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 1691: Tyler Childers

I slept in quite a bit yesterday and then I slept in a bunch more last evening – so much I slept right through an engagement. This morning I almost slept through the start of the Dolphins game. We recently got a new bed for the first time in twenty years and it makes for a much nicer (and sometimes longer) sleep. But that is a bit ridiculous.

Disc 1691 is…Rustin’ in the Rain

Artist: Tyler Childers

Year of Release: 2023

What’s up with the Cover?  Tyler Childers with what I presume is a Percheron Mule. There is a light and smoke show happening behind Tyler, perhaps the headlights from a multicar accident, a wildfire or maybe an alien landing. Or maybe all three simultaneously, which I expect will take half the night for various emergency responders to sort out. Likely need fire, police and an ambulance for that one.

As for Tyler, he’s got the mule, so there’s that.

How I Came To Know It: I already knew the artist from previous releases and while I find him hit and miss, this record was getting some critical love so I decided to give it a go.

How It Stacks Up: I have two Tyler Childers albums. I like them both, but this one comes in second.

Rating: 3 stars but almost 4

You never know what you’re going to get with a Tyler Childers record. It could be straight up country, it could be a weird twist on western music or it could be some kind of weird psychedelic rock. Six albums into his career he’s managed to capture my positive attention only twice, but “Rustin’ in the Rain” is one of those times.

This time around, he’s done it with early seventies torch and twang. “Rustin’…” is a record that is heavily influenced by the work of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. It is very old school, at times almost the point of caricature. If you’re looking to find the line where a sound balances between imitation and appreciation, this record will show it to you.

The most obvious example of this on the album is “Phone Calls and Emails” where even the title is a mix of the old and new. A title like that evokes a traditional “you won’t call me back” tune, and indeed it is exactly that. In fact it had me thinking strongly of the Flying Burrito Brothers’ 1969 tune “Sin City”. It isn’t the same, but it has the same feel, the same build and flow, and undercurrent of sadness.

But what’s this, he’s also “emailing” his unresponsive lover. Brilliant and modern, although in 2023 e-mail is also very much old school. He should be having his texts ignored, but not a mention of this. Childers is cleverly showcasing an old form, with a “new” old school form of communication. No letters or telegraphs. Phone calls and e-mails calling up something that never goes out of style in a song; unrequited love.

While most of the tunes are original compositions, Childers undertakes a remake of Kris Kristofferson’s classic, “Help Me Make It Through the Night”. It is a solid rendition, but having heard the original a thousand times, I had a difficult time accepting the small liberties Childers takes with the melody. It isn’t wrong, but the end of many lines go up where they ought to go down.  Still equally vulnerable and romantic, but differently so.

It’s like a guy who house sits for you and rearranges your Hummel figurines. He doesn’t break them, just rearranges them. No harm done, but who does that? Also, why do you have a bunch of Hummel figurines? But I digress…

“Rustin’ in the Rain” walks another line as well, which is just where an album is so short that ceases to be a full album and becomes an EP. At seven songs and 27 minutes, once again we find ourselves on a line. It’s a minor quibble of course, and the quality of those 27 minutes means all is forgiven.

The record’s penultimate tune “In Your Love,” which sees Childers taking off the trappings of old school. Here he fully commits to blending the old and the modern the result is very much all new, and all him. Childers does pay homage to some of the record’s earlier more traditional tunes. With the line “like a team of mules pulling hell off of its hinges” he cleverly references back to an earlier old timey tune “Percheron Mules” nestling the tune nicely into the rest of the record.

This record received a bunch of Grammy nominations, which naturally makes me want to hate it, but I couldn’t do it. It is just too damned lovely.

Best tracks: Rustin’ in the Rain, Phone Calls and Emails, In Your Love