The 80 Best Albums of 2025

40. Clara Mann – Rift (state51)

The UK-based multi-disciplinary artist Clara Mann’s debut album, Rift, barely lets the light in, but, when it does, it’s a glorious light. The narrator drives along rain-blackened roads without explicitly saying what she is leaving behind—heartbreak, confinement, loneliness are all contenders—which endows the rough-hewn record with a haunting subtext: an unspoken and phantom-like past.

Rift is a driving album, so much so that you feel as if you are beside the narrator in the car, traveling along English country lanes—memories shoot by like road signs—discussing if the journey will lead to self-discovery? If the past is as infinite as the road? It’s heartbreaking until, through the fissures of despair and longing, the slant of sunlight hits the steering wheel.

Like eminent folk artists, say, Anna Briggs or Shirley Collins, Mann makes you believe in the song, in the narrator’s tale, before turning it back around to the subject to make them believe in their own story. In other words, Mann inhabits tracks like an actor, whose mask reveals and conceals their interior world. However, without visuals, she conveys this through tremulous quivers, Joan Baez-esque vibratos, and caesuras. In fact, Mann has a supple voice that cuts you from the inside without words having to register. Oh, Mann should—you’d think—be a good driver after Rift. – Jack Walters

39. Mary Halvorson – About Ghosts (Nonesuch)

Jazz guitarist, composer, and bandleader Mary Halvorson has plied her trade in a variety of configurations: as a solo guitarist, with vocalists, string ensembles, quartets, you name it. But her current musical setting of choice appears to be that of a jazz sextet. Recent albums Amaryllis (2022) and Cloudward (2024) see the McArthur Genius Grant recipient exploring this format, and she continues the trend with About Ghosts.

Reuniting with the same five musicians – Jacob Garchik on trombone, Nick Dunston on double bass, Tomas Fujiwara on drums, Patricia Brennan on vibraphone, and Adam O’Farrill on trumpet – Halvorson has added additional saxophones on a few of the tracks, courtesy of Immanuel Wilkins on alto and Brian Settles on tenor.

The results are nothing short of spectacular, from the creeping, simmering opening track, “Full of Neon”, to the lush, multifaceted closer, “Endmost”, the eight songs that comprise About Ghosts are engaging, sonically rich pieces that display the full capabilities of the musicians assembled.  About Ghosts is one of the best, if not the best jazz album of the year, and Halvorson is one of the most exciting figures in contemporary jazz. – Chris Ingalls

38. Little Simz – Lotus (AWAL)

On Lotus, Little Simz sounds more hurt and vulnerable than she ever has before. Clearly devastated by the very public and very messy split from friend, collaborator, and producer Inflo over unpaid loans, the record sees her dial down her usual swagger. What’s left is a snapshot of an artist at their most bruised and defenceless.

She addresses her acrimonious rift in the most direct way from the outset on opener, “Thief”: “We went for 100 down to nought, and yes it is all your fault / Your name wasn’t popping until I worked with you.” Although she has discussed her private life in her music, from her relationship with her father to her experiences of seeing loved ones go to prison, never has she sounded this open. It’s like listening to one particularly traumatic page of her diary after another. This honesty extends to her admission of creative fatigue as she directly addresses her attempts to summon the artistic spark.

This may all sound like an artist who has lost their way. However, while the absence of Inflo is apparent, it frees her to explore previously uncharted territory. The music sounds more spacious and less gritty with elements of jazz, punk, and Afrobeat all thrown into the mix. She also leans on her collaborators, including Obongjayar, Michael Kiwanuka, Yussef Dayes, Moses Sumney, and Sampha, who really step up their games. The result is Little Simz’s most personal yet musically rich album to date. – Paul Carr

37. Richard Dawson – End of the Middle (Domino)

Richard Dawson finds his way out of a labyrinthine trilogy of albums (Peasant, 2020, and The Ruby Cord) with an Ozu-inspired collection of songs about the dramas of domestic life. Though the arrangements here are dialed down to a comparative whisper, End of The Middle reveals how the memory and minutiae of what transpires between four walls can be so momentous as to have ongoing generational effects.

The singer welcomes characters from previous songs and sees others born and die. Sally Pilkington, a welcome presence on dozens of albums across Dawson’s varied discography, has a scene-stealing verse on “More than Real,” a song that may signal Dawson’s next musical direction. Longtime fans will easily spot connections between these sketches of home(s) and the dense narratives of Dawson’s past work. Yet End of the Middle is also an ideal entry point for those only now discovering Newcastle’s finest folksinger. – Thomas Britt

36. Greet Death – Die in Love (Deathwish, Inc.)

On their first album in six years, the Midwestern heavy shoegazers let a little love into their hearts, even if those hearts are still shrouded. Amid the crushing chords and layered riffage are some genuinely pretty moments. The resulting sound is often thick and visceral but also rich and rewarding in a way that too little guitar-based music is these days. The stunning gothic horror tale/slasher film tribute “Country Girl” is the showstopper, but the aptly-named Die in Love has plenty more to offer. It’s a complex album that nonetheless lends itself well to air guitar, a timely reminder that we all have to die, but that there are opportunities for beauty before that happens. – John Bergstrom

35. Jeff Tweedy – Twilight Override (dBpm)

Before this year, Wilco’s de facto leader was not necessarily known for his prolific solo career – the live album Together at Last, followed by studio records Warm and Warmer, seemed almost tentative – but all of that changed with Twilight Override. This sprawling, three-record set takes everything great about Wilco and turns it into an intimate, periodically experimental masterwork. Eschewing the usual vanity project penchant for “special guest appearances”, Tweedy wisely sticks with a core of young, uniquely talented musicians, including his sons Spencer and Sammy, as well as acclaimed Chicago-area indie stalwarts Sima Cunningham, Macie Stewart, Liam Kazar, and James Elkington.

The result is a vibrant, vulnerable, shapeshifting set that glides around different genres without ever sounding forced. Imagine an indie-rock take on the Beatles’ White Album and you’ve got the general idea. Something of a meditation on the state of the world, Tweedy explores country-folk on “Forever Never Ends” and “KC Rain (No Wonder)”, back-to-basics punk on the irresistible “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter”, odd experimentalism on the spoken-word “Parking Lot” and the haunting, Phil Spector-like “Too Real”, and offers a 2025 survival guide on the epic, Dylanesque “Feel Free”. Twilight Override is an intense, satisfying ride, and an absolutely essential entry in the catalog of Jeff Tweedy. – Chris Ingalls

34. Blood Orange – Essex Honey (RCA)

Dev Hynes’ mother died unexpectedly in 2023, and the subsequent grief, grappling, reassessment, and re-centering all inform Essex Honey, his first album in seven years. Hynes’ music has always been personal and colored with different degrees of melancholy, but Essex Honey is his most tender, nakedly emotional work. Orchestral flourishes waft in and out of beautiful, mournful songs that never really seem to begin or end, woven together by found sounds and snippets of conversation, including a recording of Hynes’ late mother.

The cosmopolitan élan of Hynes’ past work gives way to a more subtle, cozy feel, but Hynes still has a producer’s ear for arresting details and arrangements. “The Field”, his reworking of a 1990s track by another mournful one-man band, the Durutti Column, is pure genius. Like the rest of Essex Honey, it shows just how therapeutic music can be for both the creator and the listener. – John Bergstrom

33. Lady Gaga – Mayhem (Interscope)

In her work, Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, analyzes the concept of a “perfect celebrity”, or someone who embodies contradictions seamlessly. In a track called “Perfect Celebrity” from Gaga’s seventh studio album Mayhem, the singer suggests such a role is impossible to inhabit successfully. Sandwiched between electropop tracks indicative of Gaga’s usual style, “Perfect Celebrity” is a brash rock anthem. “Sit in the front row, watch the princess die,” the provocateur says. 

While making a point about fame, “Perfect Celebrity” also upholds Gaga’s reputation as a sonic chameleon. Elsewhere on Mayhem, 1980s disco bangers “Zombieboy” and “Shadow of a Man” recall the shiny club pop of Gaga’s 2010 hit “Judas”. Elsewhere, the narrative of “How Bad Do U Want Me” channels Taylor Swift’s structure but becomes a platform for Gaga to play a surreal character. In a spoken-word interlude, she asks, “That girl in your head ain’t real / How bad do you want me for real?” 

In a 2025 interview with Rolling Stone, Gaga used the phrase “rehearsal of self” to describe preparing for the Mayhem tour. However, if the singer’s performance is rooted in caricature, how can it be a rehearsal of “self”? Where is the line between Lady Gaga and Stefani Germanotta?

In many ways, Mayhem is a return to form. The lead single “Abracadabra” showcases Gaga’s blend of camp and supernatural mystique. The chorus combines spell-casting with improvised gibberish: “Abrakadabra-abra-ooh-na-naa / Abrakadabra-morta-ooh-gaga.” For all of the production value beneath her spectacle, the maintenance of Lady Gaga is not an exact science. – Matthew Dwyer

32. Pulp – More (Rough Trade)

We’re all getting older, and Pulp are no strangers to the theme of aging: Jarvis Cocker, the rail-thin 62-year-old frontman of Pulp, wrote a ballad entitled “Help the Aged” in 1997, aged 34. More, Pulp’s eighth studio album and first in 24 years, showcases that Pulp has entered a new phase of life: middle age. On the one hand, Cocker makes his case that aging shouldn’t have to be a morose affair: “Slow Jam” is about having a slow jam rather than a slow death; on the other, “Grown Ups” is about the reluctance to grow up. 

More finds Pulp at their mythopoetic best; it contains the things that made this gauche and much-beloved band in their 1990s heyday great: kitchen-sink realism, sex (though less of it), unrequited love, and sardonic wit—but places them in a new context. The most notable difference between Pulp then and now comes from Cocker’s newfound, unabashed sincerity—especially when it comes to love. It might have taken Cocker until 40 to say the word “love” with ease, but More includes his Northern soul-inspired anthem, “Got to Have Love”—which, surely, makes up for it?

Where are the asides and in-jokes? Don’t worry, it’s all there. If you learn anything from aging, it is that humor and sincerity are not mutually exclusive. Above all, More is a love letter to Cocker’s wife, Kim Sion, who, after a year apart in 2018, reunited and married in 2024. Far more than the themes of aging, sex, and loss, More straight-facedly spreads the word of love. – Jack Walters

31. Florence + the Machine – Everybody Scream (Polydor/Republic)

With every album, Florence Welch navigates an almost impossible contradiction – writing great-sounding, accessible indie rock about tough, painful topics. It’s like going to an arena to sing along to big room ballads about factory farming and deforestation. It sounds great, but it feels bad, man. Welch doesn’t care. She refuses to make herself small for anybody, ever.

This results in records like Everybody Scream, where Welch comes off as an art rock tempestarii, calling down storms and choking fogs with her iconic banshee wail. She sings unsparingly about her miscarriage, subsequent near-death experience, and all the denizens of the dark. It’s a harrowing listen, but you almost don’t realize it; it sounds so good. – J Simpson

30. Baxter Drury – Allbarone (Heavenly)

To truly love a Baxter Drury record is to spend time with the words. In a Drury album, meanings slowly reveal themselves, like one of those magic-eye pictures from the 1990s. What all would agree is that he has a nuanced understanding of the human condition – the emotional ups, the let downs, and the everyday exposure to total dickheads. Left with just the words, new album Allbarone would read as poetry. A collection of on-the-nose, cynical, and endlessly quotable lines of social commentary.

However, with producer Paul Hepworth matching his verbosity by blending in inventive and varied electronic influences, Allbarone is elevated to somewhere near Drury’s best album to date. Paul Epworth’s dance-infused production shines with Drury laying his lines over throbbing synths and pulsing beats on tracks like “Allbarone” and “Schandenfreude”. Elsewhere, he shows his musical diversity. “Alpha Dog” lounges in a disco bed while “The Other Me” rides a hypnotic, circling, post-punk bassline.

However, it’s the richness of the lyrics that will make you keep coming back for more. “Return of the Sharp Heads” could well take the honour of featuring the funniest lyrics Drury has ever written. Meanwhile, “Mockinjay” finds him effortlessly bouncing syllables off each other in an incredible show of his wordplay. Both lyrically and musically, Drury has created a rare album that keeps revealing hidden depths. “Allbarone” is a richly observed album drawn from a wealth of experience studying human relationships. It also slaps. – Paul Carr

29. Heartworms – Glutton for Punishment (Speedy Wunderground)

In 2022, Heartworms, the solo project of Jojo Orme, was enthused as one to watch, bolstered in 2023 by the release of her post-punk EP, A Comforting Notion. Thus, when her debut album, Glutton for Punishment, was announced, a lot was riding on it to the point that failure seemed almost inevitable—or, at least, disappointment. That was not to be the case for the ethereal Heartworms, who exceeded the high expectations with the goth-infused Glutton for Punishment.

On Glutton for Punishment, Heartworms turns away from the influence of post-punk of A Comforting Notion and, instead, veers towards gothic pop, making you feel as if you are dancing in the ruins of Caspar David Friedrich’s The Abbey in the Oakwood—in fact, for Heartworms, dance is a respite, an élan vital in a phantasmagorical, war-torn world of personal and universal strife. “Dance, dance, dance,” Heartworms pleads as her final words in “Glutton for Punishment”, a reprise of “Just to Ask a Dance” and the last track on the record.

Of course, there are gothic references to Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Cure, and PJ Harvey,  but, as if Heartworms wants to surprise or divert you, or to reveal her hidden depths, there are also conspiratorial nods to Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire. Moreover, her obsession with military history informs the record and its beginning: the sound of a warplane in flight. With Kate Bush-esque vocal acrobatics, Heartworms gutturally sings, fiendishly screams, and dramatically sighs—and, likely, dances. – Jack Walters

28. Ora the Molecule – Dance Therapy (Mute)

Nora Schjelderup is one of Norway’s leading DJs. She is also the creative force behind Ora the Molecule, who recently released Dance Therapy, which might be the most accessible avant-garde disco-pop concept album you’ll hear this year. Ora the Molecule has existed since around 2015, releasing a series of singles that were compiled on Human Safari in 2021. 

Human Safari is filled with modern Euro-synthwave, with just enough throwback sounds to conjure up the feel of a lost Thompson Twins album for fans of 1980s technopop. While that album is technically Ora the Molecule’s debut, Schjelderup has noted that Dance Therapy is the first to fully represent her as an artist. – Rich Wilhelm

27. Patterson Hood – Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams (ATO)

For as prolific as Drive By Truckers are, it is surprising that it’s been more than ten years since we’ve received a Patterson Hood solo album. Oftentimes, solo albums are opportunities for band members to try material that wouldn’t quite fit on their group’s main releases. However, these albums are rarely as fully formed as Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams.

Hood, ever the accomplished storyteller, compiled nearly two decades’ worth of songs he had previously worked on. Thanks to producer Chris Funk, well known for his own ornate collages with The Decemberists, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams sounds anything but “cobbled together.”  Lydia Loveless, Wednesday, and Waxahatchee contribute some wonderful support on an album that is destined to become a fixture on many “ultimate winter album” lists. – Sean McCarthy

26. Sudan Archives – The BPM (Stones Throw)

The artistic leap that Brittney Parks made between her 2019 debut album “Athena” and 2022’s “Natural Brown Prom Queen” was gigantic, moving beyond pure violin-accented R&B into a sound that was stranger, more joyful, and more buoyant. With this year’s The BPM, she catapults herself even further, fully soaking her muse in a digital sound bath to create a monster of an electronic album that refuses to fit into any single pre-made category.

While there is still ample orchestral drama to be found (the slow string draws on “David & Goliath” collide with loud sirens to create a nervy, haunting climax), her ur-intent is to create a raw and dynamic new dance sound, which is unapologetically indebted to Detroit and Chicago house music, all overseen by her new persona of “Gadget Girl”. Yet in opener “Dead”, waves of chopped, cascading synths are joined by her soulful backing-vocal runs, pushing her sound into a bold new direction while remaining fundamentally identifiable as a Sudan Archives record.

The nervy tom-splash one-two beat of “The Nature of Power” belies a darker, more sinister kind of dance record, where self-described narcissists stare into each other’s eyes as the world around them is slaughtered in a techno-apocalypse. The BPM extensively explores our moral relationship between humanity and technology, sometimes flirting with the line between them and sometimes slicing it open to watch it bleed. Dynamic, rife with tiny, non-repeating details, and with a beating heart at its overclocked center, The BPM shows that Sudan Archives has shed all genre labels to become a genre unto herself. AI could never. – Evan Sawdey

25. CMAT – Euro-Country (CMATBABY)

Dublin artist CMAT (Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson) has mastered the art of being self-centered and universal at the same time. The songs on her third album, Euro-Country, address her personal peeves and disgust with late-stage capitalism in big, shiny letters. The songs are musically infectious and lyrically clever, simultaneously deep and superficial.

She draws from diverse cultural traditions, Irish folk, Americana, arena-friendly pop, singer-songwriter confessionals, and girl group sounds to humblebrag about the flattening of individual traditions and celebrate our universal commonalities. Her songs are not mashups. They reflect the times we live in. Who, reading this, does not have eclectic tastes and listen to music from multiple genres? We all consume from various sources.

Depending on the track, CMAT can make one weep at the death of a good man, commiserate with a pre-pubescent teen wanting to look sexy, get pissed at the unhealthiness of food choices, rage at other people’s bad behavior, and reflect on one’s own actions and find them wanting. She does this with a sense of humor and hubris, evoking tender feelings one minute and honky-tonking the next. CMAT complains that the world is becoming one big Euro-Country where individual nations lose what makes them distinctive, and she revels in our shared humanity as exemplified by our mutual musicality. It is a brilliant juggling act. – Steve Horowitz

24. Mulatu Astatke – Mulatu Plays Mulatu (Strut)

If only one name comes to mind when you think of Ethio-jazz, it’s almost certainly that of Mulatu Astatke, often considered the genre’s originator. Inspired by Ethiopian melodic modes and the rhythms and instrumentation of Latin and other American jazz traditions, Mulatu has been releasing music under this stylistic nomenclature since the 1970s. In Mulatu Plays Mulatu, he offers new arrangements of ten of his own compositions from this half-century of work.

These are more expansive versions of already brilliant tracks. Several Ethiopian instruments–krar, masenqo, kebero, begena–are as integral to the album’s textures as brass, keys, and Mulatu’s own virtuosic vibraphones. Vocal ululations and syncopated handclaps on “Chik Chikka” evoke East African folk sounds with particular aural acuity, while the wah pedals of “Yekatit” recall the relative recency of the so-called 1970s Golden Age of Ethiopian music.

It’s a triumphant demonstration of how, in his octogenarian years and perhaps on the verge of retirement, Mulatu Astatke is still the master of his craft. If this is his farewell, it’s a shame for us, an audience that will always want more. It’s a triumph, though, for Mulatu, who may have made his most tremendous record to date with Mulatu Plays Mulatu. – Adriane Pontecorvo

23. Benjamin Booker – LOWER (Fire Next Time / Thirty Tigers)

Peel back any of Benjamin Booker’s songs from his three albums, and in its center, there is always a looming question, unasked but pleading: How do we keep going in an awful world? Booker’s songs speak of a yearning to find a way through the mess in his self-titled first record, filled with energetic guitars and fueled by anxiety, pressing his music forward.

When listening to Benjamin Booker’s LOWER, I imagine these characters, despite living in our age of necropolitics, where those in power dictate how some may live, and others must die, still grope along, putting on their “walking shoes” and taking steps in a world that cares nothing for them. These faltering steps, though, urge the rest of us to believe that we can also take some steps into the darkness. – John Lennon

22. S.G. Goodman – Planting by the Signs (Slough Water/Thirty Tigers)

Hickman, Kentucky’s S.G. Goodman remembers the specifics of her small-town youth with exacting clarity. It is not only the place of her youth. Hickman is the center of her spiritual universe, where people pray to satellites, plant farm crops according to moon cycles, and see Satan daily. Goodman provides the details of daily life in that part of rural Kentucky, food, work, and such, as a badge of authenticity, even as she questions what is real and what is not. Each reference she offers conveys several possible latent truths.

Goodman’s songs are haunted and haunting. Her baritone voice squeaks and squawks, maintaining a conversational tone as she tells surrealistic tales of sadness and suffering, suffused with hope and glory. She sees death thumbing a ride by the Texaco station, God in the river, and the sun shining on the same dog’s ass every day. The singer-songwriter has seen the light and even known love. Her musical accompaniment is deceptively simple, often veering into unexpected tangents.

Goodman relies on a steady, pulsing percussion that resembles a beating heart to keep her protagonists’ stories moving forward. Her life goes on as others may die, even her little dog. She knows we are all headed to the same place eventually. In her allegorical retelling of Biblical truths, even a drunken Jesus wants a ride to heaven. Amen, brothers and sisters. She instructs us to have a little faith. – Steve Horowitz

21. Self-Esteem – A Complicated Woman (Republic)

Self-Esteem’s A Complicated Woman brims with exemplary vocals, winning beats, and Taylor’s seamless pivots from the risqué to the empathic to the exhortative. While the album’s cover presents Rebecca Taylor as a character from The Handmaid’s Tale, replete with a murderously defiant expression, the tone here is less confrontational and more harmonious than one might expect.

While some listeners will miss the wryer, bombastic timbre of Prioritise Pleasure, A Complicated Woman shows Taylor stepping into a more grounded, rangy perspective. She’s overcome numerous challenges. She’s learned to live in the world and her own skin. She’s free. Perhaps her listeners, inspired by her example, will be reminded that they too “deserve to be here”. – James Amen