115 Favorite Albums Of 2025 (This Time, With A Short Essay About Brian Wilson.)
Hello, and welcome back. If you’ve been here before, over the years, you know that — at least in recent years — this is where I break down the math of my yearly listening. How many albums I had in front of me, of those albums, how many I got through and how many I realized weren’t for me about halfway through, the weekly average of albums I set out to listen to, so on and so on. I’m not going to do that this year, for a few reasons. One reasons is that I actually don’t think the math is that interesting or important. If you are here, you are at least somewhat aware that I listen to a lot of new music. Far more than the average person. That did not change this year. I also think that the numbers can often baffle or bewilder people to the point of creating some skepticism around the list itself. For me, and for the way I organize my life, listening to the amount of new music I listen to isn’t really that spectacular or challenging at all, but it’s also worth saying that I have privileges that open my life up to that ability. I have no kids, I am not the primary caretaker for anyone, my time is not entirely my own, but the shape of my time is my own, when and where I place things. All of that leads to a lifestyle, for now at least, where it’s simple to lend my ears and attention to new music at a fairly high rate. But the other reason I’m going to skip the math this year is because, frankly, I think it painted a bleak picture. You’ll notice the number of albums is lower than last year by a not overwhelmingly significant amount, but I actually had more albums in front of me than ever (by a somewhat significant amount) and so what the math is telling me is that the quality vs. quantity concerns that I’ve expressed anxiety about in past years have finally started to come to a head, and we’re seeing more albums flood the world, but in some cases, seemingly less care with how the albums are made, or what they sound like.
So, instead of offering up boring numbers, and since I’m talking about albums being made with thoughtfulness and care anyway, I figured I’d use this year’s preamble to write a little bit about Brian Wilson. I was sad when we lost him this year, and I couldn’t get the language together in an adequate way, And while I’m sure only a fraction of you have hung around and most of you are halfway through scrolling the list by now (which is understandable,) I wanted to mention that what I loved, so much, about Brian Wilson’s writing is how beautifully and tenderly he wrote about loneliness, or about living in a world that he didn’t always feel understood in, and how I think I’ve used that to fuel my own close listening and desire to think about music as a bridge to connecting with others, and maybe you feel similarly.
I get frustrated when I read the phrase “tortured genius,” and I find myself even more frustrated when that phrase is mapped upon Brian Wilson. I love Brian Wilson’s songs for how richly and vividly they portrayed loneliness, or isolation. How they tried to articulate a feeling of placelessness in the in-between. This exists on Pet Sounds, of course — the aforementioned “I’m Waiting For The Day” is just a traditional friends-to-lovers narrative, but at the time we meet the two, they are drifting in the in-between of those two states. The speaker is hopeful, but anxious. He’s waiting for the day his girl will get over her broken heart, but he also knows he might not be who she has eyes for on the other side of the healing. So many of the early Beach Boys songs get unfairly categorized as youthful whimsy. Cars, Girls, Surfing. But there is deep heartbreak in some of those songs. “In My Room” is born out of this reality that Wilson felt. That he was safe inside his room. It was his kingdom. It was the place he didn’t feel afraid.
When I was young, I gravitated to those songs because they felt like pressing my face up against the glass of my bedroom window and wondering if I’d ever have the language to articulate the full map of myself to the world outside of it.
The Pet Sounds Sessions arrived to me (or, rather, I arrived to them,) through some early-2000s error of the universe or, if I am being less charitable and more self-critical and honest, through some childlike lack of attention. I was 16 and in the heat of the peer-to-peer sharing universe, which afforded what then seemed like endless access to downloadable songs or albums or live performances or b-sides. I thought, on the spring morning before I left for school, that I was downloading Pet Sounds, the album. This was my routine back then. I’d set up some albums to download before I went to school, and when I’d come home seven or so hours later, I’d have fresh albums to add to my ever-expanding library. And I loved Pet Sounds, I’d heard enough of it to know I’d love it, at least, and decided I wanted the album for myself, and I was in luck because I decided on that desire at a time when I could, I thought, easily fulfill it.
When I came home from school, what I thought was Pet Sounds was still downloading, slowly. The file, I noticed, was larger than I’d anticipated, and so I expanded the file title, realizing that it cut off at the album title, and needed to be clicked on in order to reveal the Sessions after. And still, when it downloaded, in the dwindling sunlight of my family’s computer room, I immersed myself in the recording for hours, so many hours I remember looking up and realizing that it was pitch black, my house had gone silent, I was alone with the echo of Brian Wilson’s voice, shouting out his dreams for the manifestations of the sounds he heard in his head.
The Pet Sounds Sessions represent, to me, one of the greatest process documents in the history of recorded music. To this day, it only exists on CD, in the same original form it was in when it was initially released in 1997: in a long, narrow green book. It is a four-CD boxset which spans just under four and a half hours. A few years later, when I actually purchased the physical object, I read the liner notes, written by Brian Wilson, in which he wrote (among other things) “Carl (his brother) and I knew for sure we were into something heavier than hell. And we just went with it.”
During the recording of Pet Sounds, the band’s vocalist, Mike Love, referred to Brian Wilson as “Dog Ears.” At the time, it was a swipe, of sorts. A reaction to the number of takes Wilson had Love sing of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” but it was also rooted in some fact: Wilson was partially deaf in his right ear, which impacted his ability to perceive and process sounds and frequencies (Wilson, himself, once remarked “I hear music with my whole body.”)
This is what makes The Pet Sounds Sessions a stunning portrait of what I believe to be the romantics of close attention, of close listening. It is also a portrait of devotion. Behind the scenes of the finished product of Pet Sounds, was Brian Wilson, at 23 years old, with some of the best session musicians alive.
They were more tenured, in-studio than Wilson was. Had played on more albums than he’d made, and the Pet Sounds Sessions, at times, consists of Brian Wilson, trying to explain how he is hearing the world in his head, in his whole body, to people who quite literally do not have the capability to hear in the manner he is hearing. And besides all of the traditional box set accoutrements — several mixes, backing tacks, the devastating ache of isolated vocals sans music — you also get a sense of the real material rigor, the obsession that Wilson pushed everyone to sink into with him. And yes, it is easier to not have been a musician in the room, which allows me, now, to still be deeply moved by hearing the first few bars of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” played tens of times, repeatedly, while Wilson shouts out random take numbers and bursts of encouragement or gentle but firm direction (“Hal! Hal! HERE’S how I want to do it!”) but I remain moved because it is a portrait of a person, in a room of musicians, saying I care about this. I want to make something beautiful. I need you to believe in me. I need you to follow me to a place, and I don’t even know what that place is yet.
It is a document of a person not apologizing for how they hear the world, or not demanding that everyone in their presence hear the world in the same way that they do, but asking how, through close and nuanced attention, the gap can be closed between our collective differences in hearing. Piece by piece. By drum, by bass, by clarinet. Each instrument gets the generosity of attention in needs to find a place to land, a place to live.
By this I mean to say that to press your ear to the world and hear sounds that you cannot articulate to others as clearly or definitively as you would like is, yes, a kind of torture. To be at least partially untranslatable to the people around you is a kind of torture. And to overcome that torture and to extract, from it, an immense beauty, doesn’t necessarily offer a relief. To hone in on Wilson’s life as this heavily torturous path doesn’t, for me, tell the full story of what it is to feel lonely, to feel misunderstood. To have an incredible gift that others do not understand but still want to access, or take from you to enrich themselves. A tortured mind doesn’t just spring forth out of singular brilliance. The world is not always as generous with its geniuses as those geniuses may be or want to be with the world, and one very real outcome of that is to want to turn away from the ways the world has, and continues to fail you. Some, I suppose, call that the result of a tortured mind.
I am not comparing my gifts with those of Brian Wilson, but I am thinking of the pleasure that exists in return and repetition, at least when those returns pay off, or confirm, for you, that they were worth it. Whenever I finish writing a poem — specifically a poem, not an essay or anything else — I often think to myself “I can’t believe I did that” which rapidly turns to the anxiety of “I can’t believe I will have to do that again, at some point.” And then the again arrives, and the first bit of language also arrives, and there are a few moments when I am in awe of what I will reduce, here, to magic, because I have no other explanation for it. And I think about what Brian Wilson must have felt like in the moment he heard the take of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” that was satisfying enough to be The One. The take that told him all of his returns were worth it. We come back to the same field over and over again, and then one day, amidst the monochromatic green, a rose emerges, which makes all of our returns worthwhile.
On the Pet Sounds Sessions there is this vocal snipped, a recording of Wilson building the vocal melody for “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)” which is a song about two lovers who are trying to read each other through a series of nonverbal cues. I think it is the most romantic song on Pet Sounds, the song that is most about what it is to not only love someone but to know them by their gestures, or the absence of gesture. To love someone so deeply that you wish to slow down the clock. “Listen to my heartbeat,” “let’s not think about tomorrow.”
The song, in its final form, draws a listener close to the speaker, who is not only urging a beloved to pull an ear near the sound, but also urging you, in your room, inside your headphones. A string section playing minor seventh chords at tight intervals, a thick-sounding electric bass drifting gently from its root note to form harmonic tension. All of the song’s work is about pulling you nearer and nearer to it.
The behind the scenes moment that I recall of Wilson building the harmonic structure isn’t especially long. It begins with Brain’s voice slowly counting out, to four, before launching into a clean, prolonged falsetto, almost as a kind of instruction, urging a collection of voices to follow him. And then, another, more distant voice in the studio, muffled, says “do it again.”
Here, you hear Wilson count, again, to four. And then, after four, there is a massive collective exhale, and a flood of voices, replicating the initial melody, at various tones. It is fifty seconds total. One of the moments I wish I could hear again for the first time, as a teenager, in a dark and empty house, it felt warm, like an entire room was closing in around me, but in a way where I would still be guaranteed safety, or comfort, even as the walls closed in. I heard that sound in my head for years after, with real consistency. I still hear it now, sometimes. There’s a real beautiful claustrophobia to it.
This is what I owe Brian Wilson — I hear the world differently. Not like he heard it, but more uniquely than I would have heard it without his impact and influence. All of my richest and most precious curiosities arrive to me through sound. I am looking, always, for the sound that arrives on the back of other sounds. The way the wind has its own sonic responsibilities to tend to, but in tending to them, there are leaves that tickle the glass of my window.
On the day of Brian Wilson’s death, I made a joke on an Instagram story (which — much like Mike Love’s “Dog Ears” jab, is a joke rooted in truth) about how awful I am at describing people by their physical attributes, how much of a challenge that has always been for me, even, and sometimes especially, if I love someone deeply or intimately. But here’s the thing. I will never lose the ability to articulate your sounds. I learned that from Brian Wilson, running around a studio, shouting out what he heard in his head. If I love you, I can describe the moment when your soft chuckle becomes full-blown laughter. If I love you, I can do five whole minutes of the sound you might make in a horror movie, the gasp of shock that, occasionally, blossoms into an exhale of relief. If I love you, I will always be able to describe how your singing voice in the kitchen differs from your singing voice in the car. And I love people who hear music with their whole bodies. My mother, who couldn’t help but have her humming open up into loud singing, or my father, who never met a steering wheel that didn’t double as a percussive instrument. I once dated someone who only had an am/fm radio in her car, and she would be so overtaken with delight at the miracle of a radio station playing her song that she would sometimes pull over to dance in the driver’s seat, eyes closed, traffic speeding past us.
I will miss Brian Wilson, and I’m thankful for what he shared with us. How wonderful that we all hear the world differently, and sometimes get to share what our hearing tells us with each other. When I was a kid staring out of my bedroom window, trying to find the language and ability to do that, I didn’t appreciate it as an always-evolving thing. Gratitude for the ever-changing frequencies of my affections, and the ability to share them.
As always: links to supplemental reading, interviews, profiles, or the occasional performance video are all linked. Bandcamp links are there for all the albums that have them if you click on the album title. Also, as with every year, the odds are that I liked some things more or less than you liked some things, and I hope that’s ok. EPs first, and I will say that I thought this year was actually kind of incredible on the EP front, so it was hard to narrow this down.
FAVORITE EPs OF THE YEAR, IN NO ORDER:
Jahnah Camille — My sunny oath!
Angel Shot — God is not a Safe Space
Bartees Strange — Shy Bairns Get Nowt
Skorn — Closer To God
Jessy Blakemore — if u need me, i’m a few missed calls away
Better Joy — at dusk
Pebbledash — To Cast The Sea In Concrete
She’s In Parties — Are You Dreaming?
Helado Negro — The Last Sound On Earth
Dog Race — Return The Day
Tems — Love Is A Kingdom
Family Dog — Macroplastics
Kills Birds — Crave
MICHELLE — Kiss/Kill
Panopticon — The Poppies Bloom For No King
Oddisee — En Route
Joey Aich & Dave Zup — Duo
MSPaint — No Separation
Paris Texas — They Left Me With A Gun
Living Dream — Absolute Devotion
Thanks Mom — Wake Me!
Fictionals — Ancestor
Anysia Kym & Loraine James — Clandestine
No Peeling — No Peeling
Kee’ahn — for me, for you
115. Daughter Of Swords — Alex
114. Cymande — Renascence
It was beautiful to see this largely unsung, but very brilliant band get their flowers this year.
113. Makin’ Out — Living In A Glass House
112. Deafheaven — Lonely People With Power
Good interview here.
111. Planning For Burial — It’s Closeness, It’s Easy
Good interview, was good to have PFB back after nearly ten years.
110. First Day Back — Forward
Good interview to familiarize yrself with this band, a band I am just so excited to keep an eye on.
109. YHWH Nailgun — 45 Pounds
108. Goya Gumbani — Warlord of the Weejuns
Great interview at Cabbages, a place I really appreciate and admire.
107. Jeremiah Cymerman — UNTITLED
106. Avery Friedman — New Thing
I like when an artist does a track-by-track walkthrough! there will be at least one more of these linked in this list.
105. Platonic Sex— Face To The Flywire
I really love this band and am a big Buy The Band Merch Guy, and though this is 100%, at least for me, an indoor shirt and not an outdoor shirt, I did enjoy making this purchase.
104. Chop7x — Become Nothing
103. Joy Guidry — Five Prayers
Good interview piece that contextualizes the album well here.
102. Rome Streetz & Conductor Williams — Trainspotting
101. Wet Kiss — Thus Spoke The Broken Chanteuse
I actually got hip to this band because I stumbled upon this interview in an online zine late last year.
100. Upchuck — I’m Nice Now
Love this band a lot, good piece here.
99. Lily Allen — West End Girl
(There was a lot on this album but I’m not linking anything only because I thought the album did such a brilliant and impressive job speaking/storytelling for itself, and then all of the media that surrounded it ended up making it this kind of hyper-salacious tabloid thing.)
98. Ho99o9 — Tomorrow We Escape
I loved this interview and especially enjoyed theOGM explaining the struggles of potty training “don’t piss this way, my bro! piss down!”
97. Told Not To Worry — Hands In The Air!
96. With Hidden Noise — Mayday
I really love this album and think it is conceptually brilliant on top of being sonically brilliant, but it is also quite bleak (complimentary!) — it’s kind transmissions from someone at the end of the world. I am very into that, but would say that if you are the type to listen to this list in order, as I know some people try to do…maybe save this one until after winter?
95. Ovrkast — While The Iron Is Hot
You have to subscribe to Hearing Things to read this full piece, but I think it’s worth it, I really love reading producers go deep on production.
94. Empty Heaven — Swear
93. Jenevieve — CRYSALIS
92. good flying birds — Talulah’s Tape
91. Preservation & Gabe ‘Nandez— Sortilège
Double dose here: Always appreciate the good work being done at Passion Of The Weiss and I’ll surely link to them again in this list, but here’s a good interview. And also great work, as always, from Andre Gee.
90. Flora Hibberd — Swirl
89. Plastic Girl In Closet — HIGH HEART
87. Cécile McLorin Salvant — Oh Snap
I don’t like posting links from years past, but I love this profile from 2017, a lot.
86. Just Mustard — WE WERE JUST HERE
Good interview here.
85. Saint Abdullah and Jason Nazary — Wiretaps For Oral
84. Lambrini Girls — Who Let The Dogs Out
Really loved reading this piece.
83. Hammydown — Former You
82. SPELLLING — Portrait Of My Heart
Enjoyed this conversation lots.
81. Annie & The Caldwells — Can’t Lose My (Soul)
Great Bandcamp piece here — also shoutout to Sinkane, who did a wonderful job producing this record.
80. Great Grandpa — Patience, Moonbeam
79. Gloin — All of your anger is actually shame (and I bet that makes you angry)
On top of being a spectacular record, this is also my favorite album title of the year. Though I also delighted in Lambrini Girls calling their album Who Let The Dogs Out.
78. Madison McFerrin — Scorpio
Good lil NPR interview.
77. SHERELLE — WITH A VENGEANCE
Very lovely, candid, and vulnerable interview here.
76. Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo — In The Earth Again
Great interview here.
75. Wave Generators — RUN AWAY WITH A WILD AND A RARE ONE
Good interview here.
74. Ghais Guevara — Goyard Ibn Said
73. Superstar Crush — Way Too Much
72. Lucrecia Dalt — A Danger To Ourselves
71. Tunde Adibempe — Thee Black Boltz
Great, great KEXP performance.
70. duendita — A Strong Desire To Survive
69. Avenade — Try Searching For a Lover
68. Hayley Williams — Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party
Lots of options here, but I’m going to link this conversation between Hayley and Kathleen Hanna, becuase I was overjoyed to be able to see it when it took place.
67. Lyra Pramuk — Hymnal
we love a Creative Independent interview
66. Nxdia — I Promise No One’s Watching
Good piece here.
65. See The Lieutenant — WhatsReallyGood.
There’s gonna be one more album put out by PTP on this list, but truly, I have a lot of admiration and respect for the consistent quality of work that collective/label puts out, and it’s work just going thru their whole bandcamp page if you aren’t hip.
64. Jane Remover — Revengeseekerz
Good interview here.
63. Maura Weaver — Strange Devotion
62. Mike Shabb — Fight the Power!
61. Blood Root — Turn
good interview to listen to here.
60. Camp Trash — Two Hundred Thousand Dollars
Here’s a great track-by-track breakdown of the album, done by the band.
59. Bore — Feral
58. Open Mike Eagle — Neighborhood Gods Unlimited
Enjoyed this piece a lot.
57. Pigeon Pit — Leash Aggression
56. Blakenberge — Decisions
I loved this album and a fascinating thing about this band is that they have only played in the same room together one time since 2022, so this album was put together in various studios, across various borders.
55. Khamari — To Dry A Tear
54. Halima — SWEET TOOTH
REALLY loved this piece, written by Halima herself, about how visiting family in Nigeria shaped the album.
53. Artificial Go — Musicial Chairs
I crossed state lines to see this band play a show this spring and I had an incredible time.
52. Lucy Dacus — Forever Is A Feeling
I feel like when there’s an abundance written about/on an artist, it’s hard to pick out a single good thing (a lot of the writing was very good!) but I’ll go with my New Yorker colleague Amanda’s piece.
51. Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas — Totality
50. African-American Sound Recordings — Hits of Ash/Runway Cremations
Cheating a little bit picking two albums by one artist, but these do feel like a single project in conversation with each other. (Also I cheat in similar but much worse way about 30 spots down.)
49. Horsegirl — Phonetics On and On
Great piece here.
48. whereisfox & shemar — the day after…
47. Hannah Jadagu— Describe
46. Erika de Casier — Lifetime
Good interview here.
45. End It — Wrong Side Of Heaven
44. Greet Death — Die In Love
Really loved this album so much, really loved this piece.
43. Everything Is Recorded — Temporary
I thought this album was a massively beautiful and varied meditation on different modes of grief. Just really breahtaking work.
42. Lucy Liyou — Every Video Without Your Face, Every Sound Without Your Name
One thing I’ve loved this year is seeing artists do their perfect 10 albums, I’ve delighted in so many clips, and Lucy had not only a great album, but a beautiful articulation of why it was selected.
41. nurse joy — can I say something…?
40. Silkback — Attrition
39. Say She She — Cut & Rewind
Good piece to read here.
38. Elujay— A Constant Charade
37. Wednesday — Bleeds
Good piece here.
36. Joviale — Mount Crystal
35. Pinkshift — Earthkeeper
Great interview. Really love this band and was thrilled to hear them continue to evolve.
34. Mereba — The Breeze Grew A Fire
I really, really loved her KEXP performance this year, if you loved the album and want a supplementary 25 minutes of brilliance.
33. Turnstile — Never Enough
Great profile here, also didn’t see a TON of live stuff this year (I’ve spent much of the last two years being the one on stage, which has impacted my ability to enjoy OTHER people on stage, but that will change in 2026 I hope!) — but I loved seeing them play in Columbus.
32. The Aces — Gold Star Baby
…also saw The Aces play Columbus, which was a delight.
31. Pretty Bitter — Pleaser
30. nabeel — ghayoom
Good interview here.
29. gushes — Delicious Collision
28. No Joy — Bugland
Great interview here.
27. Blood Orange — Essex Honey
I really loved the music video for The Field — and I generally appreciate when I see folks still taking great care with the music video as a form.
26. Qur’an Shaheed — Pulse
I look at these lists the past few years and there has been a real rise in the very specific subgenre of “black multidisciplinary artist who combines all of their disciplines to make a brilliant record”
25. Rosalía — LUX
24. Water From Your Eyes — It’s ABeautiful Place
Enjoyed this piece a lot, though I will say there were a few fairly uncool dinosaurs, the Therizonsaurus was goofy looking and not cool and I would argue many, many albums are cooler than that specific dinosaur, including this album.
23. Fines Double — Espejismo
In a great, great year for rap music, I thought this was a massive highlight. Sticking to the basics of Good Rapping, Good Beats, without being at all basic or predictable.
22. Mamalarky — Hex Key
This was another band I got a chance to see live for the first time this year, and what a cool experience that was. And I wasn’t going to go! I was having a “I want to go but I don’t want to leave my house” moment! But I powered through, to incredible end results!
21. Kathryn Mohr — Waiting Room
I feel like one of the most frequent music-related things I said this year was “hey did you know Kathryn Mohr recorded her album in self-imposed isolation in an abandoned fish factory in Iceland?”
20. PremRock/ShrapKnel — Did You Enjoy Your Time Here…? / Saisir Le Feu (W/Mike Ladd) / Armature (W/ Ohbliv) / Lincoln Continental Breakfast (W/Raphy)
This is maybe stretching the limits of my own self-made rules of how many albums I fill a single slot with, but I suppose I’m not adhering to any rules by the ones in my imagination anyway, and I do genuinely think these fall under a single umbrella of brilliance in a great year for PremRock and Curly Castro, I find it incredibly impressive that, with this many releases there’s a sonic range and lyrical range that doesn’t make these projects feel at all overwhelming to take in. As far as reading, for Did You Enjoy…I generally only link one thing but I think both of these interviews contextualize that album so well.
19. Annahstasia — Tether
Creative Independent Interview!
18. Sorry Girls — Dreamwalker
I didn’t know that Sorry Girls was also the name of some…like…DIY home makeover/lifestyle-type brand(?) and so that led to a really incredible “who’s on first” style conversation with someone earlier this year that was like “I love the Sorry Girls record!” “Oh, I didn’t know they made music??” “…wait…do they do anything else?” “…I mean, their main thing is lifestyle branding” “…WHAT???” etc etc etc
17. McKinley Dixon — Magic, Alive!
Very good piece here.
16. Amaarae — Black Star
15. Yasmin Nur — Slaughter
There are a few projects I LOVED this year that I would have never heard of at all if someone at a reading or a show didn’t say to me, during the book signing “I think you might like this.” Someone at a show I did this summer came up to get a book signed and said “have you heard of Yasmin Nur?” and when I said I hadn’t, they told me “I think you’d LOVE Slaughter” and they were extremely correct. It was also a delight to start with this album, instantly love it, and then work back through the rest of her catalog. Really talented artist, I’m excited to be a new fan.
14. Rochelle Jordan — Through The Wall
I remember back in the day, listening to bits of Rochelle Jordan songs on Soundcloud, it has been one of the pleasures of my life as a music fan to watch her brilliance keep on evolving.
13. Divide and Dissolve — Insatiable
Look man I fucking LOVE Divide and Dissolve. Have never heard a bad or even average Divide and Dissolve record in my entire life. Really just perfect album after perfect album. Here’s a good piece to read.
12. Sudan Archives — The BPM
Good profile here.
11. Dijon — Baby
10. Armand Hammer & The Alchemist — Mercy
9. Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals — A City Drowned In God’s Black Tears
Once again, you’d have to subscribe to Hearing Things to read this interview but once again, I’d encourage you to subscribe to Hearing Things. They do great work and places like that need to keep existing.
8. Maiya Blaney— A Room With A Door That Closes
7. Yves Jarvis — All Cylinders
I really love this album. And I think it’s a testament to sticking with an artist. I’ve been listening to Yves Jarvis records for years, and I enjoyed some more than others, but always stayed with his work because the talent was obvious, and it seemed clear to me that he could eventually make something that I thought was singular, and here we are.
6. billy woods — GOLLIWOG
great POW interview, as always.
5. Little Simz — Lotus
I’m not often keen on the “one famous person in conversation with another famous person” interview format, but I thought Simz and Michaela Coel was a good pairing, with good results.
4. anaiis — Devotion & The Black Divine
Perfect album. Great interview here.
3. Backxwash — Only Dust Remains
As a listener, few things thrill me more than when an already great artist ascends to a place beyond greatness. Of all the albums I listened to and loved this year, there were two that made me wish I could bottle the feeling of the first listen and keep it forever. This was one of the two.
2. Agriculture — The Spiritual Sound
…This was the second of the two. I loved this interview. I love the quote “The way we experience reality is riddled with intensity that doesn’t exist except for in our own minds” — same, same.
- keiyaA — hooke’s law
Good Creative Independent interview. Great BK Mag interview. Also, keiyaA picked Amel Larrieux’s Morning as her Pitchfork Perfect 10 album, and not to make that selection about ME, but I did feel seen as someone who has believed that album to be a classic since it first dropped.
Ok. See you next year, hopefully we all commit to imagining and inventing newer and better ways to survive faster than our enemies invent newer and worse ways of threatening our survival.
