The Best Albums of 2025
All those other lists you're seeing are just WRONG ... except where they agree with me.
So you wanna know about my favorite albums this year? First let’s look at the state of popular music in the year of Our Lord, 2025 AD, shall we?
Well, commercial radio still sucks the warts. (Don’t gasp, gentle reader. It’s unbecoming.)
The music industry still is controlled by evil pricks — tech pricks and corporate fixers so evil they make me nostalgic for Morris Levy. At least he never referred to music as “content.”
And while AI (that’s artificial intelligence, not my friend Al) has not destroyed music despite the direst, hair-on-fire predictions, I still have the gnawing fear that we mortal humans are more than capable of doing that on our own.
But even with all these roadblocks, musicians keep on releasing some mighty fine albums. You just had to look a little harder to find them. (Lordy, how many times have I written that basic sentiment in these year-end summaries through the years?)
Here’s what sounded best to these tired old ears this year:
Horror by The Mekons. Nearly 50 years together, and making more than 20 albums, somehow The mighty Mekons came up with a doozy this time. Released n the spring, Horror describes the band’s basic reaction to America’s crazy shift toward authoritarianism this year.
Horror seems to capture the the current landscape as well as supplying historical context. Literally, the first words on the album are “In 1654 on Christmas day the fleet left Portsmouth …” The song, which describes the birth of British imperialism, is “The Western Design” sung by Tom Greenhalgh and set to a deceptively soothing reggae beat.
Later, in “Mudcrawlers,” we learn about starving Irish fleeing the potato famine into Wales: “In the foundations of new buildings, the bones of Irish families still lie …”
There are several rousing rockers here, “Glasgow,” “War Economy,” “Mudcrawlers” “You’re Not Singing Anymore,” being my favorites.
But these are outnumbered on Horror by slower, sadder tunes. There’s “Fallen Leaves,” sung by Eric “Rico Bell” Bellis, who seems to have contributed more lead vocals than usual on this album.
Meanwhile, ”Sanctuary” features a sweet duet of Sally Timms and the group’s violinist Susie Honeyman is a stunner. It’s about modern Mexican immigrants looking “down from the hills on somewhere that we might belong.” And it hits home. Literally. I have to assume they’re talking about the Sangre de Cristos: “… In the blood of Christ Mountains, shoes for tiny feet // At the end of the road we stumble on sanctuary.”
Hard Headed Woman by Margo Price. The perfect antidote to bro country. After several years of dabbling in rock and even psychedelia, she returns to a strong outlaw country sound with this record. Margo makes a clear declaration of her purpose in a minute-long “Prelude,” where, backed by a mournful fiddle, she sings a melody that sounds lifted from Stephen Foster: “I’m a hard-headed woman, and I don’t owe you shit / I ain’t ashamed, I just am what I am / And I am high as the heavens / I’m stubborn as hell / I ain’t ashamed, I’m just a hard-headed woman.” Then WHOMP, she goes right into “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down,” (which I wrote about earlier this month.)
“Bastards” is followed by “Red Eye Flight,” which along with other honky-tonk stompers, can’t help but remind listeners of that period in the ‘70s when Margo’s spiritual forefathers gave Nashville a giant middle finger. She even includes covers of Waylon Jennings (“Kissing You Goodbye”) and George Jones (“I Just Don’t Give a Damn,”though Margos’ version of that one sounds more like Stax/Volt soul than 16th Avenue.)
But Margo’s originals are the real strength of the album. “Close to You,” not the Carpenters’ song, is one of the sexiest numbers you’ll hear this year. (“… We talked about Heaven and we talked about Hell / We played the jukebox while democracy fell …” ) And her duet with Tyler Childers, “Love Me Like You Used to Do” is a sweet country weeper.
Another Hard Headed tune that’s received a bunch of attention is Margo’s duet with Jesse Welles on “Don’t Wake Me Up,” a funny ode to the power of dreams that several critics have compared to Bob Dylan, largely, I suspect, due to the video. But I also detect a nod to Roger Miller in the lines “I can dream in French, I can dream in Spanish / I can dream with the subtitles on in Japannish.”Dang me, that makes me hungry for maple surple!
Trash Classic by Frankie & The Witch Fingers. You’ll probably notice that most of the albums on this list are by acts I’ve loved for years. I guess that’s just one of my geezer tendencies. But that’s not the case with Frankie & The Witch Fingers, a Los Angeles band with roots in Indiana. If I’d even heard of then before two or three months ago, they didn’t register with me. But somehow, my ancient ears were led to Frankie and crew and for that I’m grateful.
The Witch Fingers are favorites of the modern psychedelic-rock crowd, and have opened for the likes of Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segal. But the first thing I noticed about their sound were uncanny echoes of Devo. With his cool-nerd glasses frontman Dylan Sizemore (“Frankie” actually is the name of Sizemore’s cat), looks a little like Mark Mothersbaugh. But more relevant to the Devo/Witch Fingers connection are the whirly-swirly sci-fi synths of Jon Modaff, which help thrust Frankie & the gang into a New Wave techno-goof galaxy.
One of the best on Trash Classic is ”Eggs Laid Brain,” which concerns killjoys who are determined in “sucking out the fun, how tasty …” Sizemore sings “When your parents crawl around / They’re laying web eggs inside your kid head …” This may be about parents poisoning their children’s joy by unloading their adult fears and prejudices on them Or maybe a jab at RFK Jr. and his brainworm? (I doubt it, but let’s put it out there.)
“Dead Silence” is about succumbing to unceasing media and technology. And it has a great video (see below). But the lyrics can’t help but make me wonder: ARE THESE GUYS TRYING TO BRAINWASH ME?!?
Another favorite is the hard rocking “Fucksake.” I’m not sure what the words means (“Silver gods can see us wasted rotten / Death befallen in a robot coffin / Desperation for the future softens …”) but it sounds bitchen. And so does “Conducting Experiments,” with its chorus that’s almost a mission statement for this band: “There are no cages at all / It’s just an up-late free-for-all/ And if you came to dissolve / Well then, there’s nothing left to solve …” So let yourself dissolve into this fun and vital music.
Stockholm Syndrome by Fishbone. I included this album’s first track “Last Call in America” as one of the year’s finest protest songs last week. But even if that collaboration with George Clinton didn’t exist, there would have been plenty of protest songs to choose some on Stockholm. “Secret Police” would have fit in on that list (“Donny hates chinks, niggas, wet backs and Jews / So he joined the armed forces for the Red, White & Blue / He’s been deployed to a town at a riot near you ...”)
Same with “Why Do We Keep on Dying” (“Must this blood soaked earth cry out while justice wanes?”) or the even more blunt “Racist Piece of Shit” (“I see you coming down the street / With tiki torches and hate speech…”), which specifically calls out the Proud Boys, Kid Rock, and, of course, the “mad orange king.”
But the thing I love most about this album is that Fishbone is so capable of turning grim current events into joyous, infectious ska-punk dance romps, often funny, always fun. They’ve been like that since before I saw them at my first Lollapalooza more than 30 years ago. And, of course, they were like that when I saw them this summer at the Santa Fe Railyard.
Death Crossed the Street by Reverend Beat-Man & Milan Slick. You kids like the noir synth rock ’n’ roll trash garage music? I sure do. But, for those uninitiated into the cult of Voodoo Rhythm, that’s the genre description of this album, I assume concocated by the righteous reverend himself. This intense album is a collaboration between “Beat-Man” Zeller, the chief prophet and feared strongman of Voodoo Rhythm Records (who looks and sings like Popeye) and Slick, a synth-playing Nick Cave lookalike. Slick, like the right reverend, is a native of Bern, Switzerland. He previously played with Beat-Man (as part of a band called The Underground) on the 2022 release It’s a Matter of Time: The Complete Palp Sessions.
As it turns out “noir synth rock ’n’ roll trash garage” is a pretty apt description of the basic sound here. Beat-Man is a longtime purveyor of a garage sound, mixed in with generous portions of rockabilly, blues and Kraut rock. You can hear all those elements on Death Crossed the Street.
The menacing title track definitely has a noir vibe, starting slow and stark but soon building into a fiery rage with Slick’s keyboards sounding like it came from a haunted house. Another favorite is “I Found Out,” which sounds like a cuckold lover about to extract violent revenge. But my current favorite is “What Is Wrong With Those People In This World Today,” which has one of the coolest and craziest videos I’ve seen in awhile. I just hope the abandoned Chuck E. Cheese where they apparently shot it didn’t press charges.
Get Your Feathers Ready by Blue Moon Marquee & Northern Cree. Sometimes it’s nice to put a little red in the blues. This album is a teamup of two Indigenous Canadian outfits: the duo Blue Moon Marquee, (which plays blues, jazz and, as their website says, “anything that swings, jumps or grooves”) and the pow-wow/round dance group Northern Cree. The result is an incredible mix of gritty country blues — with gravel voiced lead singer A.W. Cardinal out front punctuated by the powerful drums and haunting unison vocals of the Northern Cree guys.
And it works. Whether it’s familiar blues songs like Blind Willie Johnson’s “Soul of a Man” or Muddy Waters’ “Rollin’ and Tumblin’ ” or original tunes like “Put Your Feathers On,” the melding of musical cultures sounds natural, never forced, never cute.
Plastic Eternity by Mudhoney. By the end of the 1990s, the once essential “Seattle Sound” seemed to be way past its expiration date. Kurt Cobain and Nirvana had been dead for a few years. Soundgarden’s best work was in the rearview. Pearl Jam … oh, who cares? Seattle by this point was better known for its heroin ODs than its music. “Grunge” became just a tacky punchline as Nu metal — remember that stuff? — was ascendant.
But Mudhoney never got the memo. And long after the flannel quit flying, they were one Seattle band that consistently has continued to produce great rock ‘n’ roll. I saw them play a fantastic show at Santa Fe’s Tumbleroot a couple of years ago (with Meat Puppets opening!), so I wasn’t completely surprised this year when they released Plastic Eternity, an album that sounds fresh, while keeping their trademark fuzzed-out, sound. Three out of four original members — singer/guitarist Mark Ark lead guitarist Steve Turner and drummer Dan Peters — are still playing. And they show little, if any signs of slowing down.
The new album is loaded with outright political songs, “Flush the Fascists,” “Human Stock Capital” and “Severed Dreams in the Sleeper Cell” being the most obvious. But some days, when the crap is really cascading, I think “Cascades of Crap” is even more politically relevant.
But two of the best tracks here are non-political. “Tom Herman’s Hermits” is an ode to Pere Ubu’s old guitarist Thomas E. Herman, while “Little Dogs” is a sincere, tail-wagging ode to sweet little mutts.
Jungle Cruise by Juanita & Juan. Why should I even attempt to describe the unique sound of this album, when the duo itself has supplied a description that I’ll never match: a “psychedelic lounge act on a Mexican beach.”
Although you might have never heard of Juanita & Juan, if you ever paid any attention to the Los Angeles punk world since the 1980s, surely you’ve heard of Alice Bag (Alicia Armendariz) of The Bags and Kid Congo Powers (Brian Tristan), who’s played with The Gun Club, The Cramps, Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds and his own group, The Pink Monkeybirds. The thing is, Juanita & Juan don’t really sound much like their old groups. Instead of high voltage guitars you’ll hear gentle, if somewhat spooky keyboards at deceptively mellow tempos.
Armendariz and Tristan have been friends for decades (Alice sang a tune on The Pink Monkey Birds’ album That Delicious Vice last year). But “Juanita & Juan” didn’t come about until the two collaborated on a song for a tv show I’d never heard of (The Resort on Peacock) a few years ago. J&J even appear briefly in a scene as, well, a poolside lounge act.
There are only eight songs on this record, which is less than a half hour long. But between the poisonous kiss-off of “Aftertaste” (“I’m gonna brush my teeth with gasoline / To get your taste out of my mouth …”) and the giddy fan worship of “The Prez” (about Kid Congo’s term as president of his high school’s Ramones Fan Club) and “DBWMGWD” (translation: “David Bowie Was My Gateway Drug”), there is lots to love here. The best summation of the spirit of this collaboration is when Kid Congo in the title song commands, “Shake your maracas and turn your blues into a jungle cruise.”
Rachel Brooke Sings Sad Songs. This might be the most honestly titled album of the year. This Michigan singer performs 14 songs, singing her aching heart out, backed only by her own acoustic guitar. No fancy solos, no sweet harmonies, just raw, honest, songs of loss and hurt.
I first came to Rachel’s music back in 2011, when I heard her on a compilation by the short-lived but amazing little label called Farmageddon. Around the same time I got her amazing sophomore album, Down in the Barnyard. I’ve been a fan ever since.
Sad Songs includes some fine covers — Hank Williams’ “Weary Blues From Waitng,” Nirvana’s “All Apologies” and, best of all, one of the best versions of John Hartford’s “Gentle on My Mind” I’ve ever heard. But, as I said about Margo Price’s album, the originals here are the real attraction. Some of them are downright heartbreaking, the singer’s pain nearly tangible. “I’m a lonely old bummer, not much left to say …” are the first words you hear on the album.
But on some, you can detect what may be a wry hope in Rachel’s world-weary vocals. “… I wake up every morning but I die every day,” Brooke sings in “I’m Doing Just Fine.” But the sarcastic way she sings the refrain, “I’m doing just fine,” is almost a wink to whoever’s listening to signal she might be a doing a little fine after all.
Sinners Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners was my favorite movie this year. And I’m not even a big horror movie fan. A big part of why I loved this flick was the music.
Coogler and score composer Ludwig Göransson gathered an impressive gaggle of actual blues and R&B musicians — among them Buddy Guy and Bobby Rush. Cedric Burnside does an impressive version of “Wang Dang Doodle” with Tierinii Jackson and Mississippi fife player Sharde Thomas-Mallory. (Cedric and Tierinii also duet on another song, “I Can’t Win For Losin’.”) Brittany Howard co-wrote and sings one version of “Pale, Pale Moon” (actress Jayme Lawson sings the other, as she does in the film itself.) Rhiannon Giddens with fellow Carolina Chocolate Drop Justin Robinson do an old banjo and fiddle song “Old Corn Liquor,” and Alvin Youngblood Hart plays guitar behind lead actor Miles Caton on a short tune called “Travelin’.”
Caton, a 20-year-old New Yorker, makes for a believable Delta bluesman. One of the most spectacular scenes in Sinners is the juke joint version of “I Lied to You.” (Watch it below.)
But the real surprise on this soundtrack is the Irish music, mixed in with all this blues. There’s a gorgeous version of “Wild Mountain Thyme,” (which here is called “Will Ye Go, Lassie Go”) sung by actress Lola Kirke. And the version of “Rocky Road to Dublin,” sung by actor Jack O’Connell would sound terrifying even if you haven’t seen Sinners. If there really is such thing as Irish vampires, I’m sure they’d sound like this.
Honorary Unmentionables
Possession by Ty Segal
Forever Forever by The Hives
Carpe Diem, Moonman by Psychedelic Porn Crumpets
Snipe Hunter by Tyler Childers
Black Sky Over The Projects: Apartment 2025 by Public Enemy
I’ll be playing selections from these albums on Terrell’s Sound World on Sunday. (10 p.m. Mountain on KSFR.
And please, let me know in the comments what your favorite albums of 2025 were.