GL.25.15: Caseysimone Ballestas
GL.25.24: CARL ANDERSON
GL.25.25: Matt Jasinski
GL.25.26: Tom Flanagan
GL.25.27: Mary Pero
***
30 for 2025
PRELUDE
I have a memory, maybe it’s too old to be a memory, possibly my sister told it to me. But I have a clear image of the scene in my mind. I’m nine years old or ten maybe. We are visiting my aunt and uncle outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Late one afternoon they are sitting in their matching chairs in the den. Aunt Kay is crocheting. They (and we) are listening to a weekly bluegrass program on the radio. No one talks. Not a word. We listen. When the program ends, Uncle Dale turns off the radio and everyone leaves the room.
That was, as far as I’ve ever known, the sum total of their consumption of popular music. No listening to the radio in their car, if the car even had one. Maybe they had a record player, but I don’t remember ever seeing evidence of it. They knew a vast library of church hymns, of course. Aunt Kay enjoyed Christmas carols (not the cool ones).
Younger me was outraged by the thought of having to live like this. Imagine being into bluegrass and having your entire supply be an hour a week of a radio program into which you had no input, and whose content was controlled by, well you don't even want to think about that. An inmate probably has it better today. Older me appreciates the ritual more. Bluegrass was music from their place, for their place, about their place. Finding themselves elderly and rural, this was an hour they could share music together. But mostly, I admire the deliberateness of setting aside time to sit and listen. I envy it.
2025 IN MUSIC
For me, of course, it’s rootless cosmopolitanism roiled by technological disruption forever, baby. Be grateful for what we have, my friends, be grateful.
My 2025 was shaped by the arrival of Snocaps’ album. There were faint signs, but no hints. Allison was spending time on tour with Katie. Katie’s blog was noticeably silent about writing, even though Tiger’s Blood had been out for like 18 months. Then on Halloween she wrote that “my new band Snocaps” was releasing an album: her, Allison, Brad Cook, and MJ Lenderman. This is the stuff of vision boards, not a thing that actually happens. How to explain? Imagine you are an Oasis fan, and Noel and Liam surprise announce the band got back together and finished an album—but also that Noel and Liam had never done a single thing that sucked, ever. And you were absolutely certain the new album could not possibly suck, either. And you were right about all of it.
The Snocaps album is not the best thing Katie or Allison has ever done, but I ask you, in 2025, what is better?
Well, there’s Geese. No point in me trying to explain why Geese have the album of the year (non-Crutchfield-sisters division); nobody else has been able to. Yes it is literate and interesting and you can draw lines back to Television or Velvet Underground if you wish. As for any broader social or cultural impact of this fact, it's really nothing.
Consider: in 2025, the Oklahoma City Thunder is the best team in basketball. They’re young and talented, they’ve been together for a few years, and now it's all coming together and working. You watch them and you think: Well, yeah, if you can do *that* every night you're going to win all the time. It’s not some deep or revolutionary insight. And it certainly does not mean that Oklahoma City is the center of the basketball world.
That's something like what I think about Geese. In my 20s, I thought that NYC was the center of the music world. A parochial opinion, but often reinforced by the fact that if you are hot in NYC, there are a thousand smart and literate folks who will echo it. But not true then, not true now. If by some chance Getting Killed didn’t make it out this year, or if the engineer made a few bad choices, whatever, then something else would be the consensus album of the year. Maybe Wet Leg. Then we’d all get pushed dozens of AI-generated slop posts about how Isle of Wight is the center of the “contemporary rock revival.” Ugh.
I know my takes on new music in 2025 don't amount to much. Mostly my fault. But also 2025's fault. So many bands can make good records (and good-sounding records) that all the individual webs criss-cross and overlap and start to look like a boundless sheet. Rootless cosmopolitanism, on a global scale, for the win.
CODA
This year I spent time working on a very different kind of list. Because, I got a convertible. It’s 10 years old and its once-fancy audio system has a hard drive for storing MP3s. So of course I need a driving playlist. The car is loud, so strictly rock please, stuff that sounds good even when you are also listening to what sounds like two vacuums running over the sound effects from Days of Thunder. The car speakers are what you get. And my MP3 collection is (by no coincidence) over 10 years old. I do love making a constrained list.
The first five tracks are: Ozzy Osbourne - “Crazy Train” [RIP Ozzy], AC/DC - “Highway To Hell,” The White Stripes - “Seven Nation Army,” Rage Against The Machine - “Killing In The Name,” and Green Day - “St. Jimmy.” Then more that follow in kind.
What I learned from this project has little to do with the content of the list. It's the constraint on where and how I can listen to it. That list does not exist on Spotify. It’s not in the cloud. It’s not on my phone and cannot be accessed by my phone. It's a folder of files on an SD card, now copied to the car's hard drive. It's only a list because the file names start with sequential numbers. Remember that? To listen to that list, you have to get in this specific car. This list isn’t good for anything but listening to in a loud convertible. But the deliberateness of taking time to listen to it? I dig it.
01. Snocaps - “Heathcliff”
When I mustered the nerve to listen to this album—it took a few days—I was especially nervous about track two. This is where Katie usually reveals what she's up to. By God, this chorus is so exactly what I wanted. Once I saw Allison sing a few songs with Katie on stage, and my blissed-out mind had the thought that every singer who has ever double-tracked their vocals, ever, was trying to sound like Allison and Katie singing together. In the cold light of the day that’s plainly an over-take. But you know, it isn’t altogether wrong either. This piece of music made me happier than any other this year.
02. Geese - “Au Pays Du Cocaine”
Cameron Winter is 23 and trying so very hard to be the sexiest 23 year-old on earth. Not that I would know, but he can have my vote. There’s a video of him singing Nick Drake’s “Place To Be” when he was even younger, in case you had any doubt he is genuine.
03. Dustbunny - “Jane Is Sideways”
Through years of being slandered by right-wing media whenever they seek a distraction from how much Americans hate right-wing policies, Portland carries on being Portland. A place where you can ride your bike to a venue, mingle with a few dozen people, and tonight’s local band is this good. As a former resident who fled back to San Francisco, I don’t miss Portland much. But a while back a friend bragged “all the people you wanted to leave have left” and I tried to imagine what SF would be like if that happened here. I can’t even.
04. The Beths - “Straight Line Was A Lie”
Someone who knows a lot more about these things than me said this album might be their weakest yet. And that might be true, but it shows what a standard they have set. Yes it can sound like they are mostly just looking for new songs to play live, but at the same time, yes you would like to hear them play these songs live.
05. Snocaps - “Over Our Heads”
I don't know who said, “It's a sketchbook, not a painting,” but thank you to whoever you are. They toss this shit out as if it is normal to write lines like this:
2-3-4 leave through the alley
I'll get the truck and you get the baby.
The emptiness that we both know
Descends on us like we got no place to go.
Leave it all behind, make do without,
Don't bother chasing us, boys,
We'll see ourselves out.
You could get high, listen to this album and ponder, These two women used to be one egg, I wonder what that has to do with it. I'm not saying you would gain any deep insight, I'm just saying it could happen.
06. Wet Leg - “Mangetout”
Rhian Teasdale is a wolf to Olivia Rodrigo’s corgi. Other than that, they may have created their own genre. This is definitely the album of the year in whatever that is. I’m not confident this is the best track on the album but it is the one I listen to most.
07. Audrey Hobert - “Sue Me”
I don’t know anything about Audrey Hobert but Katie Crutchfield and Yasi Salek both gushed about her debut album and that alone is worth like five listens, at least.
08. Geese - “Cobra”
Loops, spirals, and waves, the rhythms on Getting Killed control the show. Every Cameron Winter vocal highlight seems to start in one song and finish in another. And if there was any doubt, the maxim that better music is made by bands is again proved by how much better this works than his other recordings. Winter is stunting all over this track, but the band is keeping up with him, maybe even driving him. Amanda Petrusich called this band “a dramatic outfit, prone to bursts of noise, meandering digressions, and feral bleating.” Yep. And better together.
09. Momma - "Rodeo"
Momma moved from LA to NYC and in some ways their sound has not changed, but in some ways it sounds EXACTLY like if you took an earlier album and imagined they lived in NYC instead. I'm glad.
10. Sharon Van Etten and the Attachment Theory - “Idiot Box”
This band made a good album and it seemed to get little love, which I find puzzling because, well, the frontwoman is Sharon van Etten. I am grateful she chose to join a band rather than put out another solo album. At least, everyone who can sing like Sharon should do it. Wait, that’s only like five people. Well, it should happen more, that’s what I’m saying. JOIN BANDS!
11. Liquid Mike - "Lit From The Wrong End"
Do you like Liquid Mike?
YES I LIKE LIQUID MIKE
How do they put out so many songs?
EVERY SONG IS UNDER 2 MINUTES
Why so short?
THEY PLAY REALLY FAST
What if I like something longer?
LISTEN TO THE ALBUM
12. illuminati hotties - “Skateboard Tattoo”
Sarah Tudzin demonstrates that musical growth is sometimes an overrated virtue.
13. Wet Leg - “davina mccall”
Here’s the thing about Wet Leg. They are writing really good songs. Like, good songs to listen to. Have you heard of this thing, Album-Oriented Rock, sometimes "AOR" for short? This is it. BTW, the kids are listening to Fleetwood Mac's Rumors, which is pure AOR. I feel that album could do numbers.
14. The Pill - "POSH"
Tell me your intuition on this: What does Olivia Rodrigo secretly listen to when she knows no one will ever know? It's The Pill, isn't it? Yes, it is. It definitely is.
15. Sports Team - “Condensation”
It’s the third album from these aggressively conventional rockers, and in perfectly conventional form it is much more fulsome and better than the sophomore effort.
16. Fust - “Spangled”
I became a fan of Fust when I saw them play four or five songs opening for someone else I can no longer remember. Hear them play and you know immediately these guys are honest and earnest, big time. This first verse is au courant and devastating.
They tore down the hospital, out on route 11.
I'm not sure what happened, seems like repossession.
And I'm not one to try to get all the way to heaven,
But I can't even visit the last place it was relevant.
Oof. Welcome to America in 2025. [Note to non-Americans: yes, sometimes hospitals here get repossessed. It’s hard to take us seriously, I know.]
17. Lucy Dacus - “Ankles”
There is no bigger Lucy Dacus fan than me. I could comfort myself by saying this is one of the best-written songs of the year. Which happens to be true. But look, I’m not a big fan of the sound she’s developed on this new album. And so I won’t pretend. But I note her writing has moved past merely brave and on to fucking fearless.
18. Jobi Riccio - “Wildfire Season”
In my continuing quest to puzzle out why the kids in this country aren't a lot angrier, here's a nice angry one.
19. Wednesday - “Townies”
This album marks for me one of those moments when a band trends toward easier to respect than enjoy. You’ve got to wish them well in what will probably be their post-MJ Lenderman period. But it’s hard for me to listen to this now without feeling like something is ending.
20. Blondshell - "T&A"
In a time when all the big narratives are so depressing—declining birth rates, declining life expectancy, etc.—there is something jarring about Sabrina Teitelbaum's songs about very intimate and personal bad choices.
21. Alien Boy - “Pictures of You”
More proof that it’d be fun to be young and living in Portland. I’m just a little too old to have been crazy over the 90s music that these folks Definitely Maybe Bleed American. In other words, I’m the age to have been crazy over The Cure’s “Pictures of You,” a forever classic that demands the level of respect where you just cannot re-use the name. Don’t put out any tracks called “Debaser” either, OK?
22. Horsegirl - “Switch Over”
I agree with everything Tony Schoenberg wrote about this song. In other news for old dudes, did you know the best music video this year is "Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads.
23. Lifeguard - "It Will Get Worse"
Has Horsegirl SOLD OUT? Do you find them distastefully commercial now? Watch out, these scrappy new kids from Chicago are coming up fast! OK that's just a joke. Lifeguard is signed on Matador.
24. Sharp Pins - “I Can’t Stop”
A smart person said that it’s pretty uncommon for an artist to aim at A Hard’s Day Night. I mean yeah. But that could be of interest, to be sure.
25. Chelsea Hodson - “Belong To Nobody”
The first minute of this might be the best thing written this year.
Love has one philosophy:
It belongs to nobody.
A prayer that goes nowhere
A feeling I can't quite hold.
Damn Chelsea, let the other girls have a chance!
26. Sex Week - “Coach”
It's 2012 and indie electropop changes your life. It's 2025 and you release "Coach" and everyone remembers. [H/T Aaron]
27. Momma - “I Want You (Fever)”
What do we want? Kids who worship the old gods. In this case, Veruca Salt.
28. Cardinals - “Masquerade”
This album won’t be out until next year, then we will know if Cardinals are Ireland’s Pavement, or not. It’s a long shot but boy I sure I hope I get to say I told you so.
29. VILLANELLE - “Hinge”
Liam Gallagher's son has a sort of Nirvana tribute group and they, VILLANELLE, released a single. Listen to this track and consider this: Did I put the previous sentence into GPT to generate this track?
Is this a hoax? I learnt the word "villanelle" because that's the name of the character in Killing Eve played by Jody Comer (God-tier performance). It's a good pun: "Because of their repetitive nature, villanelles are well-suited to themes such as obsession or the cyclical nature of things." Naming their band "VILLANELLE" is also a fine pun, but it is a verbatim copy of the same pun featured in a hit BBC show. This is the most Gallagher thing ever. First album will be titled On The Nose. Or maybe Jawbone In A Parka.
30. Snocaps - “Doom”
It’s not really fair to other bands when your album tracks are Waxahatchee songs that Katie just hasn’t released yet. Plus, Katie and Allison Crutchfield sing together. For me, this is like fries and ketchup. It's not that fries are only good with ketchup, it's not that ketchup exists only to complement fries. But fries and ketchup belong together as much as any two things in the universe can possibly belong together.
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