ACTOR

Fresh off a name and lineup change, Hamilton’s Actor (fka Mister Rabbit) return with The Best Of, an album that trades the pastoral Americana of their previous releases for a set of crunchy, feedback-laden epics indebted to genre demarcations as varied as 1990s alternative rock, power pop, and contemporary alt-country. Earworm riffs delivered by careening guitars and impassioned, full-throated vocals hooks augment deceptively thorny arrangements and heartfelt lyricism; the album sounds like the band in a room, but glued together and rendered in glassy clarity by an expertly high-fidelity production. Though a sophomore album on paper, it feels like a group starting fresh, arriving reinvented but fully-formed with a stellar collection of material poised to propel them to greater heights. The album arrives September 25th, 2026 via Having Fun / We Are Busy Bodies.

The Best Of was recorded with producer Matt Snell and engineer Sean Pearson at Boxcar Sound. The band – made up of Jeff van Helvoort (guitar, vocals), Sean Smith (bass, vocals),  Mitch Clark (guitar, vocals), and former member Ryan Mickeloff (drums) – set up in the studio’s loft space as if playing a gig, its tall ceilings and open concept allowing them to replicate their cavernous live sound with ease. Before hitting the studio, the band spent an extensive period honing their material through rehearsals and demos, arriving at the studio a well-oiled machine. Due to this, they tracked with minimal overdubs, preferring to be as truthful to the performances as possible. The mix reinforces this approach, augmenting their takes into something larger than life but still grounded in a gritty, off-the-floor feel. Vocals and harmonies are foregrounded and dry, while drums and bass provide rock solid grounding. Guitars are the focus, though, alternating between a swampy, fuzzed-out rhythmic chug and dreamy, delay-pedal picking. Peter van Helvoort mixed the album, with Peter Letros handling mastering duties.

Musically, the band cites their shared background growing up in the Southern Ontario punk, hardcore, and emo scenes as a primary motivation for their change in direction, hoping to bring more of their formative inspirations into the fold. Influences on the record run the gamut: from the classic emo lyricism of American Football and Pedro the Lion, to the 90s radio rock trappings of Oasis, Sloan, and Smashing Pumpkins, to the wandering skronky guitar jams of Crazy Horse and late-era Red House Painters, Actor wears their influences on their sleeve. The band pulls this off without sounding the least bit derivative, though, carefully crafting their homebrewed sound out of the most salient parts of each. 

Opening salvo “Golden Youth” expertly introduces the listener to the timbres and textures of the album, serving as an excellent first single. It’s a song about frustration with people’s lack of empathy and a society that rewards it. “Counterfeit Saints” also takes aim at culture writ large, a treatise on the pitfalls of nostalgia. “Under Twenty Eight” and “A Short Dissertation on Youth and Age” tackle the anxieties encroaching middle age, not simply mourning fleeting youth, but gleaning a deeper understanding and eventual acceptance of growing older while experiencing it. Elsewhere, the album deals with familiar themes of heartbreak and longing on songs like “Chelsea Porcelain” and “CTV.”

Succinctly, though, frontman van Helvoort describes the songs as being about “being a human and trying to navigate a difficult world.” These are lofty themes that could be navel-gazing in the wrong hands, but Actor present them here as perfect microcosms, songs about individual experiences that speak to broader truths or questions. The Best Of is an excellent introduction (or reintroduction) to them as a songwriting unit, showing that they can deftly navigate through an earnest, soul-bearing rock record that resonates long after closer “I Walked Through LA” fades out.