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waterbaby: Memory Be A Blade
New album: A delicate, experimental, understated soulful chamber pop debut by the pure-voiced Stockholm-born singer-songwriter (aka Kendra Egerbladh) in 25-minute, eight-track release of lo-fi, lyrically semi-improvised numbers about heartbreak and self-renewal in a world of gorgeous musical sensations
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Lala Lala: Heaven 2
New album: Moving from Chicago to New Mexico, Reykjavík, then London and now Los Angeles, the UK-born artist Lillie West’s experimental indie dream pop is a fascinating release about restless escapism while trying to stay where she is
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Iron & Wine: Hen's Teeth
New album: Timeless, poetic, gentle folk-rock in this eighth solo album by the North Carolina multi-instrumentalist and producer Sam Beam, in warm, tender album with a title that suggests the idea of the impossible yet real, and an earthier, darker, more more tactile companion to his Grammy-nominated 2024 album Light Verse
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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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Hannah Jadagu: Describe
New album: Following her 2023 debut Aperture, the Texas-born, New York artist returns with a lusher, more expanded sound on this second LP, with synth layers added to her guitar, a sense of yearning for her home and missing a partner she left behind during a summer move to write and record in California, delivering some delicious sonic textures and reflections
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Flock of Dimes: The Life You Save
New album: A third album in the solo project of Baltimore multi-instrumentalist and producer Jenn Wasner brings together the beautiful and the bittersweet with a collection of intimate, sensitive songs about heartbreak and memory addiction, co-dependency, inherited and experienced trauma, and ways of finding peace
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Nation of Language: Dance Called Memory
New album: Harking back to the early 80s synth-pop and new wave era of the likes of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, the American trio return with their third album of smooth, wistful, simple three- and four-chord arpeggiated sounds and gliding, melancholy melodies and lyrics
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The Bug Club: Very Human Features
New album: A tremendously catchy, lively, witty, humorous and poignant new LP by the Welsh trio of Sam Willmett, Tilly Harris and Dan Matthew with a terrific toe-tapping indie-rock-pop take on a whole spectrum of human contradictions
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Alan Sparhawk: With Trampled By Turtles
New album: Suffused with a warmth, tenderness and powerful, grieving melancholy, this second solo album by the Low co-founder since the death in 2022 of his wife and lifelong creative Mimi Parker joins him with the fabulous fellow Duluth, Minnesota bluegrass and folk band Trampled By Turtles
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Tunde Adebimpe: Thee Black Boltz
New album: The likeable TV On The Radio frontman, visual artists and LA-based actor releases his first solo LP, an impressively punchy, tender, angry, sharp, intelligent fusion of synth-pop, postpunk and funk, working with multi-instrumentalist and co-producer Wilder Zoby – energised in sound, but tinged with thematic grief and loss
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Bria Salmena: Big Dog
New album: A striking, stylish debut by the Toronto artist, also co-written and co-produced with Duncan Hay Jennings, the frontwoman of Canadian post-punk outfit FRIGS delivers a mix of dark, deep, smoky-voiced pop, crafted krautrock, shimmery shoegaze, and goth-electronica
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clipping.: Dead Channel Sky
New album: Breathlessly brilliant warp-speed hip-hop with a cyberpunk, electronica and house music soundtrack by the trio fronted by rapper and actor Daveed Diggs, set in a sci-fi dystopian universe of multiple characters and stories
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Naima Bock: Below A Massive Dark Land
New album: Wonderfully delicate, deliciously paced, lo-fi indie folk by the British artist of Greek-Brazilian heritage and former member of Goat Girl, with her second album, following 2022’s Giant Palm
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The Bug Club: On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System
New album: A highbrow title heralds mischievously delightful collection of extremely catchy but deliberately silly songs filled with trivial observations in this third indie garage fuzz pop-rock LP by the Welsh trio fronted by Sam Willmett (vocals/guitar) and Tilly Harris (vocals/bass)
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LOMA: How Will I Live Without A Body?
New album: Slow, sensual, powerful, haunting, affecting, poetic and utterly gorgeous third LP by the Austin trio of Emily Cross (Cross Record), Jonathan Meiburg (Shearwater) and Dan Duszynski, which includes poetic collaborations from Laurie Anderson’s AI model
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Girl and Girl: Call A Doctor
New album: A vibrant, energetic, wittily candid, jangly indie-garage-rock release about life’s many undulations and problems, particularly mental health issues, by the Australian quartet led by Kai James in their debut LP by Sub Pop
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La Luz: News of the Universe
New album: A fourth studio LP of dreamy, exotic, alluring psychedelia and surf rock by the California quartet fronted by Shana Cleveland, simmering and potent, but made in the dark shadow of a breast cancer ordeal
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Iron & Wine: Light Verse
New album: A poetic latest release indeed North Carolina’s Sam Beam, packed with beautiful lyrics and melodies, articulate alternative folk, rock and country with flavours of Paul Simon and Cat Stevens, filled with vivid fictional and personal insights, desperate characters and wide-eyed optimists, heartache, tears and laughter including an appearance by Fiona Apple
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Shabazz Palaces: Exotic Birds of Prey
New album: Uniquely striking, experimental space-trip hip-hop, jazz, funk, electronica and Afrofuturism by the Seattle combo of Ishmael Butler, aka Palaceer Lazaro (formerly Butterfly in the 90s trio Digable Planets) and multi-instrumentalist Tendai "Baba" Maraire
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