In all honesty, 2025 has been quite a challenging year - but music has been a constant source of solace and inspiration in the midst of some turbulence. Below are 100 works from the long list that I feel stand out particularly, although no doubt on a different day I could have chosen differently. I’m aware that there are quite a few usual suspects in this list, but that’s fine when those people are still making adventurous music. A few things to note
- The long track format working particularly well for some artists (Burial, Natural Information Society, Nathan Salsburg)
- The surprising (to me) extent to which a lot of my favourite music this year either eschewed rhythm and groove, or even pushed the boundaries of what might be termed music at all (Vanessa Rosetto and Nate Wooley exploring the inherent musicality in human speech and storytelling, Joshua Bonetta’s field recordings, Jake Muir’s compelling manipulation of bell ringing).
- Artists coming back after a long period away with works that stand as equals with the peaks of their catalogue (Stereolab, Tortoise, Pulp).
- The first almost excellent Van Morrison album in quite some time.
- Geese win the award for prompting the most infuriating internet discourse - they are apparently either the saviours of guitar music or ‘rich kid NYC shite’ depending on which side you fall. Personally, I hear in Cameron Winter a songwriter with a strong command of melody being accompanied by an unusually adventurous and intriguing rhythm section, with the whole having an appealing free-wheeling looseness (to the extent that they often seem uncertain of how songs should end). I wasn’t sold on their previous two records, but there’s definitely a lot to enjoy in Getting Killed, and I rather hope there’s more to come from both the band and Cameron Winter’s solo career.
- Beyond the discourse around Geese, there were some other examples of genuinely effective indie rock from Friendship (with a fascinating quirkiness) and The Tubs.
- The sense of some projects being concluded - Saint Etienne releasing what would appear to be their final album, and a brighter, more exuberant flip side to The Night. Humanhood feeling like the conclusion to a trilogy for The Weather Station.
- Some outstanding improvised music from a nexus of US musicians (Mary Halvorson, Patricia Brennan, Ches Smith).
- ESKA coming back with an album wildly different from her debut and very brave and exciting in its own way.
- The breakthrough of Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band and also their enjoyable side projects that didn’t quite make the 100.
- An album of the year that wordlessly captured the state of things, both politically and personally for me. This work stripped back any extraneous elements - there was no show of technique or even really of musical language, just a combination of haunting and beautiful music box melodies with ambience and noise. The result was a compelling new direction for this artist, providing a beacon of hope emerging from the storm.
Sherelle - With A Vengeance
Fabienne Ambuehl - Thrive
Burial - Comafields/Imaginary Festival
Chris Brokaw - Ghost Ship
Charmaine Lee - Tulpa
Jake Muir - Campana Sonans
Carson McHone - Pentimento
Eddie Chacon - Lay Low
Blawan - SickElixir
The Hidden Cameras - BRONTO
Eiko Ishibashi - Antigone
Jonny Nash - Once Was Ours Forever
Isaiah Collier, William Hooker, William Parker - The Ancients
Saint Etienne - International
Rashad Becker - The Incident
Rob Mazurek Exploding Star Orchestra - Holy Mountain
Sylvie Lewis - Lives Wisely
Duval Timothy - Wishful Thinking
Joshua Bonetta - The Pines
JJJJJerome Ellis - Vesper Sparrow
Songs of Green Pheasant - Sings The Passing
The Weather Station - Humanhood
Ensemble Nist-Nah - Spilla
Mavis Staples - Sad and Beautiful World
Nathan Salsburg - Ipsa Corpora
Jason Isbell - Foxes In The Snow
Ikonika - Sad
Mourning [A] BLKstar - Flowers For The Living
Orcutt/Shelley/Miller - Orcutt/Shelley/Miller
Laura Jurd - Rites & Revelations
Noura Mint Seymali - Yenbett
Editrix - The Big E
Zach Phillips - True Music
Joanne Robertson - Blurr
Dijon - Baby
Patterson Hood - Exploding Trees and Airplane Screams
Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer - Different Rooms
Matthew Herbert & Momoko Gill - Clay
James Brandon Lewis - Apple Cores
James Krivchenia - Performing Belief
Rat Heart - Dancin’ In The Streets
Circuit Des Yeux - Halo On The Inside
Red River Dialect - Basic Country Mustard
Ava Luna - Ava Luna
Modern Nature - The Heat Warps
Pulp - More
Natural Information Society with Bitchin Bajas - Totality/Natural Information Society - Persverance Flow
Hieroglyphic Being - Dance Music 4 Bad People/The Sound of Something Ending
Arp Frique - The Gospel of Jesamy
Henry Threadgill - Listen Ship
Barker - Stochastic Drift
Lucrecia Dalt - A Danger To Ourselves
Billy woods - GOLLIWOG
Mason Lindahl - Joshua/Same Day Walking
Bill Fox - Resonance
[Ahmed] - Sama’a
Mark Fell - Psychic Resynthesis
Armand Hammer & The Alchemist - Mercy
More Eaze & claire rousay - no floor/claire rousay - a little death
The Tubs - Cotton Crown
Daniel Bachman - Moving Through Light
Van Morrison - Remembering Now
Ben LaMar Gay - Yowzers
Neko Case - Neon Green Midnight Grey
Aesop Rock - Black Hole Superette
Amina Claudine Myers - Solace of the Mind
Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band - New Threats From The Soul
Klein - Sleep With A Cane
Fieldwork - Thereupon
ESKA - The Ordinary Life of a Magic Woman
Big Thief - Double Infinity
Bitchin Bajas - Inland Sea
Cass McCombs - Interior Live Oak
Patricia Brennan - Of Near and Far
The Necks - Disquiet
Chris Eckman - The Land We Knew The Best
Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling, Andreas Werliin - Ghosted III
Ches Smith - Clone Row/The Self
Panda Bear - Sinister Grift
Steve Tibbets - Close
Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force - Khadim
Mary Halvorson - About Ghosts
Alan Sparhawk - Alan Sparhawk with Trampled By Turtles
SML - How You Been
Fergus McCreadie - The Shieling
Rafael Toral - Traveling Light
Tortoise - Touch
Water Damage - Instruments
Los Thuthanaka - Los Thuthanaka
Stereolab - Instant Holograms On Metal Film
Vanessa Rosetto - Pictures of the Warm South
Geese - Gettimg Killed
Nate Wooley - Henry House
Friendship - Caveman Wakes Up
Jens Kuross - Crooked Songs
**William Tyler - Time Indefinite**