Ah, another year, another year older, another year closer to
kissing dirt. I should be less glib in my introduction for this year's list
because this year was not so bad on my ears. Many artists of note, prestige,
and accreditation that I've managed to keep a bead on had releases. Melody's Echo loaded a hot one into the Chamber, and Stereolab
made themselves heard again with a fresh sonic assay. Billy Woods dropped an
album in the same year that he and Elucid ignited a heater with The Alchemist, and then The
Alchemist daisy-chained that dish with a second serving of Alfredo along with Freddie Gibbs. La Dispute crashed back into view with No One Was Driving the
Car, White Reaper showed they still have something left in the tank with Only
Slightly Empty, and Deftones shared some Private Music with the
public. Also, Turnstile released Glow On again for some reason. It's all
fantastic, and you won't hear a disparaging word from these lips as far as the
quality of any of it, but... why do I
still feel underwhelmed? Am I just spoiled for choice? Spiritually sick? I
can't say for sure, but I just can't muster the will to commentate on any of
it.
"Saying thing is your job! You have one job! Why you no
do job good?!?" I hear you shrieking at me (hypothetically). Firstly, no,
my actual job is much less interesting than writing about music (and
incidentally pays much better too [emphasis for
exaggeration]), and secondly, none of the "big" releases this
year are of the kind that I even entertain for coverage here, normally. They're
all either on major labels (or on labels that are large enough that they can
run in the same pack as the majors on occasion), and they all have large enough
audiences that my throwing 2 cents into the coffee can doesn't do much for
either of us (emotionally, commercially, artistically, etc...)
Then there is the fact that they're all huge la
discourse artists, aka music makers that you have to have an opinion on (mandatorily
sanguine btw unless you're carving a niche brand as a "discerning"
contrarian [ie a fussy little bitch]) in order to build a reputation as a
take-haver, taste-contriver, and cultural instigator (read: gatekeeper). None
of that interests me. I'm not looking to become a marketable personality, one
who imposes a canon on people, enforces a listening regimen, or gives people
anxiety about what they are or aren't committing brainpower to enjoying
(however low voltage). My goal here is to share what I find
interesting/invigorating with you as a supplement to your other habits of
listening and engagement, as a personal labor of love and expressive outlet,
and hopefully in a way that is enough off the beaten path that you escape the
dehumanizing torrent of algorithmic optimization- at least for the one minute
to an hour or so it takes to read/listen one of my reviews/interviews (hey, a minute
of fresh air in the prison yard a day helps reduce stress and illness in inmates
according to leading studies on the subject, so you can think of me as
providing a similar benefit).
The other thing about all these big, crucial names in music
(really any flagship standard-bearers in the moment) is that even when what
they're doing is good, worthy, and platinum standard (which, in my estimation,
it mostly is), emotionally, for me, it just lands like more
"content." Like, I like what they do, but keeping up with them kind
of feels like being on a treadmill long after the buildup of lactic acid in my
system has caused my organs to begin humming with a concerning arrhythmia. As
in, "Oh, so-and-so has a drop on the way, I should probably know what
that's about," instead of IDK, giving my brain a break, or whatever...
Continuing as before, it often feels like running an extra mile after I've
already completed a 5k. I have to ask myself, am I doing this for my own
health, or am I doing it because other people are going to run that extra mile,
so I should too...? It's a paradox I've wrestled with for a while without a
clear or satisfying resolution.
Something that Danny Brown (whose LP, Stardust, was
an essential release for me this year) said in an interview recently that
resonated with me is that there are "too many artists, and not enough
fans." This was in response to a general question about why it's harder
than ever to find fresh-sounding music, and it's a sentiment I understand
deeply. Everyone is trying to sell you something and no one is happy with what
they've got. Too many proclaimers, and not enough people to hear their
pronouncements. Too many profits, and not enough disciples. Too much butter and
not enough popcorn. Especially as someone who considers themselves both an artist
(don't laugh) and an avid listener (ok, fine, laugh), I think I have to get
better at being the latter and be more comfortable with modest ambitions
towards the former. In other words, I need to focus on listening more deeply and thoughtfully, and being more selective about what I hear, while having fewer
expectations as to my status as an indie/DIY/punk/emo/blowhard/etc...etc... blogger. After all, appreciation
is the point, and if something doesn't call out to me, it's alright to leave it
unexamined, resting, at peace where it lies. I've already started to do just
that, filtering more of what I hear and not chasing things down if they don't
immediately grab my attention. But as far as content here, I'm definitely
looking to make a notable pivot in coverage- after I clean out the current
backlog of albums angling for my assessment (said list is about 900 albums long
btw).
It might be a minute, but where I'd like to direct my focus
in the future is at more international artists, specifically those coming out
of Africa and South and Central America. For various reasons, these parts of
the world are on the rise and rapidly more self-sustaining, and these trends
are going to result in a cultural output in the coming years that I'm excited
to see blossom into maturity. I've already received two emails in the last week
of this year from publicists promoting amapiano artists, so the shift might be
easier than I realized, as the universe may be pulling me in that direction
with or without my conscious assent.
In sum, my goals for 2026, for this blog and my life, are to
be more chill towards myself and music, and to be a better listener,
appreciating what I have and looking towards a brighter future (even if the
brightest stars are not shining nearest to my home). As for 2025, below is a
list of 25 albums I thought were rad as hell and/or touched my soul but didn't get around to writing
about in the preceding 12 months. Have at them and have a Happy New Year!
2025 really was off to a good start when Hornet Disaster dropped in March. I had no idea it was on its way until Top Shelf emailed me about it, and it's been at the top of my mind since. There are some top-notch emo elegies here (naturally, again, issued on Top Shelf), and some that will affirm and ensure Weatherday's status as a seminally influential underground artist for decades to come, tracks such as "Hug" with its dreary sense of yearning and crawling, as well as the anguish-sickened passages, biting blizzard-y feedback swells of "Blood Online" and the wired-warp and seething surge of alienated implosion that is "Nostalgia Drive Avatar." Funnily, even though its predecessor Come In was only released in 2019, Hornet Disaster has the feeling of a revival album for the artist, which is understandable, as the impact that Weatherday has had on the modern underground music scene at an international level is almost incalculable, and frankly, that meant that they had a lot to prove with this release. It's not as overtly reclusive or peculiarly scratchy and experimental as what we've come to know Weatherday for, but it's just as daringly sentimental and compelling in its wounded gait, maintaining its shadowy eminence without sacrificing its emotional core. Despite everything, Weatherday is still themself. Forever.
The immediate and insistent impression that I was seeded with upon beholding the cover of MJ Nobel's third album,
Songs From My Castle Tower, was that it was the vessel of a cybernetic current and celestially radiant flow of ethereal inspiration, cascading over and between the battlements of an Avalonian spire, pouring down on the teeming mass of mortals below like cool, molten starlight... Now, it may be somewhat anticlimactic to acknowledge, but these initial impressions, gleaned from appearances alone, were impeccably precise. An elfin excursion into a vespertine grove of dark illumination is exactly what this album is- emancipation in a fantastical world of blissfully incarnate passion, rendered in arresting fidelity at the nexus of wondering daydreams and fiber-optic fanned eudaimonia. Folk music for a digital dynast with root privileges to your heart.
Citric Dummies - Split With Turnstile (Feel It Records)
My esteem for Feel It Records grows by the day. Sam's work with the label became a gold standard in my personal punk headcanon after splunking into Why Bother?'s catalog; now it's going platinum with this Citric Dummies LP,
Split With Turnstile (which, ironically, is more vital than the album that the actual Turnstile released this year). A bio that I read of them alludes to their sound jumbling and interlocking odds and stray crumbs from Barely Legal era Hives, the Dwarves, and the buzz-bomb of contemporaries Dark Thoughts, and while that's all enough to stake your life on when it comes to this record, in essence, it's a vindication of that classic early hardcore style as a means of liberating your crown clean off your dome- fast, irreverent, catchy, and uncontainably hostile- they're like a dog that bites your leg and, via a metastatic psychic mutation, is able to inject a scathing and scandalous rejection of the human condition in its current-year craven state, directly into the mainline of your arteries like snake venom. This record is the good kind of sick!
Shallowater - God's Gonna Give You A Million Dollars (Self-Released)
With one of the most Coen brothers-esque titles I may have bonafided with these tired eyes, Houston "dust-gaze" bowlers Shallowater grant a sip of succor to the people lost in the godless desert of 2025 with their second LP God's Gonna Give You a Million Dollars. Much has been made of the "country" side of this record, and while it does have quite a bit of twang tucked in around the trim, it's really only "country" in the way that an old windmill left in a fallow wheatfield to oxidize into an indigestible cereal of sharp, coarse particulates could be considered "country," or an old barn cat caught in a snare laid for a fox outside the henhouse- a dark reflection and a fateful and justly cruel metaphor for the silent, progressive decay and barrenness of spirit and soil that has exhausted the heartland. That kind of "country."
life - we won't say a word until tomorrow (Self-Released)
It's been a banner year for Damián Ojeda. Ok, every year is a big year for Damián, but between his various black metal, shoegaze, emo, and skramz marquees, he's dropped something like 40 separate albums- the majority of which I have not heard because I have a job and a wife—but more than life simply getting in the way of bingeing on his output, I'm frequently stricken with an awe-induced paralysis by his work, wherein I feel compelled to spend long stretches of time simply wallowing in and soaking up the vibe and nuances of each release, incapable of moving on until I've wrung all the serotonin I can out of it. Case in point: I haven't been able to step past his summer release,
we won't say a word until tomorrow, under the life honorific, to get a taste of the other three or four other life titles he's dropped since. It's just a beautifully painful listen. Conscious and cathartic, patient and devoted, bleak and blissful. Most bands are lucky to come within spitting distance of something this compelling in their entire career, and yet, this probably just felt like another Friday to Damián when he unveiled it to the world. Now, this is a fantastic record; I've already said as much, and the semi-final track "allusion to summer distance" was literally my song of the summer, but what really wins it a bushel of roses from me is the locket-shaped snippet on the cover of this album which encloses Nana Osaki and Nana Komatsu in an eternal embrace and whirl of intractable kismet. Ai Yazawa is a genius, an inimitable talent, and her manga about tragically fated love and diehard friendship vibes so hard with this album that it almost feels like they were made with each other in mind. It's all the heartbreak you can handle- sealed with a kiss.
Menace4Hire - With All That I Know Now (Self-Released)
On With All That I Know Now, Chicago MC Menace4Hire invokes a nostalgic and contemplative frame of mind, weaving observations and hard-wrung conclusions together like a colorful ribbon that connects the sun-faded images of a life in reflection as they lie static in a heavy photo album. Dust-tripping skips and loops rotate under Menace's studious reels of commentary, and lissome yet graceful flow like the treadmill of his mind, propelling him forward and sparing him from stagnant complacency, as the wheels turn and epiphanies emerge like daylight pouring over the horizon. There will be plenty more for Menace to come to know, as he is still young and the world has yet to put its full weight on his shoulders, but he's already got sure footing, clear eyes, and wisdom to bank, and that counts for a lot.
Flora Hibberd - Swirl (22Twenty)
Lucky you that you get to share a planet with Flora Hibberd. And what good fortune that she has an album out this year, called
Swirl. And while we're counting our blessings, there is a song on that album titled "Lucky You," a peppy and sardonic twist on Americana and a tender take on garage-pop that sizzles with impulsive fluorescence- kind of like the record on the whole.
Swirl was recorded by the London-born, Paris-palisaded guitarist/singer/songwriter in the Northwestern city of Eau Claire, which since at least
For Emma, Forever Ago has garnered a reputation for sublating the traditions and trappings of standard American playing styles- in other words, Flora Hibberd, who on this LP exhibits intersecting qualities of Haley Fohr and Cat Power, happens to find herself at ease and in good company in her circuitous yet delicate evasion and amendment of orthodoxy
Superdestroyer / Leave (Nelson) B - NCTV Vol. 2: Negative thoughts about myself and people I love dearly (Lonely Ghost Records)
Superdestroyer and LNB are moots irl. That's pretty much it. That's why this album happened. You can learn more about its precursor in
this interview I did with the guys last year. Ok, bye! *
shoving noises, muffled commotion* Alright, fine! So my editor (ie my conscience) is telling me that I need to say more about this record, because it's made by good people, who happen to be two of my favorite emo/DIY personalities, and it's a very fun and edifying listen... which is exactly why it's hard to come up with things to say about it... Like, have you ever looked at that panel of Dr.Manhattan sitting ponderously on the surface of Mars, gazing longingly starward, and thought to yourself, "yeah, same." Alright, now imagine there are two Dr. Ms, and they both just lost someone irreplaceable to them. That's the vibe of this LP, only less forlorn and crowned with a finish of stardust and cosmic dynamism.
they are gutting a body of water - LOTTO (ATO Records)
They Are Gutting a Body of Water... what, do they live near a data center or something? You think I'm just being funny, but there is something somewhat prophetic about this Philly group (who everyone insists are shoegaze, though to my ears they're doing a grunged-up version of Sunny Day Real Estate, but WHAT DO I KNOW? I'm only an expert when it comes to these sorts of things) and their album
LOTTO, a distorted, weathered tome and sonic manuscript, depicting a world drained of vitality and its sense-making structures, where people filter in and out like flames in the dark, choked to a snuff by a high wind. Apparitions glide around the periphery of a séance circle, a distant zone blighted by a spiritual fugue of amnesia. It's bleak enough of a setting that it could almost be mistaken for our own broken system of sinking pirate-ocracy. Don't you feel fortunate to have lived long enough to witness a fanatical state of parasitism, once only imaginable in fiction, become grounded reality? Maybe fortunate isn't the right word. But only the depths of irony can do justice to the inheritance of such a wretched windfall.
Look at this photo of Matthew Urango, aka Cola Boyy. Look at this little pimp! Bro looks like he's got the world at the end of a yo-yo string- give it a flick and let it ride like a platinum disco record at a late-night house party.
Quit to Play Chess is the gold-hearted, neo-disco-funk auteur's final record, unfortunately, as he passed away earlier this year, but it contains his best realized efforts to date. "Abundant" is a term I would use liberally to describe the passionate and distinctive confluences of crunchy Caribbean rhythms, surfy chop chords, drum and bass rattle, equitable yacht rock, and big hairy disco grooves that generously extend over the whole of this album and breathe a technicolor authenticity into its plentiful vision of the world's potential. You'd have to have a piece missing from your heart not to vibe with the pure mood manifest on this record. RIP Matthew. Thank you for this solid gold send-off.
Lealani - Beep Bop Boop (Self-Released)
It's a tale as old as... well, AOL chat rooms. Girl goes online. Girl falls in love... with a machine. What, you think she was going to get a boyfriend? Well, sure, ok, but what can a man do for you that an optimized hard drive and fiber optics connection can't? Ok... I'm hearing something about... jars? Jar opening can be automated. What can't be automated is girls (well, a girl in this case) leveraging their love of technology to approximate sonic encounters with extraterrestrial travelers party-crashing from digital destinations unknown.
Beep Bop Boop is Lealani's second solo LP, a neon-aura glam bath of leisurely gratifying and marginally disquieting, petite pop-epigrams and escapist codas that function like little trap doors in the floor of a stuffed animal factory, which drop into recesses of dayglo laughter and pots of harmonizing amphibians. AI could never match what
Beep Bop Boop is rolling out, and if it tried, Lealani would likely glitch-prompt it into oblivion with the chaos seed of her psyche.
Faetooth - Labyrinthine (The Flenser)
Personally, I'm psyched that bands are starting to describe their music as distinct and definite genres of their own making more and more often. It shows a real clarity of vision and a desire to control one's own narrative. Take Faetooth: they're calling their style "Fairy Doom." There are a number of ways that you could interpret said designation, but it gets the point of their sound- a combination of the earthen whimsy of Chelsea Wolfe, the witchy desperation of Ragana, the avant-chaos of Thou, and the ambient fury of Show Me the Body- across to you like a flaming bolt to the breastplate. The cold majesty of their latest LP,
Labyrinthine, feels best appreciated in the absolute, most dismal spans of winter, the periods during which it genuinely seems sane to ponder whether a thaw will ever grace the land again. We haven't hit that point quite yet in the Midwest as of this writing, but when we do, I'll be thankful to have the frigid solace of this album to keep me company.
Johnny Football Hero - Contingency Plan (Lonely Ghost Records)
Johnny Football Hero sounds completely pissed off on their
LP, Contingency Plan. Their outrage and the outpour of grievance is at
such an extraordinary, heated degree of fervency that it's transformed them
into an entirely different band. The thing that makes them somewhat
recognizable on this release, when compared to their '21 EP, Complacency,
is the subject matter of their songs, which remains a reflection of the
near-ubiquitous batter-thick spread of suffering that blankets the swelter of
our modern hell world. It's all post-hardcore, incoming like a cloud of Nerf-footballs
strapped with c4- whistling, blazing, and hot with intent, striking with
precision and spreading the fever of their indignant fervor like a plague of
premeditated epiphany and motivated malcontent. Emergencies call for action,
and action is what Johnny Football Hero aims to inspire.
84 Tigers - Nothing Ends (Spartan Records)
I'm presuming that the Reed brothers zeroed in on the name for their band because '85 Bears would have been too traitorous and '83 Lions would have been too obvious for the proud Motor City denizens, and for a project birthed to examine themes of nostalgia, loss, and maturation, you don't want a nom de plume that distracts too much from the subject matter, or the music for that matter. 84 Tigers’s second LP, the affirmatively titled
Nothing Ends, offers a tightfisted, sober strain of melocore that raises the gut-plunging introspection of Chuck Ragan's repertoire, with a deservedly grungy afterburn to its headstrong chord crunch, and possesses a bitter acidity in the absorbing plateaus of its marrow that stings in nettling distinction with the pragmatic yet replenishing assurances of its lyrical content. A tyrant and a confidant, folded into one.
Samba Touré - Baarakelaw (Glitterbeat Records)
Literally the last time I wrote about a blues artist was
when I interviewed Deludium Skies back in February. So, for this next pick I'm going to be discussing a tribute to the Rolling Stones'
Sticky Finge—NAHHHHHH, psych! Screw that Boomer-slop impostor Americana- listen to Samba Touré's
Baarakelaw. It's better for you, it's more soulful, it's got more heart, it's real; it's about the sweat and scratch required to dust up the dough to make a loaf of bread, and the blood and clay that build the foundations of communities. Transcendent, rhythmic guitars woven in poetic patterns, pulling threads and mosaic imprints into a tapestry of contemporary life in conversation with the traditions upon which it is founded. It's not technically the blues, but it's how you can best translate what Samba is up to if you're not Malian.
Liaam - Dancing With My Clothes On (Self-Released)
There is something about Liaam that makes me think he'd thrive in a standard-cable package slot where he's allowed to make surrealist skits with sock puppets... but maybe that's entirely because he reminds me of another twiggy, wiggly man with a similar-sounding name. It has nothing to do with his music, which sounds like he's afflicted with an itchy case of Half Japanese, with a far more terminal secondary diagnosis of Swell Maps... I'm afraid it's inoperable, ma'am. The best thing we can do for him is let him dance with his favorite collegiate blazer and tapered slacks until the friction starts to spark and he goes out in a puff of pyrrhic glory. I think it's what he would want, ma'am... that and his own TV show...
Sallow Moth - Mossbane Lantern (Lilang Isla)
The Sallow Moth saga continues with
Mossbane Lantern, named for a vegetated artifact of either profoundly magical or obscure technical origins that rests discreetly hidden in an icy inlet and grants its possessor the ability to teleport long distances, or even interdimensionally... It would probably be helpful if I mentioned that Sallow Moth is a conceptual sci-fi sound project by super-industrious metal master Garry Brents, in which he explores a universe set into chaos by mutant celestial moths who have degenerated from their positions as cosmic gardeners and naturalist stewards into a force that threatens the fabric of reality itself.
Mossbane Lantern is Garry's only LP with this project in 2025 (the other releases under the Sallow Moth banner being a demo and a pair of EPs) and is technically a continuation of the
Vial EP from 2024. This all might sound crazy, but it really pales in comparison to the actual music on this beast, which sounds like Cynic performing some manner of manic, fungus-flavored jungle-jazz to appease a disturbed Quetzalcoatl-like apparition. It's the farthest thing you can imagine from normal and restrained, and that's why it rules!
Bones Shredder - Morbid Little Thing (Sunken Teeth)
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! What the actual fuck?!? This record makes me feel like it’s 2002 again! Dark, bruisingly catchy and beguilingly haunting pop-punk is not something I ever thought I'd hear with fresh ears posterior to the Bush-era implosion of everything charmingly irreverent about punk in the daunting umbra of perpetual imperialism and economic disarray. I guess things just had to get bad enough for people to stop worrying and embrace the terminal glissade enough to welcome morbid make-out anthems like the sanguinely pining "Let Me In" and tuneful tug of "Pulling Teeth" into the crypt of their heart chamber. It helps that there is as much
Pinkerton as
From Here to Infirmary in this venomous brew, helping to balance out the persistent allusions to tragedy with an obliging antivenin of hope.
YHWH Nailgun - 45 Pounds (AD 93)The last time I encountered NYC quartet YHWH Nailgun was when I stumbled across their 2022 EP while killing time in an Airbnb in Louisville. I have such a vivid memory of that place, as well as the way YHWH's ricochet and recoil contrasted with its pseudo-Victorian decor, dark-shrouded interior, and sturdy but ancient furniture, shattering the idle calm of that place as if it were a radiation-laden satellite tumbling back in time to
Deep Impact the house
Wuthering Heights was based on. Their LP
45 Pounds eternalizes the freak energy that captivated me initially, while continuing to be just as incongruously alien within the modern setting of my home as they appeared to me while I was hibernating between the folds of an Emily Brontë novel. On this album, YHWH articulates something sonically akin to a lobotomized David Byrne, whose frontal lobe has been partially replaced with an outdated TV antenna that only picks up scrambled broadcasts of West African variety shows and rejected episodes of Later... with Jools Holland from an alternative dimension where Xiu Xiu had pivoted to become a particularly bizarre and brazen, hemp and barbed-wire necklace-hawking jam band. It's called
45 Pounds, but to me it's as dense and massive as a black hole caving in God's forehead.
Summer 2000 - Blue Meringue (Self-Released)
What is a
Blue Meringue? According to Summer 2000, it's something along the lines of a wake pool filled with tar- an undulating state of paralysis where you're somehow always propelled forward while simultaneously sinking deeper into place- like trying to use a bungee cord to escape a whirlpool, or a Toyota pinned in place by a block of cement gouging into its undercarriage while it spins its wheels. It's a good metaphor for the necessity of growing through one's experiences while still feeling inadequate with the results. In the end, you can't really ever escape yourself due to the inertia of your flaws; you can only ever learn to live with and accept yourself and make the best of the consequences, even if you're perpetually aggrieved by how far you have fallen short of expectations. You're only human after all, and even when you've run over the median barrier and bent up your axle, as long as you're alive, you can always call a tow and get back on the road... eventually. Your insurance agent and/or SO might not be too happy with you, but as long as you're trying your best, you run a good chance of being forgiven for your roadside mishaps... probably. That's what I'm getting from Summer 2K's
Blue Meringue, at least. A simple reminder of your inescapable humanness from a deeply thoughtful album.
Bug Moment - The Lazer Collection (Self-Released)
The first (and actually only) time I've seen Milwaukee's Bug Moment was when I caught them opening at a show at the Cactus Club where Blind Equation, Hey, ily, and Heccra were also playing... It was one of the most stacked lineups I can recall seeing outside of Chicago this year, and it's still one of my 2025 highlights. Being in that kind of company should give you a good idea of what to expect on their EP,
The Lazer Collection, but then again, they're their own breed of shimmering, polychromatic anomaly, separate from their peers. Bug Moment certainly favors twinkly guitar antics, extreme metal vocals, and micromusic-esque infusions of electronics, but they also have this huge, whirlwind quality to their music, as well as perfectly calibrated pop-punk and alternative songwriting instincts that make comparisons to Paramore and Flyleaf unforced and positively apt. I like this album a lot. You could even say I've got the Bug Moment bug! ...at least for the time being.
La Rat - La Rat (South of North)
Sometimes to find the good stuff you have to dig deep... or look in the gutter. That's where I presume La Rat spends most of their time (although I found them via my Bandcamp feed, which, seeing as it mainly consists of solo noise and ambient projects at the moment, could be considered part of the internet's sanitation drainage system and digital superfund site, and might require government intervention to regulate accordingly). The Amsterdam-based duo's self-titled LP is a strange and vibey hip-hop volume detailing accounts of urban scavengery, that pack-rats together sooty soul samples and rough-cut R'n'B grooves into clumpy tangles of dirty delights, which vocalist Goya van der Heijden burrows into and gnaws to pulp with the scissors-like incisors of her squeaky but breathy, hushed but boldly furtive flow. This one is all cheddar, hold the cheese.
El Michels Affair - 24 Hr Sports (Big Crown Records)
I don't have to shout it out every time Leon Michels releases an album, but then again, it feels like I do, as I find them so compelling. To me, Leon is re-engineering the soul album one effort at a time, understanding the influence that soul had on hip-hop, and then working backward from hip-hop back to soul while conserving the marrow of each: the cool swelter and richness of sentiment from soul, and the scrappy, pioneering drive of hip-hop, and forging something unique and unpredictable in their fusion. For his
24 Hr Sports LP, Leon drops the Ghanaian hand-painted movie poster shtick in favor of '80s-uncle's-parlor nostalgia, with a soft-focus photo of a giant trophy adorning the cover. He certainly earned the reward pictured here for past efforts as much as for present ones. We should really give the man a medal every year in an Olympic-style ceremony. Maybe if we start saving our change in a coffee can, we'll have enough to put on that kind of production in time for his next LP in '27-'28 or so.
Mildred - Pt. 1 (Dead Mothers Collective)
Does the apocalypse need a prequel? I guess every disaster has its stages. LA's Milred jumped right to the conclusion of their conceptual drama in a hymn to a tragedy of errors and eras with
Pt. 2, and now follows up with this year's
Pt. 1, a significantly more involved piece of work spanning more than two hours in run time and incorporating the talents of more than 23 musicians. Still, even at the length of a Golden-Age Cecil B. DeMille biblical epic, this noisy eruption of Birthday Party-esque provocation and Kakotheos-oriented post-hardcore will likely feel shorter and less dyspepsia-inducing than your average Sunday sermon- especially if you have the misfortune of being dragged to one of those houses of "worship" that have incorporated bespoke addresses from a Kirkified-AI prompt into their liturgy- an accepted state of affairs in this country, despite it being outwardly more blasphemous (and unintentionally surreal) than the band Liturgy's entire catalog- not for lack of trying, of course.
Dikembe - King (Skeletal Lightning)
If there was any doubt that I'd save the best for last, fear not, for "best" is a subjective concept, but actually, the
King EP from Dikembe is an unexpected delight this year. Not because Dikembe isn't in the habit of delivering catchy, heartfelt, and momentously urgent melodic hardcore, but because it's so effortlessly straightforward and on-point. They really do make it look easy, and that's really what you need after a long year: something that can throw the emergency brake on during the spin-out and give you about 20 minutes or so of breathing room. If that doesn't earn them the right to unilaterally appoint themselves "king" for the moment, then they should stop handing out crowns because they're passing them out to all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. Long live the squatchy sonic sovereign!
That's it! You made it to the end. Congratulations! Now get out and seize the night! Good luck out there bud. Onward to 2026!
 |
| Pictured: Me trying to enjoy my evening. |
