Before I share my list of favorite albums of 2025, I need to repeat my regular “year-end list” disclaimer. If you already know the drill, feel free to skip ahead.
1) Ranking albums is dumb…
We all know this. Art isn’t a competition. I can’t really distinguish between my 13th favorite album and my 15th favorite. This is all talk. None of it really matters.
2) …but it’s kind of fun…
Of course it is! Because it’s about sharing music recommendations. And I do mean share — make your own lists and show them to me, especially if you’re the sort inclined to complain about lists. Put yourself out there and let me complain about you, too!
3) …because it’s really about discovering an album or two (or possibly more!) that you might not have known about otherwise.
Exactly!
Now, let’s rank!
PRE-LIST “ALMOST MADE THE MAIN LIST” LIST AWARDS
Favorite Album Released In 2024 Award That I Came To Fully Love In 2025: Cameron Winter — Heavy Metal
It’s the issue that’s ripped the critical community apart — should this be counted as one of 2025’s best albums, even though it came out in December? And the answer is “no.” Come on, people! Let’s be real here! You don’t get to do the mulligan as a critic because you were too busy doing your year-end list in 2024 to pay proper attention to this instant classic upon its release. To give myself a little — too much? — credit, I did talk about Heavy Metal on Indiecast the week it came out. But putting it on the proper list this year would have made me feel like a cheat, a fink, and a flagrant defier of our space-time continuum laws.
Album Nobody Else But Me Liked Award: Kyle M — The Real Me
The year’s weirdest album. Former SNL cast member Kyle Mooney retires from comedy, puts out this collection of bedroom pop songs he seemingly wrote in 10 minutes, and they’re all still in my head months later. It’s a “funny” record but not “actually funny.” But it does legitimately move me. And I prefer it to many songs I heard this year that took more than 10 minutes to write.
Album I Suspect I’ll Regret Not Putting On This List: Caroline — Caroline 2
This effort from the admirably adventurous British art-rock band thrilled and confounded me, all without ever fully clicking like I wanted. Though if prior experience is any indication, it will as soon as this column publishes.
Favorite Old Album That I Heard For The First Time This Year: Michael Nesmith — The Prison
I could have put any Michael Nesmith album here. The one-time Monkee (who passed away in 2021) owned me for most of 2025. Many of his solo records are in the country-rock lane, and they’re all worth hearing. But I’m picking this wondrous prog-rock oddity from 1974, a so-called “book with a soundtrack” about a man trying to convince his girlfriend that he can escape his criminal confinement with his mind. I promise that it will make you want to serve a long sentence inside of Nesmith’s brain.
THE PROPER LIST
26. The Necks — Disquiet
Earlier this year I wrote a column about the most “CD album” albums. It was not a list of “best” CD albums, I explained. It was about “most” CD albums, “as in albums that make the most sense in the CD format. Or, in some cases, only make sense in the CD format.” Disquiet is that album for 2025. The latest from Australia’s leading improvisational jazz-adjacent trio, it’s a triple album containing four tracks — the shortest is 26 minutes and the longest goes on for longer than 74. I don’t know if you can purchase this on vinyl, but anyone who attempts to do so should be apprehended on camera by Keith Morrison as a true freak.
25. Nourished By Time — The Passionate Ones
I loved the prior release that Marcus Brown released as Nourished By Time, the 2024 EP Catching Chickens, which played like the lost soundtrack to a 1980s Michael Mann crime thriller as filtered through a lo-fi VHS lens. Brown further expands on his mix of R&B, pop, and gritty rock on The Passionate Ones — another exquisite “CD album” album, to be sure — which balances politically minded lyrics about modern economic dystopia with atmospheric soundscapes that evoke rain-soaked streets set against a post-apocalyptic horizon.
24. Good Flying Birds — Talulah’s Tape
One of my favorite genres come year-end list time is “good-ass indie.” I’m a fan because “good-ass indie” albums rule, of course. But as a critic, I put extra emphasis on this music because it tends to get overlooked by critics. There’s nothing flashy about “good-ass indie” albums. They do the job of presenting quality guitar music in an engaging package without necessarily reinventing the wheel artistically or shaping a larger narrative. It’s just satisfying, songs-centric music. Sometimes a “good-ass indie” band can achieve wide acclaim — the reigning patron saint of the genre this decade is Alvvays, and Spoon are the Beatles of this music — but they mostly reside below the radar. Not here, though. There are more than a dozen such albums on this list, at least, depending on one’s own personal definition of “good-ass indie” — starting with this band from Indianapolis named after a song from Alien Lanes, which panders shamelessly (and successfully) to my own interests.
23. Alien Boy — You Wanna Fade?
More “good-ass indie” music! It’s been a while (too long!) since 2021’s Don’t What Know What I Am, which made my best-of list that year. But these canny Portland power-poppers justified the wait with an even better record. While Alien Boy is often classified as emo, You Wanna Fade? shows that they’re really a great pop-rock band with a stealth knack for melodramatic grandiosity. The melodies come fast and furious, but the moody guitar tones ground the music in a kind of magnetic melancholy.
22. Craig Finn — Always Been
You know who else gets short shrift on lists like this? The wily veteran. Who is the wily veteran? The reliable songwriter or musician who has put out so many good albums over so many years that the garden-variety music critic — novelty-obsessed, trends-sensitive, afflicted with the memory and loyalty of a mosquito — decides that they are now boring. Not fair, I say! In the case of Craig Finn, the man has been writing slyly melancholic story songs about soulful losers for nearly 30 years now. Though Always Been shows that he’s growing along with his characters, and with the assistance of producer Adam Granduciel he’s made the Tunnel Of Love homage I didn’t know I wanted from him.
SUBLIST NO. 1: MY TOP 10 FAVORITE “WILY VETERAN” ALBUMS OF 2025
10. Pulp — More
Wily “British music magazines can’t get enough of this” veteran.
9. Todd Snider — High, Lonesome, And Then Some
Wily “one more harrowing listen before a too-early exit” veteran.
8. Bon Iver — SABLE, fABLE
Wily “he’s threatened Wisconsinites with early retirement more times than Brett Favre” veteran.
7. Jeff Tweedy — Twilight Override
Wily “I’m honestly still working my way through the triple album” veteran.
6. The Waterboys — Life, Death And Dennis Hopper
Wily “cameos from Springsteen, Steve Earle and Fiona Apple make this album a wily veteran convention” veteran.
5. Patterson Hood — Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams
Wily “every indie-country artist under the age of 30 would let him crash on their couch” veteran.
4. Counting Crows — Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!
Wily “the tunes are good enough to overcome the atrocious album cover and title” veteran.
3. Cass McCombs — Interior Live Oak
Wily “I’m more annoyed than you are that this isn’t on the main list” veteran.
2. Panda Bear — Sinister Grift
Wily “he’s reached his ’90s Paul Simon era and that’s a beautiful thing” veteran.
1. Van Morrison — Remembering Now
Wily “the beauty of his voice now is inversely proportional to his personal geniality, thank god” veteran.
21. Destroyer — Dan’s Boogie
Another wily veteran, yes, but he can’t be put in just that category or any category. His latest doesn’t really fit in any part of his own discography. It feels, as I wrote when it came out, “like a new beginning after the previous three releases, which form a stylistically united trilogy. (Let’s call those dark, synth-infused LPs his ’80s Dylan period — which coming from me is a compliment.) Dan’s Boogie, meanwhile, retains some of the feel of that music while also reaching back to the live-band looseness of aughts-era albums like This Night and Rubies.”
20. Alex G — Headlights
It’s hard to think of Alex G in the “wily veteran” category since he still looks like the kid who sells you Zyns at the corner convenience store. But he’s been in the game now for almost two decades, and with Headlights, he’s made some of his most straightforward and “mature” music. That might have rubbed some long-time fans the wrong way, as songs like “Afterlife” and “June Guitar” smooth out his rough edges. But Alex has an undeniable knack for heartfelt hooks that make these gentle odes to young parenthood linger in the heart over repeat listens.
19. Sharon Van Etten — Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory
I’m grouping this boisterously winning band effort from the usually quiet Van Etten with the quiet release from the usually boisterous Alex G because they are both exceptions to a depressing trend in 2025 — disappointing “comeback” records from 2010s era indie stars. More often than not, the buzziest artists of the late Obama/early Trump eras really struggled to break out of records that exuded sonic malaise and creative stasis. For Van Etten (and to a lesser degree Alex G), the key to avoiding this was upending old formulas, which for her meant making a delightful slab of synth-heavy indie sleaze (but with a thoughtful, sensitive side).
SUBLIST NO. 2: THE 10 MOST DISAPPOINTING 2025 ALBUMS BY 2010s ERA INDIE STARS (RANKED FROM LEAST TO MOST DISAPPOINTING)
10. Big Thief — Double Infinity
Not bad but also surprisingly far from great (especially by their high standards).
9. Lorde — Virgin
The most entertaining album cycle of the year — her Rolling Stone interview was especially rich with viral quotes — so I can’t fault it too much, honestly.
8. Haim — I Quit
I defended it when it came out (because of the Zooropa sample), but then it got an Album Of The Year nomination and now I believe that the Grammy people and I are both guilty of overrating it.
7. Whitney — Small Talk
All due respect but they seem like a “should have stayed in 2016” band to me.
6. Car Seat Headrest — The Scholars
Ditto, I’m afraid.
5. Japanese Breakfast — For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)
A classic “this needed to be 20 percent better or 40 percent worse to be interesting” album.
4. Julien Baker and Torres — Send A Prayer My Way
You forgot about this album until I mentioned it here.
3. Mac DeMarco — Guitar
Big-time ditto.
2. Lucy Dacus — Forever Is A Feeling
“Fine” is also a feeling, though not an especially urgent one.
1. Tame Impala — Deadbeat
Kevin Parker picked the wrong time to take “tame” literally.
18. S.G. Goodman — Planting By The Signs
This Kentucky native first arrived on my radar with 2022’s excellent Teeth Marks, which established her as a leading light in the decade’s thriving “don’t call it alt-country even though that’s what it is” indie Americana scene. Her latest album refines the predecessor’s mix of sharply drawn small-town vignettes and murky rockin’ choogle, demonstrating Goodman’s flair for slow-burn songs that play like scenes from a cult-movie character study from the 1970s.
17. Zach Top — Ain’t In It For My Health
I listened to a good amount of country music from the ’80s and ’90s this year, so Zach Top especially hit the spot for me. Coming after 2024’s Cold Beer & Country Music, his latest LP continued his faithful mining of that era’s neo-traditionalist crooners, stoic guys with fun-loving sides like Alan Jackson and George Strait equally adept at heartbreak ballads and pontoon-boat party songs. Top offers up plenty of both on Ain’t In It For My Health, which dips a toe in Buffett-friendly silliness (“Good Times & Tan Lines”) while playing it straight on weepies like “I Know A Place.”
16. Momma — Welcome To My Blue Sky
“This Brooklyn-by-way-of-LA band suffers somewhat by virtue of doing something musically that a million other bands have attempted in the past several years,” I wrote in June. “The reference points couldn’t be more obvious: Siamese Dream, Veruca Salt, Hole’s Celebrity Skin era, general shoegaziness. But Momma deserves extra credit for attempting all that and actually pulling it off. If you can allow yourself to be drawn in one more time by a music critic promising “MTV Buzz Bin rock but new,” I promise that you will find Welcome To My Blue Sky as fun as I do.”
SUBLIST NO. 3: TOP 10 ’90S ALBUMS THAT CAME OUT 2025
10. Snocaps — Snocaps
Sounds like a band that got signed to Matador and made two albums, both of which now sell for way too much money on Discogs.
9. Sam Fender — People Talking
Sounds like the post-Be Here Now/pre-Coldplay, late-stage Britpop album that’s too melodramatic and earnest for my friends and perfect for me.
8. Joanne Robertson — Blurr
Sounds like the critically acclaimed British album purchased for $18.99 after reading about it in Uncut at Borders.
7. Westerman — A Jackal’s Wedding
Sounds like the Peter Gabriel album also purchased at Borders for your dad’s Christmas gift.
6. Goose — Everything Must Go
Sounds like your favorite jam band settling down and making a “focused” studio album with Steve Lillywhite or Don Was.
5. Guerilla Toss — You’re Weird Now
Another poppy jam-band record, only this one is popular in your dorm because it reminds jocky sophomores and beautiful freshmen of the instrumental tracks from a Beastie Boys CD.
4. Tyler Childers — Snipe Hunter
Sounds like the country record that rock people allow themselves to like, a la Johnny Cash’s American Recordings, because Rick Rubin produced it.
3. Turnstile — Never Enough
Sounds like Woodstock 99.
2. Water From Your Eyes — It’s A Beautiful Place
Sounds like someone got super stoned and melted every Ween CD into one super Ween CD.
1. Bruce Springsteen — Streets Of Philadelphia Sessions (from the Tracks 2 box set)
Sounds like the Boss ditching the guitars in 1994 and making a “synths and loops” record. (Actually, that’s exactly what it is.)
15. Wednesday — Bleeds
Suffers a bit from “really good album that comes after the career-defining album” syndrome. Also: Occasionally feels like Karly Hartzman emptied her notebook of “Wednesday-like lyrical observations,” with each line feeling it could have spun off its own song. (The Death Grips lyric from “Pick Up That Knife” verges on self-parody.) But I’m nitpicking. This is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a defining band of 2020s indie. Their intersection of country and shoegaze will be a sonic signpost in future period pieces set in the mid-2020s. And Wednesday’s run since Twin Plagues is going to be studied and treasured for years to come.
14. Greg Freeman — Burnover
A similar phenomenon to the Wednesday record for me. Burnover is really good, though I like it slightly less than the one that came before. In Freeman’s case, that’s his 2023 record I Looked Out, which has the same ramshackle, “live in the studio” vibe of Burnover, only it’s a little more live and a little more ramshackle. Though the refinement of Burnover does have its advantages, particularly the ways that Freeman has slowly distanced himself from omnipresent Jason Molina comparisons. The field of indie-country bards has grown very crowded, but Freeman separates himself with his ability to marry idiosyncratic lyrical concerns (specifically the mythology of New England) with casually rousing heartland rock.
13. Oasis — Live at Wembley Stadium, 7/25/25 (Live Bootleg)
My concert of the year. Seeing them in London was mind-blowing. As I wrote at the time, “the full spectrum of human emotion was represented. During ‘Cigarettes And Alcohol,’ the GA floor section was transformed into a human wave of bobbing bodies that (almost) resembled a mosh pit. During ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger,’ I saw a burly man behind me sobbing heavily. During “The Masterplan,” an extremely high yob knocked a drink out of my hand like he was rehearsing a lethal karate chop. But the most common expression of communal excitement was the mass sing-along. It’s one thing to hear a couple dozen people nail Oasis B-sides in a bar. It was quite another to see the throngs at Wembley sing every word to ‘Half The World Away,’ one of the undercard tracks from 1994’s ‘Whatever’ single. I’ve always had a ‘whatever’ kind of attitude about ‘Half The World Away,’ one of the lesser Noel acoustic songs from their imperial mid-’90s period. But after hearing all those Brits nearly drown out Noel at Wembley, I have newfound appreciation and even awe for how ingrained Oasis B-sides are culturally over there.” Incredibly, this carries over shockingly well to the bootleg a friend slipped to me online a few days later. Listening to people shout over a band I love is more musical than I anticipated. The fidelity might be a little dodgy, but my memories eternally are in high-def.
SUBLIST NO. 4: FIVE GREAT LIVE ALBUMS BY CLASSIC-ROCK BANDS FROM BOX SETS RELEASED IN 2025
5. The Who, Live At The Pontiac Silverdome 12/7/79 (from Who Are You: Super Deluxe Edition)
4. The Rolling Stones, Live At Earls Court 1976 (from Black And Blue: Super Deluxe)
3. Little Feat, Live At The Orpheum Theatre, Boston, MA 10/31/75 (from The Last Record Album: Deluxe Edition)
2. Bob Dylan — Carnegie Hall, NYC (October 26, 1963) (from The Bootleg Series Vol. 18: Through The Open Window 1956–1963)
1. Pink Floyd, Live from the Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1975 (from Wish You Were Here (50th Anniversary))
12. Sharp Pins — Balloons Balloons Balloons
The second album on this list that I would describe as Guided By Voices-esque. It’s the project of Kai Slater, a very talented rock ‘n’ roll wunderkind from Chicago who also plays in the pretty good post-punk band Lifeguard. I prefer Sharp Pins, though I’m also more into this specific milieu (fuzzy, lo-fi pop songs that sound like an oldies radio station with poor reception). I do find it strange that he was born the same year that Earthquake Glue was released, but my impending mid-life crisis is neither his nor your concern.
11. This Is Lorelei — Holo Boy
Nate Amos is practically a senior citizen in comparison to Slater. (He was born between Same Place The Fly Got Smashed and Propeller.) He’s also involved with two musical projects, both of them excellent — Water From Your Eyes (already mentioned) and This Is Lorelei, his more “conventional” pop-rock songwriting outlet. I loved last year’s Box For Buddy, Box For Star, but Holo Boy is a skeleton key for appreciating the full breadth of his work, which has mostly unfolded as a series of impromptu releases on Bandcamp. With Holo Boy, he’s crafted a succinct sort of “greatest hits” album for that era, and in the process made a case for being one of the most impressive indie tunesmiths of his generation. (I’m tempted to call him the McCartney to Cameron Winter’s Bob Dylan and MJ Lenderman’s Neil Young, but let’s put a pause on that for now and revisit in 10 years for a final assessment.)
A Special Note Before My Top 10
Hope you’re enjoying the list so far! If I haven’t listed something that you like, I can confirm that I have “no love” for it. In fact, I hate every album from 2025 that is not on this list. All of the albums that were released this year were either great (on the list) or the worst thing ever (not on the list).
10. Jonny Greenwood — One Battle After Another (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
I’m a big fan of Jonny’s film scores, particularly the ones from PTA. When I ranked Radiohead releases, including solo efforts, I put his scores for There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread in the top 10. But I like this even more. Two things stand out — one, it’s the movie music that sounds the most like Radiohead. (Note the echoes of “Burn The Witch” in the show-stopping “River Of Hills.”) Two, it’s his most “normal” score, in that Greenwood was tasked with scoring “normal” movie things (like shootouts and car chases) rather than the highly interior character-study “action” of Paul Thomas Anderson’s other films. The result is a soundtrack that stands on its own as an album exceptionally well.
9. Hotline TNT — Raspberry Moon
One more “we refined the sound of our previous acclaimed album” album, only in this case I think it was an improvement. “Under the guiding hand of producer Amos Pitsch from DIY heroes Tenement – they recorded Raspberry Moon in Pitsch’s (and my) hometown of Appleton, Wis. — Anderson both streamlined and beefed-up Hotline TNT’s sound, sacrificing some of the gritty character of Cartwheel for extra anthemic power,” I wrote back in June. “You can hear it in the single (and one of the year’s best songs) ‘Julia’s War,’ which has a ‘na na na’ chorus I can imagine inspiring massive sing-alongs live.”
8. Fust — Big Ugly
I’ve already talked about several records that fall under the “don’t call it alt-country even though that’s what it is” umbrella. Though most of those artists also have a strong dose of old-school indie-rock in their DNA. Fust, however, is the purest manifestation of the updated alt-country sensibility. Whereas Wednesday and Greg Freeman have noisier and punkier shades to their sound, Big Ugly brings it all the way back home to the prime of Lucinda Williams and Son Volt, with brawny acoustic and pedal steel guitars supporting Aaron Dowdy’s layered observations about southern miscellanea.
7. Friendship — Caveman Wakes Up
The year’s second-best “David Berman-indebted” album. Also one of my go-to “patio” albums this year, always high praise coming from me. Like all great patio albums, Caveman Wakes Up can level you emotionally if you’re listening by yourself at dusk (due to Dan Wriggens’ subtly fraught narratives) or it can melt into the background as a suitably meaty cookout soundtrack. Like 2022’s similarly affecting Love The Stranger, I expect this to be a reliable revisit during all the summers ahead.
SUBLIST NO. 5: 10 MORE “CATHARSIS/COOKOUT DUALITY” PATIO ALBUMS, UNRANKED
Beauty Saloon — BS
Charley Crockett — Dollar A Day
Jerry David DeCicca — Cardiac Country
Dutch Interior — Moneyball
Sam Moss — Swimming
Neu Blume — Let It Win
Will Olsen — 1 5 4
Hayden Pedigo — I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away
Adrianne Lenker — Live At Revolution Hall
Rose City Band — Sol Y Sombra
6. Cory Hanson — I Love People
The title is ironic! Like seemingly every standout singer-songwriter in the indie space these days, Hanson also plays in a terrific rock band, Wand. But his solo records offer a clearer picture of his lyrical style: witty, skeptical, somewhat misanthropic. On the title track, he sneers, “I love people / with incurable disease,” like Randy Newman if Randy’s appreciation of the Eagles was 100 percent more ironic. It’s little wonder that the album’s tenderest sounding song is an ode to Lou Reed, the king of turning outsider scorn into gorgeous pop songs, which Hanson does expertly here.
5. Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band — New Threats For The Soul
Davis has been kicking around the periphery of the indie-country scene for two decades, first with the Chicago band State Champion and then on his own with the adventurous Roadhouse Band riding shotgun. But a slot opening for MJ Lenderman on the Manning Fireworks tour amounted to a mid-career break, and Davis seized his moment of notoriety by crafting an album of virtuosic, serio-comic story songs that often stretch to epic length. “He might come off like a show-off if the songs weren’t so authentically conversational or genuinely, pleasingly weird,” I observed back in July. “The lyrics frequently address the challenges of standing up to omnipresent loneliness and discouragement while searching for rare moments of grace. But they’re also about how our malfunctioning brains process the world around us in real time, as a series of warped similes and counterintuitive metaphors that are simultaneously funny and tragic. He’s like John Prine if John Prine had tried to write “Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands” each time he picked up a guitar.”
4. Brian Dunne — Clams Casino
Every year there’s one album that I underrate as a “fun but maybe not important” record, in that obnoxiously chin-scratchy music-critic kind of way. Then, when I’m making my year-end list, I discover that it was one of the records I secretly loved the most after all, like the end of some bad ’90s romantic comedy. For me in 2025, that record was Clams Casino. Whereas I Love People is a masterful pop-rock record steeped in irony (the kind of record I tend to love unabashedly), Clams Casino is the manic pixie dream girl you fall for like your listening experience was scripted by Cameron Crowe. Upon release, I classified it as heartland rock, but that doesn’t quite fit. It’s more like Fountains Of Wayne’s Welcome Interstate Managers without the snark — not that I’m against snark (I am addicted to snark, sadly), but when you have choruses this good you don’t need it.
3. Florry — Sounds Like…
Here’s a sentence I never imagined typing in 2025: Two of the albums in my top three remind me of the Rolling Stones. Florry is the dirtbag, bootleg, Cocksucker Blues side of the Stones equation — all grease and swagger and sloppiness and reckless abandon. It’s the same vibe I got from their live show, one of the best I saw this year, where every wild guitar solo was accompanied by the sweetest guitar-solo face you’ve ever seen. Underneath it all are Francie Medosch’s slices of life from America’s underbelly, as wry as they are spry. Just pure, contact-buzz joy of the highest order. Also: The “good-ass indie” album of the year.
SUBLIST NO. 6: 10 MORE “GOOD-ASS INDIE” ALBUMS, UNRANKED
Andy Boay — You Took That Walk For The Two Of Us
Good-ass “sounds like spooky Beach Boys” indie.
The Convenience — Like Cartoon Vampires
Good-ass “very Spoon-esque” indie.
Hannah Frances — Nested In Tangles
Good-ass “music so luminous I assumed she was British” indie.
Glass-Beagle — Early Riser
Good-ass “they must teach kids from Chicago to make good Wilco-inspired music” indie.
Horsegirl — Phonetics On And On
Good-ass “young people making old people post-punk” indie.
Liquid Mike — Hell Is An Airport
Good-ass “the best band from Upper Michigan since Da Yoopers” indie.
Shallowater — God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars
Good-ass “like if Cormac McCarthy made a Texas slowcore record” indie.
Jay Som — Belong
Good-ass “I can’t believe her debut will be 10 years old in 2026” indie.
The Tubs — Cotton Grown
Good-ass “rocking British folk-punk” indie.
Eli Winter — A Trick Of The Light
Good-ass “play this album at my funeral” indie.
2. Bill Fox — Resonance
The return of this relatively obscure genius singer-songwriter from Ohio — a hero to people like Jeff Tweedy and Katie Crutchfield — was my personal feel-good story of the year. “For 99.999 percent of the population, this will register as the first-ever news about an artist with the most generic ‘Ohio man’ name imaginable,” I wrote in April. “But for a small cult of fans, it is a wondrous development. Resonance is the first Bill Fox record in 13 years, and only his fifth solo LP in the past 29 years. (He also fronted a power-pop band in the ’80s called The Mice that is worshipped by power-pop freaks like the aforementioned Robert Pollard, who has raved about them being an influence on GBV. Fox, in turn, sounds a bit like an amalgam of Pollard and his former GBV bandmate, the elfin-voiced Tobin Sprout.) The bulk of Fox’s reputation rests on two albums he put out in the late ’90s, Shelter From The Smoke (1996) and Transit Byzantium (1998). They were mostly recorded at home by Fox himself on a four-track. Unlike the unruly blasts of psychedelic pseudo-arena rock turned out by his peers in GBV, Fox plays songs with Dylanesque instrumentation (voice, guitar, harmonica) and a Beatlesque melodic sense. And his lyrics — often lovelorn, occasionally political, usually introspective, and always poetic in a plainspoken way — are far better-written and heartbreaking than they need to be.”
1. Geese — Getting Killed
I said it was my album of the year in September, and I feel the same way in December. Getting Killed just announced itself as an instant classic — it’s accessible but not too accessible, it rocks but not at the expense of being smart, it’s smart but not in a self-satisfied way, it’s cool but not cold, it has serious buzz but it also sounds timeless. If you don’t get it, I’m sorry, I’ve been there, it’s not fun being on the outside looking in. But these guys have that intangible quality we might as well call “the juice.” You can listen to Getting Killed and hear the continuum of bands that Geese draws from. (Radiohead, The Strokes, Talking Heads, the Stones, any good arty rock band you could name.) You can also hear the album (particularly if you’re young) and believe they have no predecessor, and that old people comparing them to old bands are annoying, and they belong only to your generation. Both things are true — this is a great band in the “classic” sense, and a great band in the parlance of “now.” And that’s exciting, especially if you still love rock bands and you’re pleasantly surprised there are still bands that capture the zeitgeist like this.
