The Paranoid Style – White Wine Whatever
Today The Paranoid Style shares the wry, rollicking, anthemic rocker “White Wine Whatever,” an ode to contemporary malaise and cognitive dissonance.
“White Wine Whatever” is the third single made available from the band’s fifth LP titledKnown Associates, due for release on February 13th, 2026, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of Bar/None Records.
Elizabeth Nelson shares: “A favorite Paranoid Style track of mine, though recorded under a dark cloud of inter-band mystery that day—Tim was pissed at Jon, which is common enough, but even William and Peter and the typically unflappable Mike V. seemed on edge. Of course I hadn’t slept the night before, or any of the recent nights, finishing the songs and all. We were maniacs. This thing is just a pure fucking brawl. By the time Eugene Edwards—Dwight Yoakam’s lead guitarist—laid in a series of intensely greasy licks, Matt Douglas of the Mountain Goats had jumped in too, on sax, it was the closest thing to Mick Taylor and Bobby Keys I’ve heard since ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.’ If nothing else, tune in for that. My fingers are still sticky.”
The Paranoid Style’s bandleader Elizabeth Nelson is also a decorated journalist, who can now add podcast host to her resume with the recently launched Known Associates podcast, presented by New Pony in affiliation with Southwest Review. On the Known Associates pod, Nelson talks to other singers and writers about their lives and art. The first two episodes are available now and feature Craig Finn from the Hold Steady and Patterson Hood from Drive-By Truckers.
Previous single “It’s a Dog’s Breakfast (for LR),” is a song Elizabeth Nelson wrote for Linda Ronstadt that accompanied the album’s announcement in October.
August’s “Tearing the Ticket” pays tribute to lost DC-area music legends Danny Gatton and Roy Buchanan, and wrestles with the ghosts of the past amidst a flickering future.
One part funeral march and one part valedictory commitment to carry on, “Tearing the Ticket” features Matt Douglas, the multi-instrumentalist from the Mountain Goats, who provides keening saxophone and flute for the Springsteen-meets-X-Ray-Spex examination of a hard, long life lived in music, which is dedicated to Bar/None’s recently deceased and terribly missed longtime label manager Mark Lipsitz.
Elizabeth Nelson’s usual Paranoid Style lineup of Peter Holsapple, William Matheny, Michael Venutolo-Mantovani, Jon Langmead and Timothy Bracy all play on Known Associates, the exhilarating follow up to 2024’s ten-alarm panic attack The Interrogator.
A fever dream of Van Morrison-horns and Leonard Cohen sentiments, Known Associates is the LP which ratifies the steadily rising reputation of Elizabeth Nelson as one of our insurgently crucial songwriters. Like her longtime hero Lucinda Williams, Nelson’s slow burn has run side by side with an ever-growing literary reputation, which has seen her work as an acclaimed contributor to the New York Times, the Atlantic, the New Yorker and Oxford American, as well as writing liner notes for reissues by Bob Dylan and the Replacements.
Regal, ragtag and filled with the sort of hard luck stories, busted-up epiphanies and thriftstore miracles that will be familiar to any fan of Richard Thompson, David Berman or Tom Waits, the mystics and statistics are already saying it: Known Associates is one of the greatest records of 2026, and Elizabeth Nelson is one of the best singer-songwriters in the world.
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