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Cardinals: Masquerade
New album: Awash with passionate anguish and swaggering post-punk indie and gnarly energy, a strikingly impressive debut by the Cork five-piece, coloured by seething, stormy vocals and guitars, and flavoured by a distinctively rich accordion sound
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Alice Costelloe: Move On With the Year
New album: A beautifully delicate, melodious, thoughtful and poetic indie-folk-pop debut, following EPs, by the London singer-songwriter, formerly of shoe-gaze band Big Deal, here on themes of grief and growth, purging, personal rebuilding and creative detangling
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Beverley Glenn-Copeland: Laughter In Summer
New album: Delightful, charming, old-fashioned, touching, tender and timeless, this late-career LP from from 82-year-old American-born Canadian singer alongside partner Elizabeth is a love letter to their companionship, and an embrace of the inevitable
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Geologist: Can I Get A Pack Of Camel Lights?
New album: The hurdy-gurdy never quite sounded like this before. Animal Collective multi-instrumentalist Brian Weitz is the final member of that experimental collective to release a solo album, and it’s a bizarre journey of oddball sounds and instruments looped through guitar pedal effects krautrock repetitive, meditational exploratory spirit, inhaled through the titular reference to his past as a smoker
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Ye Vagabonds: All Tied Together
New album: Beautiful, evocative, poetic and profound original folk numbers with a traditional style by Irish brothers Brían and Diarmuid Mac Gloinn in their fourth LP, recorded live in a Galway house with acclaimed producer Philip Weinrobe (Big Thief, Adrianne Lenker), and vivid lyrical themes of home and memory
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Tessa Rose Jackson: The Lighthouse
New album: Beautiful, intricate, understated, poetic and intelligent, this warm, inviting experimental folk by the Dutch-British singer-songwriter is the first LP under her own name, having previously released three as the artist Someone
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The Paper Kites: If You Go There, I Hope You Find It
New album: Warm, tender, gently-paced, calmly reflective, beautifully soothing, poetic, melancholic alternative folk and Americana by the band from Melbourne in their seventh LP in 15 years
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Courtney Marie Andrews: Valentine
New album: Emotional, beautiful, stirring, Americana, folk and indie-pop by singer-songwriter from Phoenix, Arizona, in this latest studio LP in of soaring voice, strong melodies, love, vulnerability and heartbreak, longing and bravery
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Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore: Tragic Magic
New album: Delicate, beautiful, ethereal, meditative new work by the two American experimental composers in their first collaborative LP, with gentle understated vocals, classic synth sounds, and rare harps chosen from from the Paris Musée de la Musique Collection
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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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Dove Ellis: Blizzard
New album: An extraordinarily mature, passionate, poetic, and outstandingly powerful debut by the Manchester-based Galway-born singer-songwriter, whose soaring delivery has instant echoes of Jeff Buckley and lyrics that go above and beyond
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Ólöf Arnalds: Spíra
New album: A gorgeous, delicate, ethereal first release in a decade by the Icelandic singer-songwriter, acoustic instruments and her gentle, high, pure voice, all in her native language, caressing this listening experience like pure waters of some slowly trickling glacial stream
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The Mountain Goats: Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan
New album: An evocative musical journey of a concept album by the indie-folk band from Claremont, California, fronted by singer-songwriter John Darnielle, based on a dream of his in 2023 about a voyage to a fictional island by the titular captain, charting adventure, wonder and tragedy
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Haley Heynderickx and Max García Conover: What of Our Nature
New album: Beautiful, precise, poignant and poetic new folk numbers inspired by the life and music style of Woody Guthrie as the Portland, Oregon and New Yorker, now Portland, Maine-based singer-songwriters bring a delicious duet album, alternating and sharing songs covering a variety of forever topical social issues
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Iona Zajac: Bang
New album: A powerful, stirring, passionate and mature debut LP by the 29-year-old Glasgow-based Scottish singer with Polish and Ukrainian heritage who has toured as the new Pogues singer, and whose alternative folk songs capture raw emotions and the experience of modern womanhood, with echoes of PJ Harvey, Patti Smith, Aldous Harding and Lankum
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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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Stella Donnelly: Love and Fortune
New album: Finely crafted, stripped back musical simplicity combined with complex melancholic emotions mark out this beautiful, poetic, and deeply personal third folk-pop LP by the Australian singer-songwriter reflecting on the past and present
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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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Midlake: A Bridge To Far
New album: The Denton, Texas band make a welcome return with their distinctively warm, rich, psychedelic folk-rock, marked by close vocal harmonies, acoustic and pedal steel, keyboards and flute, this sixth studio album themed around hope, humility and perseverance, all as a human necessity
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