The journey continues through 2025, and into the new year. The journey toward good music! It's a never-ending one, and it's one that I take great joy in throughout the year. There are years when the "new" music for me is overwhelmingly defined as "new to me," which is anything released outside of the current calendar year. I'd say that 2025 was one of those years. But I'm never going to abandon new-new music completely. Too much good shit out there. Scroll below to check out the best of what I found.
Honorable Mentions
20. moisturizer by Wet Leg
19. Ill at ease by Preoccupations
18. God Save the Gun by Militarie Gun
Top Ten Albums of 2025
17. DON'T TAP THE GLASS by Tyler, the Creator
16. Mayhem by Lady Gaga
15. choke enough by Oklou14. Resonance by Bill Fox
13. No Hard Feelings by the Beaches
12. Snocaps by Snocaps
11. Trying Not to Have a Thought by Algernon Cadwallader
Top Ten Albums of 2025
When you say something like "this band never changes," the intent behind that statement changes depending on whether you like the thing they're pedaling or not. Maybe even if you like it, that thing you like starts to feel forced after four albums of the same thing. But if you really love something, and it keeps coming back every few years, then the part where the band never changes becomes a fucking blessing. DARK THOUGHTS are basically a Ramones cover band. They always have been. They'll hopefully keep putting out fifteen-minute albums of Ramones cover band music for as long as their West Philly coffee shop jobs are able to support the rest of their day-to-day expenses. And I will immediately download each album, and hit repeat four times an hour, and appreciate how good we have it in this life.
Check this one out: "Slept Till Two"
A few of these are repeat artists from previous years. What can I say, man? I like what I like. I liked the Tubs' brand of Lemonheads-esque jangle pop last time, and I like it even more this time. Was it a level-up? Perhaps not sonically, but definitely thematically. I read something from Frontman Owen Williams earlier in the year that he considered the Tubs' 2023 album Dead Meat sort of a one-off side project... until it started getting some heat. And then he was like, oh wow, this could actually be a main-gig thing. What joy, to have that revelation and then decide to really double-down on the art, the what-it-all-means. The Tubs are still singing upbeat power pop songs, but the subject matter—Owen Williams' mother passing away—makes it important, and makes the songs really fucking soar.
Check this one out: "Freak Mode"
Not taking things seriously really frees you up to be your best self sometimes. The dumbest shit imaginable—a cliché '80s synth line at the start of "Manchild," the line in "Tears" that goes "tears run down my thighs"—goes all the way back around to being profound, somehow. The joke isn't any one joke, the joke is that she's winking when she's making the joke. And it doesn't hurt that all of this is lethally catchy, no matter which genre hoops her producers are making her jump through. But, like, there's a reason you don't really hear too much about stuffy conservatives hating Sabrina Carpenter, ya know? She's doing some real raunchy shit, but the raunch is so clearly scripted that even the dumbest minds in America can clock it as pure entertainment. This is why this album is on this Top Ten list: I respect the hell out of good entertainment.
Check this one out: "House Tour"
I read something in a review of the whaler that Home Is Where is what happens in an alternate universe where Bob Dylan ended up being a source material for early emo music. I think about that all the time. And that description for that specific Home Is Where album didn't even know that Hunting Season was gonna lean waaay into it. Something interesting that I was thinking about while enjoying this great album this year was that me and Home Is Where seem to be heading in opposite directions. I Became Birds felt a little "too much" for me in 2021, but I'm at the point where shit like I Became Birds is the exact thing that I crave; it felt like "too much" because I started out listening to the classics like Dylan, and I needed to work my way up to Midwest emo with screamo tendencies, but now Home Is Where is headed back to where I started? Thankfully, this is not a "ships passing in the night" situation. This is artist and listener running toward each other and crashing. But, like, in a good way.
Check this one out: "the wolf man"
I was feel weary of accidentally overrating an album because I saw some songs from that album performed live. It doesn't even happen that often—how many concerts am I honestly going to?—but whenever it does, and I love the album, I make a conscious effort to tell myself and others that this ranking of this album is NOT because I saw the artist perform this year. Still, though... that short Free at Noon concert with the Mountain Goats was pretty special. My youngest kid's first concert! She wasn't even the youngest person there! What about the Mountain Goats brings in crowds like this? They're not necessarily "kid-friendly" (though it is fucking hilarious that a voice my kids will easily recognize is in the background all over this album), but it's more like... there's something for everyone?
I think my mind is going this way for this album because its themes—obtuse as they are here, and usually are on rock operas—seem to speak toward passing batons to next generations. While I'm standing there getting choked up at "This Year" because, man, it really has been a rough year but I'm gonna make it if it kills me, my kid is out here hearing "Rocks in My Pockets" for the first time right alongside me. I get to pass this along. I don't think that Sophie actually gave a shit about the new music, but don't worry, I care enough for the both of us, and will hold onto it until she's ready.
Check this one out: "Dawn of Revelation"
Feels like Hayley Williams is adjusting well to that "elder statesman" role that she recently inherited. Not that I was ever totally invested in Williams' story prior to this year, but Ego Death got me invested. Apparently she was locked into a draconian 20-year deal with a recording company that she was cajoled/tricked into signing at the age of the sixteen, and she just only this year broke free from that deal (she's turning 37 this same month that I just did)? Wild shit. If there's a hook to this album, then it's that this is her All Things Must Past, except that it's a celebration of all the things she can do after breaking out of a company as opposed to her old band.
And she really does it all on Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party. It's not as wild or wide genre tour as her first solo effort, but each of these eighteen songs are distinct, are their own little world. Sometimes she's sounding like she twisting the Owl City template to her own way-cooler liking, sometimes she's nodding her head toward trip hop that I'm not cool enough for, sometimes she's out here half-redeeming a terrible song from the motherfucking Bloodhound Gang. I was annoyed about how it was originally released (unnamed, out of order), but once it became a coherent album, I hit play, and haven't really stopped. The thing is, I get what she was doing. She was flexing. No more major record company contract shackling her, she was free to independently release her new album in any way she so chose, and I celebrate alongside her. This is some impressive shit.
Check this one out: "Hard"
Such an easy sell that it was almost fucking insulting. I'm gonna give pretty much anything Craig Finn does at least a little bit of attention, and have, consistently, ever since I stumbled into the Hold Steady's lifelong party while stuck in my youth. That's all mostly been set way to the side at this point, and Craig Finn is still a poet, and so someone's gotta put these golden words to tune, and so why not... the War on Drugs?! Too easy. I love Craig Finn, I love the War on Drugs, you have to do nothing else to sell me on Always Been.
When you first hit play, you think, well, no, this is a great album because Craig Finn has a way with words, it doesn't have anything to do with the music. That notion lasts for three minutes and thirty seconds, until that first cathartic WoD guitar solo kicks in on "Bethany," and your eyes go wide and you realize that this is something else entirely. Absolutely wild to imagine how certain combinations give such combustible results (e.g. this album's matchup reminds me of when My Morning Jacket backed Strand of Oaks on Eraserland, elevating the game of all involved), but there's so much fire on this album, it's insane. It's more grounded than WoD (because "grounded" is not their game), and it's definitely not as wild as the Hold Steady (Finn's solo efforts are very much intended as such), it's its own special thing. But it's exactly what you'd expect too, if that makes sense. And I love it. Of course I do, why wouldn't I?
Check this one out: "Luke & Leanna"
The Beths' style of indie pop has always been so goddamn charming, but something is different about this new one. Is "mature" the word I'm looking for? Maybe, though I don't want that word to be misinterpreted. This isn't adult contemporary music, it still has a youthful verve. But the Beths are tapping into something here, tapping into ideas that you can really only start to begin when you're young and innocent. Big ideas about love and life and truth, these are the thematic building blocks of Beths songs now, and I think that's kinda cool.
I wonder, or maybe fear, that the glow-up our pals isn't as visible to those who haven't been following their moves for the past seven years (as we have here, due to Record Club roping them in early). I wonder too whether this has anything to do with the rest of the band have a greater hand in the writing process (sometimes that works as an act of desperation, but here, it seems to have been an act of joy and compassion). Like maybe, for example, the wild and spiritedly amateurish flute breakdown on "No Joy" would've or ever could've happened on an earlier Beths release. Probably not? They're on a different fucking wavelength this time out. Ain't it a great feeling, to watch a band grow up and know that they're gonna be okay?
Check this one out: "Mosquitoes"
It's been my theory for a while (and maybe I shouldn't say "my" theory, since this was certainly not concocted wholesale by me, and I'm positive that many other people this way) that the layering on of classical music tropes has a way of really upping the drama and prestige levels of a song or album. I recall first having these thoughts in Record Club, but it took a while before that for those thoughts to form and solidify. It's undeniable though. You hear huge string ensembles and horn sections and big percussion instruments playing along, and you can't help but feel that emotions are heightened. I like it.
This theory is undeniable after hearing Phantom Island. I have long been a King Gizz skeptic, but Flight b741 last year managed to correct years of disappointed (Nonagon Infinity remains one of the best albums of all time, and there are no great Gizz albums in between those two). Even though I loved that one, I still had a right to remain skeptical, because Phantom Island is their B-sides from that last album. Always with the hook—instead of just releasing the B-side songs, they got an orchestra to play along with them. And it ends up being BONKERS successful.
That's because anything with classical music infused into an already established sound is going to be successful. I'm curious as to whether I'd even give a shit without it, but we'll thankfully never know. I'm also curious as to whether this means a straight-up classical album (no other genre elements) would be cool to listen to, or it's required to be a part of something I'm already familiar with. All I know for sure is that this music fucking soars, and there's really only explanation as to why. Would the "WOO-HOO!" at the end of the album hit as hard if it wasn't followed by all those strings and flutes and everything? No way, man. The orchestra elevates the rock music into the stratosphere. Very honored to hear it.
Check this one out: "Spacesick"
It's not the reason, but it's connected to the reason—there was no other album I listened to on repeat more than 1000 Variations on the Same Song by Frog. It put in the most work when my iPod was busted this past spring and I was using an adapter for my work phone to play this off of Bandcamp, but then I got my iPod fixed and the listening never really stopped. That doesn't prove anything, besides the fact that the album never really got old for me, and that encouraged me to keep listening, which meant that I liked it more, which meant that I kept listening, and around and around we went. That self-feeding system doesn't start if the album's not great, though.
That's probably the case for every #1 album every year of my life, but here, the idea feels a little more relevant. It's right there in the title: there's not really any "new" music, it's all just variants on the same shit we've already heard, but sometimes, that's what makes it special. The songs on the album are numbered, allegedly all "variants" of the first song, "STILLWELL THEME." Of course, that's not actually true, Frog do a great job making distinct, memorable songs throughout. But you can also kind of tell how they are all from the same warped mind, and how they all might be "variants" of the same few ideas floating around in said mind. (Frog actually released a second album in 2025, THE COUNT, with even more "variants," and they are good but also show that there's a limit to this shit.)
I will also say that this is one of the weirder albums I've ever fallen in love with this way, like maybe take what I'm saying here as your grain of salt when scouring the Top Ten lists for recommendations. I still think that the "Modest Mouse doing Pinegrove" descriptor is accurate, but in many ways it's stranger than that. The vocals are way more alien than even Isaac Brock, and the instrumentation would indicate, were this Pinegrove, that the musicians got extremely high beforehand. I still can't tell, after all this time, whether there is one vocalist double-tracked or two different vocalists singing the same part or if there is just an echo or what.
It's all very strange and mysterious. A band just called Frog??? What the hell kind of name is that? What are they doing? How is it that they sound like they are throwing random bullshit together, slop on a wall, and it comes out sounding full formed and catchy and in many ways beautiful? This has gotta be the only #1 album I'll ever have that features a Christmas song, right? There's a strange voodoo magic on this album that I will never understand. I do know that I've been under its spell for the majority of the year.
Ugh... this is so hard to explain. It's like, there are disparate pieces all over the album, and they are sound different, and none of them seem to go together, but they do, they're all the same artist on the same album, and the only thing that any of them have in common is that they get stuck in your head and you can't get them out for months. I can't explain it here because they require the sound, like if I typed "I'm fuckin' around, I'm fuckin' around, I'm fuckin' arouooond," then that means nothing, and seems really fucking stupid, but if you know this album, I just got that part in your head again, lodged it in there for another seven weeks. Now imagine a whole album filled with that.
And the mystery is how they fit together. They can't be variants of the same song, but maybe in this way, they are. One hypothetical golden song to rule 2025, and then eleven different songs that sound nothing like it but only feel like it, feel golden, perfect, in all their ramshackle glory. This is probably the worst #1 album blurb I've ever written, but Frog's got me perplexed. How do I explain this? The only explanation is to find out for yourself. Or don't. Go listen to other music. It's all the same anyway.
Check this one out: "HOUSEBROKEN VAR. IV"
We'll have our Top 25 Songs of 2025 for ya one week from today (hopefully)!
3 comments:
Remember when I used to post these on Facebook like they were a big fucking deal? Damn.
BILL FOX MENTIONED
Great fucking album! Definitely heard about him first right here on Puke on Your Birthday!
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