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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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Gruff Rhys: Dim Probs
New album: After last year’s acclaimed Sadness Sets Me Free, the ex-Super Furry Animals frontman’s ninth solo LP (meaning ‘no problem’) is a fully Welsh language release, his first since 2019’s Pang!, filled with charming, soothing, catchy folk-rock tunes, but with some darker subjects for current times, the title is an ironic twist
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Kathryn Joseph: WE WERE MADE PREY.
New album: Stark, menacing, visceral also hauntingly beautiful, the Glasgow singer-songwriter’s fourth LP reprises her creative partnership with fellow Scottish artist Lomond Campbell first explored on 2022’s For You Who Are The Wronged, with striking experimental soundscapes coloured by electronica as well as her piano and other instruments
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Sacred Paws: Jump Into Life
New album: Breezy, buoyant, musically breathless upbeat but also wistful indie with notes of folk, country and highlife, Bhundu Boys-esque guitars and fast-fill drumming by the Glasgow band formed by Ray Aggs and Eilidh Rodgers
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Mogwai: The Bad Fire
New album: Glasgow’s finest experimental rockers return with their 11th studio album, another classic of dark-humoured, irreverent titles for their dynamic, quiet-to-stormy arpeggio-laden, always stirring songs and instrumentals
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Arab Strap: I'm Totally Fine With It I Don't Give A Fuck Anymore
New album: Menacingly poetic, darkly humorous, searingly sordid and the sweetly sarcastic? It can only be the return of Scotland’s Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton with another fabulously articulate assault on the self and society’s sadness and strangeness
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bdrmm: I Don't Know
New album: With elements of krautrock, and echoes of Mogwai and Radiohead, the Hull experimental rock quartet’s new album has a dark, yet uplifting, mesmeric momentum, moving between stormy guitar ferocity, to wistful shoegaze and meditative electronica
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Cloth: Secret Measure
New album: Gently spun, delicately understated and cleverly crafted, dreamy, angular guitar pop-rock with a light touch of synths from the Glasgow twins Rachael and Paul Swinton
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Gentle Sinners: These Actions Cannot Be Undone
New album: An intriguing, innovative new collaborative project by James Graham of The Twilight Sad and Aidan Moffat of Arab Strap culminates in this mysterious, genre-defying, experimental album of oddly poetic numbers
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Kathryn Joseph: For You Who Are Wronged
New album: Stark, minimal, ghostly, and extraordinarily powerful, this third album by the Scottish singer-songwriter concentrates unflinchingly on the ripples that emanate around abusive relationships, particularly giving voice to the voiceless
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As Days Get Dark, Arab Strap’s seventh album, and their first for 16 years
Album review: Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton’s first album together since 2005 is as brilliant as ever – a mischievous, brooding, blackly humorous, whisperingly sinister and sweary exploration of love, sex, addiction, exploitation and death wrapped in beautiful, poetic music
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Vagabon, aka Laetitia Tamko
This week’s selection includes Foals Part 2 to their acclaimed Part 1, Mark Lanegan going slightly goth, clever pop from Vagabon, extraordinary folk from Lankum, and entrancing electronica from Floating Points and Alice Hubble
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Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, from the video for Let It Rain
A mixture of old-timers and young bucks make up this week’s selection, from the youthful Amsterdam indie band debutants Pip Blom to the dub legend Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry releasing one of his finest and most eccentric records yet
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Dawn Richard - spreading her musical wings
From an experimental album by New Orleans artist DAWN to a collaboration between Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers, as well as a return by 90s shoegazers Swervedriver, this week’s roundup has plenty of surprises
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Quirky, funky and colourful: freelance Tory y Moi
Our latest roundup of new releases includes an emotional return for The Twilight Sad and Steve Gunn, catchy quirkiness from Toro Y Moi, solid alt-rock from Juliana Hatfield, cosmic pop from Steve Mason, and dire warnings from Lost Under Heaven
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Big Joanie
Acoustic, raw, and live from the Boss and Neil Young, gentle a-caustic from Moffat and Hubbert, postpunk from Big Joanie, and some passionate posthumous material from Richard Swift are among this week’s releases
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The Beths debut album cover
A bumper roundup of new albums includes prog rock from Oh Sees, outstanding indie from New Zealand and the UK, including Slaves and The Beths, ghostly beauty from Scotland’s Kathryn Joseph, plus Death Cab For Cutie
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