Best of 2025 | Albums | Guestlists | Irish Albums | Irish songs |
Previous years: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019….
The 50 best albums of 2025
50 – 31:
50. Raisa K – Affectionately
49. JID – God Does Like Ugly
48. John Glacier – Like A Ribbon
47. Self Esteem – A Complicated Woman
46. 2hollis – star
45. Romance – Love Is Colder Than Death
44. Sault – 10
43. Westerman – A Jackal’s Wedding
42. Wet Leg – moisturizer
41. Water From Your Eyes – It’s A Beautiful Place
40. Anna B Savage – You & I Are Earth
39. Bon Iver – SABLE, fABLE
38. Tyler, The Creator – Don’t Tap The Glass
37. Léa Sen – Levels
36. Puma Blue – Antichamber
35. Daughter Of Swords – Alex
34. Earl Sweatshirt – Live Laugh Love
33. Youth Lagoon – Rarely Do I Dream
32. Ikonika – SAD
31. Snocaps – Snocaps
30.
Blawan
SickElixir
Jamie Roberts is known for his crushing atmospheres and dark dance music, but recent years have seen the Blawan project move in more experimental sound design directions, and that trend continues on his 2025 album.
SickElixir is a gnarled collection of gritty electronic productions, that buzzes, rips, whispers, distorts and bangs. Lieberson (synth, piano, guitar, vocals).
29.
Sharon Van Etten
Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory
Sharon Van Etten’s 2025 album is a full band project with named players The Attachment Theory.
Chief Auteur Van Etten is joined on the record and live by her band this time out named as full collaborators – Jorge Balbi (drums, machines), Devra Hoff (bass, vocals), and Teeny Lieberson (synth, piano, guitar, vocals).
The jamming setup has revitalised Van Etten’s songwriting with new synthy shades, with the production (and the artwork) echoing an early 90s alternative rock sensibility.
28.
Hayden Pedigo
I’ll Be Waving as You Drive Away
The Amarillo Texas guitarist’s latest album on Mexican Summer was a holiday listen this past September – its gentle guitar-lead passages and meditative arrangements soundtracked a lot of calm moments on some time off.
Fingerpicked bright guitar tones are foregrounded while piano, synths, ebow, violin, pedal steel and some light percussion add atmosphere and mood to the dusty vista of an album.
Strangely, it was the Instagram algorithm pushing Pedigo’s thoughtful tour missives into my feed that allowed me to discover I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away, the avant-garde-leaning acoustic fingerpicking artist’s fifth record.
27.
Titanic
HAGEN
Guatemalan cellist and songwriter follows up her acclaimed solo album Sentir Que No Sabes, by returning to her proggy symphonic pop project collaboration with Mexico City’s Héctor Tosta (aka I la Católica).
Through its ’80s-sounding synth and percussion pop work, it recalls the Fairlight era of Bush and Gabriel, with Daniel Lopatin contributing his trademark billowy synth sound on ‘Pájaro de fuego’,
The duo also combine industrial speed tempos and sounds with violins and voice which adds to some experimental workout on the proggy ‘Gotera’.
26.
Erika de Casier
Lifetime
The Swedish alt-pop singer and producer released a surprise album Lifetime on her own label Independent Jeep Music, that explores early 90s R&B sounds and trip-hop in a glossy vocal fashion.
It’s a record full of vibey songs like ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want,’ a pop hook-filled Enigma-channeling new agey pop highlight.
The album had the working title of Midnight Caller which helps set the vibe.
25.
Brìghde Chaimbeul
Sunwise
The Scottish piper drones on beautifully on her experimentally-minded third album as the music explores tradition, folklore and mystery.
The album comes after collaborations with Caroline Polachek and Canadian composer/saxophonist Colin Stetson (who also features here), along with Chaimbeul’s occasional vocal, her brother Eòsaph and a spoken word contribution from her father Aonghas Phàdraig.
This record follows the embrace of winter time; the closing in of darkness, the cold, the pull to turn inward. But also, the customs of the season, and gathering for the ceilidh: songs and stories told round the fire; where the boundaries between reality and imagination blur.’
24.
Maria Somerville
Luster
The long-awaited second album from Connemara artist and NTS radio host Maria Somerville finds the music moving further into a fog, a shoegaze, nu-gaze dreamy pop style that recalls the best of the label she now calls home – 4AD.
Luster features collaborators Ian Lynch of Lankum, Henry Earnest, Róisín Berkeley, Olan Monk, Margie Jean Lewis, Finn Carraher McDonald (aka Nashpaints) and producers J. Colleran, Brendan Jenkinson and Diego Herrera aka Suzanne Kraft but all serve the album’s core mistiness.
It’s all beautifully hazy stuff, white flashes of swirling pedal rock texture, layered ambient choral undulations and Stereolab-esque tones on ‘Violet’.
23.
Marie Davidson
City of Clowns
The Montreal electronic producer Marie Davidson’s sixth album arrived on Soulwax’s Deewee label and hits hard with crunching hydraulic beats, pulsating electro rhythms, electronic body music, techno and synth pop swirls, made in collaboration with Soulwax and long-time collaborator Pierre Guerineau (Essaie pas, L’Œil Nu).
City of Clowns is imprinted with a palpable sonic and lyrical ire from the artist aimed at capitalist structures, societal frustration, fake bullshitters, immoral politicians – delivered with a matter-of-fact spoken word and half-sung wit, repeating robotically and sometimes laughing maniacally. City of Clowns is searing in its humanity – body music for the post-digital age.
22.
Pink Siifu
BLACK’!ANTIQUE
BLACK’!ANTIQUE is the fourth album from rapper and producer Pink Siifu, a guest-stacked experimental noise-rap record full of abrasion that often sounding like Death Grips jamming with Suicide in a wind tunnel. Spectral gothic rap, noise boom bap and an air of experimentalism hangs over this unique antique.
21.
Automatic
Is It Now?
Automatic are an LA trio (Lola, Izzy and Halle) who make post-punk retro new wave music I’m always interested in hearing. Is It Now? is the band’s third album, released on Stones Throw, made with producer Loren Humphrey with stated influences Patrick Cowley, A Certain Ratio and Air.
To these ears, Is It Now? also takes its cues from off-kilter ’80s synth-pop like Devo, with nods to Tom Tom Club, Kraftwerk, Joy Division, Gary Numan, ESG – frankly all of which should pique your interest, along with Lola Dompé’s kinetic drumming, rubber basslines and the trio’s earworm vocals.
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Cara Magazine, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, co-founder of Lumo Club, event curator, Indie Sleaze club promoter, and producer of gigs and monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
