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Favourite music of 2025

I’m early! Spotify Wrapped (100 days, most-listened genre Alt Metal, album Tethered Hands by Tethered Hands, artist AFI, plus “get their numbers up” listens in the top 5 for Suns of the Tundra’s 20 th anniversary s/t remix and Rinoa’s An Age Among Them) has been and gone, I already know what my favourites are, and I’m thinking that if I haven’t listened to a new release enough by now then I’m unlikely to any time soon. A premium duo / family account saved my Wrapped from K Pop Demon Hunters (plenty of bangers though, tbf) and I’ve worked out that in the absence of a streaming presence – for something like GY!BE, for instance – I can scan my LP barcodes to register a play (scrobble). I have managed to resurrect my vinyl listening in the later third of the year – all it took was buying a new player under the threat of needing one for my birthday party and my existing turntable not working. Mostly I’ll still play the stuff on my phone on a low volume in a drawer or another room, as biz...
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Best music of 2024

One has to draw the line somewhere. A couple of days ago I posted on my friend’s Facebook wall our usual Friday evening last.fm collage of the week’s listening, then in a comment I replied to myself I put the ‘1 year’ version, my most listened-to record being Aussie post-rock band Laura’s 2006 masterpiece Radio Swan is Down. I did this on purpose because they have fewer than a thousand monthly listeners on Spotify, which I think unfortunately means they don’t qualify to get paid. I sort of, but not really, get that for random nonsense that might appear on the platform, but this is a proper band that released albums on CD and played shows (and is apparently working on new material!!!). As this is one of my favourite records, it was no great hardship making sure to keep up a weekly listen, but I did give up after October (last year Suns of the Tundra’s weekly catalogue binging made it to July). Well anyway, my friend pointed out that the year is not over. He’s right of course, not that t...
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Best music of 2023

Good tidings, folks and friends. I’m not trying to get away from Spotify or anything, but I’d be stretching the truth to suggest I wasn’t more than a little obsessed with the statistics. In some ways I tried to game it a bit, making sure I played the catalogues of a sprinkling of artists who are, at the very least, severely under-listened to on streaming services. I have a whole “deserve more love” playlist for several bands with fewer than a thousand monthly listeners, but the handful I made sure to play every week of the year were Suns of the Tundra, Ensemble 1, Laura, and Ro (as well as Life Coach (with Jon Theodore on drums), Fox Wound, and Five-Way Split at various points). This proved no problem with Laura and Ro, particularly with the latter’s new album from January this year, but I confess I got bored doing it with SOTT about June time, at least until the new record came out. Nevertheless, SOTT was my top artist on Spotify Wrapped – apparently, I spent 136.5 hours listening to ...
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Best music of 1997

See “Best of 2008” for a general introduction. As I wrote in my “Best of 2000” entry, you’ll see that as I move backward in time I am starting to run out of a good stock of records from these years that I have memories and opinions and any sort of knowledge or interest in. With the possible exception of Natalie Imbruglia’s Left of the Middle, albums from 1997 that I like would have been listened to years later. I was only 12 and so my formative years weren’t quite upon me yet. 1997 had plenty to be famous for, with records like Radiohead’s OK Computer, Daft Punk’s debut Homework, Bj รถ rk’s (best album) Homogenic, The Prodigy’s The Fat of the Land, Deftones’ Around the Fur, Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s F# A# Infinity, and Foo Fighters’ The Colour and the Shape still being raved about (in niche Facebook groups or mainstream music magazines) today. Dream Theater’s fourth album Falling Into Infinity was meant to be a bit more commercial sounding. I suppose it is, but I still have a ...
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Best music of 1998

See “Best of 2008” for a general introduction. As I wrote in my “Best of 2000” entry, you’ll see that as I move backward in time I am starting to run out of a good stock of records from these years that I have memories and opinions and any sort of knowledge or interest in. Like for 2000, I only have 31 albums on my longlist for 1998. Of these, I was into precisely one at the time – Garbage’s Version 2.0 (maybe The Cardigans – Gran Turismo too, but that could well have been the year after). I would have been aware of a few others, at least the singles on the radio, but that’s all. Everything else is retrospective! There are a few classics from this year that I certainly recognise as such, albeit they’ve passed me by a little too much or just haven’t quite made the top cut. Or really, any of the long list could form a credible shortlist. Things like UNKLE’s Psyence Fiction, Elliot Smith’s XO, Botch’s American Nervoso, Hole’s Celebrity Skin, Beastie Boys’ Hello Nasty, Raised Fist’s de...
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Best music of 2022

Howdy folks. Here we are again. Earlier than usual this year – I finished a final run-through of my 2022 playlist (at the time of starting writing, 284 albums, 240 hours, and 3,243 tracks) so I’m ready to ramble! This also means I can spend the rest of December listening to what I want to. Not that I don’t enjoy listening to all this new stuff, and there was a tonne of great music released in 2022, of course, but perhaps it’s a question of when . Sometimes you’re just in the mood for some 1980s Iron Maiden, y’know? Or Christmas music, given the time of year. This is mostly the only time when I forget I’m not supposed to like cheesy music, but then some records, like Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas, are classics regardless. Plus, as I’ve written before, a December cannot go by without a ritual listen of Tool’s Lateralus and AFI’s The Art of Drowning (or Korn’s Issues at New Year’s). And Spotify Wrapped only goes up to the end of November – I had previously hope...
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