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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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Mavis Staples: Sad and Beautiful World
New album: A timelessly classy release by the veteran soul, blues and gospel singer and social activist from the Staples Singers, in a release of wonderfully moving and poignant cover versions, beautifully interpreting works by artists including Tom Waits, Curtis Mayfield, Leonard Cohen, and Gillian Welch
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Paul Kelly: Seventy not out, with his 30th studio album
New album: The acclaimed, prolific Australian singer-songwriter (and perennial Song Bar playlist favourite) returns with his distinctive, Dylan-esque folk-rock-country with a landmark of age and his 30th studio album, with profound ballad, poetic detail and reflections on age, regrets, lust, love and death
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Snocaps
New album: Catchy, fresh, crisp clever, reflective sharp indie with a country twang by Katie Crutchfield aka Waxahatchee, now forming a new group with her twin sister Allison, and supported by MJ Lenderman and Brad Cook
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Robert Plant: Saving Grace
New album: The Led Zeppelin singer, after successful albums and touring with collaborators such as Alison Krauss, completes a project started in 2019 with a covers collection of traditional folk, blues, Americana and other sources, working here with singer Suzi Dian, and tight band comprising Oli Jefferson, Tony Kelsey, Barney Morse-Brown, and Matt Worley
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Jeff Tweedy: Twilight Override
New album: The Wilco frontman’s fifth solo album is a treasure trove of lo-fi, beautiful, warm, intimate, sensitive, bittersweet songwriting – gently profound, reflective and catchily tuneful, a 30-track triple LP opus recorded and self-produced himself at his Chicago studio, The Loft, with a general theme of slow, autumnal fade and mortality but also life affirmation
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Neko Case: Neon Grey Midnight Green
New album: Reflecting on whole lifetime, as well as a career spanning more than three decades, a vivid, poetic, uplifting and profound autobiographical release by the American singer-songwriter and member of the Canadian indie rockers the New Pornographers, this beautiful LP’s title is inspired by the slate-coloured clouds and conifer forests on the Pacific Northwest skyline
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Kieran Hebden + William Tyler: 41 Longfield Street Late '80s
New album: A minimalist, eclectic musical marriage of the acoustic and electronic in this experimental, ambient, eerily intriguing collaboration between British Four Tet musician and the ex-Lambchop American guitarist
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Big Thief: Double Infinity
New album: Brooklyn’s Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek and James Krivchenia return with a beautiful sixth album, joined by guest musicians including Laraaji on zither and percussion, with nine poetic, profound and elevating folk-rock numbers, all with exquisite, bustling, interwoven elegance
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CMAT: EURO-COUNTRY
New album: “I waited for love with a cricket bat …” Packed with witty, offbeat and super-sharp, candidly personal lyrics, soaring, gorgeous vocals and melodies, all with an eccentric turns, the charismatic Dublin country-pop star and songwriter Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson brings home her third, and best LP yet
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Molly Tuttle: So Long Little Miss Sunshine
New album: The California-born, Nashville-based acclaimed bluegrass guitarist, banjoist and singer-songwriter brings her nimble-fingered skills, catchy tunes and humorous, clever narrative lyrics to this excellent fifth solo LP of ballads, breakups, and ball-breakers
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Cass McCombs: Interior Live Oak
New album: Named after a tree species native to Northern California, the American singer-songwriter’s landmark 74-minute double LP, and his 11th solo studio release, is one of his finest, packed with tear-jerking, vivid ballads of gentle pace, profundity, beauty and catchy country-folk-rock grooves
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Marissa Nadler: New Radiations
New album: Exquisitely delicate, dark and beautiful as onyx or obsidian, a dream-like, haunting 10th studio LP by the Nashville singer-songwriter across gothic folk whispering soundscapes of meticulous guitar finger-picking, Hammond organ and synths, and lyrics variously inhabiting characters from an airborne Cessna, to a spaceship, a getaway car, and alternate dimensions
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Tuxis Giant: You Won't Remember This
New album: Subtle, clever, sensitive, gently poetic, nuanced alt-country and indie-folk by the Boston/ Brooklyn band led by Matt O’Connor across themes of memory, identity, a gender journey, filled with hidden narratives, wry humour and the beautifully bittersweet
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Lord Huron: The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1
New album: Wistful, vivid country-folk and Americana by the Los Angeles band fronted by Ben Schneider in this strong fifth LP, coloured by images of huge skies and stars, California deserts, love, loss, with catchy tunes, tender anguish, haunting melodies and memories
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Billie Marten: Dog Eared
New album: Beautiful, warm, intimate, gentle, experimental indie-folk by the singer-songwriter Isabella Tweddle from Ripon in North Yorkshire, in this delicious fifth LP, filled with love songs and nostalgic childhood memories, and following 2023’s Drop Cherries, an expansion of excellent musicians in the recording
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Alex G: Headlights
New album: This 10th album by the Pennsylvania indie musician, producer, and singer-songwriter Alexander Giannascoli brings a mellower sound than some of his previous LPs, with often gentle, skilfully rendered guitars, dream-like, wistful and fantastical lyrics, and beautifully drawing on Americana as well as key influences Elliott Smith and Neil Young
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Natalie Bergman: My Home Is Not In This World
New album: This stylishly retro second solo album by the Chicago-born LA-based singer-songwriter follows her acclaimed 2021 LP Mercy, and channels psychedelic soul and alt-60s pop, packed with beautiful, classic-feel, heartbreak songs, and with a title that yearns for that past era and sense of place
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Bruce Springsteen: Tracks II - The Lost Albums
New albums: Not bootlegs, B-sides or omitted songs from past albums (as in the 1998 Tracks outtakes release), this veritable mountain of unreleased gems – a whopping seven LPs spanning 1983–2018 with 82 unreleased songs and over five hours in a treasure trove of discovery for devoted and new fans
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S.G. Goodman: Planting By The Signs
New album: A third album of powerful, simmering, lyrically vivid, stripped-back folk, country and Americana by the singer-songwriter from Hickman, Kentucky, portraying stories and characters from a small town, with themes about the importance of and cycles of the natural world, and summoning a sound somewhere between Lucinda Williams and Cat Power
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