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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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Echolalia
New album: A Nashville ‘supergroup’ in the most free-flowing, relaxed form imaginable, Spencer Cullum, Andrew Combs, Jordan Lehning, Dominic Billett and others combine in a beautiful intertwining of pastoral folk, country, and dream-like, psychedelic Americana
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Tunng: Love You All Over Again. Cover art: Lilias Buchanan
New album: A beautiful, celebratory album of the pioneering British ‘folktronica’ band’s 20 years of music, with an eighth LP of brand new songs fully capturing their distinctive, delicate, crisply poetic, agile style with a delicious feeling of circularity.
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Dana Gavanski: LATE SLAP
New album: Deftly original, wry, humorous, gently dreamy, brilliantly oddball folk-pop by the London-based Canadian-Serbian artist in this third LP with a theme of tenderness in a desensitising world, playing out tensions between negative cynicism and despair against positive openness and trust
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GHOSTWOMAN: Hindsight Is 50/50
New album: This third LP by Canadian singer multi-instrumentalist Evan Uschenko and drummer Ille van Dessel, comes with a darker, moodier, goth-noir-psych-garage-rock smokiness
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Pale Blue Eyes: This House is a wistful look back at happy childhood with parents now passed on
New album: After last year’s promising debut, Souvenirs, the Devon trio return with an uplifting fusion of electro-pop and krautrock, one that deals with parental loss, but with a fondness, stylistically with some echoes of Django Django and some 80s sounds reminiscent of New Order and The Cure
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Spencer Cullum returns with further treasures
New album: Following 2021’s beautiful first coin collection, another delicious release of gentle 70s-style folk with light touches of country, jazz and pop by the Romford artist who has made his home in Nashville, Tennessee
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Sylvie, the self-titled new album that channels the sounds of 70s Laurel Canyon
New album: Beautiful retro 70s-style Laurel Canyon folk and Americana by the band formed by South California’s Ben Schwab of Drugdealer and Golden Daze, inspired by finding lost tapes of his father John’s 1970s group Mad Anthony
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Souvenirs by Pale Blue Eyes
New album: A marriage of south Devon and Sheffield in the form of couple Matt and Lucy Broad and bassist Aubrey Simpson forms this more elevating, richly sonic indie release that has echoes of New Order, krautrock and Cabaret Voltaire electro-synth pop
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Dana Gavanski’s When It Comes has finally arrived
New album: Gorgeous second folk-pop LP by the London-based Canadian-Serbian singer-songwriter, decorated with perfectly weighted hooks and measured arrangements, pure of voice and with pace that’s both intricate but minimal, like a ticking clock
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Silverbacks’ second album Archive Material
New album: Superb second LP by the Dublin-based post-punk art-rock quintet, who with shades of Deerhoof, Gang Of Four, but particularly New Yorkers Strokes and LCD Soundsystem, sharply capturing the crazy, creeping disquiet of the world, especially over the past 18 months
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Spencer Cullum's Coin Collection
New album: An exquisite album, hauntingly beautiful by the London singer-songwriter and pedal steel guitarist re-located to Nashville is reminiscent of Nick Drake with added, electric guitar, organ, keyboards, flute and light percussion with a Tennessee twang
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This week’s magic nine
Album reviews roundup: an exceptionally experimental and original lineup includes Tunng’s special death project, Iceland’s Olafur Arnalds at his most vulnerable, Tiña, the cosmic jazz funk of Planet Battagon, and for balance, some Kylie disco
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This week’s fabulous lineup of nine
The latest lineup includes female vocalists of rich original Nadine Shah and Becca Mancari, nonbinary electronica star Arca, wonderful poetry in a band from Simon Armitage, and frenetic work from Pottery and Bananagun
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Dana Gavanski, from the video for Yesterday is Gone
This week’s huge roundup includes a wide range of the soft and loud, the traditional and the experimental, from beautiful songwriting by Dana Gavanski and Waxahatchee, Aussie punks The Chats, and ambient music from Sufjan Stevens
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From Paul Thomas Anderson’s film to Thom Yorke’s Anima
The latest roundup includes the Radiohead frontman’s collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson, a return for The Black Keys, beautiful heights by The Tallest Man On Earth, plus a variety of indie, pop and mostly folk in many forms
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Twisted sister: Billie Eilish gets on up with a highly original debut LP
This week’s selection spans the full range from the quirky pop of Billie Eilish to the triumphant return of Edwyn Collins, masterful prog from White Denim to Beth Gibbons doing Henryk Górecki with a Polish orchestra
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Tunng – Songs You Make At Night
Our bumper roundup includes a welcome return to the folktronica innovators Tunng, plus White Denim, Mark Lanegan, a concept album from the Lemon Twigs, 80s-style pop from Her’s, and the soul star Candi Staton
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