“i’m GoInG tO sTaRt DoInG mUsIc RoUnDuPs EvErY yEaR sInCe I cAn’t Do MoViEs At ThE sAmE tImE aS eVeRyBoDy ElSe,” I said a decade ago, and here I am, in March, coughing up my annual Top 10 Albums of the Year column with my top 20 movies list just about finalized in the same friggin’ document. I don’t post much; I’m supposed to be pacing these out!
Part of that is that I’m not super wild about 2025 as a year in music; part of it is that I mostly listen to music while I’m writing and I’ve barely done any writing this year on account of gestures broadly so I don’t have the same level of familiarity with these albums as I’ve had in the past. I kind of thought about skipping this year, but that would’ve left a weird gap in my archives and that simply mustn’t be permitted! And, in all sincerity, whatever the merits of the year at large, this is a list of ten really good albums that I’m really excited about, I want to give them their due, and I like leaving a record of the things I enjoy so I can revisit it in the future and see how my interests have changed.
So here we go again: My Extremely Uneducated Take on the Best Music of the Year, 2025 Edition!
10. “viagr aboys,” Viagra Boys
I’m starting to think I just need to reserve the tenth spot for the Viagra Boys every year. No one finds my fixation on this band more inexplicable than I do. My first listen to every single one of their albums almost always ends as a bit of a disappointment for me, and yet every single one of those albums somehow just hangs in there throughout the year — keeps drawing me back, perplexes me, compels me, and when the time comes to put together this list it just feels dishonest to leave them off. I don’t always know what they think they’re trying to do, but the attempt alone is unfailingly fascinating. I think I might just love this stupid, stupid band, man. Love their whole gross, lazy, ridiculous bag. Sebastian Murphy fully belches on the very first verse of the very first song, it does not sound intentional, they left it in anyway, and god, I just love that about them. Eventually they’re going to make an album that’s too weird for me…I say, knowing that I fully expected that to have already happened by now.
9. “Lotus,” Little Simz
I think this entry may have single-handedly made this list as late as it is this year, just from trying to think of anything new to say about the artist who basically defaults to one of these slots every time she releases something. Little Simz is a good rapper? Great voice, great flow? Really bites into every syllable? It’s nice to once again have a rapper who thinks this kind of music ought to have a little scale to it? Rapping over bands and orchestras and whatnot? I don’t know, I could see it becoming a problem that Simz really hasn’t evolved much since “Sometimes I Might Be Introvert,” maybe even sooner than I think, but as long as she’s delivering tracks this strong I really can’t complain. I’m in the fan club, what can I say.
8. “Double Infinity,” Big Thief
First Big Thief record that wasn’t in contention for the top slot, and honestly, that’s almost a relief to me — reassures me that these people are actually human and not automatons programmed to produce one to three borderline perfect albums every year like it’s the easiest thing in the world. My objection here, to the extent that I have one, is that “Double Infinity” is a pretty front-loaded album that falls off a little in the second half. Off the top of my head, “Happy with You” is the first, and so far only, Big Thief song I think I outright dislike (I get what it’s going for; I just don’t think it works). But the first half of this album, Good Lord in Heaven, is absolutely nuts; if the last couple songs had lived up to the run of “Incomprehensible” through the title track, this would’ve been a record to make The Beatles jealous. If this had been a five-track EP, it would’ve gone squarely in that top slot, and I would not have had to think particularly hard about it. There’s very little that could’ve stopped an album like that from making this list, and let’s keep in mind that there’s only one song here I don’t like; the others are at least OK (honestly, I think I’d like Grandmother quite a bit if they’d cut like two minutes of choruses out of it). Big Thief is one of the best bands in the business, and the fact that this is what rates as a disappointment for them is the strongest proof yet.
7. “LUX,” ROSALÍA
I arrived pretty late to this party, and uh, yeah, that’s gonna be entirely my bad on this one, sorry. Because of how recently I gave it a spin, I probably have fewer listens on “LUX” than everything else on this list, but even with that little experience, it’s already quite clear to me this is one of the best albums of the year. I’m a real sucker for anything that effectively blends the modern and the traditional, and that feels like the entire MO here. It’s a big, sweeping thing, maybe even a little too big and sweeping from time to time, but it’s impossible to deny the scale of its ambition. I can’t help but get wrapped up in something that goes so completely for broke on every single track.
6. “Antidepressants,” (The London?) Suede
Seriously, what is this band called. I know they’ve historically been Suede and people continue to cover this album as if it’s Suede and everywhere they exist outside of my playlist they’re referred to as Suede and yet said playlist resolutely refers to them as The London Suede. This is making me look ignorant and I don’t like it. Help. Anyway, I am ignorant, never heard of this band before this year despite them apparently having been active for most of my life. But they’re great! I like them a lot. Just good, old-fashioned rock and roll, moody but meant to fill arenas, like if Liam Gallagher fronted The Cure. I don’t know that anything especially new is happening here, but it’s eleven tracks worth of well crafted music that’s fun to sing along with. I don’t ask for much, and (The London?) Suede gave me a lot more than that. Never doubted “Antidepressants” would make this list, and I’m honestly a little surprised it didn’t end up higher.
5. “moisturizer,” Wet Leg
My first couple listens, I registered this as kind of a disappointment, despite the strength of the singles. Not sure what changed, not sure anything even did. I just found that as I revisited these albums, everything else moved up or down the list but “moisturizer” held steady. I think it’s just a good, solid, well-rounded record from a new-ish band that continues to show a ton of promise. It covers a lot of sonic ground without losing its identity. I understand why Wet Leg has generated a bit of a backlash, but I think it’s the same reason I like them — their whole deal, which I can only describe as “cutesy filthiness,” only works within a very, very narrow lane. I find them super interesting, but I am distantly aware that all of this is only a very minor tonal shift away from being extremely annoying. And they fascinate me specifically because they somehow keep walking that tightrope, remaining novel and expanding their sound within those parameters without teetering too far to the left or right. Basically, I’ve come to realize that I love this album, and I love this band, but someday they are absolutely going to make an all-timer of a terrible record. Fortunately, it’s not this one.
4. “New Threats from the Soul,” Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band
Did I just randomly turn into an alt country guy at some point? When did that happen? And how? I think the best testament to Ryan Davis & and the Roadhouse Band — one of my favorite new discoveries this year — is that on paper I should find this album incredibly tedious. One of my worse opinions is probably that I think ninety-nine percent of songs want to be less than five minutes long and only under LCD Soundsystem and The Who-level circumstances am I particularly open to more than that. “New Threats from the Soul” contains only seven songs but runs nearly the length of a feature film. And yet every time I listen to it, I’m lulled into this trance-like dream state and I simply don’t notice how long each track goes on. I love weird stuff, man; I love this spacey, kinda psychedelic bar-band country; I love Davis’s silly off-key moan, singing like just the saddest cowboy; I love all eleven minutes of the most titanic tracks on this record; I love it, in general. This is one of those bands where I have a sense — hopefully incorrect — that one album will be all I ever need from them, but man am I a fan of that one album.
3. “Let God Sort Em Out,” Clipse
Look, sometimes this stuff is real simple: Pusha T and Malice got together and thought to themselves: “What if we came up with the thirteen sickest beats of all time? Do you think people would be into that?” And reader, they were. I’d love to write a whole long thing about “Let God Sort Em Out” — it feels cheap not to — and yet that really is the long and short of it. This album just plain sounds great from beginning to end. The only thing holding it off the top slot is that I’m not sure I find Pusha T or Malice all that interesting as rappers — not a knock on their technical ability, to be clear, just how memorable their voices are to me personally — and as a result my favorite parts of this album are mostly the features. Tyler, the Creator has one of the coolest voices in rap and if he ever starts making music I like half as much he’s going to take over the world. Anyway, “Let God Sort Em Out” good. “Let God Sort Em Out” very, very good.
2. “Bleeds,” Wednesday
Yeah, this was inevitable. Pro tip: If I ever mention in one of my year-end lists that there was a band I was close to getting into but wasn’t quite sure yet, their next album is not only a lock for a future installment but probably for the top five. I have pretty much never started getting into a band and then failed to complete that process. Anyway, Wednesday is clearly one of the “it” alt rock bands of their moment and a lot of ink has already been spilled about their songwriting and creativity. My two cents: What really impresses me about them is how firm their identity is despite the sheer variety of their sound. This is an album that runs the gamut from shoegazey rock n’ roll to folksy country to literal screaming punk, and by some means I can only assume to be actual real-world sorcery, there is such a thing as a Wednesday sound, these are all identifiable as Wednesday songs, the album is perfectly whole and cohesive, and I am just fascinated by the sheer instinctive giftedness it would take to bring that about. Is that even something you could teach? All I know is that the more I listen to “Bleeds,” the more convinced I am that it’s quietly an actual masterpiece.
- “Getting Killed,” Geese
I was so excited when I discovered these guys, man — so eager, at the end of the year, to run over here and tell you about this obscure little bunch of indie weirdos I found. And now here we are. The year has ended and Geese is now the breakout alt rock band of their generation and putting them at the top of lists like this makes you look like a boring faux-artsy trend chaser. WHATEVER. The point is, I was there first! Well, not as first as the people who knew about them before this album, but NEVERTHELESS. They were not a big deal yet when I glommed onto them and the choice I’ve made here is both accurate and reflective of the incontrovertible fact that I am An Interesting Person! Anyway, I knew this album was making the year-end list the second I first heard it, and I started planning what I would write immediately. My initial idea was to do something simple reflecting the diversity of their sound: I decided I would sit down, listen solely to the first song, write down the names of other musicians I was reminded of in its measly three minutes and forty-five seconds, and just publish that as my review. I ultimately abandoned that idea for two reasons: first, that it swiftly became just a list of, like, all the bands, every single one, and second, that it was becoming increasingly clear to me that “Getting Killed” was going to claim the number-one slot and therefore I should probably put a little more thought into it. I just love these guys’ dynamism, man, how many things they manage to be all at once. I love their invention, their madcap energy, the first vocalist in a while to have a unique voice and use it uniquely — I can only describe Cameron Winter’s singing as “if Beck fronted Radiohead,” and it’s wild to listen to. They’re like if you told an AI to make an album that was every genre at the same time, except, you know…good. I read a comment at one point that really encapsulated why Geese works for me on the level that it does — it feels like music tailor-made for its moment, not because it’s nakedly political in any sense, but because it captures the hazy, frantic, dead-behind-the-eyes aura of a world that’s simultaneously dark, desperate, terrifying, and really, really stupid. It’s the soundtrack of 2025. How could I not put it at number one?
Matthew Triponey 