And now that we have actually finally made it to the actual proper end of 2025, now that the year has actually properly finished and now that we are just about ready to come up screaming into fresh light of 2026, we can finally take a moment to look back at the albums that stood out during what is now last year.
Here then are the pick of the albums, the best things we covered or heard or played or fell over or feasted on during a very very (very) busy very musically rewarding 2025. Does it seem like there was even more than ever this year? We seem to say that every year, but 2025 does feel like it was particularly fruitful both is terms of albums and gigs (and no, we don’t get why so many publications and websites publish their lists way before the year ends, there has a number of significant albums released aver most lists were published, why do they do it?) New Years Day and here we are debating it all as we feast on bites of the many albums that came out…
And no, of course we didn’t check out everything, how could anyone? I think we can claim we did check out hundreds and hundreds of albums and bands and bites of music and this and that and yes, we probably can claim we checked out more albums and bands than most people did this year…
So without any more messing about, here are the top 43 (or maybe a few more than 43 this time, it was once again impossible to cut it down to just 43) albums of Organ’s very busy 2025, oh there’s simply no way it can just be 43 albums this stupidly busy treasure-filled year…
The links will take you to the full reviews, the music and the details…
1: Ted Hearne and the Crossing – Farming (Deathbomb Arc) – When it came down to it, this, as well as being an absolutely brilliant forward looking body of music, is the one album that really really (really) did sum up where everything was and is in 2025. If Time magazine’s person of the year cover was instead to be awarded to an album, this surely would be it. This, as well as being challenging art, is just so 2025: Ted Hearne and the Crossing’s Farming – Monumental and mindblowing, this is a work that encompasses EVERYTHING…
2: EarthBall – Outside Over There (Upset The Rhythm) – Somehow this year, somehow the four of them managed to make an even better album than the last one. With Outide Over There EarthBall are going to all the places they’ve taken us before but now they’re taking us to other places as well, to darker corners, or to (musical) boxes we hadn’t looked in before, and what is she talking about? What was that? Here’s the review from back at the start of the Autumn; Stop, there’s a new EarthBall album. They are painters, EarthBall paint music and somehow, they’ve dialled it all up even further, this is intense, this is a serious album…
3: Cardiacs – LSD (Alphabet) – This isn’t the best album of the year although yet in so so many ways it is the very best album of this year and of the last eighteen years or so. No, LSD isn’t the album of the year, not this version anyway. It probably isn’t the 3rd best or the 5th best or the 8th best or the 27th best album of the year, it is something that stands alone, aside. Something apart from it all. This version isn’t a posthumous album or a retrospective album, it is an album very much released this year by Jim Smith, Bob Leith and the band who now call themselves Cardiacs. It is both a backward looking and a forward looking thing, it is a beautiful thing, at times a difficult thing, a sometimes uncomfortable thing, it isn’t easy to listen to. It is the current band doing what they feel is their very best with the unfinished album Tim Smith left. It is their version of Tim Smith’s vision and not Tim’s own version although it is built on and around the unfinished Tim Smith version; these are his sounds, his lyrics, his arrangements, some of it is his guitar playing, his voice, it is what Jim Smith and the current line up have chosen to do with Tim’s unfinished album. It isn’t without fault, it is at times beautiful – they are mostly Tim’s compositions after all – he is all over it, it is him. This version of LSD is so so many things. This is not the album of the year, it is in so many ways the album of the year… When it did eventually come out we both reviewed it; A Cardiacs piece in three parts. Part One, exploring the album… and; A Cardiacs piece in three parts. Part Two, exploring the album… and there was a third part – An Organ piece in three parts. Part three, ten of the many moments spent working with Cardiacs…
4: Alex Paxton – Delicious (New Amsterdam Records) – It is, to make an off the cuff observation, rather like if all the small birds were to form an orchestra, and yes, that sounds like a frivolous throwaway thing to say and that is the last thing this is – ORGAN THING: Alex Paxton’s Delicious is just that, it tastes divine, it sounds just right. It is one of the musical delights of the year so far…
5: Fucked Up – Grass Can Move Stones Part 1: Year of The Goat (Tankcrimes) – Year Of The Goat? Now these are two seriously epic pieces, two “thoroughly composed operatic suites of music”, two pieces of music and an album that clocks in at a couple of minutes short of an hour, this surely is the year of the maximalist; “Nearly twenty years after its humble beginning, the journey of Fucked Up’s ever-evolving Zodiac series begins its towering conclusion…. Some of this is brilliantly progressive as in properly proper prog as flip epic prog rock (on steroids) without the band ever forgetting who they are or where they have come from – Year Of The Goat? Now these are two seriously epic pieces, two thoroughly composed maximalist suites of music, have F*cked Up just made a late bid for that album of the year list?
=6: EarthBall – Actual Earth Music – Volume 1 & 2 (Upset The Rhythm)/ Thresher/EarthBall – Thresher/Earth Ball Split (OwnSound) – There were actually three rather thrilling EarthBall albums that came our way this year. Most end of year lists seem to have neglected the blistering live album that came out back in March and before that there was January’s rather fine split tape album that also featured some spontaneous composition from Ontario’s Thresher that more than held up against the twenty two minutes of EarthBall live action. EarthBall are very special and we need more from Thresher… Earth Ball have a new live album, they are probably the best live band out there right now but don’t quote us on that… and A Thresher/Earth Ball Split? There can never be too much Earth Ball…
7: Mummy – The lead Of Saturn is Gold To The Wise (ATE) – There’s a delicious warmth to this, a dark chocolatey hum, like a whole bunch of love. Richly dark art pop and the voice (and more) of Jo Spratley, she of the band Spratleys and some of us might say the heart of Cardiacs in more recent times as she and Bic pulled together those beautiful beautiful Sing To Tim celebrations. This is an album made with Bic, or Christian Hayes to give him his real name, he of Cardiacs, Levitation and before that the rather excellent Ring – Mummy? A beautiful beautiful first album, let this just be the first, let this be the start of where Jo Spratley and Bic Hayes are going next, this is something like a whole bunch of love and more…
8: KayoDot – Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason (Prophecy) – The intensity of it all feel crushing at times, the crushing anxiety of now, that trying to break out of the shackles, out of the fear and mayhem of where we all collectively are right now, and as he says himself, this is Toby Driver writing in ways that resist prediction, this is him composing music that does not reveal itself to pattern recognition, to the algorithmic aesthetics. This is once again, a massive Kayo Dot album, then you knew it was going to be, they always are massive and no two are ever the same, they are however, always Kayo Dot: Before the year ends a look back at Kayo Dot’s epic masterpiece Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason…
9: Bunnies – Horror Spectrum – They’re from Northampton, Massachusetts, their music is indeed “a foggy, proggy, uniquely psychedelic, eye-opening experience… On one hand, it’s sublimely composed and structurally sound; on the other hand, anything goes and could switch gears at any second when the listeners, and sometimes the band members themselves, least expect it – Bunnies have a new album – “This ain’t pop rock nope, this is an outside variation on prog-rock. And not that slick sophisticated “proof of musicianship” type of prog. This is raw and they don’t really care that much what you think, as they should not. And that’s why I like ’em so much”…
10: Deerhoof – Noble and Godlike in Ruin (Joyful Noise)– They are of course beguiling, they are of course bright, they are as alive as ever, as musically positive as ever and who wouldn’t want to be friends with a band who in turn want to make friends with sparrows and pretty buttercups that are growing at strange obtuse angles while trains won’t go where you want them to go. Deerhoof always sound like Deerhoof yet they’re always loaded with surprises, with delights and details that always catch you out in just the right way;Deerhoof have a new album, Noble and Godlike in Ruin, they’ve been one of the best bands out there for years now and these just might well be their finest moments yet…
The Next bits….
THE ORGAN 
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