Best Albums of 2025
Luminescent Creatures - Ichiko Aoba
In January of 2025, Japanese songwriter and classical guitarist Ichiko Aoba kicked off a banner year for chamber pop with her new record Luminescent Creatures, inspired by her time free-diving off the coast of Japan. Aoba composed and produced the record with long-time collaborator Taro Umebayashi, both of whose arrangements inspire both the vastness of the ocean and interconnected ecosystems of a coral reef. The duo are careful to keep the focus on where it needs to be, on Ichiko’s voice and guitar, dancing through her delicate compositions that evoke the comfort of an animated movie soundtrack, without feeling cloying or melodramatic. Silence and gentle reverberations keep listeners breathing underwater, marveling at the mysteries in every drop.
Mercy - Armand Hammer and Golliwog - billy woods
Another year, another set of incredible Backwoodz Studios releases. The elusive Billy Woods continues to be the busiest man in abstract hip-hop, appearing as one part of the now-legendary Armand Hammer on the Alchemist-produced Mercy and also MC-ing the collab-heavy Golliwog, his solo follow-up to the nearly-unmatched Maps from 2023. Golliwog finally answers the big question on everyone’s minds: “What if Dälek and Scott Walker made a horrorcore record with a Danish saxophone player?” Yes, it’s as haunting as it sounds. Woods’ partner-in-rhyme, Elucid, comes out the winner on Mercy, turning in a series of amazingly dialed-in performances and wild-ass lyrical flights (30 seconds into the record he rhymes “myth of meritocracy” with “fuck a cock-and-squeeze”), all while keeping guests like Earl and Quelle Chris in check. Great job, gents, you did it again.
New Threats from the Soul - Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band
If you don’t know Achewood, let me introduce you to your newest rabbithole. The longrunning webcomic is southern idioms, misplaced California optimism, and Pacific Northwest melancholy all blended together into absurdism that drinks Coors while quoting Faulkner. It’s a foundational piece of the weirdo Americana canon alongside Jon Bois, Mark Twain, Flannery O’Connor and Calvin & Hobbes. Ryan Davis’ new one, New Threats from the Soul, has entered the same rarified air: hilarious, crushing, unforgettable.
“It’s a pissing competition between the man I am and the guy I was,” Davis says as an introduction. Davis and the Roadhouse Band straddle a misremembered past and a hazy future: pilfering from drum&bass (“Monte Carlo”) and coloring the funhouse mirror twins of “Mutilation Springs” and “Mutilation Falls” with janky synths plunking merrily next to saloon pianos and swirling pedal steel. It’s possible to fill up the rest of this paragraph with nuggets from Davis’ masterful pen, but the ultimate line, for me, is the one that broke me into tears when I saw them live. After admitting “my ribcage was a loony bin to keep my heart out of her hand,” on “The Simple Joy” Davis moves from the heartbreak that permeates the album and takes the long view. “I learned that time was not my friend or foe/ More like one of the guys from work.” Acceptance, to Davis, doesn’t grant some grand epiphany, but it does lend a sense of contentment. And, as “The Simple Joy” implies, maybe that’s all we need.
Off the Record: Four EPs - Makaya McCraven
For all the praise heaped on Chicago-based drummer and bandleader Makaya McCraven, he’s always been a bit of an outcast in the American contemporary jazz scene. Some have argued that he injects too much hip-hop into his projects, that he’s unoriginal, that he’s playing music he doesn’t, or couldn’t, understand. Those who haven’t been caught under his spell probably won’t be swayed by his 2025 output, which consists of a kookily ambitious four-EP boxset, recorded at various points over the years and released in October by International Anthem and XL as Off the Record. These terrific mini-projects are like if the redheaded stepchildren from four very different families got together for a weed-fueled jam sesh (which is unlikely to be far from the truth). PopUp Shop feels perhaps the most improvised, with visceral bass work from Ben Shepard and wonderful percussion backdrops from McCraven. Hidden Out! features the iconic guitar noodling of one Jeff Parker, best-known for his decades with post-rock outfit Tortoise, as well as the ace trumpeting and saxophone-ing of Marquis Hill and Josh Johnson, respectively. Techno Logic is like Herbie Hancock’s Future Shock as filtered through a prism where Zapp’s “Computer Love” is the only song that’s ever been written. And Joel Ross’ beautiful vibraphone on The People’s Mixtape acts as the great unifier, signaling a sort-of end to a very fun night at the jazz club, one that can be looped, replayed, and heard out of order. McCraven’s sensibilities aren’t for everyone, but he’s made one thing clear: he’s a lifer who doesn’t intend to carve out any path except his own.
On This Day - Tony Molina
Classical punk musician Tony Molina finally lends his talents to a double album of epic miniatures, all carefully aimed at the gaping hole in your heart that comes from grappling with The State of Things(™). He sings of cruel men consuming everything that is good and leaving nothing left for the rest of us. It’s as pure a hit of power-pop as they come, with 12-string guitars and the occasional horn section delivering powerhouse melodies in unconventional methods, unfolding with both masterful precision and deeply human warmth. Tony has always had the power to lodge so many hooks in your head and rip your heart out of your chest in all of 70 seconds. On This Day finds him doubling down for his best, and longest, record yet.
Opening Night - MK Velsorf & Aase Nielsen
Nina really said, “Here’s a technophile’s techno files.” And it’s giving mother…board.
Jokes aside, let me tell you about a love letter to early internet nostalgia, as told through some of this generation’s most promising EDM production chops. The early days of web surfing were genuinely full of endless wonder and possibilities - something that feels less and less true as corporations shove a heavily curated feed of dystopic nonsense in our face. But growing up with a sea of infinite knowledge splashing at our fingertips reinforced that the sky actually was the limit - that anything and everything was achievable. As a result, even if we wouldn’t go so far as to “fuck our computers,” the relationships that we developed with our devices were admittedly some of the strongest we will ever have.
Ninajirachi might be the first to shine as intimate a light on this shared experience; and as a fan of EDM through the digital age, this is a dream come true. She’s captured lightning in a bottle, marrying the off-the-wall spirit of early Skrillex with the life-loving hyperpop exuberance of late Porter Robinson, demonstrating all the deftness of a savant born and raised on pirated FL Studio. The result is front-to-back bangers, a heartwarming earnestness coloring the roller-coaster-level adrenaline spikes. From club destroyers like “London Song” and “CSIRAC” to rhapsodic head-nodders like “iPod Touch” and “Delete,” Nina showcases an effortless versatility that’s turning the head, dropping the jaw, and stirring the soul of even the most dedicated disciple of the craft.
But the moment I knew this album was destined to be one of the frontrunners of the genre was the first time I heard “Infohazard.” As rose-tinted as we can be about the days of true digital freedom, we also have a universal understanding of the unique traumas that came from unfiltered searching. The juxtaposition of discussing an extremely distressing and vulnerable shock-site experience at a young age with the unparalleled elation of perfected DDR-inspired trance production is fucking INSPIRED.
Points of Origin - Will Stratton
The scene laid out in Points of Origin’s gentle piano-led number “Temple Bar” conjures the California of Laurel Canyon; one can practically imagine Warren Zevon spinning around on a stool and raising a glass, a wolfish grin on his face. With his virtuosic talent in fingerstyle guitar, Will Stratton has many vivid compositions to his name already, but on his eighth studio album he creates his most vivid musical world yet, one sourced from versions of California both realistic and mythic. (In this detailed guide to each song, Stratton’s explanations make the whole thing sound like a short story collection.) It’s a tapestry full of fine detail; not many people writing music about California would think to name-drop Morro Bay. Where many of Stratton’s best tunes (“If You Wait Long Enough,” “New Vanguard Blues”) center on his vocals and dextrous fingerpicking, Points of Origin is a full band affair, with numbers like “I Found You” and “Higher and Drier” offering an appeal that’s damn near crossover. Listening to Points of Origin I was reminded of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, another nostalgia-tinged remembrance of my home state, one that sticks in the memory for its graceful interweaving of places real and imagined. In the end, the line between those two turns out to be not so defined after all. (Listen to our interview)
Remscela - Milkweed
Time is slippery in Milkweed's world, with layers of sound and history piled up onto one another and played back like one of Nigel Kneale's Stone Tapes. Here, the anonymous folk duo set ancient texts (specifically, stories from Irish epic Táin Bó Cuailnge) to original melodies, pair traditional instrumentation and field recordings with preset keyboard rhythms, then thoroughly fuck with everything until it comes out sounding caked with thousands of years of grime and ghosts.
All of their releases, save their shocking-in-retrospect hi-fi debut, play out this way, but Remscéla is their most fully-formed. From the blown-out bass of "How Conchobor was Begotten” and the melting-cassette stop-start rhythms of “Whiter than the Snow is the White Treasure of her Teeth," to "The Milk-Fed Calf," a ballad so bare it somehow feels out of place on what is ostensibly a folk album, Remscéla is Milkweed at their darkest, most violent, and most accomplished.
Ride Into the Sun - Brad Mehldau
There’s a vibrant stretch of releases between Brad Mehldau’s 2010 masterpiece Highway Rider and 2025. But none have captured the magic of that double album more than Ride Into the Sun, Mehldau’s tribute to his friend, the late Elliott Smith. As on Highway Rider, Mehldau employs an orchestra to augment the trio, quintet, and solo piano arrangements he uses, in this case for a mixture of new pieces that take inspiration from Smith and new versions of Smith originals. Combine the fullness of that orchestral backing with ace guest players like Chris Thile and Daniel Rossen (Grizzly Bear) and you’ve got an album that’s as much a wholly realized work of art in its own right as it is a loving remembrance for a widely beloved artist. The way that Mehldau makes Smith’s spartan breakup ballad “Better Be Quiet Now” blossom into something that sounds like a jazz standard a hundred years old is the stuff of legend – or, in this case, legends.
saoirse dream - saoirse dream
I've written and re-written a lot over the years on my year-end lists about how I reject the idea of "best ofs" and that ultimately the music that never leaves my heavy rotation over a calendar year makes up the foundation of my lists. I'm not here to compare some albums and try to figure out what makes one "better" than the other. If I had to pick a number one though, I'd be picking saoirse dream's self-titled release because it has not left my rotation since releasing in February this year.
This album has everything I could ever want in a poppy, electronic-infused indie rock record. In the past, saoirse's music was a little more foundationally hyperpop or indietronica, and here they achieve perfect crossover appeal for emo, indie rock and bitpop fans. It packs in crunchy guitar riffs, samples and vocal clips, alt-country solos and even shoegaze textures all through a Jeff Rosenstockian "post-genre" approach to pop music. It's a beautiful, relatable, messy and emotionally kaleidoscopic journey... Hey, it's kinda like being alive.