Playing My Part In the Ecosystem: 50 (or so) Good Albums of 2025
Here are fifty (or so) albums that I liked very, very much this year. It is not every album that I liked very, very much this year. Not even close. But it is fifty of the 'em. Industry, you're welcome.
Factors related to inclusion/exclusion ranged from personal fondness, personal grievance, absence/overabundance of coverage elsewhere, and how weird, on a scale of 1 to 10, it would be if I didn’t include something. So there were a lot of moving parts.
Other reasons for potential exclusion ranged from "it's bad. You guys are idiots," to "without denying the genius of either, nobody is going to believe that I, a Screeching Weasel enjoyer, am sitting through a double album of hypnogogic hauntology-pop or a more than two songs of unmastered, instrumental treble-core," to "black metal about nature is fine and I respect it, as long as the climate under discussion is that of Blashyrkh's icy and bitter wind-o-caust," to "I respect Turnstile too much to grade them on a curve," to, more often than not, “I forgot.”
hmmmm... anything else you need to know? Hardly any metal this year. Plenty of great stuff came out, but I didn't really listen to much of it. I think I may be tired of cookie monster vocals. Unless it's in a crust punk band. Which might not make sense, until you really think about cookies and then maybe it does. And I still like affected tough guy vocals in Oi! music. I haven't lost all my good taste, ya know?But even with the skinhead albums I thought were great (An Slua, Claimed Choice, Béton Armé), I'd have been just as happy if there were two or three songs off of 'em on a single comp with some sort of Oi! pun name and a crucified skinhead on the cover. Someone should really start making those again.
Ah, fuck. While I was writing the above paragraph, I was listening to the An Slua album again and it clicked. Now I wish I'd put it on the official list. But I'm so tired of coming up with adjectives. Do me a favor and just consider it on the list, ok?
I didn’t rank my AOY list because it’s a bunch of art and I am not a sociopath (in defense of my sociopathic friends and peers, I’m also not staff-run, so it’s not like voting or “being fair” comes into play). Most importantly, all the albums are #1. Until they cross me. Then they will become #51. Or until a publicist/label sends me a hideous amount of money (at least $150). Should that occur, the album represented by said publicist/label will become #1 and all the other albums will become #2. Which is still quite good. In the event of this happening, I would strongly encourage all the not-as-good-as-number-one artists to be proud that they tried their best.
Speaking of trying one's best: it's an EOY list, so please forgive the hyperbole and not so occasional instances of the flowery language getting away from me. I do get excited on occasion.
Finally, the goal in making these lists is, as always, to sell records. So please, if you like something here and are able to support the artist in a material fashion, please do so. I'm not getting paid to write this. You're not getting paid to read this. Someone should get something out of all our pain.
Ok, let’s get down to it, boppers!
Elkotsh, rhlt jdi (HIZZ / Heat Crimes) As much as I adore this whizzbanger of frequently sublime oscillations, I hate trying to describe dance music, am bad at it, and vice versa. So, to grasp Elkotsh’s charms, I’ll just suggest you picture a flock of sparrows swooping and ascending through a cloudless, dark blue, Egyptian sky. Now imagine that the birdsong of that flock of sparrows winding their way through the heavens is a more four-on-the-floor Islam Chipsy.
If it helps, feel free to picture yourself, in the above scenario, as a magical hedgehog or a wicked sexy lady.
Rhys Langston, Pale Black Negative (Black Market Poetry / Fused Arrow) A rapper known for unremitting, occasionally suffocating, intelligence, and for exhibiting a near-pathological need to pick at cultural scabs with a thesaurus, decides to make singer/songwriter album… the ways that Rhys Langston could’ve belly flopped this shit are manifold. Too much sensitivity, you get Arrested Development (or, to be fair, how people remember Arrested Development). Too much grooviness or cleverness, you get G.Love or, G help you, Soul Coughing. Too much of literally anything, you get a Fugees album where Ms. Hill doesn’t show up late or at all. Honestly, best case scenario, you get PM Dawn. And, great as those PM Dawn albums are, it’s not like that path worked out too hot for the Cordes brothers. While conceding Langston’s solid track record of successfully weed-wacking his own way, the odds were stacked high against our hero. There’s a reason that the Labi Siffre/Eminem fusion required an army of lawyers to alchemize.
Well guess what, high haters, the joke’s on you (not, tbc, on me… I always had faith) because Rhys Langston pulled the dang thing off. Eleven psychedelicized, loping tracks of gentle—but never diffuse—exploration, Pale Black Negative alternates between Fall evening chamber-pop and morning-fried freak folk. Also rap; so much rap.
And, yes, there is some PM Dawn going on—quite successfully I’d say—as well as some Swamp Dogg, some Mercury Rev, some syruppy Rufus Thompson, and even some Betty Carter; if Carter’s preferred method of scatting was to read aloud from chapters of Octavia Butler, Michael Frayn and adderall scripts, Ras Kass’ dream journal, and the Collected Silver Surfer Omnibus.
Skinhead, It’s a Beautiful Day, What a Beautiful Day (Closed Casket Activities) Not as fun as the EPs, but seemingly intentionally so. Less gags, more details that catch in the throat. Reviewed it for CREEM (and fwiw I feel kind of bad about throwing in an unnecessary Drug Church jab into the review. I was either in a bad mood or I’m still mad about some End of a Year lyric. Hard to say. Either way, if I could turn back time, I’d have kept that line to myself.)
Use Knife, État Coupable (Viernulier) Electronic-out-of-body-music by percussionist/singer Saif Al-Qaissy and two dudes from Kiss The Anus of a Black Cat. Every song is bonkers good. Control, they rule. Reviewed it for CREEM.
Shrapknel Trilogy: Armature, Saisir Le Feu, Lincoln Continental Breakfast (Fused Arrow) You want me to pick just one? Would you pick just one Lord of the Rings? You would? OK, me too. But would you pick just one Lord of the Rings if all three movies took out all the whiney “precious” stuff and replaced it with nothing but high elf cheekbones, Denethor going to town on that tomato, and two Balrogs (plus features) rapping like they had nothing, and everything, to prove? Yeah, *extreme soft-power-of-the-patriarchy meme voice* EXACTLY.
(For those who can only afford one. In terms of beats alone, using reductionist but, as all three are aces, non-judgemental descriptors: Lincoln is the hippity hoppiest, Armature is the more Murray’s Superior coded of the three, and Le Feu wears the tightest Uniqlos. Like Auster’s New York Trilogy, you can consume them each as standalones, but you’re not gonna know whodunnit if you don’t get all three.)
billy woods, GOLLIWOG (Backwoodz) As was foretold so long ago; he’s the best. Wrote about it, at great length, HERE.
Armand Hammer & the Alchemist, Mercy (Backwoodz) woods and bestie/co-best Elucid bat their eyelids at the maybe-mainstream yet again. I always keep my mouth shut when ostensible boosters flex their good intentions by proclaiming how “actually woods and Elucid aren’t obscure at all; that’s a false narrative.” This may be true. Armand Hammer’s lyrics are no more difficult to parse than those found on, say, Funcrusher Plus, or Hejira etc. Conversely: PHONES HAVE TURNED MANY PEOPLE’S BRAINS INTO SOUP. I’m not being cute. I used to be kind of smart. I’m fucking dumb now. I can’t imagine how people who were dumb ten years ago are even managing to velcro their Zips. To be fair, they seem to be managing. Thriving even. Anyway, if all (according to Spotify) 763,000 Armand Hammer fans are more Brain than Pinky, or even just more George than Lennie, where are all these dead mice coming from? Is Sombr in town?
Regardless, Elucid and woods seem to know what they’re doing. They’re hardly toiling in obscurity. Statistically speaking, some of their fans must be dumb as hell, but still they manage to see the duo’s appeal. So, fine, the rappers are accessible. Prob helps that Elucid and woods’ interplay has only grown more Houdini-esque in how the pair make their collective ally-oops look easy, and both mens’ voices are at Moses, Mohammed, and Big Daddy Kane levels of authority-conveyance. The rapping is, of course, top notch—with woods explaining what poetry does on “Dogeared” like his job is to make everyone in Four Weddings and a Funeral cry, while Elucid uses his verse on“Nil By Mouth” to juggle all the imagistic plates in China and then stack ‘em all, real casual like, in a cabinet we just watched him build from scratch. But, also, these dudes could burp in the mic for an hour and I’d still take the needle off the record feeling just like the Red Sea.
BONUS MATERIAL! Here are all the duos I tried, for literally hours, to make work as metaphors for Armand Hammer’s friendship/interplay: Nixon & Kissinger, Tango & Cash, Sinatra & the Mafia, Nice & Smooth, Todd Burdette & Billy Davis, Shawn & Gregory, Nick & Nora, Bugs & Daffy, Chuck D and another Chuck D. So don’t think for a second that I’m not out here doing the necessary work. If it weren’t for my phone shrinking my skull, I know I’d have done something sick with the Nick & Nora analogy…
Geese, Getting Killed (Partisan Records) The next big thing’s second best album. Sounds like Radiohead to anyone born after 2005, like a problem to be solved if you’re still mad about the Strokes, and Gris Gris if you’re me. Its popularity has become the key factor (besides Cameron Winter’s voice) in Geese becoming the most divisive issue in America. *cough*
Regardless where one stands on this contentious topic, we can all agree that “Bow Down” is the most evocative exploration of what it feels like to be Nick Cave, or to fully inhabit the universal desire to be Nick Cave, since Bongwater’s “Nick Cave Dolls.” Or possibly even Great Plains’ “Letter to a Fanzine.”
Reviewed it in the upcoming December issue of the magazine. Early CREEM profile of band here. Newsletter essay about it HERE. Well-regarded-by-zoomers tweet regarding it here.
Hollie Cook, Shy Girl (Mr Bongo) Shedding the old new wave and Sade-isms which at least tinged her earlier work, Hollie Cook dives into lover’s rock with her whole dang self and refuses to come up for air, cos who needs air when you got all this love? Everything she could ever possibly need is right here, in bass so deep you can’t hardly see the bottom and organ trills so sweet you’d swear they were made of kisses. That Cook sings like a songbird exclusively is where the metaphor kind of falls apart, but who’s complaining?
Nana Benz du Togo, SÉ NAM (Komos Records) Imagine if Nona Hendryx and Material were still around, as Ze Records’ flagship band, and Bill Laswell and the ex-Labelle were also a five-piece Voltron of electro-boogie and trance-gospel from Togo. After a few listens, you’ll faint from getting to third base with the pleasure principle. You’ll wake up abashed, but a better dresser.
Modern Life Is War, Life On The Moon (Deathwish Inc.) Turnstile can make great songs without even trying, so they don’t try anymore. Some of us need to put our shoulders to the wheel. And if MLIW aimed for London Calling and ended up with Sandanista, I’d still rather listen to this striving, soulful mess than all the note-perfect white riots currently clogging the post-hardcore-o-sphere. Reviewed it for CREEM.
Radioactivity, Time Won’t Bring Me Down (Wild Honey Records) Reviewed in upcoming December issue of CREEM.
Savak, SQUAWK! (Peculiar Works) All-Mod-Con-artistés brushing away their tears and chewing gum real sassily in the face of the forever wars. Not “post-hardcore” because these lifers may have winnowed their distortion down to shivs but they will never get over it. Savak sounds like they read books, but in a cool way. Reviewed it HERE
Masters of Reality, The Archer (Mascot Label Group) Dunno if it’s the trading in of the blooze riffs for sundazed melodies and big top hard rock, or if it’s just that I can’t get over my delight that the drummer of Surgery is thriving/breathing in such an esteemed outfit, but I’m gonna say that this is the best collection of Chris Goss songs since Sunrise on the Sufferbus. I’d say it’s even (slightly) better than that weathered-baseball-cap-blues-rock classic but I don’t feel like getting slapped around by Ginger Baker’s ghost. Reviewed it for CREEM.
Mekons, Horror (Fire Records) All the mythologizing and self-mythologizing holds up; the Mekons remain a bright light in a world of shit. Reviewed it for CREEM. Profile of band coming in upcoming issue.
Throwing Muses, Midnight Concessions (Fire Records) If so much indie rock stinks and sounds like something that died long ago in the center of the CMJ charts, you can’t blame Kristin Hersh. She’s spent the last four decades making a dream of college rock, where shit is oddball but rocks, and’ll break a heart without ever once getting precious. That exemplifying an alternative way of travelling down Alternative Way hasn’t resulted in too many like-minded acolytes is just proof that being yourself is not as easy as Hersh makes it seem. On Midnight Concessions, Hersh keeps it up, as hauntingly and tuff as she ever did. Now with abundant cello added, as if just to make all the sensitive boys, those phoning it in with slowed down and string-laden covers of alt hits from the ‘90s, look even more like assholes. It’s crazy that Rhode Island doesn’t have statues dedicated to the lady on every street corner.
Fatboi Sharif & GDP, ENDOCRINE (Fused Arrow Records) F. B. Sharif raps—like nobody else on this side of the veil—the body electric. Here, he counts electronic sheep and does the electric slide all the way down, and does so over body rocking ASMR beats consisting of Murder City Devils and (I’m told tho I can’t discern it) VOID samples. Reviewed it for CREEM.
Nadah el Shazly, Laini Tani (One Little Independent) After-hours-on-a-roof-top art pop, full of singing in the voice of a private prayer, beats that echo through the dimly lit stairwell, and strings that signal doors to the astral plane opening and closing. Meaning: this shit goes hard, but you may take up smoking. If 2017’s Ahwar was el Shazly’s cinemascope discotheque album and, seven years later, both The Damned Don’t Cry and Pollution Opera were literally soundtracks, then Laini Tani is all the drama, internal and external, that kicks off when the lights go down. Also, if you want to get with el Shazly’s scene (and you should), but maybe prefer your Cairo boho with more cigarettes, avant improv & jazz chords, and a Sun City Girl thrown in for taste, check out The Dwarfs of East Agouza, Sasquatch Landslide (Constellation)
Taxidermy Girls, RTE 209 Blues (Bang! Records) Upstate Blurt Explosion feat. members of Speedball Baby, Television, Rider/Horse, the Roches, and Pussy Galore. Pretty intriguing, right? Pretty great, in fact. Not available for digital purchase, let alone streaming, because everyone involved is insane. Which is also why it’s worth buying a record player for. Because it sounds like something made by the sort of men who’d be in the above bands (actually, with no disrespect intended to our brave veterans of the scumfuck wars, it sounds considerably better than that), who are too unemployable to live in NYC, too ruff and tumble for Hudson, and who have suffered at the hands of compression and convenience all their lives, and they’re not going to take it anymore.
80HD, Orc Party (Iron Lung) Who Pays?, Hard Times (11PM) I wasn’t going to include Who Pays because I was trying to limit the NYC bands that I have friends in, and I was excited to proselytize about 80HD cos I love Orc Party and thought I didn’t know anyone involved. Buuuut I just checked discogs and it turns out I do. So it would be stupid to penalize the equally fab Who Pays. Let nepotism reign. Or, rather, it would reign if either of these bands gave a damn about EOY lists, or anything else valued by square society. Two thuggish funnycars of punk—with 80HD running on Hyborian trucker speed and Who Pays fueled by a liquid concoction of ½ a crumpled up transcription of the Iran Contra hearings and ½ runoff from the Tompkins Square dog park—both manned by sweet souls who know how to fill out a sleeveless denim jacket, and accordingly sound like it. Put both albums on simultaneously and immediately gain the ability to travel back in time. The hitch being that you can only go to the taking of that photo of Nausea and Roger Miret hanging out on the stoop in front of the Physical Graffiti building. Counterpoint: where/when else could you possibly want to go?
Chuck Roth, waterg0st songs (Palilalia) An album of winding interiority that doesn’t let up even as the loveliness starts to make you sweat. Sucks that the maudlin amongst us have ruined fireflies as a metaphor, cos Chuck Roth seemingly has a herd of them at his fingertips. Not that I’m much of an expert on notes and modes and whatnot, but it seems to me that waterg0st songs makes a better argument for being able to play one’s instrument than all the proggers combined. Who knew that music could be so pretty, and to its benefit??? Not me, that’s for sure. Consider me appropriately chastened.
The Spells, The Night Has Eyes (Garganta Press) Sole LP, recorded in 1997, unreleased for reasons, from my favorite mod/goth/garage band. I wrote the (pretty sick if I do say so myself) liner notes so I’m biased. But I wrote the liner notes because I’m biased; biased towards things that don’t suck. Liner notes here. BTW Leni Zumas’ new novel is out and, if you share my bias towards things that don’t suck, you should buy it.
XIXA, Xolo (Jullian Records) Have you ever wanted to feel like the wind is your best friend? Have you ever wished your black jeans were haunted? Have you ever been a literal stallion? Reviewed it for CREEM.
Ed Kuepper & Jim White, After the Flood (12XU) Jim White of Dirty Three/Xylouris White and Ed Kuepper of Saints/Laughing Clowns team up to reinterpret selected songs from Kuepper’s deep catalog. As a duo, the men sound free but not too free. Imagine, if you will, someone putting a gun to the Dead C’s head(s) and saying, “make an album that will be successful enough to get you on the cover of Rolling Stone Australia, or we’ll kill your families. Here’s $1,500.” and this was their bravest, most restrained, attempt. That may sound like an insult, but I can’t imagine anything much better.
White’s drumming is… I guess the word would be “impressionistic.” In that you get the impression that he’s going to kick a mountain’s ass. When he’s not spraying the walls with water lilies, he’s playing like he wants to hurt a doom metal drummer’s feelings. Kuepper has a timber that implies a similarly complicated relationship with mountains, and he too can write his way around an ellipses like nobody’s business, conveying in sparsely populated, truncated verses what it’d take more famous ex-husbands a novella to get across. Throughout, he sounds just like a rosebush.
Ganser, Animal Hospital (Felte Records) Twelve tracks of swirling and serrated agit-pop by these habitués of your rougher malt shops. At times it’d almost qualify as dream pop, except that it’s not boring and it’s unlikely that anyone in the band has ever slept. Their best one yet. Reviewed it for CREEM.
Milkweed, Remscéla (Broadside Hacks) Irish folk tales, performed by merrow, recorded in the lower intestines of a Muckie (complimentary).
Noura Mint Seymali, Yenbett (Glitterbeat Records) Review in an upcoming issue of CREEM. Possibly the rock album of the year and easily the psych album of the year. Also, with co-production by the dude in Mdou Moctar whose favorite world music band is Fugazi, the post-hardcore album of the year. And if you have any other preferred genre, there’s a case for Yenbett beating the pants off whatever the consensus favorite is in that arena as well. Yes, I’m doing that thing that Western critics do; "hey, kids! Check out this richly textured collection, composed by one of Mauritania's most revered griots, which deftly melds traditional Moorish modes with Western influences to make something truly singular! RIYL [insert shitty English post-punk band, or '90s Midwest art rock act chosen at random from the Touch & Go catalog, here]!" I’m trying to move some units. That conceded, Noura Mint Seymali (band and singer) has always made her/their own thing which does touch on, and needle through, a variety of sub-genres. Point is, if you like singing that sounds like Dio riding an eagle, winding guitar/ardine lines that exhaust one’s synonym options for “serpentine” (before they blossom into lil’ cascades of fuzz), all backed by highway-heavy-n-winding bass and drums that roadcrew a rhythm like it's working triplet overtime, I have good news...
AYUCABA, Operación Masacre (Educacion Cínica) Barcelona punk band, made up of punks, making punk music. Next time you see an album review or band bio that says something like “infused with punk energy,” and the band or album doesn’t sound like it’s infused with Ayucaba, then that means the review/bio is lying, and you have permission to go to the author or band’s home, set their lawn on fire, and spray-paint “poseur” on the side of their dog. In fact, doing so is your duty.
Alsarah & the Nubatones, Seasons of the Road NYC Because of Steely Dan, specifically "Deacon Blues," and some lifestyle choices I made as a teenager which resulted in my falling in with a certain type, I regularly have to remind myself that "languid" is not a compliment. Despite years of using it incorrectly in a sentence, always to mean something like "slinky, bell-bottomed, expansive in ideas of conventional morality, good hair" and then catching myself at the last minute and deleting, I still do it. And the temptation is never so strong as when I'm trying to describe an album like Seasons of the Road, the album by Sudan/NYC sophisticate, Alsarah (and her regular band, the Nubatones). East-Afro-pop that's simultaneously orchestral and pin-prick sharp. Amidst all the painterly colors and flair, the rubber bass, counter rhythms, and nightbird harmonies accrue, working overtime if not breaking any visible sweat. Like the Steely Dan lyric; bittersweet maybe, and definitely slinking. But hardly languid. More like "luscious," or even "luxurious" (from a revolutionary perspective obvs), the Nubatones work hard for their money (as it were) so we can all reap the rewards.
SANAM, Sametou Sawtan (Constellation) Space age noir from Lebanon. I won't diminish the thing, or the other thing, by implying that high stakes are the key factor in SANAM's way around, with, and through dread or grief. I have no doubt these designated mourners would make great art even if they were from Silver Lake. But I also won't diminish those stakes or the band's accomplishment by pretending that it's not particularly impressive the way that Sametou Sawtan channels, sounds out some succor in the face of, and sonically warps reality in equal measure. Speaking of which, let's not forget Postcards, Ripe (Ruptured), the sister act of SANAM, whose new album has forced me to increase the number of shoegaze bands that I give a damn about from one (1) to two (2). As much as it pains me to admit that there might be something left worth squeezing out of that exhausted/exhausting genre, my pride/principles are no reason to deny beauty when it shows up on the front porch. At least the Nothing which has lived in solitude in my heart for so long will be happy to finally have some company (the irl Nothing won’t have any strong feelings about it one way or another).
Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals, A City Drowned In God’s Black Tears (Phantom Limb) This hybrid—of rap, rant, classical guitar, boom, doom metal, bap, and avant-choir—didn’t get nearly as much attention as I assumed it would. Seeing the number of shows they cancelled, and at the risk of engaging in completely baseless gossip-theorizing, I do wonder if there’s some serial bridge-burning going on here. Assuming that neither Knives nor Ennals are sleeping with all the listmakers’ wives and/or hawking their peers’ mini-Korgs to buy pterodactyl tranquilizer, I’ll notch this album not winning an EGOT up to a collective failure of taste. Reviewed it for CREEM.
Psych-War, Psychotic Warmonger (Agipunk) This band of crustaceans play a belly-forward d-beat with enough junk in its collectivist trunk to necessitate the musicians being in a hundred other bands; so they have enough backpatches to protect their individual heinies from the Philadelphia cold. Their sound is fat enough to imagine Psyche-War at the freegan buffet, filling up their plates with dis fear, dat fear, and all the bayoneted doves ‘n’ metal leads they can carry. While obviously not intended as a moving tribute to Tomas Lindberg’s life and art-in-opposition, it’s that too.
Dana, Clean Living (self-released) To be standard bearers in the New Wave of American Nö Wave (population: them) is Dana’s gift and curse. If Dana had been around in the ‘90s, they’d have toured with Dog Faced Hermans and cleaned up on the European squat circuit. If they’d been in around in the Aughts, they’d have had to avoid playing Providence/RISD for fear of getting laid too much and Troubleman Unlimited would owe them money. Absent living in those golden eras, Dana must content themselves with being top-tier in an admittedly pretty lonely category (and I don’t think they’d appreciate being compared to Guerilla Toss if it had to be to the benefit or detriment of either band). Even Teenage Jesus had their cross to bear. Anyways, Post-Trash called this perhaps the art punk album of the year and, tumbleweeds competition aside, I agree!
Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band, New Threats from the Soul (Sophomore Lounge) Reviewed it for CREEM. Cleo Reed, Cuntry For the good of the soul of the nation, I want two of our finest soul-of-the-nation-singers, Cleo Reed and Ryan Davis, to do an album of country duets; cosmic, contrarian, or otherwise. Five to eight songs over six sides of a triple album. Let these complexifying Stars of Folk really give America’s running dogs something to gnaw at. I can’t promise that it’d result in universal healthcare. Or even cover the costs of ER, but Davis could use a foil (besides himself) and Reed’s songwriting makes for a hell of an ambulance ride. And, not for nothing, it’d make me feel pretty good.
Wave Generators, Run Away With a Rare and Wild One (Fused Arrow Records) I know it’s a recurring theme over here, but of all the absurdly slept on albums on this list, this LP by Nosaj from New Kingdom and Height Keech might not only be the most slept on but also the album where the shortage of due attention paid is most absurd. There is periodic burst of praise for New Kingdom, the group that Nosaj was in with Sebastain Laws in the ‘90s, but even today the duo’s albums’ availability for streaming/purchase is about as reliable as a roommate. And, as a rap album, I get why a chant ‘n’ ragga, neo-Sabotage riff fest like Run Away With a Rare and Wild One hasn’t maybe reached the old heads who are serially insecure about being perceived as liking “hipster” (whatever the term might mean to you) rap, or young heads who like their bass to sound like guitars coming out of a stabbed amp, their guitars to take that shit elsewhere entirely, and their drums to sound like a stuttering click track from earbuds one state over. Fandom has its social aspects and people, I’ve been assured, like what they like. So their loss, you know?
But, even being resigned to all that, we can still throw a tantrum over the rock intelligentsia’s collective failure. I mean, we’re talking about an entire album of back-in-Black metal, psychedelic gong bangers, with every single one of ‘em topped off with blissed out provocations that, if they came out of a mouth with an English accent or the world was just, Nosaj would already be shining his pulitzer and, if they came out on Flatspot Records, you’d be able to see r/hardcore’s erection from space. And don't get me started on ELUCID rapping over a truncated Sabbath riff... Anyway, I shan't dwell on this (and God knows I hope none of this makes Wave Generators feel like the album is anything less than a total success in all the ways that matter). So, while I realize that many of today’s rock fans eschew no-sleep-till music for an indie buzz which helps them snooze on that long L ride from Brooklyn to Ridgewood, I’ll just point out, to you and the void, that standards still matter and it’s never too late to get right with Jesus, Nosaj/Keech, or any other similarly righteous character.
The London Suede, Antidepressants (Bertelsmann Music Group) The best hard rock album since Chinese Democracy at least.
Tomorrow Kings, SALT (Buenaventura Records) Six members, trimmed down from the nine who rapped on their last album (named something I won’t even be thinking aloud until at least the fourth Trump administration and even then I’ll only do it if Baron is holding a knife to the throat of a puppy and insisting), Tomorrow Kings is a North American rap collective, where SKECH185 isn’t always the angriest, most scabrous dude in the room, which is what I imagine it must be like for Batman and Wolverine every time there’s Marvel/DC crossover event. The rapping is dizzying but never oblique for its own sake, and never to the song’s detriment, and everyone involved has charisma to burn. The beats pretty much consist of space stations side swiping each other. It’s art based on dread, like Carnival of Souls or Nixonland, and as entertaining as either. Someday SKECH185 will be part of an album that isn’t the blues. But not yet. I wish that for him but, s/o to Saint Augustine, also not yet.
Citric Dummies, Split With Turnstile (Feel It Records) Three hüsky düdes from the bohemian district of the New Somalian Zion, Citric Dummies play a version of their homeland’s traditional folk music that is both fundamentalist (rejecting all corrupting influences, they correctly refuse to acknowledge any of the apocrypha which came after Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash) and irreverent (they got jokes). The jokes range from “funny enough” to even, as evidenced by their new LP’s title, the heights of “lol irl” (though, in either case, it helps to have access to a punk-reference decoder ring). Citric Dummies save themselves from novelty by merit of A. their exhibiting a sense of humor caustic enough to flirt with ideation (it helps to have stakes), B. their having songs for days, each one as bullying and tuneful as the last, and C. their having a knack for filling every nook and cranny of their two minute blasts with enough lightning riffs and flair—informed by a staggering knowledge of the Cleveland, Rockford, and Froberg songbooks—to make even the songs explicitly about punk minutia feel universal to those of us who passionately don’t give a shit about the topic. Also, one gets the sense that these guys are fantastic uncles. When one (or all) of them dies in some horrific Dillinger Four related bearding accident, it’ll be super fucking sad for everyone.
208L Containers, Soft Monstrous Masses! (Rough Skies) New to me, as of today. Recommended by Native Cats, which I trust enough that I would include this w/o a single listen. But, just to be ethical, I’ve listened to this a dozen times. I’m not sure I can stop. Hideously charming suburban lawn-punk, like a smarter friend that you’re going to inevitably resent. But that’s tomorrow you’s problem.
Che, Rest In Bass (10K Projects) Not gonna pretend I’d know this if it weren’t for people I must have liked less than I do P4K giving Rae-Aila Crumble shit for being enthusiastic, and my checking it out to just to spite whoever those crying people were. As if there was any rational response to this music beyond hyperbole; if you got ears and a heart, this is either godhead or the end of civilization. I err on the side of godhead, and not just because it sounds like godheadsilo. Not gonna pretend to know the actual frames of reference this belongs in (I remain agnostic on both Playboi Carti and Crystal Castles) but it reminds me of things I enjoy; ween, Ghosts of Chechnya era Vatican Shadow, “Cars That Go Boom,” etc. Sure, I might like this more in theory than practice, but that just puts Che in the same windmills of my mind as, like, The Kinks or sushi.
Real Lies, We Will Annihilate Our Enemies (Tonal) I keep seeing comments along the lines of “I don’t understand why these guys aren’t bigger?!?!” which is very funny to me. The question is based on the flawed premise that this album’s surface gloss and cool sad, cool “romantic” aspects make these mooks a Disclosure-in-waiting who just haven’t gotten the right Apple synch yet. As if this wasn’t utterly oppressive; as actually claustrophobic as that Chat Pile album was supposed to be. This doesn’t remind me of Pet Shop Boys. It reminds me of Slayer.
NOTE: In this comparison’s cinematic universe, the role of “proto-metal” is played by Miike Snow.
(And, OK, it reminds me of Pet Shop Boys as well.)
Kid Congo & Naim Amor, Tucson Safari (In The Red)
Juanita & Juan, Jungle Cruise (In The Red)
Escape-ism, Charge of the Love Brigade (Radical Elite)
Yes, I am grouping these three albums together partially because I’m trying to keep this list down to fifty and, to make that happen, I either have to exclude albums or ask some of the albums to, if they don’t mind, cohabitate. This grouping does make sense, consisting as it does of an overlap of friends (or at least peers), all of whom are—in the parlance of the day—street walking cheetahs with hearts full of napalm, and who are all, to varying primitivist degrees, using technology. Besides utilizing some of the jankiest drum machines ever discovered in the caves of Lascaux, all three albums share a love of cinematic soundscapes—be they spaghetti-strewn deserts or beach blanket high kitsch—coupled with a love, for what the squares might consider “trash,” so extreme that it must be couched in a veneer of irony lest the artists’ hearts simply burst from their respective chests. So to is the love displayed on these albums for rock and roll; an affection so deep and complicated that Kid & Naim, Juanita & Juan, and Ian & Sandi, all feel the need to push rock & roll around like a schoolyard crush, laugh in rock & roll’s face, carve the names of Suicide songs into their inner thighs, and generally play the fool, so rock & roll will never suspect the depth and seriousness of their feelings. Because the most important thing that all these cats know, better than 99.9999% of the world’s population,is that once rock & roll knows how you really feel? It’ll jump at the chance to commodify, homogenize, and declaw you. It’ll all-in-all break your lil’ heart, ruining the good looks of even the most street-savvy cheetah. It’s no coincidence that all three duos send their respective missives from the desert, the high seas, and the international pop underground. They all know that, once rock & roll gets a bead on you, it’s the bag then the river for sure.
Vampire, What Seems Forever Can Be Broken (Phobia Records) Australia’s Vampire aren’t reinventing the wheel because, as any student of Antischism history well knows, wheels are complicit with paved roads; the sworn enemy of a Fly-O illustrated future utopia where post-apocalyptic agrarian-punks run wild, their floppy mohawks and shirtless vests flapping free under a fallout-red sky. So—accepting that everything is folk music, but peace-punk especially—Vampire is very, very, very good at propagating said tradition. The songs are propulsive, soul-stirring, and as inventive as the genre allows. I bet their in-between-song stage patter is a wonder to behold; may it go on forever. See Also: Rigorous Institution, Tormentor (Roachleg)
Cory Hansen, I Love People (Drag City) A masterclass of Laurel Canyon songwriting where the best dressed werewolf in burnout rock (or whatever Wand, Ty Segall, etc play) goes full moon fever. A collection of sweet ‘n’ scornful ballads. incisive and moving enough to make a Joni consider sticking around, and so full of barely suppressed rage they’d make Manson bark all night long.
CAVEAT: I can’t stand it when Afghanistan is used as a plotpoint signifier for trauma, which Hansen does in one (1) song’s narrative. COUNTERPOINT: I get that my POV might be different from others. So let’s not let the one quibble take away from an album so groovily cutting. The title track alone is so stop-dead-in-yr-tracks good, it deserves to have a watchtower named after it.
(Also, I don’t typically listen to much stuff in this vein so I tend to focus on the strays that catch me. But if the alt fire & rain scene is your bag and you somehow missed this year’s Ty Segall, or this excellent one from Domestic Drafts, consider yourself now hipped.)
Rien Virgule, Berceuses des deux mondes (zamzamrec) No matter the Bauhauses or the Cures or any of the other earthbound mopers that the consensus creeps may throw at you, real heads know that Cranes are the best goth band ever. But only Rien Virgule has the guts to put that knowledge into practice. Of course, I’m just assuming that the British band of spooky angels is an influence. Maybe Rien Virgule are just geniuses (or fans of Dead Can Dance) and tbc this isn’t a pastiche of the Shaw siblings’ industrial etheria. Rien Virgule, even as they pitchshift their ouija boards in and out of time and space, do sound entirely modern. Again (and again and again), it’s all folk music and I do prefer the bands that work the traditions that aren’t quite as well trod. So I’m just saying that this sounds real nice to my ears. Never mind me if I detect (or project) the sound of a much missed flapping of wings.
Say She She, Cut & Rewind (drink sum wtr) Risqué adventures into the land of the good groove, with the pristine and guarded heart of Real People, chauffeured by Simon Le Bon in a whale-sized cadillac, with a bumper sticker on its pull-up-bumper that reads “Sade or the highway.” Reviewed in December issue of CREEM.
mclusky, the world is still here and so are we (Ipecac) Non-interventionist demi-gods of barroom agnosticism return with an album of self-smiting, wrath, and guitar husbandry, in order to save an undeserving world from false Idols (the creation of which they are entirely responsible for, but that’s besides the point). Reviewed it for CREEM.
Haram, ليش الجنة بيتبلش في الجهنم؟ Why Does Paradise Begin in Hell (Toxic State) Someone (not me) needs to write a comprehensive overview of post-2010 NYC “Nuke York” punk. I don’t doubt that there’s a thread connecting the sounds of Crazy Spirit, Dawn of Humans etc. and the previous decades, be they NYHC, CBGBs, or ABC No Rio, but I couldn’t tell you what it is. It’s worth a book just getting into how many bands all over the world are influenced by Hank Wood and the Hammerheads.
But I digress. Haram has long been one of the best of that local brand of Flipper-ic repetition, What We Do is Secret (SERIOUSLY), cosmic punk rock and roll music. While Haram’s politics is, by necessity, more grounded in material reality than some of their more broadly existentialist peers (the LP coming out on 9/11 wasn’t by quirky happenstance), the balance of insularity and savoir faire is something that I guess is just in the Bushwick/Queens water.
In terms of what separates Haram—outside of the adhan Haram perform live, and the Surat on the album (which my wife describes as “the Surat you’ll hear when you’re on a plane, train, or automobile and a good boy or girl is going to do the right thing for the revolution”... the last few weeks have gotten my gal on her last nerve…)—there’s the melodies, the introduction of off-path instruments, and the natural progression evident since 2012; the Crazy Spirit dentist drill has evolved into a steamroller. These songs are full, they shake with dynamics that’d been seen as prog (or just pulled off so sloppily it’d sound like mush) a decade ago. They’re sung by a glammed up preacher-man, whose heresies—and how they’re delivered—are Danzig-coded to a level which only our very finest topless performers could ever hope to match.
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