Albums Of The Year 2025

My Grief On The Sea is a jaw-dropping exploration of Irish emigration and immigration, curated by Dr. Richard McMahon and Dr. Niall Whelehan, blending historical records, letters, and books into an emotionally resonant contemporary project. Released via Bring Your Own Hammer and Dimple Disc, it is a powerful reflection on 19th-century migration stories.

Michelle O’Rourke opens with the slow, mournful title track, lamenting a lost love sent to America. Adrian Crowley and Brigid Mae Power’s Golden Streets, Bitter Tears carries hushed reverence, portraying the hope and sorrow of leaving home for pastures new. Mike Smalle, Cathal Coughlan, and Jah Wobble’s Old Oak Road brims with haunting imprecations and gorgeous harmonies, emphasizing the irretrievability of home.

The Man With Open Arms, featuring the late Cathal Coughlan and Linda Buckley, delicately narrates a tale of survival and aspiration, while The Female Cabin Boy by Eileen Gogan and Neil Farrell tells of resilience and ingenuity in the face of famine. Smalle and Wally Nkikita’s I Love Over the Ghosts is lush and haunting, transporting listeners to Baltimore with elegiac trumpet and string arrangements. The album closes with Michael J. Sheehy’s The Weight of Water, a reflective, acoustic meditation on hope and the transformative power of the sea.

Richly poetic and exquisitely crafted, My Grief On The Sea stands as one of the most emotionally and intellectually rewarding albums of 2025.

 – Simon Phillips

This album is a loving recreation of Joe Cocker’s original Mad Dogs & Englishmen live album from 1970. Recorded as a tribute to Cocker on September 11th, 2015, for the 45th anniversary of that legendary concert film and live album, it is now issued to mark the 55th anniversary of the gig. The Tedeschi Trucks Band assembled as many of the original surviving members as they could, along with special guests, resulting in 29 performers onstage at the Lockn’ Festival in Arrington, Virginia.

From the opening of The Letter, Susan Tedeschi’s stunning vocals, bold brass, and delicate guitar solo capture the magic of the original while adding their own contemporary polish. Dixie Lullaby, featuring Leon Russell on lead vocals and piano, evokes a sound somewhere between Joe Cocker and Dr. John. Their reworking of Bob Dylan’s Girl From The North Country as a piano ballad, with Leon Russell and Claudia Lennear sharing vocals, adds layers of meaning and a poignant sense of melancholy.

They channel Ashford & Simpson’s brilliant Let’s Go Get Stoned into a raw, gospel-like celebration of indulgence, while She Came In Through The Bathroom Window delivers two Beatles covers with Warren Haynes’ burnished vocals shining through. Rita Coolidge brings Leonard Cohen’s Bird On A Wire into a soulful, almost spiritual space, while The Weight reaches its apex with her trading vocal lines with Pamela Polland and Susan Tedeschi.

With A Little Help From My Friends is treated with reverence, recalling Joe Cocker’s iconic Woodstock rendition. Chris Robinson and Susan Tedeschi wring every ounce of emotion from the track, with Tedeschi at times channeling Janis Joplin. The album closes with The Ballad Of Mad Dogs & Englishmen, stripped back to Leon at the piano, evoking a smoky bar and nostalgic reflections on the 1960s. This live recreation is, without a doubt, one of the most compelling live albums of 2025.

 – Simon Phillips

With Moisturizer, Wet Leg return sharper, stranger and more self-assured, doubling down on the deadpan absurdism and sugar-rush hooks that made their debut such a phenomenon. CPR sets the tone immediately — woozy, off-kilter indie pop punctured by Rhian Teasdale’s signature eye-roll delivery — before liquidize slinks in with a rubbery bassline and a chorus that feels both flirty and threatening in the way only Wet Leg can.

catch these fists is all jagged guitars and snark, a chaotic kiss-off built for festival stages, while davina mccall is pure Wet Leg mischief: a frenetic ode to late-night self-help TV that somehow becomes an earworm of the highest order. jennifer’s body leans darker and dreamier, its title a wink to cult cinema wrapped in shoegazy haze, giving way to the buoyant mangetout and the whimsical pond song, which treads the line between nursery rhyme and indie disco banger.

pokemon brings a burst of pure serotonin, its playful nostalgia masking quietly poignant lyricism. pillow talk shifts gears into something more intimate and slow-burning, before don’t speak snaps back with crunchy riffs and a sing-along chorus destined to be screamed in sweaty rooms. 11:21 drifts through late-night melancholia, atmospheric and aching, setting up closer u and me at home — a beautifully dishevelled lullaby that brings the album full circle with tenderness and a sly smile.

With Moisturizer, the Isle Of Wight-hailing duododge the sophomore slump entirely, delivering a record that’s weirder, warmer and even more addictive than their debut. It’s proof that beneath the memes and mischief lies one of Britain’s most inventive alt-pop bands, still writing hooks that cling like glitter and emotional truths that sneak up on you when you least expect them.

 – Kalpesh Patel

Unless you’ve been lying low in these final few months of 2025, it’s been impossible to avoid West End Girl. The fifth studio album by English singer-songwriter and actress Lily Allen, and follow-up to Mercury Prize-nominated No Shame (2018), has generated relentless hype since its release on 24 October.  

Recorded over an intense 10-day period and co-produced alongside Seb Chew, Kito and Blue May, the album didn’t so much land softly as crack the ground beneath it wide open. People are still dissecting the details; from the Nieves González-painted album cover (Allen in a sky-blue, polka dot Miu-Miu quilted jacket), the mystery of Madeline (“No, but who is Madeline, actually?”) to the notorious Architectural Digest tours of the Brooklyn brownstone.

At its core, West End Girl appears to chronicle the fragmentation of Allen’s marriage to American actor David Harbour. She’s described the album as ‘autofictional’ (telling British Vogue that it references things “I experienced within my marriage, but that’s not to say that it’s all gospel.”) Whatever the boundaries, it’s the music that deserves the attention. Each track charts the alleged infidelity and resulting sense of betrayal and helplessness through raw, unfiltered lyrics. 

If you tune out of the commotion that surrounds it, West End Girl is a multi-layered masterpiece. While a pop album in the main, an eclectic blend of genres keeps it fresh and unpredictable, from dancehall to 2-step and beyond. Combined with the kind of whip smart lyrics that have been her signature since Alright, Still (2006), and the London-born artist’s candour and lucidity, the result is a potent mix. 

I approach the album as I would a favourite novel; each of the 14 tracks tells a story that unfolds deliciously, so they’re best savoured in order from West End Girl through to Fruityloop, without interruption. For me, standout moments are the gauzy, dream-like Sleepwalking and Dallas Major, which captures the awkwardness and surreal vulnerability of using dating apps while raising children. 

West End Girl is an alternative romance album that launches the break-up genre into a new universe. Hearing Allen articulate her rage and hurt without minimising it, apologising or being gracious as we’re so often expected to be, feels validating in a culture that labels outspoken women as “too much”.

Hell hath no fury like Lily Allen, especially when she channels it into an impeccable album and reclaims the narrative with bite. Now this is what you call a comeback. 

– Nicola Greenbrook

A record steeped in intimacy, longing and a steady warmth, Forever Is A Feeling arrives as Lucy Dacus’s fourth solo outing and her first since the meteoric rise of boygenius catapulted her into the broader musical spotlight. Written in the wake of a deep and transformative love, the album sees Dacus lean into tenderness without sacrificing the sharp lyrical craft that has become her hallmark.

Opening with the hushed, orchestral shimmer of Calliope Prelude, the Richmond-born singer sets a mood more akin to a dimly lit theatre overture than an indie rock record. This brief, cinematic prologue bleeds into Big Deal, a languid meditation on missed chances that pairs muted percussion with Dacus’s warm, unhurried vocal—a song that feels like it could only be sung while staring out of a rain-flecked window.

Third track Ankles takes a turn for the sensual, its delicate strings and brushed drums giving space for her intimate confession: “Pull me by the ankles to the edge of the bed.” This is Dacus at her most quietly daring, embedding desire within restraint. Limerence follows, unfolding like a cabaret ballad—piano chords sway between infatuation and melancholy as the arrangement swells into something almost torch-song grand.

Album centrepiece Modigliani invites boygenius bandmate Phoebe Bridgers into the frame for a gauzy, close-mic duet that could be mistaken for a lullaby were it not for the underlying ache in the lyrics. Elsewhere, Talk dials up the distortion for a shoegaze-leaning burst of frustration before Dacus drops the curtain with the title track—joined again by Bridgers and Julien Baker—braiding their three voices into an aching farewell that lingers well past its fade-out.

But it’s Bullseye that delivers the album’s emotional knockout, pairing Dacus with Hozier in a vocal sparring match that captures the thrill and terror of new love. The track’s chorus—half-plea, half-triumph—lands with the intensity of a spotlight hitting centre stage. Closer Lost Time starts as a gentle acoustic confession before blossoming into a soaring, electric finale that feels both triumphant and resigned.

If there’s a fault here, it’s one shared by some critics: the arrangements occasionally play it safe, letting the lyrics do the heavy lifting when a touch more sonic risk could have elevated certain moments. Yet, in a year of bombast and overstatement, there’s something refreshing about a record that asks you to lean in rather than shout along.

Quietly confident, Forever Is A Feeling is less a grand statement than a love letter whispered across a pillow—personal, precise, and deeply human. Believe in its slow burn; it’s one you’ll keep returning to long after the flame first catches.

 – Kalpesh Patel

Po$t American is an essential album from Native American band Dead Pioneers, a fierce and uncompromising salvo against systemic oppression and white supremacy. The album channels anger and urgency through a potent blend of hardcore rock and rap, grabbing listeners by the throat from the very first note.

The record opens by re-tooling A.I.M., invoking the Native cry and drumbeat of the American Indian Movement, before exploding into the title track Po$t American, a searing rap about the genocide at the heart of the American myth. My Spirit Animal Ate Your Spirit Animal confronts the hatred and ignorance directed at Native people, delivering thrillingly angry, confrontational sounds.

The Caucasity is a brilliant set piece of rage and despair, depicting a guest speaker interrupted by a white teenager who believes anger is unwarranted. The track makes clear that the devastation of homelessness, drugs, and systemic oppression is not the fault of Native Americans, but of the white invaders who caused it. Mythical Cowboys skewers the tropes of old Westerns, turning the tables on the idea that Native people were the villains.

White Whine is a poem set to experimental soundscapes, exploring the origins of racism with painful honesty, creating a deeply cathartic experience for anyone willing to listen. Juicy Fruit (Ode to Chief Bromden) is perhaps the best tribute to a film character you’ll hear all year, compelling listeners to revisit One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. STFU delivers its message in a brief, scorching burst, while Bloodletting Carnival offers a dystopian, riff-driven vision of what happens if systemic oppression goes unchecked.

Love Language (ft. Ren Aldridge) channels the fury of corrosion of conformity, railing against endless zealotry and hatred. Working Class Warfare is a blitz of hardcore angst, leaving no emotion unexplored. The album closes with the monumental Untitled Spoken Word No. 2, a searing meditation on the cruelty inflicted by white supremacy, with the message that the only good pioneer is a Dead Pioneer.

Po$t American is strong, unflinching medicine for our times—angry, smart, and necessary listening that challenges the listener at every turn.

 – Simon Phillips

On Returning To Myself, Brandi Carlile delivers her most intimate, soul-baring work to date — a record that feels less like a reinvention and more like a quiet homecoming. Opening with the reflective title track, Carlile immediately sets the album’s tone: warm, unhurried, deeply human. That sentiment flows into Human, its earthy acoustics and soaring harmonies reminding us why her voice remains one of the most arresting in modern Americana.

A Woman Oversees brings a stirring sense of purpose, Carlile’s vocal grit underscored by stately percussion, while A War With Time stands out as one of the album’s finest moments — a meditation on ageing and legacy delivered with devastating restraint. Anniversary offers a tender reprieve, its soft piano lines cradling Carlile’s delicate falsetto, before Church & State cuts through with a righteous, gospel-tinged fire.

Her tribute Joni is as heartfelt as the name suggests, a gentle, open-hearted nod to one of her guiding lights. The vulnerability deepens on You Without Me, Carlile laying out emotional fractures with poetic clarity. Penultimate track No One Knows Us glows with hushed harmonies and a quiet confidence built on long-won trust, before A Long Goodbye closes the album in classic Carlile fashion — equal parts ache, acceptance and catharsis.

A masterclass in songwriting maturity, Returning To Myself strips away grandeur in favour of truth, showcasing an artist fully at ease with who she’s become. It’s one of Carlile’s most affecting records yet — and one that lingers long after the final note.

 – Kalpesh Patel

Noah Cyrus’ I Want My Loved Ones To Go With Me is a quiet earthquake of a record — a sweeping, dusk-lit Americana odyssey that cements her as one of the most affecting storytellers of her generation. The album opens with I Saw the Mountains, a fragile, wind-brushed hymn that immediately sets the tone: intimate, creaking, full of breath and bruised memory. It’s the sound of Cyrus stepping onto a bigger landscape while keeping her vulnerabilities close.

Don’t Put It All On Me, featuring the golden harmonies of Fleet Foxes, unfurls like a prayer whispered between canyon walls, while What’s It All For? leans into soft country-soul, Cyrus’ voice catching beautifully on every doubt and confession. Way of the World pairs her with Ella Langley for a dust-kicked lament rich with fiddle and gravel, their voices dovetailing with a lived-in ache.

New Country, with Blake Shelton, brings a playful, tongue-in-cheek twang without losing the album’s emotional thread, before Long Ride Home plunges back into somber territory — a road song where regret sits in the passenger seat. Apple Tree and Man In The Field are stripped-back gems, showcasing Cyrus’ gift for quiet, cinematic detail; both feel like modern folk standards already.

With You is a warm glow after the storm, while Love Is A Canyon stands tall as one of the album’s emotional peaks — a sweeping, orchestral country piece that captures the danger and beauty of loving with your whole chest. And then there’s XXX, a haunting collaboration with Bill Callahan that drifts like cigarette smoke through the darkest corners of a dive bar. Their voices — hers trembling, his subterranean — create a spellbinding, eerie intimacy that lingers long after the final note.

I Want My Loved Ones To Go With Me is a triumph of restraint and emotional clarity, a record that trades bombast for raw truth. Noah Cyrus has never sounded more assured, more poetic, or more devastating — an artist fully arriving by whisper rather than roar.

 – Kalpesh Patel