Like the mighty hair metal band Europe, it is time for the final countdown for 2025.
10: Ex-Vöid – In Love Again
Ex-Vöid was the cruellest of love stories for Reading Indie Life this year. Discover an amazing band you were not aware of. Listen to their amazing new album. See them play a brilliant live performance in a lovely small venue. Weep as they announce they are calling it a day. It was not the only time it happened this year (House of Women will also be sadly missed), but this one hit hardest. Still, we will always have our memories, and two stunning albums to listen to.
9: Squid – Cowards
Are there more literary and borderline pretentious albums than Cowards out there for 2025? Possibly. However, the edge this album possesses is that it is also really clever musically.
Cowards starts off with a track about cannibalism before taking in climate anxiety, the affect of the more unevolved parts of the human brain on our modern decision making process and Charles Manson. Evil and deluded protagonists stalk the narratives from start to finish.
Musically, it constantly shifts direction and the time signatures of most songs barely hold together. ‘Crispy Skin’ and ‘Building 360’ are the kind of tracks Radiohead would have been proud of. File under gloriously offbeat.
8: Dave – The Boy Who Played The Harp
A sophisticated album from one of the greatest living exponents of the rap genre. Instead of loud and showy this is a thoughtful, almost introverted offering, that revels in powerful moments of calm and insight. This is a thoroughly cohesive album, a whole body of work. There are no obvious singles, though ‘Raindance’ has cut through to a wide audience.
We cannot wait to see Dave at Reading Festival next year.
7: Humour – Learning Greek
An astonishingly accomplished debut album. Humour possess a contained energy that unleashes on a regular basis. There is a constant balance of power shifting between melody and deliberate rough edges. Like Squid and Cowards there is hugely interesting, sometimes difficult, choices of topic and protagonist. Incredibly impressive live, this is a band to watch closely.
6: Florence + The Machine – Everybody Scream
An assured masterpiece from one of the UK’s greatest stars. Florence Welch explores her own mythology, her recent near death experience, and the nature of being a woman within the male dominated music industry. These tracks, added to the already impressive back catalogue, will make for a stunning headline set at Reading Festival 2026, fourteen years on from the last appearance. A victory for feminism and brilliant indie guitar music.
5: jasmine.4.t – You Are The Morning
Released all the way back in January this fragile album has been high on our playing rotation the whole year. As important for the issues it stands for and the minorities it speaks on behalf of, as much as the phenomenal songwriting and trapped emotions. Jasmine has proven to be a deeply outspoken figurehead on a wide range of issues from Trans rights through to the genocide of the Palestinians. Musically it veers from singer-songwriter numbers through to the edges of skate punk.
4: Rosalía – Lux
As soon as Bjork turned up on the preceding single ‘Berghain’ it became clear that something quite extraordinary was incoming. It takes something special to draw in the Icelandic agent of chaos. I doubt it took more than a few minutes of playing some of the multi-language, expansively orchestrated demos to convince her to sign up.
No other album released this year contained as much ambition as this one. A staggering mash-up of classical, opera and pop with elements of dance music whilst Rosalía sings in thirteen languages. Whilst she can hardly be described as generic previously, this feels like a once in a lifetime magnum opus from a visionary artist. From the way ‘Divinize’ echoes the sound of a human heart, through to the orchestral dance music of ‘Reliquia,’ the high drama opera of ‘Berghain’ and the beautiful musical-like number ‘La Perla.’ Everyone was raving about it.
3: Baxter Dury – Allbarone
The most unexpected entry in the Top Five is this career defining effort from Baxter Dury. Whilst a maker of decent music for many years, there was very little hint that such an undoubted masterpiece resided within. From start to finish it zings with note perfect production, married to Baxter’s wit and insight. Dance floor bangers of the highest order. Paul Epworth deserves Producer of The Year for dragging this brilliance out of everyone involved.
2: Turnstile – Never Enough
Back in our June review we considered if NEVER ENOUGH was better than GLOW ON and came up with an incorrect result. The answer after several months of listening was a win in favour of NEVER ENOUGH. If anything, it is considerably better. Ignore all the distracting side discussions, the beating heart of this record is a rock behemoth that incorporates a wide range of guitar influences and turns out an end product that is both thrilling and joyous.
Turnstile have absolutely owned 2025, stunning UK audiences as both headliners at Outbreak and on their own triumphant tour. This is a band in the ascent, ready to conquer the whole world and doing it all on their own terms.
1: Benefits – Constant Noise
Some albums can go up and down in your estimation across the year. The darker, bleaker and more disturbing 2025 has got the more this album has become the one to go to. Trump and Putin are causing havoc, global warming is still being ignored, the far right is making significant inroads and the descent into countries being run by corporate oligarchies feels ever more inevitable.
Critically adored universally (number 9 on Metacritics list of albums for 2025), even if it has struggled to connect to the wider audience it deserves, Constant Noise captures the horrendous feelings conjured by life in modern Britain and begins trying to figure out how rational beings can make sense of that without losing their sanity.
Is it music or is it art? Performance poetry? Underground dance? The ultimate punk album? It doesn’t really matter how you want to fail to pigeonhole it – the outcome is sheer brilliance. The passion underlying it shines through constantly, the musical choices keep surprising you. If you haven’t been to see Benefits yet you need to make it your New Year’s Resolution – they will give you everything they have to give.
No other album has spoken as personally as this one has to us this year, a life-raft to hang onto amid the oncoming storm, the constant noise.
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