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Honey Dijon: The Nightlife
New album: The irrepressible, prolific and charismatic London-based Chicago DJ, musician, producer and vinyl lover returns with a flamboyantly fun celebration of club and queer culture through the prism of dance music from disco to house, with a wide variety of guest vocalists
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Jessie Ware - Superbloom
New album: Following 2020’s What’s Your Pleasure? and 2023’s That! Feels Good!, as well as the successful food podcast Table Manners she hosts alongside her mother, the British pop singer continues to ride the 70s disco ball train, catering to the clever, kitsch and catchy with an ironic wink, adding also a luxuriant garden metaphor
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Lime Garden: Maybe Not Tonight
New album: Zesty, fresh, infectiously catchy, smash-and-grab synthy indie-pop-rock by the Brighton quartet, packed with fabulous riffs and melodies and droll, tongue-in-cheek lyrics that engagingly chart the highs and lows, the joys and insecurities of a big night out
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RAYE: This Music May Contain Hope
New album: A highly entertaining, exuberantly stylish, cross-genre 17-track, 73-minute odyssey by the London popstar, with a huge musical show of a second LP, spanning swing-era jazz to soul, R&B, house music, pop, dance, gospel, classical and the full kitchen sink, with orchestral band, family members, Hans Zimmer, and even Al Green
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Ladytron: Paradises
New album: Following 2023’s Time’s Arrow, the Liverpool synth-pop band fronted by Helen Marnie, now a trio, return with substantial 16-track eighth LP that combines simplicity of chord progressions with rich textures, styles retro and futuristic with classic, catchy pop melodies
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Alexis Taylor: Paris In The Spring
New album: The clarity and high range of the distinctive Hot Chip lead singer returns with his seventh solo LP, packed with personal, candid, philosphofical and sometimes melancholy lyrics allided with bright, melodic leftfield electro-pop, a dash of country, elegant disco-house, and Vangelis-inspired soundscapes, and a title echoing a psychological test where things are not as they seem
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War Child: HELP(2) follows 1995’s first compilation with another impressive range of music and artists
New album: Not only a timely and topical milestone charity record following the first in 1995 to help bring aid and wide variety of support to children in war zones around he world, but an impressive double-LP array of stellar British and international talent and powerful, poignant 23 songs from Arctic Monkeys to Young Fathers
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Part Two favourite albums of 2025 collage
Welcome to the second part of Song Bar favourite albums of 2025. There is also a first part and a third part this week. There is no countdown nor describing these necessarily as “best” albums of the year, but they are chosen by their quality, originality and reader popularity
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First selection of 25 favourite albums in no particular order …
Welcome to the first part of Song Bar favourite albums of 2025. There will also be a second and third part this week. There is no countdown nor describing these necessarily as “best” albums of the year, but they are chosen by their quality, originality and reader popularity
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Tame Impala: Deadbeat
New album: This fifth LP and first in five years by the Australian multi-instrumentalist Kevin Parker sees him go down a more a more dance-electronica route, mixing psych, techno, reggaeton, and the heavy drum kicks of the western Australia’s “bush doof” rave scene, but as ever with the distinctive yearning of his falsetto voice
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Stealing Sheep: GLO (GIrl Life Online)
New album: Always bringing effervescently quirky, original and experimental work, this is an especially vibrant, fizzing, percussive, witty and superb LP – and surely the very best yet by the excellent Liverpool electro-pop trio of Emily Lansley, Luciana Mercer, and Rebecca Hawley
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Baxter Dury - Allbarone
New album: Alongside his usual droll, witty wordsmithery and distinctive dark, deep-voiced spoken delivery, the Londoner and son of Ian also brings a slightly different, more boisterous style of satirical and nihilistic misery with a collection of supremely catchy, danceable numbers in this ninth LP, produced Paul Epworth
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Saint Etienne: International
New album: Catchy retro, singalong electro-pop, soft, bouncy beats, simple melodies and a big dose of nostalgia? If this 13th really is the British trio’s final album across 35 years, it's a decent sign-off by Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs since that breakthrough LP Foxbase Alpha in 1991
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Jessica Winter: My First Album
New album: After a series of acclaimed singles, EPs and collaborations, the south London sweetly high-voiced singer-songwriter’s debut LP is fabulously sparkling, humorous, witty indie-dance-pop, packed with classy, clever tunes, touching moments of reflection, self-love and personal acceptance
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Model/Actriz: Pirouette
New album: Following 2023’s Dogsbody, a second LP of strikingly innovative experimental, staccato, percussive post-punk by one of the most exciting bands around – the Brookyn-based quartet of vocalist Cole Haden, guitarist Jack Wetmore, bassist Aaron Shapiro, and drummer Ruben Radlauer
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The Moonlandingz: No Rocket Required
New album: Seven years since their last LP together, and many different projects in the meantime, Fat White Family’s Lias Saoudi and Eccentronic Research Council’s Dean Honer and Adrian Flanagan return with their clever, witty electro-dance satire on a dystopian world, with guests including Iggy Pop, Nadine Shah, Jessica Winter and actor Ewen Bremner
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Lady Gaga: MAYHEM
New album: Something of return to form and fun for the superstar singer and actress? Certainly this revisits something of her late 2000s Poker Face- and Bad Romance-era flamboyant, bombastic pop sound where excess and outsider oddness made her name
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Antony Szmierek: Service Station At The End Of The Universe
New album: Named after Douglas Adams’ satirical sci-fi Restaurant novel, the likeable Manchester spoken word poet’s debut LP is an entertaining, playful, richly observational mix of Streetsy stream-of-consciousness stories inspired by his home city through the classic sounds of 90s dance music and indie
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Hifi Sean and David McAlmont: TWILIGHT
New album: Twinned with last summer’s LP DAYLIGHT, the duo of Scottish musician and the English soul singer return with the darkside – an absorbing adventure from dusk to dawn, with evocative, cinematic, experimental, old-school synths and electronica and McAlmont’s extraordinary, wide-ranging voice
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DECIUS: Decius Vol. II (Splendour & Obedience)
New album: After 2022’s Part 1, a second outing of eclectic, mesmerically inventive reworking of deep Chicago acid house/ electronica by the shapeshifting Lias Saoudi of Fat White Family with brothers Liam and Luke May (founders of Trashmouth Records) and Quinn Whalley from Warmduscher
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