Weird Nightmare’s ‘Hoopla’ Finds Alex Edkins Confronting Heartbreak with Pop Optimism

Four years after his self-titled debut, Alex Edkins has released a second Weird Nightmare album. The project started during an ongoing hiatus from his main band, the post-grunge trio METZ, and has now taken a sharper personal turn. Hoopla drops the guest appearances that marked the first record. Instead, Edkins works alone, writing and playing everything himself. That isolation matches the subject matter.

The album focuses on the collapse of a romantic relationship. Edkins traces the emotional arc from disintegration to what comes after, avoiding self-pity. The songs lean on bright melodies and pop structures. Tracks like “Might See You There” and “Baby Don’t” carry an almost buoyant energy. The record does not wallow. It moves, and that motion is its central idea.

Edkins still has a feel for the fuzzed-out guitar lines that defined METZ. Moments on “Forever Elsewhere” recall the exuberant crunch of Guided by Voices or The Flaming Lips, but the tone is his own. The hooks arrive quickly. They rarely let up. The closing track, “Where I Belong,” sums up the frustration of a broken heart and points toward the only real solution Edkins seems to trust: keep working, keep playing, keep going.

Both METZ and Weird Nightmare sit on the Sub Pop roster. That continuity matters less here than the clarity Edkins brings to these eleven songs. Hoopla treats heartbreak not as a dead end but as something to push through, and it does so with a directness that makes the record feel chosen, not obligatory.