In this season, I look back on my ten favorite records of the past year. Please note I am not claiming these are the best albums of 2025. I’m well aware that the quirky and rather limited range of my personal preferences means that outstanding music being released in many of the most popular genres (including mainstream country, jazz, pop and hip hop) are completely out of my wheelhouse. Without further ado, then, my entirely subjective top ten:
10. Haley Heynderickx and Max Garcia Conover, What of Our Nature
A contemporary, queer and Latinx take on the classic folk era, with stripped down acoustic arrangements and progressive political lyrics that recall Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Malvina Reynolds. In the opening “Song for Aliza” we dial into the intended audience: If you, like me, have never believed in this kingdom of commerce we live in. . . .
In this darkest time of a very dark year, we dearly need the hope of “This Morning I Am Born Again,” which describes the task at hand: In our great eternal moment in the thrall of our own star/In our bordered and our neighbored and our tortured little yards/Fighting all this emptiness against us
To quote the late great Harlan Howard: Three chords and the truth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSPrj2ZUZUU
9. Ruston Kelly, Pale, Through the Window
Progressive singer/songwriter country music that exudes hard-won joy and wisdom. This is what you get when the Carter family meets Jackson Browne.
I didn’t say it’d be easy but it’d be worth it. . . /Into the great wide open/I surrender it all
A journey from self-loathing to self-compassion, which we all seek right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSW1IZ-WLyw
8. Julien Baker and TORRES, Send a Prayer My Way
Two confessional queer indie-rock icons get together and make a superb country record. Proud, rooted and full of southern love and heartbreak. “Sugar in the Tank” offers irresistible lusty banjo and steel guitar-driven hooks that make you want to kick up your boots and dance with your lover, while “Bottom of a Bottle” is an LGBTQ take on the age-old sad sack countrified alcoholic lament:
So I searched the corner bar/I lost my faith/So I went wishin’ on a Lone Star/I lost my woman/. . . Oh God, don’t let me die here at the bottom of a bottle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4kYwPXrD0o
7. James McMurtry, The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy
James McMurtry is one of our most gifted—and profoundly underrated—singer/songwriters. His hardscrabble poetry and cynical sensibility, which recall artists like Raymond Carver and Warren Zevon, feel more essential than ever in the age of Donald Trump. I can’t think of any other living musician who could have penned a song like “Pinocchio in Vegas,” which opens: Pinocchio’s in Vegas with his eyes on the prize/He’s a real boy now, his dick grows when he lies
Another highlight is the Americana-tinged look back at 9-11, “Annie,” which reminds us how much our current political landscape dates back to that tragic day a quarter century ago: I never thought much of the younger Bush/He never seemed to have a clue/. . . He laid the blame on Saddam Hussein/You’da thought we might have learned/He sat with Prince Bandar, both enjoyed a fine cigar/On the White House Truman Balcony while the Pentagon still burned
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK91EQV6B2Q
6. Willi Carlisle, Winged Victory
So, queer Americana seems to be a recurring motif in this year’s list, and no one represents that trend with more passion, gusto, heart and humor than Willi Carlisle. In his talking blues number “Big Butt Billy” he notes: With hash browns so burnt and eggs so raw/You make an Idahoan cry and hear the chicken squall. . . /I’ve never seen a finer they/them than Big Butt Billy
The whole record is filled to the brim with banjos, accordions, fiddles, and odes to working people like “We Have Fed You All for 1000 Years”:
Come and reckon our dead by the forges red/And the factories where we spin/Oh, if blood be the price of your cursed wealth/Good God, we have paid it in!
And as a bonus, I saw Carlisle live this fall at the Shrine and it was an extraordinary show—in addition to all that amazing music, we got giant puppets, scrolling stories, powerful protest politics and a fabulous, tireless clogging fiddler. This is what big-hearted looks like. A treat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTlrMRLk8LQ
5. Craig Finn, Always Been
A stellar solo effort from the front man of the Hold Steady. Craig Finn is another blue collar storyteller, and this album combines irresistible hooks with the loosely told tale of a small-time former preacher who has hit the skids. Music and lyrics take us on a non-linear cross-country trip through space and time, finding beauty in despair. The sensibility is Springsteen-like with a little more cynicism than we usually get from The Boss—elegiac, lovely, sad with some great bangers mixed in. One of those is “Luke and Leanna”: They moved to the city/To have an adventure/Ten years together/Hold on till it hurts
Sometimes beauty lingers even when hope is gone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96HCUFQIGqE
4. Lily Seabird, Trash Mountain
American singer-songwriter that recalls the best of Lucinda Williams—and that is high praise, indeed. A warm sound bath of twangy guitar, harmonica and heartfelt vocals. Like most great poetry, this one offers more questions than answers, starting with the title track:
How are we supposed to remember things/when everything is coming and going/and my cell phone says to me that I’m/no use in knowing/we’re just living in catastrophe/and when did everyone start thinking so much/me, me, me?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhn8B47_E5o
3. Allo Darlin’, Bright Nights
This British indie-pop band is aptly named, because the music on this album brings illumination and lightness amidst the gathering gloom. More jangly guitars, adult lyrics and fortification for the struggles that lie ahead. This is how we gain perspective and muster energy when we’re down, from the song “Cologne”:
And yes I know it’s been a shitty year/And that the winters are so brutal over here/And in the purple sky the clouds look like pearls/And the frost on the windowpanes diamonds
The river is wide/the road so long/I’m not in it for the ride/I’m in it for the long run
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULst-CAaKGM
2. Snocaps, Snocaps
My favorite artist of the last decade is Katie Crutchfield, aka Waxahatchee, who is joined in this impromptu band by her twin sister Allison, Brad Cook, and indie-rock darling MJ Lenderman. To my surprise, I was most drawn to Allison’s songs, which rock a little harder than Katie’s Waxahatchee material. This record is a little ragged around the edges—in all the best ways. Start with “Brand New City”:
Neon frost on your glasses lens/And the darker it gets/The less we make any sense/We’re the last two in, the last two in/Toast to us and the game where no one wins/. . . Brand new city, same dark bar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExeqAn9sjoA
1. Bruce Springsteen, Streets of Philadelphia Sessions (from Tracks II)
It was a great year for fans of The Boss, with the long-awaited release of both electric “Nebraska” and the seven full discs of Tracks II. My favorite, by far, is the second, which offers 1990s sad, sensuous synths, loneliness and alienation in abundance tempered by sparks of light and glimpses of a better world. “One Beautiful Morning” opens with “Her eyes were black with disease” and no peace, but then—in the classic Springsteen chorus that offers relief from the darkness of the verses—insists:
We give our hearts to the mystery
We give our souls to the mystery, spirit flies
Come one beautiful morning
Come one beautiful morning
Come one beautiful morning when we rise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LoFFXTk0v4
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