REVIEW: “This Time Next Year” by Cheap Peach

For my alt-rock, punk, and pop-rock lovers, and fans of Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco: it’s time for Cheap Peach to be on your radar and in your playlists. 

Recorded at Tarbox Road Studios, the band’s first full-length album, This Time Next Year, was produced, mixed, and engineered by Jon Fridmann and mastered by Mike Fridmann. It was released in December of 2025. 

Founded in 2016, the now five-piece band went from high school friends to college bandmates and has been playing together since. The members are alumni of SUNY Fredonia and Buffalo State, having earned multiple music degrees among themselves. 

In an interview with the Local Lo-Down, a SUNY Fredonia Radio station, the band notes, “We’ve been rocking and rolling ever since,” says bassist Jade Hoch-Ryan. “And I don’t think we’re ever going to stop.”

“Fredonia is our stomping ground,” says founding member Tyler Will. “It’s where we got our start.” 

In the album, outside of their respective instruments and roles in the band, you get to hear vocals and other auxiliary instruments from each of the members. You’ll hear guitarist Dillon Slater laying down guitar riffs that pull you in, wanting to hear more, from catchy melodic lines to interesting dissonance and intrigue. That, alongside the rhythmic foundations laid down by drummer Brendan Ryan, and the skills of Bassist Jade Hoch-Ryan and Keyboardist Reilly Brouillard, the sounds of Cheap Peach musicians come together in each track in beautiful harmonies with a bit of chaotic energy. 

Outside of the musicians on their regular instruments, you also get to hear each member of the band sing throughout the album, which gives it a sense of cohesion while adding different sounds and timbres that mix changing voices from track to track. 

The entire project is full of surprises and interesting sounds that catch you off guard while also fitting into the song perfectly. From a long list of auxiliary percussion, acoustic guitars, bass clarinet, trumpet, and a full brass interlude, the band also added the sounds of a blender. 

It might be a long list of instruments and an overwhelming amount of sounds, but Cheap Peach manages it well: pulling forward certain aspects, letting other musical components sit in the background while allowing certain instruments to have their outburst and their moment. That, combined with the vocals, the harmonies, and the right levels of distortion, makes for a post-punk and alt-rock sound we all know and love. 

You get to hear all of these aspects through the first five tracks of the album, which include the title track “This Time Next Year”. Each of the tracks leads and blends into one after the other, until “Far Away” begins. It slows down the pace of the album drastically, allowing you to really catch the beautiful story of the lyrics and the sweet sounds of the acoustic guitars, keys, and much more. The band still maintains their auxiliary instruments, and in this song seems to add shimmers throughout the track that are nice, smaller, and more anticipated interruptions. 

If it makes you miss the punk and rock you heard at the beginning, never fear, because the band is right back at it with the following track, “Cowboys”. The song has an underlying catchy melody that hooks you, and the simplicity creates an environment for the chaos of other guitars, drums, vocals, and immense distortion to bring you into their post-punk world. 

One of my favorite aspects of the album is how the band gets each track to fade perfectly into the next, as previously mentioned. It allows you to get lost in the music, lost in the words, without being interrupted by the beginning of a new song. Each song leads right into the next, creating a listening experience you don’t find often. 

For those looking for alt and punk rock that hits the right notes and feelings, tracks “New Year’s Eve”, “This Time Next Year”, and “What’s The Problem?”, among others, will do just that. When you are ready to slow down, “Beep Beach,” “Jagged Memories”, and “Porch Smoke” are some of the tracks to look out for. If you are looking for a mix of both, Cheap Peach does that in other tracks as well, but particularly in “On Sale, Half Off”, which also highlights the group’s intensity and emotions in their lyrics and in their work. 

The balance of different energies is something this band does so well, and the versatility they showcase as a group, going back and forth between different styles, instruments, and tempos, is remarkable. 

Check out Cheap Peach’s other music and their first full-length studio album, This Time Next Year, on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, and Bandcamp. Hit up their Instagram @cheappeachband and scroll through their linktree @CheapPeach to learn more about the band and what they are up to.