Since I began participating in a year-end music poll a few years back, I've taken my own year-end rankings more seriously than one should. Last year I made the mistake of submitting my ballot too early, which resulted in what turned out to be my favorite album of 2024 - Wussy's Cincinnati, Ohio - not even being on my list.
The poll, based on the format of the Village Voice Pazz & Jop Poll (more on that below), is on Facebook, so participants can view each submittal as they're posted on the site. I took my time this year, made note of albums I hadn't heard that were appearing on a lot of lists, and submitted my own entry on the day before the January 3 deadline. Even then, once the results were published, there were a couple of high finishers that might have cracked my Top Ten.
Like Pazz & Jop, the way the poll works is that participants have 100 points to allot to 10 albums. The maximum award is 30, the minimum 5. A lot of participants (this year there were 304) just pick 10 albums and award 10 points to each, but I've always thought that was the easy way out. For me, this year was difficult, because truth be told there wasn't a huge gap between my #1 and my #10 (or even #20, for that matter).
1. Patterson Hood, Exploding Trees and Airplane Screams (15 points). In the liner notes, Hood writes, "My solo albums have always had a separate life from my work with DBT (Drive-By Truckers, for the uninitiated), but I decided that the next time I did one, it needed to be a bigger departure than the others." That is certainly true - had the album been released in November instead of February, it might not have cracked my Top Ten. Which is to say, the songs took a while to sink in. There's only one obvious rocker, "The Van Pelt Parties," which is about a family that hosted huge parties on Christmas Even when Hood was growing up. The songs are largely autobiographical, and in several instances - most notably, "Airplane Screams," a song Hood wrote about a troubled friend when he was only twenty - originally written years ago.
2. Big Thief, Double Infinity (13). The band's 2022 album, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, was probably more heralded (it even received a Grammy nomination), but Double Infinity clicked with me in a way the previous record never did. This is atmospheric rock/folk at its best. Adrienne Lenker doesn't have a "pretty" voice per se, but she sings beautifully on the album. Choice cuts: "Words," "Los Angeles," "No Fear," "Grandmother," "How Could I Have Known."
3. Snocaps, Snocaps (12). Snocaps is comprised of twin sisters Katie and Allison Crutchfield, with key assists from Brad Cook and MJ Lenderman. Katie is best known for her outstanding work in/as Waxahatchee, and the sisters do themselves proud on this joint effort. They each sing on the album, and to these ears it's impossible to tell them apart. The best songs - in particular, "Doom" and - are the ones where they sing in harmony. The album clocks in with 13 songs and at a brisk 33 minutes, and there is not a single minute wasted.
4. Bruce Springsteen, Tracks II (11). How often does an album (or in this case, a box set) have its own trailer? Maybe it's happened once or twice, but off the top of my head I don't remember one. But there it was last April, a trailer for Tracks II, with Bruce himself talking about how people assumed he didn't do much work during the 90s (outside of raising some kids, presumably), but no! He was working all the time! And there were not one, not two, not even three, but SEVEN unreleased albums in the can, an injustice that would now be rectified in three short months. What Bruce fan would not be excited by such news? For Bruce fans, it was like our "Taylor's Version" announcement.
As it turns out, the marketing was a little misleading. Two of the "albums" included in the package - LA Garage Sessions '83 (Disc 1) and Perfect World (Disc 7) aren't really albums per se, they're compilations of unreleased tracks, similar to the original Tracks set and the discs that accompanied the anniversary versions of Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River. A third disc, Fearless, is a soundtrack from a movie that was never made. But that leaves four fully-realized albums that for various reasons Bruce chose not to release: Streets of Philadelphia Sessions (although I'm sure it would have been called something different had it been released at the time), Somewhere North of Nashville, Inyo, and Twilight Hours.
Of those four, the one I was most looking forward to - Streets of Philadelphia Sessions - is the one I enjoyed the least. It's not bad, probably A-/B+ territory, but for me it proved that what no doubt would have been the album's title track had it been released at the time was a glorious one-shot whose quality couldn't quite be extended over the course of an entire album. North of Nashville is a fun romp, and would likely have been considered just that. Not quite "Bruce goes country," but close enough.
That leaves Inyo and Twilight Hours, two albums that couldn't sound less alike if he was trying (maybe he was), and they're both great - solid A's. My guess is that Inyo likely appeals most to fans of Nebraska, The Ghost of Tom Joad and Devils & Dust. The following is written in the box set's liner notes, and is a fair description of what the album is about:
Inyo is another set of richly woven, deeply human stories like those found on The Ghost of Tom Joad and Devils & Dust, albums contemporary to much of this material. Several touch on the Mexican diaspora: how border crossing between Mexico and the US has affected generations, along with the cultural losses endured as a result. A few were written during the 1995-97 solo tour in support of Joad.
It's an album that benefits from repeated listens, and it definitely helps to have the lyric sheet handy. But to these ears, the music is gorgeous, perfectly complementing the stories Bruce tells in the songs.
Which leaves Twilight Hours, the biggest surprise in the set. It's been described as his Sinatra album, which makes sense, but it's both different and more than that. It's Bruce exploring a genre of music that he obviously respects - the Sinatra chapter in his memoir makes that clear - and unlike much of his foray into Jimmy Webb/Glen Campbell territory on Western Stars, it works in a way that makes me astonished that he never let the record see the light of day until now.
The two compilation albums that bracket the set? I'm glad they exist, and they provide an insight into what Bruce was thinking about and working on at the time the songs were recorded. Like all compilations of the type, they're a little hit and miss, but there's far more than enough outstanding material to justify their existence.
5. Hayley Williams, Ego Death At a Bachelorette Party (10). I was embarrassingly late to the party on Paramore, the band for which Williams is the lead singer. The first inkling that they'd been around a lot longer than I knew was when some of my colleagues covered one of their songs during a karaoke event at a conference I attended. I'd describe her solo album as being more pop-oriented than her work with Paramore, and the album - 20 tracks, many of which she released as singles over the course of 2025 - is an embarrassment of riches. It was really difficult to pick just four tracks for my year-end playlist from the album, and I'm still not sure I chose the right four.
6. James McMurtry, The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy (10). McMurtry is another artist where it's good to have the lyric sheet handy, which one would expect given he's the son of Larry, the great 20th Century novelist. Black Dog is a little more diffuse thematically and perhaps not quite as good as 2015's Complicated Game and 2021's The Horses and The Hounds, but considering both of those were my favorite albums the years they were released, that's hardly an insult. Highlights are "South Texas Lawman," which could be expanded to a great short story, "Annie," and "Sailing Away." The album concludes with a great cover of Kris Kristofferson's "Broken Freedom Song." Produced by Don Dixon, a name I don't think I'd seen since the 1980s.
7. Robert Plant with Suzi Dian, Saving Grace (9). Every now and then you see an invitation to post your "least popular take" about movies, music, etc. Definitely one of my least popular takes is that I think Robert Plant's post-Led Zeppelin musical catalogue is fully equal to that which came before, if not superior. That's intended more as praise for Plant than as disrespect to Zeppelin, but we're now 46 years past the last Zeppelin album and Plant just keeps cranking out one good album after another, exploring myriad styles but always sounding just like himself (although those high notes are a thing of the past, I think). The highlight of this record is his cover of "I Never Will Marry," nearly half a century after Linda Ronstadt's great version (with Dolly Parton on harmony) on Simple Dreams.
8. The Delines, Mr. Luck and Ms. Doom (8). Hailing from Portland, Oregon, they call themselves a "retro country-soul band." Listening to their songs, you can imagine them being recorded somewhere in the south in the late 1960s. Think of Bobbie Gentry mixed with the Muscle Shoals sound, and you get the idea. This was my first deep foray into their work, but it won't be the last. Highlights: "There's Nothing Down the Highway," the title track, and "Maureen's Gone Missing."
9. Kathleen Edwards, Billionaire (7). I still remember where I was the first time I heard Kathleen Edwards. We were on a short vacation in Santa Cruz, and during an afternoon strolling around the downtown area we found ourselves browsing at the local Borders, where her album Back to Me (her second) was playing. The album, and especially the song "Summerlong," resonated with me immediately and I bought the record (something I had a habit of doing back in those days). It was outstanding, as was the follow-up, Asking for Flowers. The album after that was a letdown, overly influenced by her then-relationship with Bon Iver. Then came nearly a decade with no new music, during which she actually opened and operated a coffee shop. She returned with the solid Total Freedom in 2020, and in early 2025 released a couple of solid EPs, one that was all cover versions.
Billionaire was described by Pitchfork as "a polished update of the rough-edged alt-country folk rock that informed her first three LPs," and that's fair. The album was co-produced by Jason Isbell, and his recognizable guitar licks can be heard on nearly every track. The title track just might be my favorite song of 2025, and "Other People's Bands" isn't far behind.
10. Jason Isbell, Foxes in the Snow (5). Speaking of Jason Isbell...this was his first truly solo album, featuring strictly acoustic guitar with very little (or perhaps none, it's sometimes hard to tell) accompaniment. Going into 2025, I had a feeling we would be seeing new albums from Isbell and his now-ex wife Amanda Shires, and admittedly I wasn't looking forward to it. Their breakup really bummed me out, even if anyone who watched the movie that was on HBO a while back could tell that there were some issues brewing there. Unlike Shires, whose album was difficult to listen to because the pain and anger emanated from every track, Isbell doesn't address the breakup directly, although there are lines in both "Eileen" and "Good While It Lasted" that could be interpreted as being about what happened. Overall it's very solid work, if not as powerful as his recent albums with the 400 Unit.
The Second Ten
Honestly, on any given day one of these albums might have found their way into the Top Ten - it was that close.
Lilly Hiatt – Forever. Less heralded and less popular than she should be.
HAIM – I quit. To these ears, their best album.
Tyler Childers – Snipe Hunter. Produced by the erstwhile Rick Rubin, and a big step forward for a guy who will be a big star (and may be one now, for all I know).
Hayes Carll – We’re Only Human. Carll just has a knack for writing great songs. "Progress of Man (Bitcoin and Cattle)" is the all-timer here, and "High" (yes, it's about what you think it's about) isn't far behind.
Amanda Shires – Nobody’s Girl. As noted above, very painful to listen to. Jason clearly did her wrong, and if it didn't quite feel so much as if the album was her effort to make him look as bad as possible (and don't get me wrong, maybe he deserves it), I'd probably have ranked it a little higher. But a truly great singer, and several of the songs are well beyond top-notch.
Lady Gaga – MAYHEM. I'm not enough of a Gaga expert to know if this is a return to form or just the latest in a long line of good albums, but every song is filled with hooks and quite danceable - not that you'd want to see me try.
Bob Mould – Here We Go Crazy. Remember Husker Du? Great 80s band, mostly unsung. Mould has continued to make records since then, and this is one of the best.
Lola Young – I’m Only F**cking Myself. Last summer, I asked some of my younger friends (mostly in their 30s) what the summer bangers were, and one of them turned me on to Lola Young's "Messy" from 2024. There's nothing quite that good on this album, but several cuts come very close.
Beach Bunny – Tunnel Vision. Want hooks? This band has more than enough to go around.
Margo Price – Hard-Headed Woman. Fully back in the country fold, and this just might be her best.
1 comment:
Good list! I appreciated your Springsteen breakdown. I think I recently said that I didn't understand why he released Western Stars instead of Twilight Hours, but then I listened to WS recently and it finally clicked with me.
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