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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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Folk Bitch Trio: Now Would Be A Good Thing
New album: Sweetly beautiful three-part harmonies underpin darkly ironic humour and deliciously unfolding, oddly disturbing lyrics in this entertaining debut by the Melbourne former high school friends Heide Peverelle ((they/them), Jeanie Pilkington and Gracie Sinclair
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Bon Iver: SABLE, fABLE
New album: Wisconsin’s Justin Vernon returns with his fifth album, a sparse, tender, sometimes world-weary, but also often beautiful, distinctive fusion of folk, indie, R&B, soul, country, and a dash of soft rock, all wrapped in celebration of the salmon pink - “the colour of life”
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Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory
New album: With a strong, seasoned new band, the acclaimed New Jersey singer-songwriter takes a new direction, from her more recent country and folk output, into an expansive sheen of synth, indie, rock and a hint of goth, and themes of emancipation, letting go, and relationships
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Angel Olsen and various: Cosmic Waves Volume 1
New album: A novel form of “compilation reimagined as a dialogue” LP by the acclaimed, serene-voiced American singer-songwriter, showcasing five different lesser-known artists on Side A, and then covering other songs by them on Side B
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Mustafa: Dunya
New album: This tenderly delivered debut LP by Sudanese-Canadian performance poet, film-maker, and singer-songwriter is a hushed-voiced, acoustic form of folk, the title translated as “the world in all its flaws” in Arabic, and variously touches on religious devotion, childhood trauma, gang violence to romantic intimacy
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Malice K: AVANTI
New album: Angsty but beautiful, reminiscent of the whispery, intimate style of the late, great Elliott Smith, but also the occasional punk scream eruption, this darkly mesmeric, candid, introspective indie-folk-grunge-punk LP by New York-based visual artist and songwriter Alex Konschuh is a vivid, ghostly, and deeply emotional
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Crack Cloud: Red Mile
New album: Sharp, witty satire and parody abound in this third LP by the Canadian indie-garage-rock collective, playing with cliches across pop to rock with a striking set of clever, aggressively tuneful, curveball songs led by frontman and Zach Choy
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Bizhiki: Unbound
New album: A primal, evocative, soul-stirring release combining Native American powpow chanting and with ambient electronica dulcimer strings and gentle drums by singer-songwriter Joe Rainey, drummer and producer S Carey, and indigenous singer Dylan Bizhikiins Jennings
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Reflective: Jamila Woods’s new LP Water Made Us
New album: The Chicago singer and poet moves from 2019’s socio-historical Legacy! Legacy! LP, to a more experimental, soulful album of self-analysis, examining the life cycles of relationships across 17 tracks, in which love evolves and develops like a living cell
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Unknown Mortal Orchestra: V
New album: New Zealand’s Ruban Nielson and co return with a post-lockdown double album, a fifth LP keeping that distinctive dirty mic vocal filter, and a mixture of the upbeat and downbeat
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Angel Olsen’s sixth album, Big Time
New album: Majestic, slow-paced and emotionally powerful, an outstanding country-tinged dark folk dream-pop sixth LP by the American singer-songwriter inspired by liberation and grief – coming out to her aged parents in 2021 very shortly before their deaths
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Sharon Van Etten’s sixth album
New album: Powerful, passionate, personal and one of her best yet, this sixth album by the New Jersey singer-songwriter has hugely relevant themes, her songs addressing how we might protect the things most precious to us from destructive forces beyond our control
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The second LP by Big Red Machine
New album: Featuring guests including Fleet Foxes and Taylor Swift, an attractive second LP of mellow indie-folk by the band formed by The National’s Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon aka Bon Iver, and named after the dominant 1970s Cincinnati Reds baseball team
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Dinosaur Jr return with Sweep It Into Space
Album review: Packed with tender lo-fi to full-on rock numbers, the distinctive voice and playing of J Mascis joined Lou Barlow’s bass and Murph on drum, rolls out in the form of a very fine new LP, their first together for five years
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Matthew E. White and Lonnie Holley
Album review: This first collaborative release between the Virginia songwriter, producer, and founder of Spacebomb Records and the Alabama sculptor is an experimental fusion of jazz, funk, electronica and exclamatory spoken-word observation
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Another nine albums to explore …
Album reviews roundup: This week’s selection includes an exquisite gem from Bill Callahan, clever dance music from Disclosure, a stark reworking of her last album by Angel Olsen, and a second helping of a previous by My Morning Jacket
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Mark Lanegan
This week’s roundup includes a gritty but musical journey to accompany Mark Lanegan’s memoirs, a solo album the the Paramore singer, and Part Two of Moses Sumney’s extraordinary funk/jazz falsetto album
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Moses Sumney
The latest roundup includes a multi-genre double by Moses Sumney, melancholy electronica from Caribou, funk-indie-pop from the Orielles as well as Scandinavian selections from Denmark’s black metal queen doing folk
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Pet Shop Boys
The second of this week’s roundups includes the return of the Pet Shop Boys, raw emotion from Sarah Mary Chadwick, eccentric pop from OKay Kaya and laid back electronica from Jim Noir
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