Big Stir Records is proud to begin 2026 with the January 23 release of a new album by acclaimed UK postpunk veterans THE JACK RUBIES: VISIONS IN THE BOWLING ALLEY on CD, Streaming and, for the first time since 1990, Vinyl as well. The band's fourth album and the followup to their critically-hailed 2024 comeback CLOCKS ARE OUT OF TIME, the full-length release features the band's recent indie hits “Are We Being Recorded?” and “Greedy” as well as “Phantom” as heard on BSR's 2025 Halloween collection, along with nine more all-new tracks. It's up for pre-order and presave now:

https://orcd.co/jackrubies-vitba

The time-tested lineup of THE JACK RUBIES – Ian Wright (lead vocals and guitar), SD Ineson (guitar, harmonica, backing vocals), Steve Brockway (bass), Lawrence Giltnane (percussion), and Peter Maxted (drums, and also the album's producer) – is exactly the same today as it was four decades ago when the band emerged from the English C86 and postpunk scene, and the new record even sees the return of violinist and honorary sixth member Emma Peters who guested on the debut album and performed live with the band during the early UK tours. At that time, they won the hearts of fans of college radio and MTV's 120 Minutes with their angular, noir-tinged sound, memorable melodies and sly, literate lyrics, shared stages worldwide with the likes of Katrina & the Waves, The Triffids, They Might Be Giants and Modern English, and delivered two deeply engrossing albums, Fascinatin’ Vacation (1988) and See The Money In My Smile (1990), for TVT Records. Then came the grunge and Britpop years, and the band slept, as life and other exploits took center stage until the unlikely catalyst of the 2020 pandemic led the geographically-dispersed members to rekindle their collaboration with all on board and, miraculously, their original chemistry intact. The resulting flurry of activity led first to a series of singles (all of them at once of a piece with the band's early work and yet shockingly contemporary in every sense) and ultimately to the 2024 release of their third album, CLOCKS ARE OUT OF TIME, hailed by rock writers worldwide as not just a return to form but the band's best work yet.

Even that is now old news, and with VISIONS IN THE BOWLING ALLEY, The Jack Rubies demonstrate just why their new material feels so very urgent: the band were almost always unquestionably ahead of their time. It's difficult to take joy in the fact that we now live in times so closely resembling the dystopian collapse that the Rubies' early lyrics so often seemed to depict, but here we are, and there could be no better sonic documentarians of the present day. If the songs on Clocks Are Out Of Time dealt in part with The Jack Rubies’ miraculous regeneration, then Visions In The Bowling Alley sees their collective gaze turn to the strange new future world where they now find themselves. Visions indeed, that summon gluttonous desires, artificial malevolent lovers, Martian pyramids and London buses, labyrinths, phantoms (always phantoms), Beatles books and devil boys, bullet trains and deep fakes... all of these and more inform the album, taking their place among bewitching guitar textures, infectious beats and deadpan but consummately melodic vocal deliveries.

It's not just the tenor of the times but also the enduring resurgence of the postpunk sound in this century, from Interpol to Dry Cleaning, that make THE JACK RUBIES feel more relevant than ever. Even so, there's a freshness and urgency to the band's newest material that sets them apart from their followers, and part of that is a function of the band's own inspired need to keep its own eerie flame alight. The single “Phantom,” with its tense lyrics and Remain In Light-inspired groove, was all over indie radio by October 2024, mere months after CLOCKS ARE OUT OF TIME's release, and the even more unsettling remix featured here was a highlight of Big Stir's Halloween collection CHILLING, THRILLING HOOKS AND HAUNTED HARMONIES a year later. Between Autumns, fans were treated to the very of-the-times postmodern spy music outing “Are We Being Recorded?” and most recently, setting the stage for VISIONS, there was the standalone release of the album's archly humorous rocker of a lead track “Greedy.” The new singles have all been accompanied by compellingly original and artistic music videos of the kind they just don't make any more, with all the media telegraphing just how driven the band is to seize the moment and make it their own.

VISIONS IN THE BOWLING ALLEY makes good on every last bit of that ambition. Beyond the singles, the album features hooks and grooves aplenty and deeper explorations of the kind of paranoia, scrambled identity and media saturation that's barely science fiction any more. There are cautionary tales of intrusive technology like the loping “My Perceptron,” the near-blues retro vibes of “Dead Man” framing a '50s-era character study involving ghosts and Martians, and the darkly twanging tones of the genuinely spooky and likewise flying-saucer-inspired “Flying Machine.” Fragments of ska and ABBA-inspired piano mingle with the noir guitar leads on the humorously menacing “Asteroid,” while “This Is Not A Joke,” an exploration of a delusional world of secret societies, false rumors and omens of impending upheaval, radiates unease with mounting layers of guitars, keyboards, and backing vocals.

For all its tales of untethered personalities adrift in an unhinged world that frighteningly resembles our own, VISIONS IN THE BOWLING ALLEY, even at its darkest, is shot through with humor that's too clever and heartfelt to be truly bleak. It ends with a trio of tracks that are conversely too knowing to be considered strictly gleeful, but which sport indelible hooks that are sure to spark joy in anyone who hears them. “Boat Rocker” finds the band in almost Squeeze-like pop territory, and it's followed by an irresistibly toe-tapping cover of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band's “Swampsnake” pushed over the edge by guest Ayumi Ishito's saxophone. And the closing “Be Good Or Be Gone” is simply a delight: with its dancefloor beat, wailing harmonica, soulful backing vocals courtesy of Cat Henry, and one of Ian Wright's most instantly memorable vocal hooks ever, it's quite simply a hit waiting to happen.

Enter, then, the hallucinatory delirium of this thoroughly inviting fever dream of a record, where lions weep and creatures crawl. Where birds fly in reverse and truant scarecrows flee their fields. Yes, folks, nothing too weird or outlandish here – just the matrix overloading in this Garden of Earthly Delights. As the enigmatic Netherlandish rock star Hieronymus Bosch is unreliably reported to have said, “Life is a simulation!” You are invited to overindulge, go overboard, and wolf down this sonic slice of post punk pie. It’s The Jack Rubies’ new album... binge on!