Photo of Blondshell’s Sabrina Teitelbaum by Daniel Topete
I don’t know anyone who isn’t ready to kick 2025 to the curb. It was an exhausting year, one that wavered between feeling interminable, and as if months at a time passed in the blink of an eye. But through this white-knuckled grip on time, there was music. Music is comforting, challenging, thought-provoking, and something that makes sense, even when the rest of the world does anything but. As always, art doesn’t much care to be ranked, quantified, grouped, graded, or put into competition. I’m not saying these are the best albums of the year. But they are the ones that I had in regular rotation, that made an impact on me, and that got me through this interesting-but-not-in-a-good-way 12 months on Planet Earth.
The Top 10:
Blondshell | If You Asked for a Picture (Partisan)
Blondshell’s Sabrina Teitelbaum has a gift for 1990s alt rock-coded indie with searing, funny, and affecting lyrics. You could compare her to Liz Phair, PJ Harvey, or even in the non-musical realm, Janeane Garofalo. But while there are echoes of the past in her music, comparisons so specific are ultimately reductive. Part of her skill and craft is in sounding like she could surreptitiously slot in on The Point in 1994, without aping any specific artist, and also sounding like she doesn’t belong to any decade except the 2020s.
Blondshell’s sophomore album If You Asked for a Picture revels in Teitelbaum’s trademark TMI. Whether she’s focusing on body image, her bisexuality, and depression on the floaty finale “Model Rockets,” self-loathing self-sabotage on wiry midtempo rocker “Toy,” intractable parental issues on the sprightly “23’s a Baby” (or fiery lead single “What’s Fair”), or a habit for self-selecting on the wrong lovers on the quiet-loud rager “T&A,” Teitelbaum’s self-deprecating looks into her neuroses are never self-indulgent, but always incisive.
Momma | Welcome to My Blue Sky (Polyvinyl/Lucky Number)
Building on 2022’s Household Name and its 1990s-ish indie rock riffage, Welcome to My Blue Sky offers a heightened sense of sonic and emotional clarity. Born of a crazy summer three years ago, it’s a gripping, honest post-hoc hurricane eye that settles the wreckage of romantic dissolution and family trauma.
Matt Berninger | Get Sunk (Book/Concord)
Matt Berninger, frontman of indie standard-bearers The National and patron saint of Sad Dads of all stripes, often seems most at home when he’s rummaging around in the dusty old steamer trunk of his mind. On his second solo album, Get Sunk, while he can’t help plunging an occasional hand all the way down to the bottom, he often takes a breath and a step back to close the box entirely. Get Sunk was written in spurts sandwiching a case of writer’s block, with lyrics written on, among other things, old baseballs. These esoteric roots appear to have breached Berninger’s creative floodgates, and helped him write songs that highlight the tension between the solace of solitude and a yearning for quiet, meaningful connection.
Check out my full-length review at: https://theartsstl.com/matt-berninger-get-sunk-book-concord/
The Beths | Straight Line Was a Lie (Anti-)
Straight Line Was a Lie doesn’t abandon The Beths’ embodiment of the jangly, buzzy power pop ideal. But it finds Elizabeth Stokes and company recalibrating their approach. In the past few years, Stokes endured health issues and medication changes which messed with her writing process. At one point she started writing ten pages a day on a manual typewriter. Those stream of consciousness writings formed the basis of this record’s songs. In some places, they’re more introspective than she’s ever been. In others, she contemplates her environment, family relations, and big metaphysical issues. For every song such as the title track or “Metal,” that are sonically pretty close to the band’s well-loved bread and butter, there are others like “Til My Heart Stops” and acoustic plea “Mother, Pray for Me” that lean into the opportunity to shake up what a Beths song can be. The slowly building “Mosquitoes” puts all of it together—it might be my favorite song on the record. The new approaches make Straight Line Was a Lie a compelling album that’s experimental-ish, but still bursting with tunes, and one that does a great job of illustrating how life is more of a series of swerves and circles than a direct path. I love this band, and I love that they took the opportunity to come at things from a slightly different angle.
Jeff Tweedy | Twilight Override (dBpm)
How many triple albums justify their existence? Not many, in my estimation. But Jeff Tweedy’s Twilight Override increments that count by one. Clocking in at 30 songs and nearly two hours, it’s an album that initially looks like a song dump but, in reality, is a work with an arc, an ethos, and a reason for being. What saves Twilight Override from potential impenetrability is the way each of its component discs work on its own, with an opener, a closing track, and a narrative—but while still playing into the notion that this is all one work, rather than three separate albums released at once. But that’s enough about the format.
Twilight Override is Jeff Tweedy raging against the dying of the light, pushing back against life in an America that is, at present, more than ever before stuffed to the gills with despair, cruelty, corruption, and darkness. That resistance is right there in the name of the record. In this bonanza of music, Tweedy often finds solace, and even joy, in the small things, and the singular moments that make life worth living. It’s in the undefeated psych-up of opening track “One Tiny Flower.” It’s in the hypnotic, seven-minute list of things that can and should make you feel free in the second disc closer “Feel Free.” It’s in the gentle twang of the title track, and its dream of finding a quiet place to create, and to be. The album’s other notable strain is the series of songs that offer hyper-vivid memories: Tweedy and his date broken down on the side of a Southern Illinois highway, in the freezing cold, on the way to a prom he didn’t want to go to in the first place in the shuffling “Forever Never Ends”; or walking around on a street in Spain in 2019, following the path of a city’s mosaics, and encountering The Stray Cats playing a show in the hypnotic, almost transcendently gleeful “Stray Cats in Spain.”
One of the themes of the album, and one that gives it such quiet strength, is its insistence that self-care, and artistic creation, are radical acts in the face of encroaching darkness. Twilight Override is not only an inspiration, but an instruction manual of sorts. It’s fitting that the album ends with the rocking “Enough,” where Tweedy not only laments the effort it takes to keep your soul fires raging in days such as these, but celebrates the tiny victories, and moments of theft-proof humanity, that allow us to do so.
Manic Street Preachers | Critical Thinking (Columbia)
Fifteen albums into their iconoclastic career, the Manics continue to outlast and outwit so many of their 1990s peers. One of the themes of Critical Thinking is “managed decline,” properly exemplified by the stirring “Decline & Fall.” It’s not typical rock n roll stuff, but since when has this band ever been typical?
One of the album’s great little twists is how it continues to shift the band’s roles around a bit. Nicky Wire takes lead vocals on three songs, the most ever on a Manics LP, and he continues to grow into the role. His Ian McCulloch vocal stylings are a great fit for songs like the no-fucks-to-give title track, “Onemanmilitia” and its Clash-meets-Kant bulldozing, and the choral-inflected “Hiding in Plain Sight,” which is about as close to a celebration of a “there’s nothing out there for me, Jerry” ethos as possible. Elsewhere, guitarist extraordinaire James Bradfield writes more lyrics, including the emotionally devastating “Brushstrokes of Reunion,” a song about reconnecting with his late mother via a painting she left him.
The album’s two best songs come back to back at the end of side one. “People Ruin Paintings” extols the lasting virtues of art, while acknowledging that oftentimes the people that make it have far less worthiness, clarity, and longevity to offer. “Dear Stephen,” inspired by Wire recalling a letter he wrote to Morrissey as a teenage Smiths fan, examines problematic artists that we can’t quite quit, and begs the increasingly despicable Moz to “please come back to us/I believe in repentance and forgiveness.” It’s all set to a glorious Johnny Marr-esque jangle, and peppered with little Morrissey lyrical shout outs.
The album runs out of steam a little bit in the second half, but overall Critical Thinking is a worthy, thought-provoking, and moving record from a band that I appreciate still asks us to pay attention to what’s going on, both in the greater world, and inside of ourselves.
Idlewild | s/t (V2)
One of the hallmarks of Idlewild’s now quarter-century-long career has been their drive to evolve. Their thrashy early days gave way to a sound somewhere close to R.E.M. plays Pixies, which eventually led to them incorporating country-rock and synthesizers into their music. This tendency to stretch their sound has been even more pronounced in the decade since their reboot/return from hiatus with 2015’s Everything Ever Written. Idlewild 2.0 featured a modified lineup, a commitment to angular sounds (without abandoning their innate melodic gifts), and a desire to experiment with unconventional sound structures. Therefore, it was highly surprising when, halfway through 2025, the group announced their brand new album would find them consciously looking back—specifically to the heady first half of the Aughts, which found the band championed by the NME, and, briefly, rising to a level of fame where they were playing arenas in the UK. I admit to being somewhat suspicious that a band so committed to their own growth would willingly revert to an earlier version. Self-titling the record only amplified that inkling. But it turns out I was overthinking things. What’s new, eh?
On Idlewild, the band isn’t trying to recapture past glories. Instead, the dominant theme is revisiting youth via the wisdom of age. This idea is even reflected in the cover art—a washed-out shot of lead singer Roddy Woomble’s teenage son looking out over the same coastal location featured on the band’s debut Hope Is Important, which in turn featured two of the band’s teenage friends looking at a washed-up boat on the shore.
Musically, Idlewild largely eschews the winding arrangements that were so prominent on their previous two LPs. Instead, its three-minute songs are played with a noisy crunch reminiscent of their debut album, a jangly quiet-loud that hearkens back to their breakthrough sophomore record 100 Broken Windows, and a heavy, majestic melodicism that summons the band’s mainstream success with The Remote Part and its follow-up Warnings/Promises. Witness “I Wish I Wrote It Down,” which features an effortless tune to go along with Rod Jones’ propulsive guitars, and Woomble’s lyrics that discuss, in his semi-impressionist style, going back to a place you used to be from, only to remember why you left in the first place—but also to possibly realize there’s more of it in you than you ever wanted to acknowledge. The album’s best songs are also its first and last. Opener “Stay Out of Place” careens out of the gate with more of Jones’ best howling guitars, and a thumping vocal performance from Woomble. Closing track “End With Sunrise” rides a sequenced synth melody, Andrew Mitchell’s chunky bass, and Jones’ squiggly guitars as Woomble again looks over his shoulder at the past, only to find it less compelling than the present. “I’m sorry that I came back / but I went out to see / if there was anything for me / but then I came back / and I’m sorry that I came all the way back.”
The most fascinating aspect of Idlewild, and what makes it such a compelling slow-grow success for me, is hearing the band use the vocabulary of their youth to speak of their middle age. This is an album that wisely doesn’t venerate the past, but instead uses a temporary trip down memory lane to frame the next adventurous steps into the future.
Counting Crows | Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets! (BMG)
In 2021, Counting Crows released Butter Miracle, Suite One, a well-received EP/song cycle that lent a slightly rockier edge to the band’s earnest lyricism. (You can read my review of it here: https://theartsstl.com/top-10-albums-of-2021-mike-rengel/) It also begged the question: where was Suite Two? Frontman Adam Duritz took a break from his pandemic-era Internet cooking show to reassure listeners that it was coming, but as three years passed, it did not. It finally came to light that in 2022, while Duritz was recording backing vocals on Gang of Youth’s angel in realtime., he decided the original songwriting for Suite Two wasn’t on par with the first installment, so he started over on the arrangements, and wrote a new track to boot.
Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets! (exclamation point and all) finally arrived in May of 2025, adding five new songs to the remixed and revamped original four song suite. Most notable about The Complete Sweets is how confident the band sounds. The rip-roaring “Boxcars” and the barroom piano in effortlessly catchy “Spaceman in Tulsa” rock harder than the band has since Recovering the Satellites all the way back in 1996. The meditative “Virgina Through the Rain” and swirling, slowly building “Under the Aurora” adapt Counting Crows’ heart-on-sleeve poeticism for a new millennium. Counting Crows never stopped being a great live band, but somewhere as the Nineties turned into the mid-Aughts, the group’s recorded output started to sound a bit lost, and less magical than what listeners who loved them expected. It’s been a joy, then, to watch the band reclaim that heart, and add a new edge, as the 21st century rolls along unabated.
Craig Finn | Always Been (Tamarac/Thirty Tigers)
Surely I’m not the only 40-something guy who’s ever secretly dreamed of world’s most erudite bar band The Hold Steady and psychedelic-baked classic rock enthusiasts The War on Drugs joining forces. On Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn’s latest solo album Always Been, produced by War on Drugs mastermind Adam Granduciel, and featuring other members of the band, that fantasy comes as close to being true as it ever will.
Granduciel’s meticulous sonic approach is a superb complement to Finn’s detailed story-based songwriting. Granduciel’s passionate and exuberant guitar playing animates Finn’s non-linear tale of an aimless dude who joins the priesthood, not out of some religious fervor, but because, well, “A Man Needs a Vocation.” Woven throughout the main narrative are ruminations on betrayal, self-inflicted punishment, redemption, and the mixing of the sacred and profane lapsed Catholics understand innately.
Despite Always Been’s album-length story, almost every song is detailed, and punchy, enough to stand on its own. The ‘80s Springsteen synth-and-guitar-soaked rocker “Luke & Leana” is radio ready; the restless, poignant “Fletchers” continues Finn’s knack for film script-worthy characterization; the driving, yet elegiac “Postcards” looks at how big dreams often become smaller realities.
Always Been has strong bones; it’s easy to picture these songs as works for acoustic guitar and voice, as they were presented while Finn was workshopping them on tour. But the full-bodied approach and arrangements imbue Finn’s inherent focus on the individual with a widescreen power. The marriage of story, structure, and collaborators make this one of the master raconteur’s best works yet.
Pulp | More (Rough Trade)
In the fall of 2024, I was lucky enough to fulfill a lifelong dream of seeing Pulp live. At that show in Chicago, the band played their classic hits and album tracks with a renewed vigor, despite still mourning the loss of longtime bassist Steve Mackey, who died in 2023. Most intriguingly, Pulp debuted a handful of new songs on that tour, which were tantalizingly good for a band that hadn’t released a new song in over a decade. These new songs immediately invited speculation that the band was working on a new album. The rumors were wishcasted into reality the next year when Pulp released More, their first new LP since 2001’s cult classic We Love Life.
More is an aptly titled album. Its strength lies in tapping into the “kitchen sink drama” that fueled Pulp’s rise to reluctant stardom in the 1990s, but adapting it to a late middle age perspective.
While it wouldn’t be a Pulp record without a healthy dollop of irony, More finds frontman, and beating, “dirty English professor” heart of the band, Jarvis Cocker allowing more sincerity to slip in than ever before. There are moments that hit all of the classic Pulp spots: the menacing groove of “Slow Jam” and the discofied “My Sex” wouldn’t be out of place on records from the band’s heyday.
But it’s the songs that showcase Cocker’s growth that hit the hardest. Album opener, and lead single, “Spike Island” pulsates with one of keyboardist Candida Doyle’s trademark synth lines, and leads Cocker to exclaim, in a moment of surprise and acceptance, “I was born to perform / it’s a calling / I exist to do this / shouting and pointing!” “Grown Ups” looks back to 1985, using upstroke guitars to tell a story about Jarvis and a striving friend of his, and how his friend “who said he moved near the motorway, well ‘cause it was good for commuting” only strengthened Cocker’s resolve to further his own skewed ambition. It’s also a song about trying to strike the balance between adult, and “not dead yet,” and even about what being a “grown up” even means in the first place.
The gentle chamber folk of “Farmers Market” is one of the most touching things Pulp has ever recorded. In it, Cocker reminisces about meeting his future wife at a market, and deciding to go back to ask for her number as they passed in the car park on the way out. It’s also, via that initial meet-cute, a reminder that it’s never a bad time to show some of the vulnerability and priority that brought you and your partner together in the first place. There’s a lyric in the song that really cuts to the heart of the place More inhabits: “We thought we were just joking trying dreams on for size / we never realised we’d be stuck with them for the rest of our natural lives.”
A recurring theme of More is that these people we pretend to be, or strive to be, when we’re younger, can become an albatross that threaten to hamper our maturity. At the heart of the record is an urge to find a way to hold on to both the carefree and mature aspects of ourselves, and to identify and celebrate ways to bring them together. Here, Pulp gives us More, but not just of the same. If only all reunion albums were this deep, and so damn good!
Honorable Mentions:
Hand Habits | Blue Reminder (Fat Possum)
Meg Duffy’s latest is chunky and ethereal. She excels at writing melodies that sneak up from behind like an embrace from a family member. Blue Reminder exudes a vulnerability that can shake even the numbest heart from its torpor.
Bleach Lab | Close to the Flame EP (Self-released)
The best music recommendations come from friends, family, or music publications. But once in a while, the algorithm does you a solid, too. London’s Bleach Lab brings together goth, shoegaze, jangle pop, and dream pop into an arresting whole that apparently my Apple Music “Mike’s Station” thought I needed to hear. Whether it’s the gauzy romance of “In Your Arms,” the infectious jangle of “Feel Something,” or the driving opener “Drown,” Close to the Flame envelops the listener in a mood, one of shadowy longing, but also of streaks of hopeful light. Hats off to the rich sonic world that bassist Josh Longman, guitarist Frank Wates, and drummer Kieran Weston conjure, and to Jenna Kyle’s throaty croon for making it soar.
Lucy Dacus | Forever Is a Feeling (Geffen)
Lucy Dacus excels at naming the thoughts and memories that linger in the creepy-closet backs of our minds. Her songs drape perceptive observations about queer identity, wincing sepia-toned sleepaway camp awakenings, and general-grade emo longing in a slowly enveloping gothic indie-folk grandeur. It’s no surprise that her natural emotional intelligence, and ever-increasing songwriting prowess, has led to Forever Is a Feeling, a record that wastes no time in diving headfirst into a pool of all-consuming desire.
Check out my full-length review at: https://theartsstl.com/lucy-dacus-forever-is-a-feeling-geffen/
Seashine | s/t (Self-released)
The self-titled debut LP from STL’s Seashine hits all of the right shoegaze/dream pop spots. The mood is immaculate; the songs are crystalline and crushing.
Bioscope | Gentō (earMUSIC)
Marillion guitarist Steve Rothery and Tangerine Dream keyboardist Thorsten Quaeschning team up for an album of cinematic instrumental music. Rothery’s lyrical guitar, which blends melody and rhythm, fits snugly alongside Quaeschning’s scintillating New Age prog/electronica synths. The duo is joined by Elbow drummer Alex Reeves, who helps give the record both an anchor and a propeller. Gentō swirls together progressive rock, electronica, and ambient music to invoke a journey, and tell a story without words.
Kathleen Edwards | Billionaire (Dualtone)
Somehow, it’s already been five years since Kathleen Edwards came out of musical retirement with Total Freedom, which was her clear-eyed and affecting first album in eight years. Much appears to have changed for Edwards in the ensuing half decade since that return. She sold Quitters, the coffee shop she opened after dropping out of the music business, and relocated from her hometown of Ottawa, Ontario to her adopted home state, Florida. She also made a new record, Billionaire. Wisely, Billionaire doesn’t try to recreate the unrepeatable confluence of events that led to Total Freedom’s gracious honesty. Instead, Edwards focuses on what comes after the comeback. It makes for a somewhat more guarded listen, albeit one that’s still capable of moments of touching beauty and brutal honesty.
Check out my full-length review at: https://theartsstl.com/kathleen-edwards-billionaire-dualtone/
Nation of Language | Dance Called Memory (Sub Pop)
On their fourth LP, and first on Sub Pop, Dance Called Memory, Nation of Language keeps finding new ways to explore the shadowier corners of the human heart and psyche via post-punk inspired synth pop. Their innate ability to balance melancholy with a weirdly unexpected sort of spiritual boost is one of the reasons I’ve been a fan since day one.
The Mary Onettes | Sworn (Welfare Sounds)
Sworn, the group’s first full-length since 2013’s Hit the Waves, is filled with the defense of the dark hearts that the band does so well, and quite unlike anyone else. The record arrived in late November, just in time for the sun to pull the blanket up over its head and sleep in during the long, dark winter months. The title track’s woozy, ringing shuffle brings to mind the paradoxical beauty and depression of an 8 AM December sunrise.
Check out my full-length review at: https://theartsstl.com/the-mary-onettes-sworn-welfare-sounds/
Flock of Dimes | The Life You Save (Sub Pop)
Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner’s solo project is a quietly powerful exploration of addiction, codependency, and family dynamics that’s filled with beautifully subtle turns of melodic phrase that grant these poignant realizations about struggling with grief and trauma a graceful sense of freedom.
Bright Eyes | Kids Table EP (Dead Oceans)
I loved Bright Eyes’ 2020 reunion album Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was, but I was disappointed by last year’s Five Dice, All Threes, which came off as freewheeling and ramshackle, but not in any ways that really grabbed me. So when I saw there was a new EP out this year, I was a little wary, but hey, I always listen to Conor Oberst, so I gave it a spin. I’m so happy I did!
Kids Table is focused, and is tailor-made for these batshit insane times we live in, taking a look at the vitality of empathy (and what it takes to keep it going when it’d be easier to check out), the dead end of capitalism, and that general sense of floating in metaphysical space that we all seem to get a lot more of than we probably should these days. It’s also a little hopeful at times. I didn’t think I’d ever have “Bright Eyes 1980s ska song” on my sonic bingo card, but it works—on the eviscerating, but in a fun way, “1st World Blues.”
The EP also features the awesome Alynda Segarra from Bright Eyes tour mates Hurray for the Riff Raff on two tracks, which is a total bonus. Plus, the artwork and packaging absolutely nails the vibe as well. The cover art features a “game of life” type board game filled with warped spaces and black humor. The actual newspaper that forms part of the liner notes, has both satirical articles and album lyrics. The fake ads, that are almost like the sort of things that you find in doctor’s office magazines or in your junk mail, are the icing on the cake.
Still Blank | s/t (National Anthem/Capitol)
Transatlantic duo Jordy Fleming (Hawaii) and Ben Kirkland (Manchester, UK) blend folk, grunge, and a heavier Mazzy Star-esque dream pop into an arresting whole. Their self-titled debut album is akin to a daydream: fuzzy, but punctuated with moments of vividness, and capable of transporting you to a different world for a moment or three.
The Weather Station | Humanhood (Fat Possum)
While the Weather Station’s Humanhood doesn’t quite reach the heights of 2021’s zeitgeist-capturing Ignorance, it’s another strong showing from Tamara Lindeman. While Ignorance looked outward, toward climate change and existential emergency, Humanhood focuses her gaze inward, resulting in a critical, yet empathetic, look at what each of us is capable of. Lindeman paints these songs with a snazzy, jazzy art-rock that’s at once meticulous and free-flowing.
Neko Case | Neon Grey Midnight Green (Anti-)
Neko Case’s first album in seven years, Neon Grey Midnight Green, is informed by loss. In recent years, Case was stunned by the death of a number of close friends and artistic collaborators. Remarkably, the specter of loss didn’t result in a morbid, or even particularly dark record. Instead, Neon Grey leans into celebrating the life and the impact of these departed friends. It’s an album about relationships, and about self-assuredness. Neon Grey is the first time Case has been the sole producer on one of her records. The feeling of being completely responsible for the album’s outcome is mirrored by the theme running throughout of agency for her own self-definition, and self-worth.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Neko Case record without also touching on perennial themes of hers like gender as a construct, the natural world, and humanity as another animal among animals. (Shout out to “Little Gears,” a great song that uses watching a spider build a web as a springboard to musings about self-determination, humility, and wonder.) Neon Grey is also notable for the way Case uses her famous voice, harnessing her gale-force power into something more nuanced, and controlled, than ever before.
Case is one of those rare artists that get better with age. Her youth was a training ground, not a glory day. With Neon Grey Midnight Green, she’s made an album that might be the most fully-formed expression of her worldview, and personhood, to date.
Margo Price | Hard Headed Woman (Loma Vista)
After branching out into psychedelia and Americana on her previous couple of albums, Margo Price returns to her traditional country roots on Hard Headed Woman. In a political climate that seems hell-bent on silencing women, Price is unafraid to be the squeaky wheel. Songs like her swaggering cover of George Jones’ “I Just Don’t Give a Damn,” and the incendiary original “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down,” are defiant and righteously confident. Elsewhere, coming of age chronicle “Losing Streak” and the vivid, intimate “Close to You” deftly illustrate Price’s range, and her ability to mix vulnerability with brashness.
Lera Lynn | Comic Book Cowboy (Ruby Range Records)
Pigeonhole Lera Lynn at your own peril. While Comic Book Cowboy, her ninth album, contains country-rock gems like the darkly breezy “Cherry Tree,” it also showcases her depth as a songwriter—along with her guitar chops. The acoustic noir “Into Nothing” contrasts with the electronic-augmented strum of “Both Sides,” while the title track glides on a trip-hop twang. The album ends with two striking declarations of love and regret—the billowing, pulsating “I Love You” and the starkly insightful “Laundry.” On Comic Book Cowboy, Lynn explores love, life, longing, and self-identity on the cusp of middle age, as well as what it takes to keep your soul intact in a world that too often seems to want to shred it.
Samia | Bloodless (Grand Jury Music)
Samia Finnerty has a talent for weaving specificity into conversationalism. Her third album, Bloodless, illustrates this via songs that veer from contemplative to explosive, often within the same track. Witness the circling acoustic guitars that blow up into distortion on “North Poles,” the piano-thrash of “Carousel,” or the gentle acoustic licks that turn into a cacophony of percussion on “Bovine Excision.” Samia shines with her dynamic songs, supple melodies, and perceptive lyrics that inhabit the space where deep thinking overlaps with overthinking. Bloodless might be her best album so far, and cements her status as a singer/songwriter worth keeping tabs on.
No Joy | Bugland (Hand Drawn Dracula)
While I’m thrilled with the COVID era’s renewed interest in shoegaze, it’s easy to bemoan that there’s not enough innovation going within the currently flourishing genre. Canadian group No Joy (who is really just Jasamine White-Gluz at this point) stands out with its dual commitments to reverence and experimentation. Bugland is a fascinating hybrid of shoegaze, electronica, alt rock, and prog that often feels like being happily stuck inside of a dial-up modem trying to connect.
Others Worth Exploring:
Saint Etienne | International (Heavenly)
Hamilton Leithauser | This Side of the Island (Glassnote)
Elton John & Brandi Carlile | Who Believes in Angels? (Interscope)
Destroyer | Dan’s Boogie (Merge)
Sharon Van Etten | Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory (Jagjaguwar)
Sunflower Bean | Mortal Primetime (Lucky Number)
Stereolab | Instant Holograms On Metal Film (Duophonic UHF/Warp)
Tobias Jesso, Jr. | Shine (R&R)
Suede | Antidepressants (BMG)
Oneohtrix Point Never | Tranquilizer (Warp)
Dear Boy | Celebrator (Last Gang)
All the Days | Rules We Follow (Yellow Lady Slippers)
Daniel Avery | Tremor (Domino)
Snocaps | s/t (Anti-)
Wednesday | Bleeds (Dead Oceans)
Case Oats | Last Missouri Exit (Merge)
Charles Ellsworth | Cosmic Cannon Fodder (Burro Borracho)
Josh Ritter | I Believe In You, My Honeydew (Pytheas Recordings)
Sunday (1994) | Doomsday EP (Arista)
