Top 20 Albums of the Year 2025
This year’s album list (unranked) isn’t about one dominant style or one “scene.” It’s an array of contrasts, often between despair and hope, or the sacred and the profane. As…
Bug Teeth’s “Micrographia” finds cosmic resonance in quiet moments
Bug Teeth’s debut full-length arrives softly, building and scrutinising loss down to its fine veins, even as it gazes upward to the skies. With a title drawn from Robert Hooke’s…
Austra turns heartbreak into ferocity on “Chin Up Buttercup“
Calling Chin Up Buttercup a breakup album may be factually accurate but it’s woefully inadequate when describing the music aimed at reconstructing life after turbulent relationship heartache and loss. The…
Nightbus travel a dark route on “Passenger”
Debut albums introduce a band and they can be tricky beasts. The sound, attitude and mood all tie in to create an image but there can be an urge to…
Pynch soundtrack what it is to try and be alive on “Beautiful Noise”
When Howling at a Concrete Moon introduced us to Pynch, we met a band wrestling with the disillusionments of youth, already sounding world-weary, defiant and bruised. But for their follow-up,…
Clipping fail to improve on original with deluxe re-issue “Dead Channel Sky Plus”
Let’s not call this album a “re-issue”. Being kind and less cynical we’ll go with the PR blurb and say it’s an “expanded, digital deluxe edition” aimed at enhancing the…
NewDad search for a renewed faith on “Altar”
There’s always been a pull-and-push at the heart of NewDad’s music. The beauty pitched against distortion, a particular intimacy found within the grandeur. With Altar, their second album following quickly…
“Antidepressants” sees Suede defiant in our disconnected age
Nearly four decades into their career Suede could have opted to rest comfortably on past laurels. They could’ve even chosen to sideline the 2022 triumphant ‘comeback’ success of Autofiction’s punk…
Modern Nature Find New Direction On “The Heat Warps”
Jack Cooper abandons the long-form abstraction of previous album No Fixed Point in Space for something more grounded. Trading drift for direction, Modern Nature’s new four-piece core, newly anchored by…
Jehnny Beth makes a fierce return with “You Heartbreaker, You”
Raw and ferocity are words that have always described Jehnny Beth’s music. From Savages to her solo work the painful intensity she wrings out of her music marries trauma and…
Hand Habits’ Blue Reminder is the sound of acceptance and love
The warm glow of 90s indie rock pulses through Blue Reminder, yet Meg Duffy’s trademark introspection, as Hand Habits remains intact. The songs form a delicate seesaw between joy and…
Alison Goldfrapp’s intimate “Flux” continues her fearless growth
For an artist who has always played with reinvention; as glam-rock mystic, electronic siren, ambient poet, and synth-pop high priestess, Alison Goldfrapp has rarely sounded as personally rooted and emotionally…
Wisp luxuriates in If Not Winter’s sonics
Wisp’s debut full-length, If Not Winter, arrives at the height of summer like a shimmering shoegaze fantasia, something aching, bred from restless longing and mythic yearning. Natalie Lu aka Wisp,…
Tropical F*ck Storm sound the alarm with Fairyland Codex
It would seem that Tropical Fuck Storm are primed to prove how riotous they are. The more you continue to listen to their fourth outing, the more it becomes evident…
Water Machine’s “God Park” debut album is a deranged delight
Glasgow’s Water Machine crashes onto the scene with God Park, a glorious debut that sounds like a post-punk petting zoo run by art school dropouts on a sugar high. These…