The 10 Best Albums of 2025

With 2025 over and 2026 only just beginning, we can finally, with clear perceptions, assess which albums are worthy of inclusion into that yearly considered, highly esteemed canon known only as ‘The Albums of The Year™’.

So, with the shared acquisition of this this collective new year clarity, I welcome you to the finest, most comprehensive, most carefully considered, album of the year list this side of 2025.

Throw away your Rough Trade best of 2025 pamphlet, you no longer need it. In fact, dismiss any other list you might have considered. This is the only one that matters. All else is superfluous.

To briefly preface: This list focuses only upon the best studio albums released this year.

As a result it excludes live albums, (highlights from 2025 include Fat White Family’s Konk if You’re Lonely, Spike Fuck’s Live From Underground and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Live God) re-recordings, (the only one I was aware of this year, and therefore the best, was Mozart Estate’s Tower Block in A Jam Jar) and this year’s Cameron Winter led album that was nowhere near as good, nor as interesting, as Heavy Metal but nevertheless achieved twice the success (Getting Killed by Geese).

All jokes aside, I genuinely believe there to be an album for music fans of all tastes and stripes on this list, so ladies and gentlemen, get your headphones ready!

Decius Vol. II (Splendour and Obedience) by Decius

Lias Saoudi’s quartet of erotic dissidents return with their second full length, Decius Vol. II (Splendour and Obedience). Over an hour of disco-inclined, vocally driven acid house, Decius dominate, submit, sweat, bleed, debauch and disgrace. Decius aren’t just the soundtrack to the party; they are the party. No longer can you deny yourself. Let go from piety, give into sin.

Blurrr by Joanne Robertston

Attempting to describe an album as hauntingly beautiful as Joanne Robertson’s latest collection of cavernously reverbed songs, it’s easy to fall into the obvious clichés; otherworldly, aching, ethereal, enveloping etc. Instead, I’ll simply recommend that you listen to this record without distractions. This one is special.

Speak Daggers by Elias Rønnenfelt

2025 has been a breakthrough year for Danish singer/songwriter/poet Elias Rønnenfelt. Between the release of Lucre, a critically acclaimed collaborative EP with Dean Blunt, and leading a tour with Iceage, Rønnenfelt has also managed to release a follow-up to his excellent 2024 solo release, Heavy Glory. Speak Daggers is a tight collection of 13 songs, each containing some of Rønnenfelt’s sharpest and most sophisticated lyricism yet. Just as worthy as Lucre, this album does not deserve to be overlooked.

A Man For All Seasons by Insecure Men

2025 saw the long-awaited grand comeback of head Insecure Man Saul Adamczewski. Not only was 2023’s folk inclined album Adventures in Limbo rescued from the abyss of YouTube and finally released on streaming services, we were also lucky enough to receive the release of The Coward, a collaborative album with Warmduscher’s Marley Mackey. Beyond this, Adamczewski also reformed Insecure Men, leading to the band’s first release of new music in 7 years. Rescued from the stupor of methamphetamine and heroin addiction with renewed purpose, Adamczewski is fully back on form with a wonderful collection of delightfully off-kilter pop songs. Don’t miss him and his fellow Insecure Men on their national tour during the first few months of 2026.

Waterfall Horizon by 7038634357

7038634357’s (also known as Neo Gibson) latest album is a superb collection of vocally driven ambient. Recalling Arthur Russel in its ghostly, emotionally charged delivery, what might feel initially feel spartan and spare, has a real emotional, often elegiac heft beneath. This isn’t washing machine ambient; this is pop music for a lost future. A deeply felt, deeply considered work.

Allbarone by Baxter Dury

Baxter Dury, London’s latter-day answer to Serge Gainsbourg, made a triumphant return with Allbarone. At once moody and reflective while also disco and club-influenced, this album is classic Drury. For those not yet acquainted with Drury’s music, the neologism in the title describes the album perfectly, suggesting both the anonymity and mundanity of a high street restaurant (All Bar One) and a sort of Mediterranean fantasy world of lost promises. Dury’s lyricism is as sharp as ever, detailing gilded excesses, chronic resentments, and bad decisions. Enter Allbarone. All you’ve ever wanted can be found within.

All Worlds by Lust For Youth and Croatian Amor

A man of many aliases but probably best known as Croatian Amor, Loke Rahbek, Denmark’s premier genre-hopping electronic maestro of drone, noise, future garage, and post-industrial, reunited with ex-bandmates Lust For Youth for All Worlds. A real departure from the gothy, darkwave influenced synth-pop heard on Lust For Youth’s previous albums, this album instead sees the trio embark on an ambitious electronic album. 2-step breakbeats dominate rhythmically while washed out guest vocals from Purient and Emma Acs recall The Cocteau Twins when accompanied by ethereally reverbed synths and pads.

Ghosted III by Oren Ambarchi, Johann Berthling and Andreas Werliin

Oren Ambarchi began his Ghosted project in 2022. In the three years since, we’ve received two excellent sequels. Each have been fascinating explorations of  Steve Reich inspired minimalist jazz. Whether or not we’ll be receiving any further instalments, Ghosted III makes for a superb trilogy capper to its previous two entries. While much of the album is rhythmically focused around the ever-changing syncopation of various rhythms, so too is Ambarchi no stranger to the development of an interesting melody. I think you’ll be hard pressed to find a more hypnotically re-playable album this year.

End Beginnings by Sandwell District

The choice for this spot was tied between this, and Shell Wave by Surgeon. While both are techno albums in a similarly pulsating vein, (Sandwell District member Regis has collaborated with Surgeon on the Industrial techno project British Murder Boys), End Beginnings, encompassing acid, industrial, and ambient, eventually won out as my favourite. This is an album unafraid to be both atmospheric and pummelling when required. Released and recorded after the untimely death of founding member Silent Servant, there’s a real humanity to this collection. These tracks both mourn a life and celebrate it.

Revengeseekerz by Jane Remover

I won’t pretend to still be clued into the seemingly ever-fertile hinterlands inhabited by the global denizens of internet rap and hyper pop. Were I to pinpoint the time my musical tastes diverged from the brawn of its tidal current, I would place it at the release of Yung Lean’s Stardust in 2022, at which point for me, folk and country’s moody troubadours’ expressions of multitudinous melancholia become an enduring two-year long obsession.

And while I do know 2Hollis to have achieved more success than all of those who have come before him, (for all the cloud-rap inclined physicists reading this, I believe this to be a truly Newtonian case of having ‘stood on the shoulders of giants’), I’ve never knowingly heard Nettspend or more than a couple songs in passing by Oklou.

Yet, thanks to my friend Tom’s influence, I’ve been introduced to Jane Remover. A quick scan of the internet reveals them to have gained a not un-notable amount of hype. I advise you to believe it. This album is great, and as an added bonus, the production is frequently proficient to the point of prompting, at least from this listener, laughter. Resembling a musical panic attack in the best way possible, this is an engaging, exciting, and confidently over the top work.

Honourable Mention: Disquiet by The Necks

Prompted by a Geoff Dyer Instagram post, this album was a late discovery for me (dare I confess, a 2026 one), nonetheless it deserves an inclusion on this list, if only as an honourable mention.

I’ll acknowledge that recommending a 3-hour Avant Jazz album sounds like a hard sell. Granted, were I not already familiar with this album it certainly would be to me, having had a tendency to struggle, especially outside of a live setting, with jazz’s more adventurous fringes. However, this was not the case with Disquiet. Once you’re locked into its’ relentless, sometimes steamtrain-like rhythms, it does not let go. The more liberated, more expansive, seemingly more improvisatory cousin of Ambarchi’s Ghosted III, this record owes as much to drone, mid-century classical minimalism and post-rock as it does to traditional jazz arrangements.

Attached below is a link to a playlist containing a song from each album. Enjoy listening!

https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/13N0XYRjQoJcOnzBlrJm9u?utm_source=generator