THE BEST (AND WORST) ALBUMS OF 2025

 

Hello and welcome to my year-end Album Extravaganza!  Glad you could make it; I know it wasn't easy.  Sit down here for a second and take the edge off.

So it's been a weird year getting to this list.  Couple of last-minute changes to the Top Ten, couple of albums I thought were shoe-ins not living up to further scrutiny.  I haven't put the Songs list out yet (which I usually do first), because there were so many album cuts, I figured I should get this one done so I could be thorough (turns out that was the right call; I was adding noms up until the end).

But the real strange thing was my approach to new music this year.  You'll have noticed if you check this blog regularly, I only posted one review all year (two if you count the #MWE roundup in March).  The rest were just Hit Mixes.  Well, confluence of factors there: First off, there were so many decent to great songs coming out that I just did a ton of Hit Mixes, but second, I needed a break from new albums.  I was full.  The last several years, I've been hearing more and more albums per annum, and they've wound up meaning less and less.  225 in 2023, 189 in 2024.

This year?

By June?

Eight.

And I made one of them.

Of course, I filled that gap by buying a SHIT ton of CDs, but most of those are albums I reconnected with from my past.  That ruled; I had a great time!  You could say I enjoyed my vacation.  By November 1st, I had 46 under my belt and thought: "Well, I haven't bought CDs in awhile.  I guess I could start listening to new music this month, and by December 1st, I'll get in what I get in.  That'll be the lists."

December 1st rolls around, and I've heard 120 albums from 2025.

So yeah, gunning 3/5ths of your year's listening right before List Season is a...novel approach to say the least.  I didn't even try; it just happened.  (Turns out when your commute sucks, you have time to hear two albums every weekday.  Then when you listen to albums doing stuff around the house instead of watching YouTube?  Bruh.  Gets bananas.)  So never fear!  We have a reasonable cross-section of new releases for you to peruse.

There was one other small thing that kept me from doing reviews, and that is I made a deliberate decision to stop writing this year.

I've been suffering from some kind of creative burnout since at least 2012.  The only way to finally kick that dragon in the dick and send it packing was to get outside.  If "Being Creative" was a car, I had to get out of the cab, get a ways from it and take a look to determine where to affect repairs.  And that repair just...came.  Turns out doing nothing is what I had to do.  This last week, I've written almost as much as I did all year, and it wasn't like pulling teeth.  Shit is just flowin'.

And a big part of that is by pausing, I finally shed the sense of Obligation I've always felt to "get projects done".  I've had a list of stuff to do (most of which, if I buckled down, would take a year or more to finish and there's over a dozen) that I felt like I needed to work on.  I felt busy all the time, and never felt like I was getting anywhere.  "Aaah!  I have so much I need to do!"  Okay, when's the last time you actually touched that project over there?  Do you even want to work on it anymore?  No?  Then what's the worry?

And notice I've said nothing about that sense of Obligation being related to success.  Am I gonna let my "audience" down?  Well, maybe.  I appreciate the loyal few I have, but they ain't forcing me to do anything; we have a healthy relationship.  I've never made a dime off blogging or videos.  The only time I got paid to write was 25 years ago when I won some awards from the school magazine.  And music has never paid shyit.  Point is, that Obligation is purely from inside my head.  Glad I dumped it.

All of this is a long way of saying: Shit, I needed a vacation.  And I'm glad I got one.  Now let's get down to business:

This year, I've combined my best and worst lists into one blog, so we're counting down from the bottom to the top. I normally do this in tiers: The Bottom Ten, Meh, Okay, Pretty Good, Honorable Mentions and The Top 20.  This year is a little different, because a) We only have a Bottom 5, b) There's no Honorable Mentions (but unlike last year, I have enough for a Top 20!) and c) I've added a new tier!

It's called "Decent" and it goes above Okay and below Pretty Good.  I'm already happy with the results, because it's allowed me to further define each tier, to get more granular with it (and that goes for all the tiers, not just its neighbors).

If you're new: The Bottom tier is the albums I thought were really bad, exceptionally frustrating, disappointing, boring to an extreme, or some combination of all of the above.  The Meh tier is for albums that range from "I dunno, maybe this is well made but I'm not getting anything out of it" to "It's bad, but not 'worst of the year' bad."  Okay is albums that had something to them, but I'm probably not going back to as a whole.  I wouldn't hate hearing them again, but I'm not excited by the prospect.  Decent is albums that are like: "Hmm.  Y'know, I kinda fuck with this."  I might revisit them.  Pretty Good is albums that are like: "Okay, I fuck with this.  I'm listening to this again."  And The Top 20 is the albums that were better than Pretty Good.

THE BOTTOM FIVE

This year, I didn't have much to work with (partially because I wasn't looking for trash and the place I usually get it from closed down because that YouTuber was an abuser...), so not only is this list cut in half, but you should take it with a grain of salt.  None of these will make my Worst of the Decade (should we all still be here to perceive it).  But they still suck, so let's put them down for posterity, shall we?

5. Folk Bitch Trio "Now Would Be A Good Time"

Really liked "God's A Different Sword" and "Cathode", but even then you get kind of a trad wifey vibe.  This is the second-most boring slog of the year.  And it isn't like I'm not into this kind of music either: there's an album much further up the list that does the same thing a LOT better.  "Now" would have been a good time to make sure the rest of your album at least lived up to half the quality of your singles.

4. Everything Is Recorded "Richard Russell Is Temporary"

This is the most boring slog of the year.  Said all I really need to say when I reviewed it.

3. A Day To Remember "Big Ole Album Vol. 1"

Doesn't really belong on a Worst Of list, much less at #3, but like I said: thin field.  Especially because it does something commendable: Takes emo pop punk, Falling In Reverse deathcore and modern pop country and makes those horrid ingredients into something not quite tolerable, rather than the worst thing ever.  That deserves a frickin' MEDAL!

The album still sucks, but y'know.  Could've been a lot worse.

2. Kayo Dot "Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason"

So I wouldn't consider myself a gigantic Kayo Dot fan, but I've heard at least four of their projects before (if you count Maudlin Of The Well) and liked all of them.  They're a unique band, they generate an otherworldly atmosphere, they have cool musical ideas...

What the hell happened to all that?

Look, I gave this as fair a shake as I could.  I got to about four minutes into the 23 minute "Automatic Writing" before I tapped out.  I should probably also mention that I've never liked black metal and I'll never get what people hear in it, so the vocals on opener "Mental Shed" reeealy tried my patience (not to mention the eleven minutes of ear-piercing synth tone and some metal things clanging together being the only other sounds on the track).  "Oracle By Severed Head" had actual singing, but the drum part fucking suuuucks.  Even then, I could still kind of see the vision, if not get behind it, but man, on a re-listen those vocals have the opposite problem of being really weak and theatrical.

"Closet Door In The Room Where She Died" caught my ear.  Well, first, the barbed wire of those shrill synth pads snagged me and it hurt, but then the vocals are this wretched, confessional scream, this visceral thing that goes beyond mere aesthetic (which is one of the reasons I don't like black metal; it all feels like a front).  This feels like someone losing their shit, having their guts emotionally torn out and all hope stamped out in front of them.  I respected it.

It did not need to go on unabated for fourteen fucking minutes.

Bruh.

Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason is sonically, compositionally and performance wise below a "We want out of our record contract" level of bad.  It's one of the most heinous sounding projects I've heard in a long time.  And its from a band I usually like.  Oh hey, speaking of which:

1. Taylor Swift "The Life Of A Showgirl"

This album reminds me of Emimem's Kamikaze.  

No, hear me out: They're both super defensive, insecure, immature, trying too hard to be edgy and are both extremely mixed bags of quality.  But here's the thing: Kamikaze came out as a response to the backlash and criticism of Eminem's woeful dumpster fire Revival.  The Life Of A Showgirl came out in response to Taylor Swift conquering the fucking world.

The Tortured Poet's Department (the album directly before this) HAD THE ENTIRE TOP 14 TO ITSELF ON THE HOT 100 WHEN IT CAME OUT.  It's gone 11x Platinum in a year and a half.  This is to say nothing of the $2.2 Billion dollar tour gross and almost $300 million for the concert film of the same, nor Time's 2023 Person Of The Year, nor her 90+ weeks at #1 on the album chart, nor her numerous #1 singles, nor her record fourth Album of the Year Grammy, nor finding romantic happiness with a football player who won the fucking Super Bowl.

Point is: Why be mad at the haters?  Why care at all?  How can you even see them from up there?  Put down the binoculars.

But that's not how the album starts off.  I liked "The Fate Of Ophelia" on the first two listens; it's a catchy, well-crafted pop song, and I've been a casual fan of Taylor Swift for at least five years now.  I was digging it.  Then Todd In The Shadows did his episode on the song and I found out what the lyrics were.  It's like a spell was broken.   "Oh.  This is just dumb.  Got it."

Tracks 2 and 3 are fine, but "Father Figure" derails the album completely.  There may be the mitigating circumstances of its framing devices: it was inspired by Succession, part of it's from the P.O.V. of Scott Borchetta (the guy who sold Swift's masters to Scooter Braun out from under her), but it's still the power fantasy of a billionaire who got what she wanted.

That's the problem with a lot of this album: She won.  She literally won.  She broke almost every record she could break.  She's the biggest pop star since Michael Jackson by just about every metric you could think of.  Yes, this album does explore her domestic bliss with Travis Kelce a bit (maybe too much for some people (see: "Wood")), but there are so many moments that feel like a mask slip, or maybe an intentional de-masking.  I think she thinks they're relatable, but they just seem snotty, catty and defensive.

Based on just her last four albums, you know she's better at writing lyrics than this.  There are SO many clunkers littered throughout the project.  Musically, it feels like a re-tread of better songs she's done.  You can add exhaustion and creative depletion to the pile of problems too, so I'm glad she's taking a break after this.  (YOU'VE EARNED IT.  GO TO BED.  ENJOY YOUR VACATION.)

But exhaustion doesn't explain going after Charli XCX.  Maybe Taylor was perfectly cast in Cats, because oof.  Enough people have gone in on the specifics of this diss track ("Actually Romantic"), but the main takeaway is "I'm not mad.  I swear I'm not.  I...win, in fact!  Ha ha!  I win!  I'm not even mad!  DON'T LET THEM PRINT THAT I WAS MAD!"

There's also "Cancelled!" where she tries to be a badass because she "likes her friends cancelled".  We've...all moved on from "cancelled", right?  The world today proves that shit doesn't even work.  So not only is it a failed attempt to be an edgy badass, it's already dated.  Having assholes for friends doesn't make you cool.

I think the ultimate failure of this album is it's trying to be cool and unbothered.  When you try to do those things instead of actually being them (especially when you put them on public display on an album that has been #1 since it came out three months ago), it's a lot easier to see through.  When you try to act cool, you're never cool.

And The Life Of A Showgirl reminding me of Kamikaze is ultimately a bit of a tragedy, because, though I'm no Swiftie, I've liked most of what she's done this decade.  She's made my Top 10 Albums list twice.  She's done well on my songs lists.  I was on her side.  But this album, like Kamikaze did with Eminem, makes me question how much I want to go back to her other stuff.  I think her catalogue (especially post Lover) holds up better than Eminem's, but only time will tell.

MEH

 

David Byrne "Who Is The Sky?"
Funny Weather & Little Dragon "Funny Weather"
Haley Williams "Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party"
Katamari Damacy Rolling LIVE
Kedr Livanskiy "Myrtus Myth"
KickFlip "Kick Out, Flip Now!"
Maul Tide "Visual Plea"
Men I Trust "Equus Asinus"
Of Monsters And Men "All Is Love And Pain In The Mouse Parade"
Oneohtrix Point Never "Tranquilizer"
Raygunscottie "I Look Pretty When I Cry"
Sarah Sommers "Vivid"
Say She She "Cut & Rewind"
Styx "Circling From Avove"
The Uncrowned "Run Through The Night"
Water From Your Eyes "It's A Beautiful Place"
Xikers "House Of Tricky: Spur"

• Who Is The Sky? is basically the same song twelve times.  It's an okay song, but eh.
• Funny Weather & Little Dragon maybe should've made the worst list; that album gets rancid after track 3.  But the first three songs were kind of a vibe so I spared it from the bottom.
• I don't know if Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party just hit me at the wrong time or what happened, but I got really bored and annoyed with it.  Didn't even finish the whole thing.  Easily my least favorite project Hayley Williams ever put out, solo or otherwise.
• The valley between the two Men I Trust albums this year is staggering.
• I didn't hate Tranquilizer, but I got nothing out of it.
• Say She She have no business being this low on the list (the title "cut" is proof they can do much better), but after the first three tracks everything is the same song on infinite repeat.
• Circling From Above pisses me off, because a) Styx is coming off they're 2nd best album ever (yeah, I said it) and b) It really looked like they were keeping the streak up.  The one-two punch of the title track and "Build And Destroy" might've made the Songs list if it'd been one song; it's a hell of an opener.  But by track 7, everything starts devolving into bad showtunes and goofy crap!  By track 11 I was baffled and saying to myself "What the hell HAPPENED!??!"
• When you put out two albums in two weeks, their combined length is less than an hour, I pay money for a CD of one of them, and it not only ends up being the shorter of the two but only has four good songs on it?  Darn tootin', it goes low on the list.  At least Long Days, No Dreams did a fair bit better than It's a Beautiful Place.

OKAY

 

 

Alex Isley "When"
Aly & AJ "Silver Deliverer"
August Silhouette "Just A Bump In The Road"
Babymetal "Metal Forth"
Bernth & Charles Berthoud "CyberFunk"
Clipping "Dead Channel Sky"
Costa Contra "The Fifth"
Dream Theater "Parasomnia"
Jane Handcock "It's Me, Not You"
Kaytranada "Ain't No Damn Way!"
Lord Huron "The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1"
Makaya McCraven "Off The Record"
McKinley Dixon "Magic, Alive!"
Miley Cyrus "Something Beautiful"
Miso Extra "Earcandy"
Neko Case "Neon Grey Midnight Green"
No Mana "Odyssey Soundsystem"
Nospun "Ozai"
Obverse
Open Mike Eagle "Neighborhood Gods Unlimited"
Puma Blue "Antichamber"
Puma Blue "Extchamber"
Robin Trower "Come And Find Me"
Skrillex "Fuck U Skrillex You Think Ur Andy Warhol But Ur Not!! <3"
Sleep Token "Even In Arcadia"
Spellling "Portrait Of My Heart"
Stereolab "Instant Holograms On Metal Film"
Tesseracts "Two Turntables And The Mic"
Tune-Yards "Better Dreaming"
Yoko Kanno "Under The Midnight Rainbow"

• Aly & AJ hit like a ton of bricks on first listen, but on subsequent plays, it was pleasant, but I didn't connect with it.  (Except for the first three songs; those are quite good.)
• Babymetal put out an album that didn't even start working for me until the last two or three songs, but what came before was...fine enough.  Those last few songs though?  HOLY SHIT.
• It's pretty damning that the best thing I got out of the Dream Theater / Portnoy reunion so far is I re-listened to the first two Mangini DT albums for the first time in a decade and really liked them.  I don't remember much from this one, but I remember thinking it was "Pretty Good" at the time.  Will I ever spin it again?  Probably not, but never say never.
• Liked the first 40% of The Cosmic Selector a fair bit, but after "Who Laughs Last" it falls off into "...I guess..." territory.  Y'know, I hear a song and I'm not opposed to its existence, but it's relentlessly "Whatever"?  That's the back half of this album.
• Makaya McCraven makes some really good sample fodder.  I'd make beats with half of this and even rap over some of it if I wanted to embarrass myself.  Maybe someday I'll actually sit down and absorb some of these as songs.
• Miley Cyrus continues to put up mixed bags.  I'm still interested in what she does next (she's usually really interesting), but I'm not expecting a back-to-front solid project, y'know?  There were some moments on Something Beautiful, but it didn't click with me as a whole.
• Neko Case is one of the two albums I thought were shoe-ins that didn't hold up to repeat listen.  It's fine, but for whatever reason, for a Neko Case album, I found it to be "whatever".
• I love Open Mike Eagle, but out of his last five projects, I've only really connected with one of them.  This wasn't the one.  But the baseline is still...fine?  I didn't hate listening to it, but I'm not going back.
• Antichamber is decent shelf building music.  Can personally attest to such.
• I should be careful what I wish for, but I want Sleep Token to either be better or worse than they are, because then I'd have more to say about it.  Instead, Even In Arcadia is just kinda tepid, even if still somewhat novel in its approach.  (Still liked "Emergence"; who writes a line like "Burst out of my chest and hide out in the vents" about a relationship?  And gets it to chart at #58 on Billboard despite being a six and a half minute deathcore R&B song.)

DECENT

 

Andre 3000 "7 Piano Sketches"
Arrested Development "Adult Contemporary Hip Hop"
Busta Rhymes "Dragon Season...The Awakening"
Busta Rhymes "Dragon Season...Equinox"
Car Bomb "Tiles Whisper Dreams"
Cautious Clay "The Hours: Morning"
Chevelle "Bright As Blasphemy"
Djrum "Under Tangled Silence"
Elton John & Brandi Carlile "Who Believes In Angels?"
Flipturn "Burnout Days"
Florence + The Machine "Everybody Scream"
Ghost "Skeleta"
Haim "I Quit"
The Happy Fits "Lovesick"
KickFlip "Flip It, Kick It!"
Level Nine "Lost Sector Battle Section (Goddess Of Victory: NIKKE Original Soundtrack)"
The Mountain Goats "Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan"
Nourished By Time "The Passionate Ones"
Obongjayar "Paradise Now"
Onyx & L'Uzine "Battle Royale"
Q "10 Songs"
Raygunscottie "Finite Fridays, Vol. 1"
Results "Enter"
Sudan Archives "The BPM"
Tortoise "Touch"
u-Ziq "1979"
Vanessa Carlton & John McCauley "Wish You Were Here (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)"
The Velveteers "A Million Knives"
Water From Your Eyes "Long Days, No Dreams"
Ziferblat "Of Us"

• I found because of its brief, simple nature, 7 Piano Sketches is a great palette cleanser between albums.  It's only 13 minutes, it really resets your mind, but is also interesting to listen to on its own.
• I get why people would hate the first Busta EP for the recording quality; it's trash.  But the comments I read about his performance and lyrical content tell me these people either never listened to other Busta Rhymes projects or don't know how bad it's been that this is a big step up.  I admit I graded these on a slight curve, but it's the most life, the most fire he's had in almost 20 years.  To call this embarrassing means you ain't been paying attention.
• Chevelle continues to be the Ol' Reliable of nu metal.  They will always put out a pretty good project.  I think I liked the last one better (which is the first time I can say that since maybe 2004), but this is still a damn fine radio hard rock record.
• This is my least favorite Florence + The Machine album, but I still think it's alright.  First five songs are great, then some of the air gets let out.  YMMV, especially if you're a Florence faithful.  It's still worth a listen regardless.
• The Happy Fits stopped sucking.  Hooray!
• Onyx and a bunch of French rappers (L'Uzine) doing that Official Nast shit.  It's not the last foreign language (that I don't speak) rap album on this list either!
• See?  Told ya Long Days, No Dreams did better.  It was alright.

PRETTY GOOD

 

Aesop Rock "I Heard It's A Mess There Too"
Agropelter "The Book Of Hours"
Alesia Cara "Love & Hyperbole"
Ari Hoenig "Punkbop Live At Smalls"
Beach Bunny "Tunnel Vision"
Demi Lovato "It's Not That Deep"
Despised Icon "Shadow Work"
Gwenno "Utopia"
Hiromi & Sonicwonder "Out There"
JID "God Does Like Ugly"
Jinjer "Duel"
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard "Phantom Island"
King Princess "Girl Violence"
Lauren Mayberry "Vicious Creature"
Lil Nas X "Days Before Dreamboy"
Little Simz "Lotus"
Oscar Jerome "The Fork"
Socks. "The Sock Drawer"
Stella "Adagio"
Stella Donnelly "Love And Fortune"

• Alesia Cara continues to put out really solid projects.  This one's a bit hamstrung by this sibilance that wreaths the production, like I'm hearing it through static or cellophane.  I keep thinking there's something wrong with my system, but no, it's just really sibilant.  But the songs are good to great (especially "Go Outside!", "Dead Man", "Subside" (shout to that one; I really feel the line "Mourning something that's still alive" (see also: My entire 30s)), "(Isn't It) Obvious", "Slow Motion" and bonus track "Sunday").  (Not "Nighttime Thing", though; that drove me up a wall.)
• Yes I put Demi Lovato right next to Despised Icon.  Probably the most funny pairing when I made the collages for these.  But yeah, liked 'em both, and would listen to them back to back in either order.  That's the Nick Nutter promise!
• I always hate that I can never truly love Hiromi's projects.  She's so fucking good, but by the end of all her albums, I'm kinda like "I liked it a lot!  I'm never going back to it."  I get this feeling that I've heard enough; I got the idea.  I wish it wasn't true, but despite being a fan of hers for well over a decade, I can't hum you a bar of anything she's ever done nor would I probably recognize any of her songs if they came up on random.  It's weird.  Because I'd recommend this to any jazz or prog heads highly, anyone who likes instrumental technicality, but for me, I just never seem to internalize any of it.  But it's a good time while it's happening.
• Of ALL the artists to put out two or more projects this year, KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD IS NOT ONE OF THEM.  Let that sink in for a minute.
• I was lukewarm to meh on King Princess's first album, so it's cool to check in and see her take a big step up.
• Was really surprised how much I liked Days Before Dreamboy.  It's a fragmented project (and considering what's happening with Monty lately, I'm worried this is all we'll get), but the quality of the music is much better than his 2024 output (though that's the lowest of bars).  That being said, it depends on the day whether or not I'd throw this in "Decent" or "Pretty Good".  (Also, it kinda reminds me of Kenna's Land 2 Air Chronicles, except those have been scrubbed from existence and the broken pieces of what should have been Kenna's third album only exist on the hard drives of the few that bought them off iTunes 12 years ago (myself not included :( ).  This has nothing to do with Lil Nas X (I hope), but I think the connection I'm getting at is Days Before Dreamboy is also a lesser, but still admirable third project after two certified bangers beset by a troubled release cadence.)

THE TOP 20

20. Wisconsin Space Program "Sun In Your Hands"

Shout out to guitarist Kevin Topel; I watched that dude grow up when his family lived next door to my aunt.  Oh, the music?  What if Clutch and Psychedelic Porn Crumpets formed a supergroup that played mid-60s garage rock, but kept the things that made them them while writing the songs?

19. Spin Doctors "Face Full Of Cake"

Yes, a Spin Doctors album from the year of our lord 2025 was actually pretty good.  Starts a little rough, but if you can get past the first song, it becomes a solid rock record (which is a dying art if there ever was one).

18. Testament "Para Bellum"

Some people (myself included, at first) were turned off by the first few songs relying on blast beats and death vocals.  But for days after each listen, I found myself still drumming out blast beats on whatever table I had in front of me.  The songs (though they kinda sound like walls of extreme) wound up sticking with me in ways I didn't expect.

Then the rest of the album takes a tour through all the different kinds of stuff Testament has done in the past four decades, and there is actually a lot of variety to be had.  Old-school thrash, drop D western showdown music, "Children Of The Grave" style stompers, even a ballad reminiscent of "Return To Serenity".  Because of these shifts, Para Bellum manages to carve an identity out for itself the way that the last few Testament albums haven't quite been able to.

17. Babymetal "Metal Forth"

("Wait, didn't we already...?"  "Dude, trust me; I'll explain.")

So when I went to check this out again for the Songs List, I started at the end, because I remember the closer "White Flame" being an absolute ripper.  So just for giggles, I then listened to the rest of the album in reverse track order, and wouldn't ya know it?  It works a lot better backwards!  I could see maybe leaving the opener and the closer where they are, but reverse the other ones and Metal Forth flows a lot better.  So my #17 album is an album that I thought was just okay, but backwards.  (Told you it was a weird journey to get here.)

16. Fishbone "Stockholm Syndrome"

A sadly on-the-nose commentary of what's going on, set to head-bobbing punk, funk and ska.  It's Fishbone doing what they do best.

15. Men I Trust "Equus Caballus"

Liminal vibe bops.  I will not be taking further questions at this time.

14. Creepy Nuts "Legion"

One of the most hype things you'll hear all year.  Even if you don't speak Japanese, this album will make you jump up and down.  (Even someone like me, a white gai-jin in his mid-40s with a surgically repaired knee.  I'm BOUNCIN'!)

13. Tyler The Creator "Don't Tap The Glass"

It's a fun one and it's a short one, so it makes it easy for repeat listening.  It's also not that deep (literally in the intro instructions), which nicely de-escalates the stakes for future Tyler projects so he can take it anywhere he wants.  But not being deep doesn't mean there's nothing to hold on to: Bops and bangers abound to stick with you.  It has a manic energy, but is grounded by older hip-hop beats (specifically the opener and the title track).  And then the last three songs get really melodic, and Tyler goes more into his producer bag, letting the guests do the heavy vocal lifting.  Even at 29 minutes, there's a lot packed in.

12. Scars On Broadway "Addicted To The Violence"

Turns out something that's about 3/4ths as good as System Of A Down is still pretty damn good.  (Also, it's been 20 years; it's never happening.  Even if System gets back together, it won't be the same.  Just bump Daron's shit instead.)

11. I'm With Her "Wild And Clear And Blue"

So here's the album I was talking about before that absolutely eats the Folk Bitch Trio's lunch.

I'm With Her is an acoustic folk trio consisting of Sara Watkins (Nickel Creek), Aoife O'Donovan (Crooked Still) and Sarah Jarosz (maker of my #1 song of 2024).  Beautiful three part harmonies, just the right amount of reverb, mostly just guitar, banjo and fiddle for accompaniment...it's quite a relaxing listen if you just lay down and pay attention.  In a time like...the last decade, you might need that.  Keep this one in mind.

10. Kamasi Washington "Lazarus"

Pretty good year for jazz.  I don't listen to a lot of the new stuff, but when it hits it hits.  And this was hittin'.  Maybe a little too hard, since a lot of the drumming is the most super-technical fast shit going literally quadruple time when the song doesn't really call for it, but that only happens on a few tracks.  Mostly, the fireworks are justified, as Kamasi Washington don't fuck around.  It's a lot to take in, it's almost 80 minutes, it's the soundtrack to an anime by the maker of Cowboy Bebop (which I haven't seen a lick of yet), it hits you with choirs and blinding sax solos and all sorts of drums and bombastic arrangements...if you can handle it, you can find the key to something special.

9. Amber Mark "Pretty Idea"

What if somebody really good at quiet storm R&B tried to inject a bit of the Dua Lipa dance formula into their music and it not only worked, but made the whole thing a little better?  Amber Mark's first album was great in spots, but way too long and felt like it was missing another gear.  I didn't think Future Nostalgia was that other gear, but holy shit, it worked.  Kudos.

8. Cocojoey "Stars"

The most unique album in my top 20, to be sure.  I don't really know how the fuck to describe this one.  Umm....what if Devin Townsend and Vylet Pony made a metal album together using the GameCube sound font?  Yeah, that's about right.

7. Franz Ferdinand "The Human Fear"

I've never messed with Franz Ferdinand before, but this was pretty nice.  Reminded me a lot of Kaiser Chief's Start The Revolution Without Me (2012) (y'know, their last good album).  "Tell Me I Should Stay" stood out especially.  Kind of an anticlimactic ending, though (I thought the album was picking up a bit, was bobbing my head, but it turns out autoplay was on and it ended three tracks ago.  I'd been hearing songs from fifteen years ago by other bands!  Oh well, added those to the library; no real loss.  So yeah, they ain't reinventing much on here, but it was a solid listen.  Did what it did in exemplary fashion.)

6. Tropical Fuck Storm "Fairyland Codex"

Tropical Fuck Storm's last two albums have seemed to come along in response to traumatic years: 2020 and 2024.  The Pandemic and the rise of fascism.  The difference between Fairyland Codex and 2021's Deep States is the latter has some of the loopy energy of early lockdown to it and maybe a bit of hope.  Codex drops all the pretense.  They're literally screaming "MURDERERS!" on the hook of the last song.

They're still the weirdo band they started out, making music that sounds like it shouldn't work, maybe sounds like it's not even working now, not in any logical sense, but you know you feel that shit and it connects in the most baffling ways.  The disaster of their compositions helps illustrate the phantasmagoria they're singing about, the one we all live in now.  Through the looking glass, over the Rubicon to grandmother's house we go.

5. Lola Young "I'm Only Fucking Myself"

The lyrics may seem crass, intended to shock, and yes, they are raw and sexual in nature, but they tell stories with acute and specific detail.  By using blunt and explicit language, Young forces you to think twice, perhaps thrice to get the entire picture.  The first one is the potent wheft of the fumes, the second one is to clear the head and get adjusted, the third approach is to see the real picture hiding in plain sight.  It also helps that the songs all slap; there's three nominees on the Best List for those.

4. Aesop Rock "Black Hole Superette"

Black Hole Superette  is an odd bird.  First listen, I thought it was bizarrely back-loaded, not really clicking until the 25 minute mark.  Second time through, I thought the opposite?  And I couldn't remember much I heard from it.  I still remember liking it, even if the specifics have crossed the event horizon.

Then on third listen, it clicked the fuck into place.

My most meandering, up and down back and forth journey with any album this year stops at number four.  The highest I had it before was 20.  The lowest was maybe Decent tier.  Now?  No doubt.  I felt this one at last.  Probably my second favorite of his besides The Impossible Kid (2016).

It has it all: dizzying lyrical prowess, thoughtful introspection, levity, just enough guest stars to keep some variety (and please the back-packers), his most respectable beat selections this decade, snails (don't ask), and it continues an undercurring arc of healing and personal progress that has been growing since The Impossible Kid.  Things seemed a lot bleaker back then.  They seem more stable now.  Aes and I seem to be on the same against-the-grain-of-the-world-outside trajectory in our personal lives.

3. The Night Howls "You Never Know"

There's something to be said for an album you've heard a thousand times and you still love it.

Have I listened to You Never Know a thousand times?  No.  But a couple hundred maybe.  Look, if you're new here, this is big cheats because I'm in The Night Howls and I've had a rough mix on hand since July 2023.  I had to listen to these songs over and over again to help with mixing and mastering.  To say nothing of playing the damn songs (though that's a different take every time).

I feel weird ranking my own albums so high, but I will also be honest about how much I enjoy listening to my own shit.  This is truly my third favorite album that came out this year.  I'm glad I didn't have to put it at #1; I was a little worried I wouldn't find something better, and have an awkward repeat of 2018 on my hands (an opinion that still stands, I think; I don't go back to much from that year).  I always want there to be something I love outside of myself, something to reach for and aspire to, or even just marvel at like a wolf howling at the moon.

So, the problem with this one is I started writing and couldn't stop.  I realized once this entry alone passed 1,000 words, I should probably just make it it's own blog.  So that's what I'll do.  Coming in February, I will tell the tale and go into detail about You Never Know.  

If you wanna know why I love it musically (besides nepotism): It's a really solid hard rock record in a way that isn't made much anymore.  It goes back to my core.  Shit so mid-90s.  It has a variety of styles and structures, it keeps you guessing but also bobbing (or banging) your head.  I would love for there to be more new music like this out there.  (And looking back at my Top 20 here, there was!)

So if that tickles your fancy, stay tuned for the blog.  I'll leave a link for it here.

2. Kae Tempest "Self-Titled"

A very human album to meet this very inhuman moment.  Self-Titled is filled with stories of Tempest's experience transitioning while in the limelight.  In the U.K.  Damn.

It tackles topics like "allies" (the ones that will mourn your death but won't acknowledge you exist in life unless it's for clout),  the agonizing decision of whether or not to have children, of learning how to become yourself when you've been forced to be someone else for the rest of your life up until now, wishing you could console your younger self, losing people to depression, mental illness but through the lens of thinking "The world's fucked up, not me", climate change, billionaires doing stupid shit to the world, alcoholism, losing your wife to your problems...It's more spoken word than hip hop, but that just makes it more impactful when he does flow (especially when it crescendos with penultimate track "Breathe").  

It's not all darkness and strife; "Sunshine On Catford" is a dance love poem with a hook by Neil Tennant from Pet Shop Boys (now there's a band I never thought would touch my best list).  The rest is pretty intense, but it ends up hopeful.  Hopeful that if Kae can navigate the bullshit he just went through, we can all make it to the light out of this dark tunnel.  That life will be worth living after this war.

I was expecting maybe one or two bangers like "More Pressure", and instead I got a powerful, powerful treatise on what it's like to truly live in 2025.  Not just to think you do.

1. Emma-Jean Thackray "Werido"

Oh, hey.  My Best and Worst albums this year both have women in tubs on the cover.  Who could've called that?

This album is described by Thackray as a "grief diary" after their partner died.  And HOO BOY does it go there.  A lot of it is about depression, suicidal ideation, loneliness, wondering what the fuck is the point anymore...a lot of thoughts I've had in the last fifteen years.  But it also has quirky moments like "Tofu" and "Fried Rice" because even the terminally depressed have more than one feeling they feel.  If Self-Titled is a very human album, this is the more unvarnished portrait.  Tempest is still framing things in relation to his public persona.  This is completely unflinching.  It's every ugly intrusive thought (and a few funny ones) that goes through your head when you get this low.

Musically, it reminds me of my 2016 #1 Emily's D-Evolution by Esperanza Spalding.  It's jazzy soul, but with an indie rock edge to it, and more straighforward rhythms than, say, my #10 album this year Lazarus.  Part of that is because Emma-Jean Thackray played ALL THE INSTRUMENTS on this.  The only exceptions are Reggie Watts's backing vocals on "Black Hole" and Kassa Overall's drums and vocals on "It's Okay".

Eventually, as the album winds through this dissociative fog, it comes to the conclusion of "I want to live again after all".

Oh, hey.  That rings a bell.

I'd basically been mourning my own death since 2012.  I figured I'd fucked my life up and I'd never get it back.  And things weren't even that bad at first, but when you're in that funk you can't see that.  Which allowed the funk to get much deeper.  Allowed circumstance and the tide of...fucking everything since then to send me deeper into emotional, spiritual and financial depression.  I felt like I'd squandered my one chance at a life, and the further I went along, I got further and further away from being able to get back to solid ground.  But then something happened to me (that I talked about in the You Never Know segment I cut for length, so if you wanna know exactly what you're gonna hafta stay tuned) that helped me out of the hole.  In the stupidest way possible, but my luck has never been good or bad so much as wild, so par for the course!

I can honestly say, looking back over the last two years, I've finally got out from under that shadow.  I've left depression behind.  If it finds me again, it'll be a different one.  I feel like I've finally put my griefs to bed, like I'm finally ready to live, finally ready to be.  Shit state of the world outside be damned.  Joy is an act of resistance.  Play to your outs.  Make them have it.

And Weirdo is a wonderful soundtrack to encapsulate that journey.  There's a damn good reason it's nominated for the Mercury Prize.  I hope it wins.


Whew!  Unburdened at last, I put this lengthy piece to all of you.  And let me know: What were you feeling this year?  What albums got through to you (or got you through)?  Feel free to leave a comment or hit me up on the socials.  (Bluesky or Mastodon).  Next up is the Best Songs Of 2025, which, hopefully, I'll be able to get out in the next week (or two; there's a lot of songs on the list!).  Most important of all, though, now more than ever:

Don't Give Up.