2025 Music Time Capsule
Reflections from a benched nerd on why 2025 was my favourite year for the ears.
Hey y’all - long time, no transmission. I haven’t really been putting words or things into this space lately; the impulse to make stuff or write outside of work’s been… pretty subdued. Mostly I’ve been leaning into more consumptive vibes: reading, gigging, drinking, sweating, plunging and the like. But surgery has me benched, awash in surplus hours, and in a tipsy, hyperbolic exchange on New Years Eve, I told Jake (my partner in relentless live music hunger, with whom I’ve treated end-of-days likelihood with seriousness, and wasted no time seeing shows) that this past year might actually be the year - an all time one for the ears. Naturally, he told me to put my money where my mouth is and write it down. A listicle as framework, he said, like tarot or astrology, something to guide reflection, to give shape to the swirl of time and sound. So here we are.
I’ve made time capsules before - a couple years ago I did one on Instagram - but I’ve never leaned into it this deeply, never really forced myself to make a case for any of the music. I’ve always had a complicated relationship with music criticism: language is always a step behind music, which is extralinguistic, and singularly personal, so I find it reductive when writers are prescriptive, or try to forge overarching narratives around sound, which can’t be contained in the written word. But, when done well, writing about music can give context, open doors, and – like any great writing – put into words something you’ve always felt but couldn’t quite express. It can connect you, or deepen a connection. So, I’ve had a go.
Spoiler: it’s hard. Really hard. There’s a reason most music writing is… well, cringey or forgettable. It’s difficult not to echo everyone else. My interest isn’t in proving concepts or scoring points. It’s more in personal encounter. The pieces I’ve written are reflections of my own experience with the music, the moods and times it accompanied me. I’ve tried to keep it that way, and hopefully that won’t make your listening feel prescribed.
I don’t have a ton of experience with writing like this. I’ve dabbled. I spent more time this year doing it for Headfirst (shout-out to Harry, Miles, and Kate for making that happen), and I discovered that, when the mood is right, I really enjoy it. Expect variation: I’ve been writing in various states of painkiller-induced mellow, and in between bedside vase pisses. Whether you’re a writer or not, if you’re willing, send critiques - what lands, what doesn’t, what moves you. I can take it. It’s the only way to get better. Maybe I’ll do more of this; maybe I won’t. We can’t all be Jon. Writing this took time I would normally have spent in the pub with you lot, and as much as I liked it, y’all know I prefer that.
Part of why the year felt so good for music, I think, is just how much of it I spent in front of speakers. I saw gigs in Tokyo, Berlin, Chicago, London, Leeds; I went to festivals in Wales and Seattle. I finally saw a few true bucket-list bands (My Bloody Valentine, Modest Mouse, Scissor Sisters, System Of A Down, TV On The Radio). I watched all-time faves deliver genuinely perfect, no-notes shows (The Hotelier, Joyce Manor, Alan Sparhawk, Deafheaven), and caught acts right in their prime (Cameron Winter, SML, Los Thuthanaka, Ryan Davis, Porter Robinson, Black Fondu, Joshua Idehen).
But beyond the brag-sheet, I do actually think there is simply more great music available than ever before - recorded and live. If you’re willing to look, the abundance is real. My hope is that this list might give you some ideas for what to try next, and – to get on my soapbox briefly – encourage people to devote some of their time to a more active form of listening. One of the best books of 2025, Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine, highlights how streaming platforms like Spotify have transformed music into a backdrop for life, optimised for passive listening through mood playlists and “lean-back” algorithms. Convenience has eclipsed curiosity, amplifying generic tracks and “ghost artists” while sidelining real creators. Passive listening turns music into data; active listening reconnects us to what are deliberate cultural acts, and sustains a meaningful connection between listener and creator.
I’m not here to police anyone’s listening habits - I’ve spent more time on Spotify than most, and there’s a playlist below to prove it - but maybe just to make you reflect: how do you want to relate to music? Functionally or emotionally? Do you feel less or more connected to new music than you did in the past? People often chalk up fading interest in new music to aging, but maybe it’s really about how we listen. I, for one, am living evidence that for some, music only gets better every year.
A couple notes on how I’ve structured this: I didn’t want to rank albums. Instead, they live in three categories, and just appear in the order that I wrote about them:
Sleeping On These – less well known records I feel need a champion.
Everybody’s Talking About It – albums that I loved, but are on a lot of critics’ year end lists, and don’t need my help getting heard.
Still Killing It – veterans continuing to pump out brilliance.
Some albums would fit in multiple categories, but I placed them where they felt most at home. None of this is curated with anyone else’s taste in mind; it’s purely all the stuff that resonated most with me this year, and none of the stuff that didn’t. Some (or a lot) may not be for you - but I say, open your mind! I’ve added genre notes and FFOs (for fans of), and I’m happy to make personal recs if you want. Just gimme a buzz (or in the unlikely event you’re here and don’t have my number, post in the comments).
And finally, I’d love for you to share your faves - whether they appear on my list or not. Tell me what you love, what hits! Drop some takes in the comments (if you can reach them). Let’s make this a conversation. Okay, without further ado, here’s 10,000 words (that’s right! ten-whole-thousand! many of them superlatives! should keep you going all year!) about my 54 favourite albums of 2025… I’ll buy anyone who makes it to the end a big-ol’ draught beer-o.
Listen along:
Below is a playlist of all the records that are available on streaming, in the order they appear here. Taste test a track before diving into the full record, or dive in blind, based purely on my word salad - your call.
Part 1: Sleeping On These
The underheard stuff that deserves more attention.
Home Is Where - hunting season (Emo-Country/Post-Hardcore)
You couldn’t get much more Home Is Where than a concept album about 13 Elvis impersonators dying in a 13-car pileup. If you’re at all into Neutral Milk Hotel and haven’t checked out this band, you’re in for a treat. This is the third excellent record in a row from my favourite emo-country weirdos. They experiment with everything from yodel-hardcore to Flying Burrito Brothers tributes to 10-minute Sung Tongs-era Animal Collective-style freak outs. Lyrically, nobody balances Lynchian surrealism with political and personal stakes better than vocalist Bea MacDonald. In part, the album is a grieving love letter to her home state of Florida, set against the backdrop of anti-trans legislation and the rejection of her gender identity. It revels in that specifically Southern brand of Americana that embraces weirdness, wildness, eccentrics, and uncared-for corners, even when the relationship to it is fraught and what’s lost is unattainable. Don’t let the heavy subject matter scare you off, though, it’s honky-tonk ready - a raucous, playful Southern rock mini-opera filled with fishing lures and coolers full of beer. Perfect grilling music.
for fans of Neutral Milk Hotel; early Modest Mouse; Algernon Cadwallader; Flying Burrito Brothers
Friendship - Caveman Wakes Up (Alt-Country/Indie Rock)
Long hours surrendered to repetitive labour. Fluorescent pit stops for fuel and nicotine. A post-shift beer. Staring at the ceiling’s cracked geometry. Does all this mundane stuff add up to something meaningful? Caveman Wakes Up answers… It does! Take this record as proof! I’ve had a lot of my favourite listening experiences zoning-out on public transit – I probably took a return coach to London a dozen times this year – and Friendship are the perfect soundtrack for the passing of unspectacular landscapes. Lead vocalist and songwriter Dan Wriggins is one of the sharpest available writers in any medium. Both his lyrics and written poetry are stuffed with wry humour, ambivalent aphorisms, witty twists of thought, nonchalant dread. The organising principle is the accumulation of the quiet, unimpressive features of life, the overlooked, the unremarkable. After Love the Stranger (my favourite album of 2022) this was highly anticipated, and it did not disappoint. The band get a little more curious and mischievous in their playing but still retain their inviting shabbiness, and Dan stretches his signature warble further into strain than ever. Such an underrated band. Also, this features what may be the greatest ever bit of video game-based semantic recontextualization (“Resident Evil”).
FFO: Silver Jews/Purple Mountains; Bill Callahan; Bonnie “Prince” Billy; Leonard Cohen; MJ Lenderman; Vic Chesnutt
Agriculture - The Spiritual Sound (Transcendental Black Metal)
The Spiritual Sound of Agriculture’s ecstatic black metal is a music ritual. Submit to overwhelming uplift! Seriously, cataclysmically euphoric emotional states are available with this record. The technical musicianship is insane - complex riffs, tempo changes, layered textures, rhythmic experimentation, and the “Bodhidharma” guitar solo! That track alone is among the best of the year. Ridiculous stuff. We all know technical displays can sound like musical masturbation without any emotional depth, but this record pummels you with feelings. Its dynamic contrasts become the push and pull of life. Blast beats, heavy riffs, and dense instrumentation suddenly shift into serene, airy melodies or ambient passages. By confronting these intense, sometimes chaotic, sometimes beautiful sounds, I have experienced what can only be described as a kind of emotional purification. A detachment and clearing of the mind. Who needs silent meditation when you’ve got sonic immersion? Let go of your fear, anger, and regret: ascend!!
FFO: Deafheaven; Scott Walker; My Bloody Valentine; Harvey Milk; Slayer
Duval Timothy - wishful thinking (Modern Classical/Post-Minimalism)
London-born pianist–composer–painter–hat maker–children’s author–carpenter–restaurateur–shoe designer Duval Timothy has made some of the best piano-based music of the past decade. His last album, Meeting With a Judas Tree, was one of my favourites of that year, and he’s followed it with another gorgeous, characteristically unflashy sensory world on Wishful Thinking. His self-taught instrument is the main voice, but it’s occasionally flecked with gorgeous field recordings (street sounds, conversations, cars, birds, wind) and touches of guitar, or trumpet on the highlight “Grass.” Simple, sentimental motifs and melodies are rounded out by subtle, strange sound manipulation, but it’s never overdone; he always resists the urge to be too harsh or disruptive. Ultimately, it’s one of the most peaceful and generous things I listened to this year. I also picked up his limited-release vinyl You Go to the Middle of Nothing, which I like even more than this - so if you’re one of the cool ones, come over and listen.
FFO: Erik Satie; Thelonious Monk; Harold Budd; Terry Riley; Bach
SML - How You Been (Nu Jazz)
SML (Small Medium Large) is the modern day answer to ‘70s Miles Davis. A quintet made up of the sickest jazz fusion improv virtuosos around, this is bonkers future music like you’ve never heard. A lot of the writing around this band positions them as a rebuttal to AI slop, which I think is a bit reductive, but it’s true that there’s is a real lived energy and sense of play that couldn’t ever be digitally prompted. The way they respond to each other is based or radical presence and familiarity with each member’s playing, and there are the audience sounds and on-stage directions that tie the recording back to the improvised performances from which the record was compiled. Jake and I were blessed enough to see them do a two set show at the Church of Sound a few months ago, and it was outrageous. There was a bit where bassist Anna Butterss played these loping effervescent funk grooves and then shifted to a minimal techno schaffel; there was a Josh Johnson led, dreamy processed sax expression pedal space out; there was a bit where Booker Stardrum went full Buddy Rich; there was a bit where modular synth player Jeremiah Chiu live-sampled the saxophone with a shotgun microphone, then smeared it into a percussive groove. Again, words can’t do this kind of music any justice, all I’m saying is the spirit of play lives on in these five, the chops are SICK, and go listen. If this is your bag, there are five different directions to go with your listening in the SML universe, including in the direction of Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet.
FFO: Miles Davis’ On The Corner; ‘70s Herbie Hancock; Nala Sinephro; Can
Horsegirl - Phonetics On and On (Minimalist Indie Pop)
Horsegirl’s debut was a superb piece of contemporary shoegaze — noisy, hyper-sensitive slabs of sound you could dissolve into — very much my bag, so expectations for the follow-up were high. What they delivered is stranger, and far more compelling. At a time when the shoegaze revival couldn’t be more trendy, they teamed up with Cate Le Bon and completely reinvented themselves into a minimalist act. This is some Arthur Russell shit. It’s one of the best examples of how to do loads with virtually nothing. The songs use very few elements, but the arrangements are PERFECT. The guitars are cleaner, taut, and precise, with almost no distortion. Like the title suggests, the focus is on sound and language - phonetics - and the idea that tones and syllables can communicate emotion as powerfully (or more so) as semantic meaning. So the songs use lots of non-lexical sounds as central musical elements, treating the voice like another instrument, which is a playful approach, but it only works if you’re as casually assured as these three.
FFO: anything C86; The Velvet Underground; The Feelies; The Raincoats
Cleo Reed - Cuntry (Americana-R&B)
Records this political are rarely this fun. If you didn’t get it, the Cuntry is America, and America is not well. The songs on here are about tallying the bill, surviving misogyny and transphobia, losing your mind because society’s designed that way. But Cleo Reed slips the shiv in gently with lush arrangements and a SZA-like honeyed voice. They call this a folk rap album, which is a bit of a decoy. There are all kinds of sounds in here. Sub-bass and triangle pings. There’s no pinning it down. It’s sometimes as close to Eureka-era Jim O’Rourke as it is Doja Cat. I love the storytelling: the bar lights, the bad decisions, the survival drinking. It’s all so vivid. And the hooks stick to your brain like a well-earned hangover (like, one of the good ones). Also, according to stream numbers, nowhere near enough people have heard this. I’m very confused by that.
FFO: SZA; Solange; Nourished By Time; Kara Jackson
Shallowater - God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars (Slowcore/Alt-Country)
I’m gonna let myself get extra superlative with this one. God’s Gonna Give You A Million Dollars is a tour-de-force: an emotionally precise, regionally grounded expression of longing, metaphysical exhaustion, and the perpetual deferral of home. It could not be more my vibe: it’s deeply evocative of Texas in subject matter and aesthetic, and it’s basically the midpoint on the Venn diagram between Pinegrove, Low, Codeine, and Jason Molina. The six tracks are desolate, dusty, tumbleweed-filled landscapes that unfold expansively in pace and depth. With a bit of patience, you encounter narrators negotiating survival, disassociation, dislocation, and (occasionally) reconciliation. Songs mostly begin subdued and slowly build toward cathartic, feedback-drenched dust storms. And the centrepiece, “Highway,” is my favourite song of the year - a stunning slice of dirtcore that perfectly captures the isolation of loss after a relationship that has drifted apart.
FFO: Codeine; Wednesday; Low; Pinegrove; Songs: Ohia; Slint
Djrum - Under Tangled Silence (IDM/Modern Classical/Ambient-Techno)
With the exception of Los Thuthanaka, this is probably the most unique and fresh sounding album on this list. Built around Felix Manuel’s childhood piano skills, Under Tangled Silence is one of the most unconventional electronic albums I’ve ever listened to. It jumps through every kind of electronic and classical genre sound you can imagine - dancehall, techno, breakcore, gabber, spiritual jazz, all in here. There’s harp and mbira. The sounds are so skillfully mixed that you can’t always tell what’s live and what’s digital. Aphex Twin is definitely a reference point, and the comparison is well-earned - it has a similarly alien, deeply immersive quality – but Under Tangled Silence is more epic. I’d say this was my favourite first listen of the year, purely because of the thrill of disbelief. I went full stoner grin: how is this even allowed? There is a sense of ascension the trajectory, where each track rolls out a new dimension, and the fluidity is mental, it keeps you on the edge of your seat for the whole running time. I can’t wait to hear what he does next.
FFO: Aphex Twin; Floating Points; Burial; Barker; Jon Hopkins
Asher White - 8 Tips for Full Catastrophe Living (Art Rock)
Do you like every album on this list? Seriously, all of them? This one might be for you… Listening to the singular one-woman band Asher White is like stepping into a maximalist music palace with a thousand rooms. Except there’s also a crazy cross-draft in the palace (there’s an internal breezeway) that creates swirling wind tunnels, swinging doors open willy-nilly for a wee sonic taster before silently slamming them shut again. Vocally, Dave Longstreth of Dirty Projectors comes to mind, but it can go anywhere. Airy plucked-harmonic folk-pop will give way to throbbing electronic propulsion, then to monolithic doom-laden sludge, then to lush chamber serenity, then to textural cinematic soundscapes. It’s all here. Somehow it always coheres in a way that lands. It’s the sort of record I’d love to make if I had even a microgram of this talent and confidence.
FFO: Dirty Projectors; Emperor X; Black Country, New Road; Water From Your Eyes
keiyaA - hooke’s law (Experimental R&B)
keiyaA’s first record, Forever, Ya Girl, pretty much passed me by at the time, but hooke’s law sucked me into its world from the very first moments. It’s so arresting, I couldn’t get enough. When it finished, I immediately went back and listened to the other one. Then I went back to hooke’s law. And so on, for days. The central reference point is lush alt-R&B in the Solange/Erykah Badu vein, but there’s so much more to it than that. What’s special about keiyaA is how pissed off she sounds - she’s constantly telling you she hates you, or that you should be quiet, or that the system is a scam (“suffering is the plan”) - and how the music animates her psyche like some sort of shape-shifting digital chimera: aggressive when she’s angry, jittery when she’s anxious, alluring when she wants to seduce. She stacks busy arrangements with frantic free-jazz drums, Earl Sweatshirt–style sludge-hop, blown-out auto-tuned vocals, and frantic IDM bleep-bloops, layering them all with surprising cohesion. I usually have one or two artists each year that I become obsessed with, diving deep into everything they’ve made, and keiyaA was one of those for me in 2025.
FFO: Sudan Archives; Solange; Blood Orange; Erykah Badu
University - McCartney, It’ll Be OK (Noise Rock/Math Rock)
If you know me, you know I love noise. University are a baby-faced four-piece from - of all places - Crewe, in Cheshire, who clearly love the sheer physical act of making a hell of a racket together. It’s such a fun, playful record about youthful anxiety and friendship, and despite the DIY aesthetic, it’s really tight. Sure, it’s lo-fi, screeching, and lurching, but it’s also mathy, full of sudden stops, starts, and tempo changes, and the drums and bass are crazy precise. Even when it gets aggressive, it never feels angry or negative - it’s all for the thrill! And there are just so many ideas - you think you know what’s coming, but they keep surprising you with a sick onslaught of serrated staccato math-rock riffs, corrosive eruptions, and strangulated vocal spasms. 10/10, best new noise.
FFO: Black Dice; Cap‘n Jazz; Frog Eyes; Snowing; black midi
Snocaps - Snocaps (Indie Pop/Alt-Country)
The vibe on this one is hammock. A surprise Halloween release from a new Crutchfield-verse supergroup made up of Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee), Allison Crutchfield (Swearin’), MJ Lenderman, and producer Brad Cook. Had this been promoted, it probably would’ve been way more popular. It’s a buffet of choruses! And a reunion for Katie and Allison after nearly 15 years apart as collaborators, mixing the raw pop-punk energy of their early band P.S. Eliot with the more polished, laid-back vibe of their recent solo work. Katie Crutchfield still has the most arresting singing voice I’ve ever heard - the sister harmonies are a highlight - and she writes all the best songs that happen in cars. Brad Cook might be my pick for best working indie rock producer, everything he touches turns to gold.
FFO: Lucinda Williams; Big Thief; Waxahatchee; Swearin’; MJ Lenderman
$ilkMoney - WHO WATERS THE WILTING GIVING TREE ONCE THE LEAVES DRY UP AND FRUITS NO LONGER BEAR? (Abstract Hip-Hop)
Greatest rapper alive? You could make the case for billy woods, who released another great record this year, but my pick is $ilkMoney. He treats rapping like a physical and intellectual sport, pulverising wads of syllables with his signature percussive snarl. He’s unusually obsessed with rap’s internal architecture – the tactility of language, how many ideas you can cram into a bar, how far you can push a rhyme before it collapses. The beats are loud, weird, and heady, built from warped soul and jazz loops, stray audio lifted from phone calls and YouTube ephemera. And the lyrics are uncompromisingly dense (the record is conceptually inspired by Shel Silverstein’s children’s book The Giving Tree) – but it works because it’s so tonally versatile. Some parts are really extreme, but then he’ll undercut them with esoteric jokes or surprisingly sincere moments. Within a single verse, he can pivot from Black radical theory or AI ethics to cartoons, fast food, naked self-doubt. Also, nobody is touching him when it comes to song titles. I mean, come on: “THE $400 CHEESEBURGER FROM THE WINDOW SHOPPER VIDEO WAS JUST A BIG MAC.”
FFO: MIKE; Pink Siifu; billy woods; JPEGMafia; Injury Reserve
Hotline TNT - Raspberry Moon (Power Pop/Shoegaze)
A tip-top follow-up to a tip-top record by a tip-top band. Sure, it’s a bit derivative, but they’re the best at the thing they’re doing, I hope they just keep putting out records like this every few years. Change nothing - I’d happily take another dozen of these earnest, unpretentious, heart-on-your-sleeve albums. It’s shoegaze done well, with a power-pop sensibility and hints of ‘90s indie rock. Packed with snapshot-like lyrics that capture feelings in just a few lines, fuzzy guitars, hooky vocal melodies, and big, punchy drums and bass. A band with an arena-ready sound that hopefully never plays an arena.
FFO: DIIV; Wednesday; Dinosaur Jr.; feeble little horse
Walt McClements - On a Painted Ocean (Accordion Ambient/Drone)
Who knew accordion music could be this intense? This record is a slow-motion drone pilgrimage that contains the same ominous/reassuring quality you get in the music of Kali Malone or Tim Hecker - or, indeed, the sound of a foghorn at sea. McClements’ accordion, braided with electronics and cathedral-thick organ tones, swells to a beauty so immense it’s on the verge of buckling under spiritual pressure, occasionally ruptured by brief saxophone ascents that slice the haze with anguished shards of light. Like all great voyages - or readings of Moby-Dick - it moves slowly and deliberately.
FFO: Tim Hecker; Kali Malone; Fennesz; Brian Eno
Huremic - Seeking Darkness (Post-Rock/Noise Rock)
A side project of the extremely prolific South Korean underground recluse Parannoul, who normally writes meticulous shoegaze-emo architectures – songs engineered for lift, propulsion, and emotional excess. Seeking Darkness is more like an ideas lab where he follows his weirder, darker, more abstract impulses wherever they want to go – it’s loud, murky, and chaotic. And he samples an elephant. My favourite thing he’s made.
FFO: Sigur Ros; Godspeed You! Black Emperor; Weatherday; Sweet Trip
Dean Johnson - I Hope We Can Still Be Friends (Singer-songwriter/Folk/Country)
A second stunning collection of self-deprecating heartbreak ditties from one of the most underrated singer-songwriters around. If this had come out in 2008, Dean Johnson may well have been getting radio play. As it is, he plays intimate wee shows in basement venues and releases unfussy, velvet-grade, country-rooted folk records. Works for me. Slightly crisper production, courtesy of Sera Cahoone from Band of Horses, is the primary difference between this and his previous album Nothing for Me, Please. But the already refined formula is much the same: unrequited love, breakups, sharp observational humour, soft acoustic arrangements, and his universally gorgeous high-tenor voice. I should probably chase him up about that interview he offered me after the Louisiana gig.
FFO: Waxahatchee; Joan Shelley; Neil Young; S.G. Goodman
Great Grandpa - Patience, Moonbeam (Indie Rock/Folk Rock)
After what feels like an age without a peep (aside from lead vocalist Al Menne’s underheard solo record from a couple of years ago), this is a high point return from a band I’m very fond of. They’re simply better than most bands working in this well-worn space: soft, cosy, guitar-driven indie rock with roots in emo, folk, and alt-country. The songs are about tenderness, care, time passing, and reunion after the band spent years apart living in different countries and not knowing if they’d continue. They were the highlight of the poorly organised Saturday at Pitchfork Festival in Dalston this year, and it was genuinely lovely to finally see a band I thought I might never get the chance to catch.
FFO: Pinegrove; Big Thief; Hovvdy; Alex G; Lomelda
For Those I Love - Carving the Stone (Irish Spoken Word/Progressive House)
This is probably the least subtle record on this list, and definitely the most self-serious - one to avoid if spoken-word poetry makes you itch. It’s not the kind of music I naturally gravitate toward, but every now and then something arrives that’s greater than the sum of its parts, and David Balfe’s unapologetic directness and sincere conviction just hits my giddy spot. Carving The Stone, which follows the devastating self-titled elegy he made after the death of his childhood friend and musical partner Paul Curran, is a weary address to contemporary Dublin. He’s watching the city he loves be hollowed out by tech gentrification, economic strain, and the slow erosion of community. The words technofeudalism and cunt both feature (the latter quite a bit more than the former), and the beats go hard, rich with melancholy piano melodies, warped drumkits, burbling synths, and Irish folk samples, along with his signature candid conversation tape samples. Marmite music - you’ll be able to tell within the first minute whether it’s for you or not.
FFO: The Streets; Underworld; Benefits
Leif - Collide (Ambient Techno)
This one just came out and, unfortunately, will likely be overlooked at the tail end of an exceptional year of AD93 releases. Leif Knowles is a Welsh electronic producer closely associated with the private festival Freerotation (if you know how to get me in, I am open to negotiation), and apparently lives in Bristol - though I’ve never had the chance to see him perform. His peaks are arguable: my favourites are 2019’s Loom Dream (his most conventionally beautiful) and this one, which is built from ambient and kosmische textures made using an old Aria Pro II electric guitar he’s owned since childhood, mixed with motorik beats and proto-techno pulses. His signature move is to defamiliarise sounds into a soup of looping, otherworldly nostalgia, and I find it very elegant and distinctive in a way that a lot of psychedelic dance-adjacent stuff usually isn’t.
FFO: Gas; The Field; Pantha du Prince; Purelink
Frog - 1000 Variations on the Same Song (Indie Rock/Slacker Fun)
This band love having fun. They love writing songs. You can tell they are having a great time and they are in the flow zone. Case and point:
Did Santa come down the chimney?
You think I’m dumb? What’d he bring me?
Did Santa come?
Carry me, Mom
Stick out your tongue
The air tastes like home
Vape hits your lungs
Bring in the drums
Did Santa come?
or...
I can’t justify it, it isn’t rational!
I get high and I cry it over a broken Casio
I could’ve tried to hide it, it’s in the past and all
In case I’m wrong, these next two songs are by The National
(Etc.)
FFO: This Is Lorelei; Geese; Friendship; MJ Lenderman
Whatever The Weather - Whatever The Weather II (Ambient/Glitch/IDM)
Loraine James might be my favourite working London producer. The last two records released under her own name are hard, unsettling digital squall odysseys that tear through bits of drill, grime, and IDM in totally fresh ways. The Whatever The Weather project is just as sophisticated, but much different in intensity. Listen on headphones and it sucks you into a strange nocturnal musical weather map of emotions. Each track is labelled with a temperature in Celsius, which represents James’ “emotional temperature” while making it, and they’re mainly ambient, minimalist pieces made with muted synth pads, faint digital glitches and occasional soft distortion. It’s an airy and contemplative listen that, like all great ambient music, creates a guided space for your subconscious feelings, thoughts and emotional climates to roll through at their own pace.
FFO: Autechre; Jefre Cantu-Ledesma; Tim Hecker; KMRU
Keiran Hebden & William Tyler - 41 Longfield Street Late ‘80s
(Americana Ambient-Techno)
It’s been almost 15 years since King Creosote collaborated with Jon Hopkins on one of the greatest albums ever recorded by a Scot. At the time, I expected we’d see more folk-rooted artists teaming up with respected electronic producers, but that hasn’t really come to pass. 41 Longfield Street Late ’80s is a very different record from Diamond Mine – there are no vocals, for one – but they share a similar sensibility, and I love them both for many of the same reasons. It’s a collaboration between avant-folk guitarist William Tyler (who’s other record this year, Time Indefinite, is equally gorgeous) and Four Tet (no introduction necessary). Tyler’s fingerpicked acoustic guitar is the main focus for most of the album (with the exception of the more techno influenced “Spider Ballad”), while the electronic elements are subtle and supportive. The result is best described as landscape music: serene, contemplative, full of cosmic wonder, sunlit vistas, and open canyons. It made a perfect soundtrack for my 2025 reread of Stoner by John Williams - one of my all-time favourite novels - and I’d also say it pairs beautifully with one of the year’s best films, Train Dreams (an adaptation of another favourite book of mine). All three works meditate on time and impermanence, portraying life as a series of small, often unnoticed events. The emotional power comes from the accumulation and compression of these moments, which in a more conventional artwork might be absent entirely. In the right mood, this is a perfect record.
FFO: Four Tet; Jon Hopkins; Tortoise; Hayden Pedigo
Cryogeyser - Cryogeyser (Indie Rock/Pop Shoegaze)
Like the Hotline TNT album, this is the cream of the oversaturated shoegaze-revival crop. ‘90s/early 2000s nostalgia doesn’t get much closer to a platonic ideal. You can hear Siamese Dream, Courtney Love, Drop Nineteens, even a little Dido on here. Buffy, Charmed, and The O.C. are explicitly mentioned, and the songs would fit perfectly in any of those shows. Shawn Marom writes pop-forward, melodic, grand anthems of romantic fatalism. The production shimmers and the guitars are thick, sometimes verging on nasty. Cryogeyser got buried in the thicket of other records of its ilk this year, but it deserves better.
FFO: Smashing Pumpkins; Mannequin Pussy; Alvvays; Broadcast
Part 2: Everybody’s Talking About It
The usual suspects. Most agree these rule.
Geese - Getting Killed (Art Rock)
I have nothing more to add to the Geese/Cameron Winter discourse - Getting Killed is undeniable. It’s the best album of the year; let’s not pretend otherwise. Jeff Tweedy put it well:
“Geese is exactly what a young band should be. So intense and unsettling and committed. Bold in a way that a lot of young bands don’t seem to be. I hear a lot of bands trying to thread the needle between being cool and aloof or something. Stop it!“
They’re so central to contemporary music discourse that they’ve naturally started to attract plenty of contrarian detractors - but, honestly, most of those criticisms read like compliments. Some variation of “This is just ripping off Radiohead and The Strokes… and Bob Dylan… and Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Captain Beefheart, Harry Nilsson, Bill Callahan, The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison.” Yeah, all of them at once!? Sounds pretty great to me! To those people, I say: “that’s how a lot of assholes feel/but that’s not how I feel at all.”
FFO: See above
Sudan Archives - The BPM (Maximalist Alt-R&B/Dance-Pop)
Some might wince at the suggestion that Brittney Parks is the production heir to Kanye West, but hear me out. Kanye reinvented hip-hop production multiple times (chipmunk soul, maximalist pop, industrial minimalism, gospel futurism, etc.). On The BPM and its awesome predecessor, Natural Brown Prom Queen, Sudan Archives operates with a similar iconoclastic spirit. She’s an aesthetic architect, using soundworld construction as narrative infrastructure, collapsing R&B, hip-hop, Detroit and Chicago house, Jersey club, and experimental beatwork into a frictionless vernacular all her own. Like Kanye, the scale of ambition and self-belief is staggering (mercifully without the same pathologies), and similarly self-implicating: declarations of money, power, and pleasure are undercut by loneliness, insecurity, and overstimulation. Her narrator, “Gadget Girl,” is a hilarious proto-cyborg persona who basically goes hard at all times, and the transitions are insanely creative; there are a million ideas packed into this record, and it’s constantly surprising. The relentless motion depicts a life that never slows down, and how can you blame her, when it can be this stimulating and fun!?
FFO: FKA Twigs; 2010s Kanye West; Amaarae; James Blake
Oklou - choke enough (deluxe) (Ambient Trance-Pop)
A perfect foil to The BPM, choke enough stages a soft retreat from sensory overload. It’s a kind of ablutionary pop, designed for immersion, tucking blurred, classical-leaning melodies and gentle vocals inside digital production. Imagine a calm, protective space where anxiety and stress are matabolised through encryption. I’ll admit it took me a long time to get into this one (I was way behind everyone else), because what I usually want from pop in this register is an immediate neurochemical payoff: dopamine, catharsis, face-first release - the blunt force of instant affirmation. That’s obviously not what this album offers, that expectation is deliberately refused. This is an extended release drug. But make no mistake, it’ll get you high: the hooks make love your pleasure centres, and will have you going back over and over. It was the deluxe tracks that really won me over, which is why I’ve listed the deluxe version here, and for any remaining sceptics, the Tiny Desk performance will do the trick. She’s had a huge year, and it’s refreshing to see such an insular, sophisticated pop record resonate so widely.
FFO: Grimes; Caroline Polachek; Imogen Heap; FKA Twigs
Dijon - Baby (Bedroom R&B/Neo-Soul)
We lost D’Angelo this year…. 2026 marks a decade without Prince…. Frank Ocean appears to be more interested in luxury jewelry than music. It’s rough out there for fans of enigmatic R&B auteur worship. But do not fear, Dijon is here. This album fucking rules. It’s absolutely feral. It exhales heat and sweat: nocturnal, viscous, funky heat and sweat. It’s calibrated for maximum sensation. At the same time, it’s a ruptured lo-fi assemblage of blown-out speakers, smeared melodies, grooves buckling under their own weight. Something this scrappy has no right to be this sexy. It feels emotional before it feels intelligible, but once you get into the weeds, none of the big swings (and the feelings are massive: he’s ecstatic, he’s suicidal, he’s incredibly horny) feel contrived. These are beautifully crafted songs about how domesticity, marriage, and fatherhood can magnify emotions to chaos levels – this guy is not stoic, or aloof, or avoidant. And they insist on a bodily response. I have grinned, I have danced, I have screamed parts in the shower. This my most anticipated show of 2026 by far – I’m seeing him in London and in Porto. I could honestly just quote the entire lyric sheet for this one.
FFO: Prince; Frank Ocean; D’Angelo; Bon Iver
Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band - New Threats From The Soul
(Progressive Country)
New Threats From The Soul soundtracked a lot of in-between moments on my solo trips through Japan and the U.S. this year. It’s perfect for that kind of liminal listening. Narrators drift through life without clear answers, finding meaning in observation and humour. The spectre of David Berman looms large on the meandering aphoristic drift of the lyrics, but this thing’s true distinction comes from the band’s endurance and refusal to hurry. Rob and I saw them in the basement of the Exchange with barely a dozen other people in May, right before the record came out; not long after, they ended up with a profile in The New Yorker. We were so lucky – a chance encounter with this band is the correct way. What might otherwise register as serviceable indie-country sketches are allowed to breathe and dilate, unfurling into time-slip corridors. The “Roadhouse Band” part of the name isn’t a pastiche gimmick, every member is as essential as Ryan, and they’re incredibly tight and do genuinely interesting things with the format. If you’re having a bad day, start with “The Simple Joy”, it’s one of the best salve-songs of the year.
FFO: Bill Callahan; Silver Jews/Purple Mountains; Greg Freeman; MJ Lenderman
aya - hexed! (Deconstructed Club/Digital Hardcore)
I first listened to this on a walk along the river to Conham on a lovely, still summer afternoon. Less appropriate imagery, you will not find. This is extremely aggressive electronic music with very little space to breathe. hexed! is a record about living inside the pain, fear, and anger of gender transition, leaving religion, and early sobriety. It sounds as violent and unstable as those experiences. It is not accessible. The mood is panic, and it is physical as fuck. This shit does a number on your nervous system. Thuds, squelches and scraping noises match the album’s obsession with the body changing, breaking, and reforming. There is heavy, pounding gabber rhythms; jump scares; distorted industrial noise; nu-metal screaming; acid house freak-outs. This is the closest music has ever sounded to being hunted from the inside, and it articulates that experience in, frankly, the sickest way. aya knows well that the things hurting us are often the things we use to cope. Or as she puts it: “I am the pipe I hit myself with”.
FFO: Black Dresses; Death Grips; Fever Ray; Model/Actriz
Water From Your Eyes - It’s A Beautiful Place (Art Pop/Math Pop)
I’ve loved this band for a while, and I’m glad to see them finally getting a breakthrough. This is really their third great record in a row, but it seems to have resonated with people more than the last two. I went to see them a few years ago at Rough Trade, and it was the most poorly attended gig I’ve been to in Bristol, so it was lovely to be at a sold-out Strange Brew show this year. Justice! No shots fired at vocalist Rachel Brown, who I love, but Nate Amos is the real superstar - he’s one of the best working guitarists, and such a bonkers funhouse-style producer. His axe is used in wildly different ways: abrasive post-hardcore riffs, dreamy shoegaze textures, John Frusciante-style solos, pure ambient sketches. And the drums are intricate and odd, jerking and tumbling through unusual time signatures. The kaleidoscope spins madly, and the references are exhilaratingly disparate: Tool, The Magnetic Fields, Madonna, Red Hot Chili Peppers. It’s edge of your seat stuff, and a marvel that all the pieces somehow fit together.
FFO: Deerhoof; John Frusciante; Alvvays; The Jesus & Mary Chain
Los Thuthanaka - Los Thuthanaka (Epic Latin Electronic Noise Collage)
How do I explain this one? I’m definitely not the most qualified person to write about this record’s politics, but I’ll do my best to break down how one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the year is an unmastered, Bandcamp-exclusive, experimental noise-chicha onslaught. Based on what I’ve read:
It reclaims Indigenous musical forms like huayño, caporal, and kullawada, integrating them with modern electronic techniques. By blending ancestral sounds with futuristic production, it resists the erasure of Indigenous knowledge.
It honours queer Aymara identity through the figure of Chuqi Chinchay, a dual-gendered jaguar deity.
The unmastered, chaotic production style rejects commercial notions of perfection, which many critics read as a critique of commodified music culture, and its insistence on patience, immersion, and deep listening challenges modern attention economies.
This isn’t accessible stuff, but in my opinion, it’s one of the most rewarding experiences you can have with music. If part of what you’re looking for in art is to be surprised - to have an experience like you’ve never had before, to see the world in a whole new way - this is the record on this list most capable of delivering that. It’s totally alien. And despite the serious critical framing, it’s also genuinely fun, in a Miami Vice kind of way. Like Boredoms, or Oneohtrix Point Never, if you give this your sustained attention, it will hack into a part of your brain that feels like it exists solely for the purpose of hearing this album. Seeing them at the ICA in London with Jake this year was one of the best decisions I made all year. DJ!
FFO: Boredoms; Black Dice; Oneohtrix Point Never; early Animal Collective
Model/Actriz - Pirouette (Dance-Punk)
One of the best live acts since their very beginning, Model/Actriz are perfect for fans of LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture who also appreciate heavier sounds, drag performance, and confessional storytelling about shame-tinged queer sexual escapades. Pirouette explores the tension between wanting to be desired and fearing the cost of that desire, with intensely intimate lyrics about queer self-image and shame, set against icy, danceable post-industrial music driven by metallic guitars and relentless dance-punk rhythms. Try to see them live if you can: frontperson Cole Haden, adorned in a Black Swan-like drag ensemble, threads the audience with a serpentine mic cable, moving, holding, and occasionally cradling those who cross his orbit in a kind of sinister corporeal party ritual. It rules.
FFO: LCD Soundsystem; Swans; Xiu Xiu; Gilla Band
Nourished By Time - The Passionate Ones (Synthpop/Bedroom R&B)
After getting serotonin-sabotaged by Anthony at my birthday gig in 2024, I got to see Nourished By Time again with Louis this year. I felt validated - my initial reaction was the correct one. The follow-up to breakthrough Erotic Probiotic 2 sounds like some rediscovered dusty bargain-bin relic come to life. Marcus Brown has extremely good taste, digging through bedroom synth-pop, R&B, lo-fi, house, post-punk, and soul for “deep-feeling sounds,” whatever that means (you know them when you hear them). Numbness and irony are his enemies. He croons about love, desire, and burnout in hymns to the dignity of routine (“9 2 5”) and laments for passion-dulling self-doubt (“Max Potential”). He makes the unsexy stuff sexy. Great cleaning music.
Part 3: Still Killing It
Mid and late-career legends still making some of their best work.
Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power (Atmospheric Black Metal/Post-Metal)
Hot fucking damn is this the happiest a record made me this year. Thank god my fave metal band of all time remembered how to do this! Deafheaven are not for everyone, but they send yours truly to the cosmos on the regs. They rinse my soul and melt my face. Their last record, Infinite Granite, was, frankly, pish. Weak sauce. No screamies? On a Deafheaven record? Well, I don’t give a shit about that now - Lonely People has abundant screamies. The screamies are thunderous. And the pace is relentless. And the guitars are scalding. It’s a banquet of metals. A sonic wreckage piled high. Metal on metal on metal. Layer upon layer. Fuck tons of metals. Sunbather may have been an instant classic, but the best Deafheaven album, from a craftsmanship standpoint, is unquestionably this one. It was the last mosh pit I got to participate in before I tore my ACL, and I’m still peaking.
FFO: My Bloody Valentine; Liturgy; Panopticon; Wolves In The Throne Room
Jeff Tweedy - Twilight Override (Singer-Songwriter/Contemporary Folk)
I really wish I could hang out with Jeff Tweedy. He’s one of my absolute heroes in both art and life. Living proof that you can go from being debilitatingly depressed to embodying a graceful paternalistic ease; being George Saunders’ best bud; and working towards the project of “growing a heart big enough to love everyone”. Wilco were my favourite band for a while in my early twenties, so I have a long-standing relationship with the music of this guy, and while I’ve always kept up, it’s been a while since I’ve connected this hard. It really is a late-career masterpiece. And 30 tracks! A two-hour record that I’ve listened to start to finish dozens of times this year. Not a bit bloated. Like 30 big, lovely, warm hugs from my best bud Greig (famously a great hugger). Jeff embraces eclecticism, wandering through George Harrison-esque pastoral rock, chamber-pop oddities, sedate funk and soul nods, rockabilly, and so on. For a taste test, check out the playful poem-song “Parking Lot.” Hell of a guy, hell of a songwriter.
FFO: Wilco; George Harrison; Cassandra Jenkins; Bill Callahan; Billy Bragg; Kurt Vile
Danny Brown - Stardust (EDM Hip-Hop/Bubblebum Bass)
Speaking of nice guys who used to be drug addicts, Danny Brown is in his kind vibe phase, which for him means making a whole bunch of freaky, hyperpop rave-rap. Compared to his dark and intense peaks, XXX and Atrocity Exhibition, Stardust is much lighter - a celebration of leaving behind a period of self-destructive behavior - and a load of fun. He’s taken his iconoclasm to totally new extremes, working with younger experimental trans and non-binary producers (Jane Remover, Quadeca, femtantyl, Frost Children), with whom he shares outsider status and a refusal to be confined by genre labels. It’s fast, chaotic synths, glitchy beats, and playful digital textures. And his special ability: rap over anything. Whether you think it all works or not, the result is undeniably unique. Nobody alive could replicate Danny Brown’s particular brand of weird.
FFO: Jane Remover; JPEGMafia; Brockhampton; Death Grips
Alan Sparhawk - With Trampled By Turtles (Americana/Progressive Bluegrass)
After his wife and longtime musical partner Mimi Parker passed away in 2022, Alan Sparhawk left Low behind and went on tour for the first run of solo shows in his career. I didn’t manage to catch him on that tour, but the reports were that he was playing raw, bluntly confrontational grief songs in the mode of Skeleton Tree, Carrie & Lowell or A Crow Looked At Me. Then, unexpectedly, he dropped a divisive (I loved it) left-turn album called White Roses, My God - a wild collection of hyper-processed, disorientating chipmunk-vocaled trap jams. I wasn’t alone in wondering where the bare stripped down songs had gone, or if they’d ever be recorded. As big Low-head, I was hoping I’d get to hear them some day. Turns out he was waiting to record them with his close friends Trampled By Turtles, and it was worth the wait. These are gorgeous recordings that lean into folk and bluegrass-inspired acoustic instrumentation, warm harmonies, and some killer string parts. The weight of longing and grief is palpable - he’s such a confident songwriter, you know within a minute of the record that you’re in good hands. I’d go anywhere with him. At Green Man, he played a show in two halves – 45 mins of autotune-fueled bangers before diving into this new material. It made me very happy. I sobbed. I challenge anyone to pull off a set that disparate and have the mood shift feel as effortless as it did. Also, at 57, he’s in great shape. Check it out:
FFO: Low; A Crow Looked At Me; Nick Drake; Fleet Foxes
Panda Bear - Sinister Grift (Psychedelic Pop)
A heavy grower, the Green Man show really sold me. This is the most accessible (and perhaps my favourite) Panda Bear record, and the best AnCo related project since Merriweather Post Pavillion. How else would Noah Lennox go about a painful divorce album than a collection of dubby laid-back beach hang bangers? You can’t get them out of your head! I honestly thought I would never like reggae sounds, but this has changed my mind. The platonic ideal of a mid career indie darling album. Less experimental than Person Pitch, Tomboy, or Grim Reaper, but still lush and textured, and more straightforward pop songwriting really suits him.
FFO: Beach Boys; Dan Deacon; Tame Impala; Deerhunter
Alex G - Headlights (Indie-Folk)
This guy is a bit of a secular saint in my eyes. Headlights is his tenth studio album. How? How has Alex G made ten albums!? And how has he managed to get better with each one!? And most remarkably: how on earth has it taken this long for his major-label debut? Accordingly, it’s the most polished production has ever sounded on his music (though he was getting pretty close to this on God Save the Animals). Mandolin, banjo, accordion, strings, and children’s choirs all make appearances. And the upgrade in fidelity mirrors the subject matter (as far as there is a subject matter on an Alex G record - it’s always very impressionistic): major label, bigger stages, more money. There are fewer character studies and more first-person reflections; it’s more emotionally direct. But deep down, he’s still a weirdo who writes off-kilter nursery-rhyme indie pop. The songs rule: his way of writing about the pressure of minor fame is to make a song about a stressed-out football player trying to punt a ball as far as he can (“Beam Me Up”). “Some things I do for love / Some things I do for money / It ain’t like I don’t want it / It ain’t like I’m above it… I’m gonna put that football way up in the sky!”
FFO: Elliott Smith; Car Seat Headrest; Mitski; Phoebe Bridgers
HAIM - I quit (Sam’s Version) (Pop-Rock)
Okay, I quit is the worst HAIM album. Bit wait… I quit (Sam’s Version) is the best HAIM album! You just gotta pick out the duds, guys. Get it down to a tight, clean 38 mins. Here’s the tracklist:
Gone1. All Over Me
2. Relationships
3. Down To Be Wrong
4. Take Me Back
5. Love You Right
6. The FarmLucky Stars7. Everybody’s Trying To Figure Me Out
Million YearsTry To Feel My Pain8. Blood On The Street
Spinning
CryNow It’s Time9. Tie you down
10. The story of us
11. Even the bad times
FFO: Olivia Rodrigo; Sheryl Crow; Vampire Weekend; Fleetwood Mac
Bon Iver - SABLE, fABLE (Art Pop/Pop Soul)
I don’t need to go around reminding people that Justin Vernon is good at music. He’s very good at it. Probably one of the only artists on this list that my parents know well. He’s in full Bruce Hornsby-cosplay mode on this one. It’s brighter and less restrained than previous records. He’s dipping into adult contemporary and more than getting away with it. After almost two decades of imitators, he’s still the best available version of the thing that he does. Go listen to “THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS” – one of my most listened to songs of the year - for evidence that he’s still working at the peak of his powers. Like all Bon Iver records, get your cynicism in the sea before you press play, it has no place here. These songs are about you, and they are classic. He claims this will be his last, but I doubt it.
FFO: Bruce Hornsby; Sufjan Stevens; The National; Father John Misty
Oneohtrix Point Never/Daniel Lopatin - Tranquilizer/Marty Supreme OST
(Sound Collage)
Hail the sonic messiah - Daniel Lopatin, patron saint of turning cultural junk drawers into Wayback Machine sound baths. The guy has a gift for scooping up forgotten sounds and dunking them in woozy sonic gravy. Are you into new-age synths? The Blade Runner score? Yacht rock? Do you enjoy being lightly unsettled by sounds that are objectively corny? If so, OPN remains your guy. Tranquilizer is inspired by sample packs he found on the Internet Archive, and it’s a return to Replica-era plunderponics, less chaotic and abrasive than Age Of and Garden of Delete. It’s a mish-mash of cinematic strings, harp, bells, R&B fragments, dog barks, creaking doors, and so on. Goofy rave stabs and sudden jazz hiccups underscore the unpredictability of rediscovering lost cultural artifacts severed from their initial context. It sounds like what it is: fragments of culture floating in time, untethered from their original meaning. And while we’re here: he also made the best score of the year (sorry Jonny Greenwood) for Josh Safdie’s ping-pong panic attack Marty Supreme.
FFO: The Books; James Ferraro; Aphex Twin; Emeralds
Japanese Breakfast - For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) (Indie Folk)
The first Michelle Zauner project to meet something like a lukewarm public response, especially after the runaway, near-mainstream rapture of Jubilee and her memoir Crying in H Mart. For me, though, it’s the best thing she’s made since Psychopomp. Like each previous record, it’s a totally clean break from anything she’s done before. This is a mature, restrained album full of soft ballads, old-world orchestral strings and twangy guitars. Mood has always been one of JBrekkie’s superpowers, and here sepia-toned, candlelit atmosphere is refined and effortless. It all feels so natural. The great writer that she is, she skillfully delivers on the unifying theme. And not in her usual autobiographical way: these are imagined scenes of mythological figures, fictional lovers, bitter spouses, lonely men, and so on. All different types of melancholy, from all different angles. Including melancholy men in bars, which features (who else?) Jeff Bridges.
FFO: Alvvays; Mitski; Snail Mail; Soccer Mommy
Baths - Gut (Indietronica)
This was a lovely surprise. A guy who has never made a bad album but gets memory holed a lot, reappears and casually drops what I reckon’s his best work. This was also maybe the most well attended show by my loved ones this year - loads of you came to the Strange Brew show and all seemed to enjoy it, which was sweet. Will Wiesenfeld played all on his own with pads and a mic, and once he got going managed to hold the room in a vice, which is really hard to do without live instrumentation. He calls it “stomach music,” meaning it comes from gut reactions: he’s horny, angry, insecure, euphoric, ashamed. It’s louder and harsher than Baths’ previous albums - it leans closer to screamo and rock than anything before, lots of post-punk guitar sounds, scraping strings, jittery synths, breathy vocals that break into screams. But ultimately these are bangers. “Homosexuals” is one of the best songs of the year. “Carnal is a normal mode / THATS THAT!”
FFO: Perfume Genius; Youth Lagoon; Dan Deacon; Model/Actriz
FKA twigs - EUSEXUA (Art Pop/Dance Pop)
A divisive one for fans of the insular, eerie music FKA twigs has become known for making over the past decade. She lost some people with this one. I guess not everyone can be into post-human Eurodance. Sucks for those people! Twigs’ Ray of Light era rules! Titled after a term she coined for her “state of pure clarity” (lol) EUSEXUA is bangers all the way down. She’s pulling from a hefty selection of subgenres too: techno, house, garage, drum & bass, jungle, hyperpop. All the dancies. I’m a fan of it all. Songs will morph mid track: my favourite, “Sticky”, starts as a sparse, sexy electronic ballad, then adds full percussion, and builds to a dubsteppy breakdown. It’s a perfect headphones record, full of depth and detail, and her vocals (so ethereal) are what elevates the whole thing to another level. She released multiple versions throughout the year (confusing and annoying) so make sure you listen to the one that came out in January, cos the tracks on other ones are weaker (except for “HARD”, which speaks for itself).
FFO: Grimes; Madonna; Bjork; Fever Ray
Richard Dawson - End of the Middle (Avant-Folk)
Everyone’s favourite Geordie nightmare-tavern-folk bard eccentric. Compared to Peasant, 2020, and The Ruby Chord, this one is more personal. Fewer songs about 18th century quilt makers and droit du seigneur. More the stuff of Raymond Carver stories: in highlight “Gondola”, a grandmother contemplates missed opportunities while watching Cash In The Attic; in “Removals Van”, moving to a new home while starting a family triggers memories of childhood and a fear of repeating old patterns. Lovely, idiosyncratic stuff from Rich, as usual. And, at times, hilarious (“Deal Or No Deal, or no deal, or no deal, or no deal / Box number 17 is opened to reveal a wound that’s never healed.”) Grows with each listen.
FFO: Ewan MacColl; Phil Elverum; Joanna Newsom; King Crimson
Destroyer - Dan’s Boogie (Sophisti-pop)
Dan Bejar is very much in his comfort zone at this point in his career. He’s an indulgent figure, jetting around, smoking cigars, talking to the breeze. His lyrics are still full of unexpected, surreal images: “Unbearable heat is parrot weather”; “A circus mongrel sniffing for clues”; “My life’s a giant lid closing on an eye.” The music is still lush: high-tog, hotel-lounge, Prefab Sprout–y leisure-suit pop. It’s as luxurious as everything he’s made since Kaputt. If you’ve been into it, you will be into it.
FFO: Prefab Sprout; The Blue Nile; Blood Orange; pre-Berlin David Bowie
Perfume Genius - Glory (Art-Pop)
Mike Hadreas has a peculiar knack for turning the lights low and cracking a joke right as the trapdoor opens. He deals in art-pop steeped in gallows humour: songs that drift in on a fog of restraint and then split open with cathedral-sized surges. The preoccupations remain the same as usual on Glory - shame and exposure, queer desire and queer bodies, anxiety and the threat of violence, symbolism and emotional myth-making – but the craft is as sharp and assured as it’s ever been. I have a soft spot for his middle era (Too Bright, No Shape, Set My Heart on Fire Immediately), but he’s yet to misstep; there’s no such thing as a lesser Perfume Genius record. He’s also an outstanding dancer – his 2025 Green Man set was full of chair acrobatics and he spent more time folded onto the ground than standing.
FFO: Mitski; Moses Sumney; Bon Iver; ANOHNI and the Johnsons
Joan Shelley - Real Warmth (Singer-Songwriter/Contemporary Folk)
Like Alex G, Joan Shelley is on a run of, like, 7 great records in a row. Unlike him, she’s never had a big explosive popular one, which means often a new release by her can slip by if you’re not already listening. But if you are, she remains one of the most reliably beautiful songwriters we have. For this one, she moved away from her longtime home in Kentucky, started a new life in Michigan, and made this album in Toronto with a new group of musicians. The record reflects that transition: it’s about finding belonging, protecting the people you love, and staying emotionally open as you grow older. It’s fuller and more communal, with jazz-leaning percussion and some saxophone. What hasn’t softened is her ethical clarity. She writes beautifully about climate anxiety and increasing inequality and injustice. She has a UK tour coming up soon, so I encourage you all to purchase tickets. The last time I saw her I cried.
FFO: Gillian Welch; Bonnie “Prince” Billy; Emmylou Harris; Townes Van Zandt
Algernon Cadwallader - Trying Not to Have a Thought (Midwest Emo)
The fourth-wave emo cult faves’ comeback sounds pretty different to their most acclaimed and influential record, Some Kind of Cadwallader. That record was a raw, chaotic artifact of youth. Scuffed-up tracks pulsing with restless energy, technical slyness, finger-tapping, rhythmic interplay, and unusual song structures. Bands that deal in youthful energy rarely age gracefully, but this is a very cool direction for Algernon to take. A bit like The Hotelier’s transition to Goodness, they are more like an indie band now. The songs are denser and more controlled than their early stuff. The arrangements are still excellent, full of technical guitar work and playful drumming. While their early music focused mostly on adolescent angst and abstract imagery, Trying Not to Have a Thought addresses personal grief and political issues pretty candidly, in a grown-up way, without losing the magic of its youthful past. Very cool tunes.
FFO: Cap'n Jazz; American Football; The Hotelier; Joyce Manor
Black Country, New Road - Forever Howlong (Progressive Chamber Pop)
I did not expect this one to be good. After Isaac Wood left, and that underwhelming live album came out, this band was done in my mind. And it kind of is… This is not the same band. They should probably released this record under a different name. The transition is comparable to Joy Division becoming New Order, really. Apart from one member, the lineup remains the same. But the darkness went with him, and the darkness was a key ingredient. Forever Howlong is very good though! The post-punk irony makes way for something not a million miles from Joanna Newsom: medieval knights, Dickensian imagery, baroque whimsy. Georgia Ellery (Jockstrap), May Kershaw, and Tyler Hyde share songwriting duties, and that’s reflected in lyrics about friendship and community. It’s gentle. It’s not the band that made Ants From Up Here, they’re not coming back. But this is still better than most music, don’t deny yourself. I still think they should have retired the name though.
FFO: Joanna Newsom; The Decemberists; Kate Bush; Jockstrap
That’s it! If you made it this far, you’re a saint! I’m grateful. And very sorry. Here’s to an equally great year in 2026! Much love, always.
Sam