The Best Albums of 2025

This is the latest I have ever shared my Top 10 albums. It took longer than I thought to sort through the options, and I’ve been working to avoid – as much as possible – later edits as I rethink my choices as I get to know these records from 2025 better (and discover new ones I missed earlier.

I found 113 albums I enjoyed enough to buy (or put on my purchase list) and I considered every one of them while making this list. 2025 was a good year for music, just like every other year. It is OK to take those old records off the shelf, but finding new ones is also worth your time.

As I’ve done previously, I’ve included a link to albums I previously reviewed that you can read more about it. I’ve also provided a youtube link to a song of note for each record in the Top 10.

10 The Doohickeys – All Hat, No Cattle

-          Yes, these old school throwback country songs can get a bit kitschy, but this record is fun without ever sacrificing clever. Music is supposed to be fun, right?  Here’s “This Town Sucks”

9 Nite – Cult of the Serpent Sun

-          Nite was one of my happier discoveries of 2025, with their old school metal vibe and creepy cultist vibe – these guys get better on every record. Here’s “Crow (Fear the Night)

8 CMAT – Euro-Country

-          In 2022, CMAT first landed on A Creative Maelstrom’s Top 10 list with an honourable mention, but in 2025 she takes the next step. Think Chappel Roan, with a bit more country and you’ll have an idea. Clever and vulnerable with lots to say, here’s an example with “Take a Sexy Picture of Me”

7 Tyler Childers – Snipe Hunter

-          Every Tyler Childers album is different, as he routinely pushes the boundaries of the country genre. “Snipe Hunter” has a very traditional sound, with some sneaky and thoughtful songs nestled like Easter eggs amidst the plain brown packaging. Here’s Oneida

6 Panopticon – Laurentian Blue

-          Long-time Panopticon fans who have grown used to the band’s clever blending of bluegrass and black metal might feel left behind by this record, that doubles down on the bluegrass and leaves behind the double bass drumming and growling. Don’t be fooled, though, as this record has metal sensibility at its heart, and is as moody and black as anything they’ve done to date. My favourite is “An Argument With God” but I’m going to go with the also awesome (and more accessible) “Ever North” in a shameless attempt to get your attention

5 Craig Finn – Always Been

-          I’m a sucker for the hardscrabble stories that Craig Finn spins (he also made the Top 10 in 2022). This year we have a thoughtful collection of songs that once again peer deep and uncompromisingly into the human heart. Here’s The Man I’ve Always Been

4 Geese – Getting Killed

-          Along with CMAT, Geese is a band that this year will get more notice than for their previous releases. While I first encountered Geese through their 2021 album, “Projector” “Getting Killed” takes them to a whole other level. While not my usual scene, it is so innovative and amazing that it can’t be ignored Here’s Au Pays du Cocaine

3 Kora Feder – Some Kind of Truth

-          From my review: Kora Feder is a singer-songwriter with a young heart and an old soul. Listening to her records is like receiving a confessional from a close friend or curling up on the couch with a book of poetry for an afternoon of feeling the feels. Here’s the sad and thoughtful In a Young Person’s Body

2 Julien Baker and TORRES – Send a Prayer My Way

-          When I reviewed this last July I boldly claimed it would be making the Top 10, and here it is. I’ve always been a TORREs fan, and what she does in collaboration with Julien Baker is simply sublime – the whole better than the sum of the already amazing parts. Here’s Bottom of the Bottle

1 Ken Pomeroy – Cruel Joke

-          Ken Pomeroy straddles the line between folk and country, which is the perfect vehicle to deliver songs that are intensely personal, and grounded in natural space and place that puts substance and gravitas to her self-exploration. Like all great works of art, “Cruel Joke” taps into something that makes the personal into the universal. Here’s a live version of Coyote to show that all Pomeroy needs is her voice and a guitar to summon greatness

Honourable Mention – all great, but fell short because I could only pick a top 10. Here are 5 more in no particular order in the event you aren’t sated by the official winners:

• Annahstasia – Tether; Cory Hansen – I Love People; Wet Leg – moisturizer; Lommi – 667788; Master Spy – Maze Runner

And for those new to the Top Ten Experience, click on the year below to get the full from that year (I’ve proved #1 as a teaser):

Best of 2024 (#1 was Amyl and the Sniffers)

Best of 2023 (#1 was Boy Golden)

Best of 2022 (#1 was Grace Cummings)

Best of 2021 (#1 was Lucy Dacus)

Best of 2020 (#1 was Katie Pruitt)

CD Odyssey Disc 1848: Julien Baker & Torres

This next album is certain to land on my Top 10 albums list for 2025.

Disc 1848 is…Send a Prayer My Way

Artist: Julien Baker & Torres

Year of Release: 2025

What’s up with the Cover? I believe the kids call this “rotting”. Fear not, Julien Baker and Mackenzie Scott (aka Torres) are not zombies – they’re just listless.

At least two coffee drinks are within easy reach so that could help. With the listlessness, I mean. Not zombie-ism. Only one cure for that my friends – the old click-bang. Next time don’t brave an infested café for that second coffee and it wouldn’t have to come to this.

But I digress…

How I Came To Know It: I’m a fan of Torres, so I was excited to see she had a new album out. I was less excited about Julien Baker, as her previous records had not grabbed me. I was resolved to check it out at some point, and was further encouraged by my local baristas, who both said this was a good one.

So I did that, I liked it, and here we are. Another quarter-inch of shelf space occupied.

How It Stacks Up: I have five Torres albums and no Julien Baker albums. As a collaboration, this record is neither, so can’t stack up either way.

Ratings: 5 stars

When artists collaborate they lose a little of their individuality and create something new through that process. This is a certainty. What isn’t certain is whether that ‘something new’ is any good.

Consider “Trio” as one example. Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt – all legends, all amazing, all welcome in the CD Odyssey collection. “Trio” should be great, but instead is a saccharine sappy mess. I owned it for a good five minutes and is now gone with nothing to show for it other than this nasty little paragraph you’re reading now.

Enter Julien Baker & Torres. Not living legends (at least not yet) but definitely two artists with their own distinct sounds that decided to go down that uncharted third road of collaboration. How did it go for them?

As it happens, it could not have gone better. Consider my prior uncertainty around Julien Baker extinguished, and as for Torres, this is the best work I’ve ever heard from them, solo or otherwise.

Torres solo records can be a bit weird and ambient. This is not an insult. I love how they are ambient and weird. I’ve reviewed three of them so far and they all earned four stars.

Torres’ voice is low, rounded and fills a room. It is hard to imagine anything you’d want to intrude when you’re under its spell. But then along comes Julien Baker, with her high angst-ridden vocals. Just as full, but higher and lighter – the sky to Torres’ earth. The combination creates a tension greater than the sum of the parts.

Consider the country twang of “The Only Marble I’ve Got Left” with Torres singing low like she’s channeling the ghost of mid-career Leonard Cohen, and Julien coming in with a loose harmony at the second verse like Cohen’s ever-changing but always talented female collaborators.

While the vocal combination is sublime, the alchemy goes deeper. Somehow the combination of styles led the duo to a folksy country. I’m sure they would call it indie, but what a terribly uncertain and diffuse word. This is folk-country, right down to the gentle guitar strums, the lilting melodies, and the lyrics-forward focus. Long time readers will know this style of music is VERY likely to land in my happy place.

If you’re going to put your vocals forward in the mix, you better have something to say, and once again the duo do not disappoint. This record is deeply personal, exploring both singers’ complex relationship with faith, love and heartache. The record holds a delightful tension between crippling doubt and self-sabotage, juxtaposed with a bit of romantic whimsy that leaves you comforted in the knowledge that love will always win out. You’ll feel deep dark feels, but you’ll also receive a reassuring hug.

Along the way, you’ll be gifted with powerful imagery and master-class storytelling that takes the specific and makes it speak to something larger. The examples on “Send a Prayer…” are almost bottomless, but a couple of my favourites include:

From, “Sugar in the Tank”:

“I love you all the way to hell and back
I love you tied up on the train tracks
I love you clear as day and in the dark
I love you sleeping on my dead left arm”

Brilliant, and the way the song later takes the effects of sugar in a gas tank (bad) and turns it on its head into a grand romantic gesture is so good I won’t spoil it by quoting anything.

And from “Bottom of a Bottle”:

“I care too much for my own good
I’ve got a dog in every fight
Lost a few along the way”

Been there, done that.

I could quote and quote and quote this record, because as a lover of language it just keeps giving me more of what I love, but the real magic happens when everything is paired together. The words, the voices, the gentle and insistent strum of the guitars, and the collaborative alchemy that happens when two great artists put aside who they are at the door and create something truly special together.

Best tracks: all tracks (minus the ten seconds of outtake conversation at the start of “Goodbye Baby)