Tiffany Poon takes a geographical turn focusing on French composers for her second album, Nature. The care she brought to Diaries Schumann shows up here as well.
Hooverphonic, The Magnificent Tree
For the longest time, I thought the only thing I needed from Hooverphonic was their cover of “Shake the Disease” on the tribute album For the Masses. I was wrong.
Miguel, CAOS
The title of this album is an apt description for the songs therein, but they don’t get too out of hand to lose focus.
Rosalía, LUX
The orchestrations on this album are phenomenal, but I think Rosalía could study Shiina Ringo’s Karuki Zaamen Kuri no Hana for a lesson on how to keep ambitions in check. This album would be more impactful with a short running time.
Black Country, New Road, Forever Howlong Geese, Getting Killed National of Language, Dance Called Memory
I’ll admit I had to do some fourth quarter catch-up on these albums, so they’re indelibly tied in mind due to context-switching. In the case of Forever Howlong and Getting Killed, these albums flex ambition that wouldn’t sound out of place next to a Shiina Ringo or Naked City album, just a bit tempered. Dance Called Memory, meanwhile, evokes an age familiar to anyone who grew up in the Reagan years.
As much as I liked these albums, I didn’t discover them early enough in the year to dislodge the favorites I’ve already ranked. I was also listening to Dijon’s Baby, which did manage to break into the year-end list. Getting Killed garnered a lot of acclaim, but I perceive it as a less-fun version of Parquet Court’s Wide Awake!
Tortoise, Touch
I bet this album might have also ranked higher on the Favorite Edition 2025 list if it had just come out slightly earlier in the year.
I can’t tell you why I like some hip-hop albums more than others because I just don’t have the subject matter expertise. I just know there’s some genuine pain that comes through on this album, which puts it at odds with the bravado inherent in hip-hop. Clipse navigates that tension like the masters they are.
Tyler Childers, Snipe Hunter
Remember Sturgill Simpson’s A Soldier’s Guide to the Earth from nearly a decade back? This album might be Tyler Childers’ Soldier’s Guide.
Amanda Shires, Nobody’s Girl
I’m calling it now — Amanda Shires has released the better divorce album of 2025, but Jason Isbell’s fame all but guarantees Foxes in the Snow will occupy the discourse. And I can’t say I liked that album.
Kathleen Edwards, Billionaire
I like Kathleen Edwards, but I don’t buy enough of her albums to consider myself a fan. Billionaire, though, is the most confident work I’ve heard from her. Gena Johnson and Jason Isbell co-produced the album, and they coaxed some beefy performances from Edwards.
Patty Griffin, Crown of Roses
This album is haunting. It’s Patty Griffin spliced with the sonic DNA of Mazzy Star’s She Hangs Brightly.
Ringdown, Lady on the Bike
I just like the idea that a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer (Caroline Shaw) formed a pop duo and made an album that could dug by music composition majors and electronic dance fans.
Julia Fordham, Julia Fordham
I remember music magazines trying to lump Julia Fordham with Edie Brickell, Sinéad O’Connor and Tracy Chapman. She’s more similar to Basia and Swing Out Sister but with a deeper jazz vocabulary.
Davóne Tines and The Truth, Robeson
This theater piece based on the life of Paul Robeson takes a lot musical twists and turns, but it never loses its throughline. It’s essentially a sonic time machine traveling through American music history.
Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion, Rectangles and Circumstance
Is this an indie rock album? You could be forgiven for mistaking it as one. Shaw and Sō Percussion give enough of a veneer to make the case, but their modern classical expertise is never far away.
Turnstile, NEVER ENOUGH
I like this album a lot, but when I look up the definition of hardcore, it’s usually next to a picture of Hüsker Dü.
John Zorn, Prolegomena
Not much different from his string quartets, but still thrilling to hear.
If I were honest, I don’t think Nobody Lives Here is as cohesive as the albums preceding it, but the first half of 2025 was scant on albums that provided a dopamine hit on each listen. And I fully expect the album to have a spot on the year-end list, if not on the strength of “White Light of the Morning” alone.
Parlando / Ian Niederhoffer, Censored Anthems
Mieczyslaw Weinberg and Edvard Mirzoyan take up most of the playing time on this album of composers working under the Soviet regime. Dmitri Shostakovich is on there too with an overture. These works are hidden gems that deserve programming by more orchestras.
Kendrick Lamar, GNX
My flimsy excuse for including a late-2024 album on a mid-2025 overview is the fact the physical release of the album didn’t happen till February. So I didn’t really start living with this album till I could make my own rip of the CD. I needn’t tell you how good this album is at this point.
Henki Skidu, Spring Water
A collaborator with comedian Matt Rogers, Henry Koperski goes in an indie-folk direction as Henki Skidu, and Spring Water offers a set of earnest songs that hint at a more ambitious orchestral sound lurking beneath. I also like album cover.
Cynthia Erivo, I Forgive You
I’m never going to finish watching Wicked because the score is just not appropriate to the darkness of the story. I Forgive You is a better showcase for Cynthia Erivo’s vocal skills anyway. But are there longer versions of the covers she hints at on the album?
Reissues
Robert Palmer, Live at the Apollo
This live show recorded in 1988 features Palmer at the height of his fame, but it also serves as a retrospective of his varied career, which included funk and new wave. Even the big hits of the era don’t feel out of place.
U2, How to Re-Assemble an Atomic Bomb
This alternate version of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb was released as part of a massive boxed set, then separately as a Record Store Day Black Friday exclusive in 2024. I’m almost inclined to say it’s a better album than the one the band would eventually release.
Steve Reich, Collected Works
Nonesuch reached out to other labels to gather the most comprehensive collection of Steve Reich’s recorded works to date.
Catalog
Little Anthony and the Imperials, Goin’ Out of My Mind
If you grew up on Linda Ronstadt’s version of “Hurt So Bad,” you should give the original by Little Anthony and the Imperials a chance. Then listen to this album in its entirety.
These Trails, These Trails
This album serves as a blueprint for how experimental music can work within the context of Hawaiian music. Hawaiian music tend to play it safe when infusing Hawaiian music with other genres.
DO AS INFINITY, EIGHT
I liked this album when it was first release, but I never bought a physical copy. Hearing it again made me realize it needs a permanent spot in my collection.
I’m not sure this album is SYML’s best, but it certainly was the one I returned to time and again on my media player.
Do As Infinity, EIGHT
I never got around to owning this album on a physical format, and listening to again a decade later makes me think it’s probably the best in the band’s 20-year discography. It holds up incredibly well.
Rammstein, Mutter
I get the sense this album might be Rammstein’s most accessible.
Club Nouveau, Listen to the Message
Club Nouveau’s Life, Laugh and Love is an unsung 80s classic, but its socially-conscious follow-up didn’t replicate that success, despite being an album of much deeper thoughtfulness and more forceful messaging.
Hamilton Leithauser, Black Hours
I kept coming back to this album because Leithauser doesn’t seem to like being beholden to a single style.
Ray Lynch, Deep Breakfast
I have a soft spot for new age music from the 1980s, and modern dance music owes a lot of its ethereal pads to work by the likes of Lynch. I did think “Celestial Soda Pop” was a set of variations on Blondie’s “Call Me.”
Cynthia Erivo, I Forgive You
I would have thought the success of Erivo’s work on Wicked and a concert performance of Jesus Christ Superstar would have rubbed off on this album, but it seems like nobody’s talking about it. And I’d much prefer to listen to this album than Wicked.
Little Anthony and the Imperials, Goin’ Out of My Head
The title track and “Hurt So Bad” are the most recognizable tracks on this album, which at the time didn’t conceive the notion of an album as a singular work with a unified feel. The Beach Boys and The Beatles would pioneer that idea shortly afterward. “Hurt So Bad” has more of a bittersweet vibe than Linda Ronstadt’s cover nearly two decades later.
Cherrelle, High Priority
Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were on a hot streak with new jack swing, and this album joins Alexander O’Neal’s Hearsay and Janet Jackson’s Control in a string of production successes.
Henki Skidu, Spring Water
Spring Water hints that Henry Koperski, going by Henki Skidu, could have a grander album with a bigger budget, but I rather prefer the low-key feel.
Kendrick Lamar, GMX
I was traveling around the time the digital version of this album was released, so I didn’t really listen to it fully till its physical release in February. It should have been included in the Favorite Edition 2024 list, but I had already locked up the list. Will it show up on the 2025 list?
w.o.d., Ai
BLEACH Thousand Year Blood War was my pop culture Roman Empire of 2024, and w.o.d.’s “Stars” didn’t wear out with repeat viewings of the third coeur. The band’s major label debut also endured multiple spins on the playback device.
Ian Niederhoffer / Parlando, Censored Anthems
I would love to see the pieces on this album performed as a concert program. Although Dmitri Shostakovich is the marquee name, Mieczyslaw Weinberg and Edvard Mirzoyan take up the most playing time with a pair of pieces that deserve more exposure.
These Trails, These Trails
This album is the closest we’ll get to Hawaiian music with a bona fide freak flag.
Painkiller, The Equinox
The original members of John Zorn’s Painkiller trio return, with drummer Mick Harris replacing himself with drum machines. It doesn’t make the music any less frenetic.
U2, How to Reassemble An Atomic Bomb
At the very least, this album of outtakes from How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb offers a tantalizing glimpse of what mid-200s U2 could have been. Part of me suspects this alternate album is better than what was officially released.
Rhino released the full concert on YouTube, so do yourself a fever and watch it whlie it’s still available. Ronstadt filmed this concert for HBO around the time she released Mad Love.
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Live from the Ryman, Vol. 2
Many of the tracks on this second edition of live recordings from the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville come from Weathervanes, probably Isbell’s best album since Southeastern. So I’m inclined to rank it favorably over the first volume.
Various Artists, Club Epic
This compilation of remixes has some top notch hits from the ’80s: “Fantastic Voyage” by Lakeside, “Saturday Love” by Cherrelle and Alexander O’Neal, “Lover Girl” by Teena Marie, to name a few. I didn’t realize how much I missed hearing these songs.
Painkiller, Samsara
Mick Harris has traded live drums for electronics on this album reuniting the former Napalm Death drummer with bassist Bill Laswell and saxophonist John Zorn. It’s no less frenetic and still mixes well with the wild abandon for which Painkiller is known.
Ray Chen, Player One
I can’t confess to being any sort of video game soundtrack listener, so those tracks which bookend this album are pretty much adornment for the Erich Korngold Violin Concerto, the crunchiest piece of repertoire I’ve heard Chen tackle so far.
Tim McGraw, Standing Room Only
I don’t mind that Tim McGraw engages in a bit of gay-baiting, and he doesn’t move in the same creative circles of Jason Isbell or Sturgill Simpson. But I have to admit Standing Room Only sounds like an album that could imagine a Venn diagram where McGraw, Isbell and Simpson intersect.
Marshall Crenshaw, Field Day
I hadn’t explored much of Crenshaw’s early albums till a number of them showed up at the thrift store. Now I understand how the press was flummoxed that Crenshaw just never stormed the charts.
Chappell Roan, The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess
She won me over on “Femininomenon,” when she asked: “Um, can you play a song with a fucking beat?”
Charli XCX, brat
I admit that I actually didn’t like brat on my first few listens. It didn’t have the same ebb and flow as The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess, which is probably not a fair comparison. It just felt limited.
Which is exactly the point. And it took a version of the album redone in Mario Paint Composer to confirm these limitations and also transcend them.
brat succeeds because it spins an epic out of the barest of material.
sungazer, Against the Darkness of Night
I could make a joke that sungazer is what happens when music theory becomes a real boy, but Adam Neely and Shawn Crowder are too good at what they do to make that snark stick. In a video preceding the album’s release, Neely pointed out that Perihelion, the band’s first full-length album, didn’t translate as well in a live setting. So for this second album, they set out to make music to get people moving. Of course, they couldn’t just leave a 4/4 time signature well enough alone. All the rhythmic sorcery of the first album returns, but mission accomplished, guys — this album moves.
SYML, LIVE AT HANGAR 30
I just like hearing Brian Fennell sing.
Johnny Blue Skies, Passage du Desir
Sturgill Simpson the person killed Sturgill Simpson the brand, so to continue making music, Johnny Blue Skies was born. In yet another shift, Simpson has entered his Gram Parsons era, lacking only Emmylou Harris to complement this set of 70s-influenced country rock.
Boredoms, Chocolate Synthesizer
Yamantaka Eye is so tightly coupled with Naked City in my mind that I almost thought this album would sound just like Naked City. Nope. There’s still a lot of noise-making, but it actually feels less chaotic than Naked City.
Material Issue, International Pop Overthrow
I remember seeing this album all over the place in my early college days, but I didn’t feel compelled to check it out. But somehow, it’s managed to exist in the periphery, showing up regularly in thrift shops and used CD bins as years wore on. Curiosity finally got the best of me, and yeah, younger me was a dolt for not following up way back in the early 1990s. But then I wouldn’t have avoided news of singer Jim Ellison’s death by the decade’s midpoint.
Death Waits, Burn Everything Xenakis Minor, XM1
Meta launched Threads in 2023 to fill a void left by the site formerly known as Twitter, and early adopters of the service quickly formed a tight-knit group of independent musicians. Followers of the Music Threads tag will probably encounter posts by Xenakis Minor (@xenakisminor) and Death Waits (@666death_waits666) at some point.
Death Waits is a raucous band that could easily fill the void departed by Torche. Burn Everything, in fact, reminds me a lot of Torche’s final album Restarter. Xenakis Minor, on the other hand, proposes a reality where piano, not guitar, is the main driver for prog rock. XM1 is billed as an EP, but with a running time of 41 minutes over the course of three tracks, that’s just trolling.
I have no clue why city pop became such a niche interest in 2024, but I support any trend that gets Nakamori Akina’s early albums into more ears. Aran Tomoko was an impulse purchase because someone had sold a vinyl reissue to Sonic Boom Records, and I bought it because … hey, it’s Japan!
It’s become one of my most-played albums of 2024. This album is so much more than city pop. It bends genres and indulges in experiments, all the while hewing to the confines of Japanese pop music. It predates the adventurousness of Shiina Ringo by two decades.
Beyoncé, Act II: Cowboy Carter
My immediate reaction after hearing Cowboy Carter for the first time was: “This is the closest an American artist has come to making a Shiina Ringo album.” If Renaissance felt symphonic, Cowboy Carter is operatic. (It helps that Beyonce quotes Tomasso Giordani on “Daughter.”) I’m not even going to get into whether this album is “country” — country is far too restrictive a genre to encompass the ambition on this album. To make a comparison only long-time readers might understand, Cowboy Carter operates on the level of Shousou Strip.
Shiina Ringo, Hojoya
It does seem Shiina has been releasing albums just to compile the last half dozen of singles, but Hojoya is something different. Perhaps borrowing from Beyoncé, Shiina announced the album just days before its release. Half the tracks feature collaborations with female singers, and Shiina sounds positively energized by it.
Nocchi from Perfume sounds unrecognizable without Nakata Yasutaka drowning her voice in effects, but she more than holds her own on “Ui K.O. Kachi.” Ai’s husky voice makes for a great contrast with Shiina on “Shuusha no Koushin.”
Not since Tokyo Jihen’s Sports has a Shiina Ringo album sounded so focused. It’s her best writing in years.
Haim, Women in Music, Pt. III
If I had to judge a band by their press photos, I would have pegged Haim as being an indie folk outfit. So I was surprised to hear they’re way more pop.
La Bouche, Sweet Dreams
Sweet Dreams was a huge hit in my last years of college, but I was too busy trying to get imports of John Zorn’s Masada to pay attention. The title track is indeed a banger, but the rest of the album is no slouch.
Yellow Magic Orchestra, Naughty Boys
This album is my first encounter with Yellow Magic Orchestra. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long.
Brian Fennell, Safety Songs
Before there was SYML or Barcelona, there was an album with a fresh-faced Brian Fennell going by his own name. Safety Songs is essentially a proto-Barcelona album. Even at this early stage, Fennell’s writing chops already feel well-honed.
Cocco’s first four albums loom pretty large over her discography, so it’s easy to fall into the trap of comparing her subsequent works to that early corpus. That said, Beatrice harkens back to the storminess of Rapunzel and has some of the catchiest songs she’s written since Emerald.
John Zorn, Simulacrum
Leave it to John Zorn to devise a hardcore jazz ensemble consisting of organ, guitar and drums, with the organ part played by John Medeski or Medeski, Martin and Woods.
Tyler Childers, Rustlin’ in the Rain
I’ll admit the video for “In Your Love” drew my attention to Childers, but I also love the concept behind this album: pitching modern day songs to Elvis Presley.
Onitsuka Chihiro, UN AMNESIAC GIRL -First Code 2000-2003-
No era of Onitsuka Chihiro’s career has been as thoroughly mined as her first three albums. With each jump to a new label — from EMI to Universal to Victor — a new compilation comes out to remind listeners what Onitsuka produced in those early years. This latest boxed set compiles Insomnia, This Armor and Sugar High along with B-sides and non-album singles. I didn’t pick up This Armor when it was first released, so it’s nice to have a physical copy.
Sleater-Kinney, Little Rope
It seemed like the band wandered a bit after Janet Weiss’ departure before finding their footing again on Little Rope. It sucks that it came in the wake of tremendous loss for Carrie Brownstein.
Ms. Dynamite, A Little Deeper
I remember seeing this album all over the UK press back in 2002, and I understand now why that was so.
Tiffany Poon, Diaries: Schumann
Poon has such an enthusiasm for the works of Robert Schumann that it spurred me to take out the Album for the Young and learn a few of the pieces geared for adults. Beethoven’s shadow looms over Schumann, but his works have fleeting moments of spice that hint at the coming dissolution of harmony later in the 19th Century. But Poon is not concerned about that future past. She just wants listeners to love Schumann as much as she does.
Kim Gordon, The Collective
I love that Gordon wanted to make this album more “beat-oriented.” I wonder sometimes if this album is what clipping ought to sound like.
Descendants, Milo Goes to College
How much more punk can you get with a 15-track album that totals 22 minutes in length? None. None more punk.
I’m enough of a rockist snob to turn my nose up at Christmas music, so imagine my surprise at seeing a fucking Christmas album as a year-end pick. But Matt Rogers takes a piss out of the genre, offering a set of songs sung as earnestly as any pop star with Broadway pipes, but throwing equal measures of irreverence toward religion, gay culture and whatever else the zeitgeist deems important. But if these songs were just straight-up pop extracted from the seasonal theme? Fire. Absolute fire.
Right Said Fred, Up
Yes, Right Said Fred is a one-hit wonder, but this album is pretty solid. No, seriously.
The American Analog Set, For Forever
AmAnSet returns after 18 years with an album that doesn’t sound like the AmAnSet I remember from the 2000s. For Forever is uncharacteristically extroverted if your perception of the band is as frozen in time as mine.
Helmet, LEFT
I read a number of reviews that pointed out the last track on the album was jazzy without mentioning it was a cover of John Coltrane’s “Resolution.” These reviews were on metal-themed sites, so … OK? The rest of the album is a lot more tuneful than the Helmet I remember, a perception admittedly stuck in the early-1990s.
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