Hi, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, Internet's busiest music nerd. Hope you're doing well.

It's time to talk about some year-end list stuff. Mine are coming out very soon, but in the meantime, there is another list connected to The Needle Drop that I would like to dig into. And that is the top 40 albums list of 2025 on The Needle Drop website that was assembled by the wonderful writers and contributors on the platform. They've come out with the top songs of 2025 list as well. And yeah, basically, there are a lot of great picks and placements on this list, records that either I did not review entirely or just was not as crazy about. There are also a lot of records and bands that I know that you guys are going to be well aware of and pretty hype about, too. So with that, I figured, why not come on here, speak to two of the writers who contributed a lot of blurbs and ideas to the list, and basically ask them how the list came together and press them on some of the placements, especially the ones I disagree with the most.

So here we have a conversation with Victoria Borlando as well as Alan Pedder.

Anthony Fantano: Let's do it. Off the bat from both of you, would you say that the process of coming up with this list between all of you, because there's over a dozen of you coming together for this piece here, was it difficult? Was there any tension, any bad blood between any of you guys? I'm sensing before either of you even say anything that there's some beef between both of you on screen right now, some real, probably deep-seated hatred over not being able to come to an agreement over where these albums should stand in the list.

Victoria Borlando: I guess I can start, because I was definitely one of the loudest people in our chat. But before, I would like to say that it was actually a very amicable process. It was mostly just fun to see the albums that everyone liked throughout the years and stuff that all of us were really motivated by and really wanted to write about. Everyone was super passionate about everything that they picked, and it was nice to just reminisce over great albums. I'd say that we had more conflict over songs than we did albums. I personally got into a really heated argument that turned into a campaign over which Geese song do we feature on the list because there was three in the running. As with every single publication, there was more than one Geese song in the running. "Au Pays Du Cocaine" beat out my choice, which was "Long Island City Here I Come". Nobody wanted to support the song with no chorus and balls-to-the-wall production, walls-to-the-wall sound, and really Catholic lyrics. But it's fine. I got to write about it anyway.

AF: Alan, was this essentially a democratic process that you guys used to orient which record sat where?

Alan Pedder: To be honest, I think that mostly lay with Jeremy. Obviously, because we had such a wide diversity of tastes – I don't think Vic and I had a single same album on our lists – it was hard to come up with a consensus.

AF: How exactly did you guys come to the decision of where certain albums sit, with respect to Jeremy – shout out to Jeremy – when it's really maybe just one or two of you who's just like, this needs to be somewhere on here because I think this is amazing.

AP: We didn't actually know the order of the list until it was published.

AF: So you guys were just kept in the dark?

VB: Yeah, Jeremy withheld that information from us.

AF: Okay. So Jeremy was the hand behind the curtain maybe.

VB: A little bit, yeah. I mean, we had a point system where we gave our top 20, and then number one had 20 points, and then down from there. But I don't know. My favorite album got 20 points, and then it got 39th. But also because I was annoying about it all year, it got to be on the list, of which I was really happy.

AF: Okay, let's dig into some of these records, especially, again, ones that I didn't necessarily review or go gaga for myself. Alan, I'm curious about this Kathryn Joseph record at number 40. Not only is this not on my list, but I haven't even heard this album. What has you going crazy for this record? I see it's on Mogwai's Rock Action Records, which is obviously an interesting place for a record to pop up. What's the background behind this album? Why should people check it out?

AP: Kathryn's got a very particular sound. I was a bit slow catching onto it. It wasn't until I saw her opening for Neko Case in 2018 that it really clicked for me. She's got this really intense, emotionally charged, wonderfully witchy vibe. She's always very strong in her vision. Her last album, which I think was picked up by Pitchfork reviews, put all these forms of abuse under the microscope, and she was really singing, as the album title says, for you who are the wronged. This album, WE WERE MADE PREY, is something totally different from her. It's way more in your face. It's very strong. It's very electronic. It has a very important role of Lomond Campbell, who I don't know if you know, is this electronic music wizard and instrument builder. He put out his own great album on One Little Independent this year called Transmission Loss.

At the risk of sounding like a parasocial weirdo, I do take it personally that this album hasn't had more attention because it really is deserving… It's an album about want, largely. It's an album about making choices, almost messing up your life completely. The choosing between being settled and the comfort of being wanted with the reality that Kathryn, her emotional space at the time was very much wanting something else.

There's a lot of tension going on, a lot of noise, a lot of passion. There's a song on that called "BEFORE.", which is probably the angriest she's ever been on record. It's partly about Palestine. It's partly about basically just not understanding how people can let these things slide and not understanding how people cannot be angry about what is going on. There's a lot of very animalistic imagery. It's very bloody. There's a lot of broken bones. There's wolves. It's super interesting from her. I can't recommend it enough.

AF: I definitely resonate with what you're saying there in terms of... It drives us to do what we do in terms of hearing that one record that you feel like nobody knows about and not enough people are excited about it. You've got to say something just because it seems like it's it's deserving of hype and excitement that it's just not getting.

AP: For sure.

AF: And, Victoria, you already previewed this a little bit, but you said at number 39 is where your album of the year landed, which was this Jerskin Fendrix record [Once Upon a Time... in Shropshire]. He's a multi-instrumentalist producer, if you're unfamiliar. I believe he's done stuff, or rather just straight out did the Poor Things soundtrack and that stuff. Obviously, with a background like that, his music is going to be pretty theatrical and pretty over the top, which this album most definitely is, quite eccentric as well. I've seen a lot of people compare it to recent work from Geordie Greep, that thing. But there's also a lot of differences there, too. Actually, maybe more separation than overlap in a lot of ways, outside of it just being very bold and very full of character. What drew you to this record and made it your album of the year?

VB: I was a fan of Jerskin Fendrix for a really long time. I caught on to Winterreise in 2021. If anyone's unfamiliar, it's this very short, electronic pop record from 2020 that is crazy, electronic, super interesting way that he uses his vocals and autotune in order to express breakup grief and heartbreak and crashing out, and just going through emotional turmoil in this very theatrical, self-aware way. When I went into Once Upon a Time... in Shropshire this year, and I heard the first three singles that came out, there was "Jerskin Frendrix Freeestyle", which came out April 1st. Then there was "SK1", which came out May 14th. Then there was "Beth's Farm", which came out June 17th. It's crazy that I know that off the top of my head. But all three of those songs were so different, and they offered such complex instrumentation and approaches to songwriting and approaches to lyric writing. I think, overall, what I really like about Jerskin Fendrix and what really comes across in this beautiful, long, sprawling record about grief and reconciling with your childhood and trying to find happy memories out of sad memories, is that I think that he does a really, really good job of taking complex feelings and taking these human emotions that can be described in 10 million words and putting it all on the same plane.

When he talks about grief and insecurity in the freestyle, he is able to use a big brass band, a big post-rock sound. And he's he's rapping, he's doing a really silly acrostic that's making fun of himself. And he's able to just communicate these feelings that everyone has, where it's like, oh, I'm crying and I'm sad, but at the same time, I look ridiculous while I'm crying. My face is puffy. No one else around me is as sad as I am. Everyone here is staring at me and thinks I'm weird. But at the same time, I'm sad because this was a great person in my life that's now gone. I'm also remembering every good thing, and I'm happy that I was able to know them and whatever. I think that lyrically, emotionally, and then you just add the fact that he's this professional composer who's an expert in piano and violin, writing this beautiful folk album. He knows so much about every single note, and he knows how to use every single note to convey the same story. For that reason, I just think it's brilliant. It's been so hard to write every single thing. I've been writing about it all year just because it's so hard to express how complicated it is and how beautiful it is.

AF: Now, I've been there before, too. Records that you're really just floored by, and you just have so many feelings about them, and yet you're also struggling to put it in a way to where it feels like this is how it works or this is... It's like you're fighting to make the message make sense.

VB: Yeah. And with this album, specifically, it is really hard to tell people the way that he manipulates his raw vocals in this one because he doesn't implement any auto-tune in this one whatsoever. Guys, the way that he purposefully makes himself sound ridiculous and his really dumb jokes that he puts in, it works. It's so stupid. But it works. Then everyone is like, Why are you calling it stupid if you think it's good? I'm like, You don't get it. You don't understand.

AF: Yeah, sometimes, and that is an important thing to note. There is definitely a conscious element of comedy to the record and humor about himself. In a lot of audiences, sadly... I guess, as deep and as introspective and as intelligent as a lot of alternative music fans like to view themselves as. Humor is often the most difficult thing to be transcribed in – I don't know if you want to call it hipster circles or whatever – because the moment that somebody's being a little bit jokey, they're instantaneously viewed as unserious. The art behind maybe the humor in what they're doing doesn't quite land sometimes, or people are having a hard time seeing it for what it is.

But with that being said, there are some other choices on here that I have to press you guys on because personally, I take it as an affront. I see you guys rebelling here with the Addison Rae at number 28. Again, I'm taking this personally. Did you guys do this just to make a fool of me? What is going on here? Not that you guys can't be pro-Addison Rae, but this just seems like You're throwing the barrels of tea into the harbor here. I want to know what's going on.

AP: I don't know about you Vic, but I take no responsibility for this. I'm not going to pretend be any expert on Addison Rae. I won't pretend to understand all the hype around this distinctly okay album. I don't know. How do you feel about it, Vic?

VB: I am in the same boat as you. She was not on my personal top 40 list. I also thought it was just okay. It's good pop music, and we need that. But I don't know, for my personal taste, it revels a little bit too much of nostalgia. But the other staff members, they voted for it, so they get to put it up. I'm sorry it's above Clipse. I'm very sorry.

AF: That's the other thing. Clipse landed at 30, which I thought was harsh. Obviously, I honestly did not think that Let God Sort 'Em Out was going to land at number one, but I thought at least top 10. At least top 10 for Clipse. But it's not even past the halfway point in the list. Number 30 is devastatingly low, but I don't know. I'm not going to act like it's the most beloved rap record of the year. There have been some very notable reviews that are just like, 'This is okay, having just a bit of a neutral reaction like with the Addison Rae record, which I suppose is fine depending on what you were expecting from the album. Maybe people were expecting more evolution, maybe more bold moves, maybe something of reinvention or whatever. Did this album resonate with either of you guys as much as it did with me or even a fraction?

AP: I'm just going to put this gently in the 'Not for me' pile. I haven't been Clipse-pilled, and I don't think I ever will be.

VB: Were we talking about Addison Rae?

AF: The Clipse record.

VB: Oh, yeah. Also in the 'Not necessarily for me' pile.

AF: Okay, that's fine. You know, maybe my old head hip-hop head genes are showing on that one, and that's completely fine. That's totally fine.

With that being said, though, I was curious if Alan could speak a little bit to a record that is literally my last review of the year. I have one more today to get done. One final review out before I start doing List Week, and so on and so forth. I'm so happy I was able to get this one in before the year was out because I just had on my year-end list for albums, which I'm just finalizing. I usually have at least 50 records by the time I do these lists, and there was one spot open, and I was like, 'Oh, man, am I going to have to throw an album that's like a seven out of 10 that I reviewed in there?' I mean, it's happened before. It's whatever. But then this one came through as a recommendation from Jeremy. He was telling me about his year-end list, and I was asking him maybe some things that popped up – because he knows what I am and I'm not listening to and what I've reviewed before, obviously.

Then he passed me this Annahstasia Tether record. I was taken aback by how just intense the vocals were off the bat, especially on the first track, where the acoustics and the arranged instrumentation are just so faint in comparison with her voice. She really comes on strong on this debut album. But then when the record continued to play and I was going deeper into it, I was like, 'Damn, this is actually insane.' The vocal talent, the lyricism. For an artist who is giving us her first album here, even though she's been leading up to this moment with some singles and some EPs. This is just such an immense amount of development and boldness and talent for a debut record. I know that you, Alan, wrote the blurb for this one. Are you echoing any of these feelings? How did you come into this album and where did it land on your list, personally?

AP: Definitely top five for me. Again, I also agree with you. It's hard to believe that this is her first full-length album. I mean, the amount of gravity, as I say, the amount of depth to it. As you say, the vocals are immaculate. I like that they're not smoothed over in any way. They're very naturalistic. They're a bit cracked in places. There's a lot of emotion going on. I think what I said in my little blurb was there's so much space in this album that could easily make it feel a bit light, but it's not. It's heavy in so many ways. Even in the most quiet moments, it feels really strong.

AF: Victoria, I would love to praise for a minute a record that landed pretty high on the list that has also been one of my favorites of the year, and that's the new Black Country New Road album, Forever Howlong, which I obviously see that you did the write-up for. Why did this album resonate so much with you? People know why I love it, but as much as I have enjoyed it, is it appealing for you any differently than it is for me? And also, in addition to that, what have you thought of some of the controversy of the band transitioning into this new sound and having to reckon with the expectations of their fans who maybe want that older sound from their first couple of records?

VB: I can see the headline now, "Addressing the Controversy."

AF: Yeah. Maybe the C-word is a little heavy, but the band definitely went into this LP with certain expectations because of the standards that had been set by their older work and consciously deciding not to change the band name, which I think they're well within their right to not do. But still, I think the record came out great. But there's been some disagreement there for sure.

VB: Yeah. I will say that the people who don't like the new sound and are saying that it's too soft or it's too feminine are a certain demographic, I think, within the online critique of them. Not necessarily from the critics, because I think that it did favorably well with critics. I certainly ranked it high. Obviously, it's one of my favorites of all time. But I do believe that the band nowadays is not necessarily getting enough credit for what they're doing musically in the album. I think that if we disregard the lyrics and we disregard the vocal lineup change, which for the first time – much as I loved Isaac Wood – we finally have good singers. We finally have people who can sing well, even though there is a time and a place for vocals like Isaac's, and the shakiness is very dramatic and booming.

AF: I love it. It's a totally different type of vocal appeal.

VB: Yeah, exactly. But I think that the way that this album should be approached, first and foremost, is that all six of the current members are individually extremely talented. I think that the Lewis Evans saxophone riffs are so beautiful, especially in "Nancy Tries to Take the Night", where he does that treble thing, and it swirls around with the guitar that Tyler plays, because she fingerpicks the acoustic guitar. And Luke is also there with the guitar. Charlie is doing the drums. Charlie and Georgia with the mandolin and the drums in "Two Horses" is so good as well. Obviously, May as a piano player is fantastic. Hopefully, I named all six of them because I want give them all credit.

AF: No, they all deserve it.

VB: Yeah. I think that they're so individually strong. But at the same time, this album really had them working together. Again, playing off of each other, not just having a dialog with the lyrics, because conceptually, that's what this album was built to be. It was built to be a patchwork of friendship between the three women singer-songwriters and how they support each other, which I think is quite novel in a world where a lot of love albums are about romance. Or sometimes it's about grief and family relationships, or it's about heartbreak. I think that having an album about one of the strongest kinds of love there is, which is the love of your friends, is very refreshing and it's very sweet. It is a little twee, but sometimes you need to be a little twee.

AF: I'm going to stop you there and say I feel like, as a society, we need to have a little bit more of a pro-twee stance. I feel like the word twee shouldn't necessarily make our skin crawl. It can just be a little twee, and that's cool, and that's fine.

VB: Yeah. This album is also theatrical in that way. I think that being so unabashedly in love with your friends and praising them and using them as a support system, especially when there are songs like "Forever Howlong" and "For the Cold Country", where May deals with insecurity and does this really good way of describing coldness and warming up and peeling off the layers of armor when her friends are there. I just think that it's a very strong communication between band members that we don't see in a lot of bands and where there is no one person that stands above the rest. I think that they do a really good job of crediting each other, and in turn, that inspires people to credit them as well and recognize their strengths in the indie world.

AF: Each person on the record really does get a moment, I mean, different moments to stand out across the album and just the collectiveness of it is part of what makes it so interesting and appealing. I mean, it's part of the reason I love groups like Belle and Sebastian. Part of the reason I like groups like Godspeed as well. Very different music and sounds. But I mean, the fact that there seems to be so much creative equity there in terms of certain bits of instrumentation standing out and playing a really significant role at certain times, I mean, I think is part of what makes the whole thing so cool.

Alan, I'm going to ask you to educate me a little bit on a record that landed pretty high on the list, much higher than Clipse, I'm going to say, much higher than Clipse. Not that I have any strong feelings about that because this is a record I'm not super familiar with. I've seen the cover getting thrown back and forth quite a bit, and it's got me curious. But this Big city life Smerz album What is the deal? What is the background on the Smerz record? Should I be into it? Am I missing out? And for it to land so high on the list, what is the general vibe among the writers? Is this a dark horse release or something? What's the hype behind the Smerz record?

AP: These two women, they're originally from Norway, but they were educated at this Copenhagen school that has become super well known for producing a lot of inventive and interesting acts. I think they broke through with their 2021 album, Believer, and then they've done a soundtrack since then. But Big city life is a bit more pop, but it's very much dark. It's very much of the night. It's a very nocturnal, pacey record. It's got this post-club sensibility. I think you should definitely listen to it. It's popped up on so many lists, and I think it was very popular in our list, too. I don't think I put it so high on my list, but definitely it was up there. Especially, I think we picked out one of the songs "You got time and I got money," which maybe I got wrong but it's something like that. But it's a very cohesive record. It's very interesting in the way that they have the dynamics of being young and getting into this relationship with the whole post-club esthetic and the relationship with the streets. It's not as fragmented as Believer. It does come together a bit more, but it's still very shadowy, and there's a lot of tension in there. I think it's definitely one that you just have to soak into. It's not necessarily the most immediate record of the year, but it's definitely super worth being patient with.

AF: When you say like post-club, are you saying... is this an electronic music record at its core, or is it like borrowing ideas from club-centric music and doing something else with them entirely?

AP: Yeah, it's the latter. It doesn't sound like club music at all, but it's definitely using that late-night vibe to convey the sense of a club without actually sounding like club music, which I think is the strength of the album and what makes it so interesting and so unlike anything else that I've heard this year.

AF: Okay, quickly, let's hit some big records in the top 10 just to shout them out. If you guys want to throw out a few quick words as well on all of them, that would be cool. Number 10, liking EUSEXUA getting thrown in there. I know that the record has grown on me a little bit, especially with the slight tracklist revamp that happened recently with the release of Afterglow. I guess the quick question I'll ask is if either of you have heard that version, did that change your view of the album at all? Are you preferring the original version of the record? Do you have feelings about either?

VB: I mean, I'm a little petty.

AF: Petty? We're having petty feelings over the FKA twigs.

VB: She took out my favorite EUSEXUA track, which was "Girl Feels Good".

AF: Okay.

VB: I really liked "Girl Feels Good". I think It's a perfect song to be driving or walking around. Again, we were just talking about that club feeling, that late night feeling. I think it's a great song. I don't know. I think I'm very tired of this idea of pop artists, especially, doing this thing where they think that, 'Oh, nobody owns this music because it's all on streaming platforms. Only I own it. I'm entitled to readjust it however I want.'

AF: So you do an album post-op?

VB: Yeah. Like, either finish it and hand it out or talk with your label, and if you believe in tracks that they don't believe in... I don't know what the situation is behind closed doors. I wish that she had as much creative control as she did, if we're going to take her claim at face value that the new EUSEXUA thing is more true to her artistic vision, But yeah, I'm very much an all-in-one person, and your deluxe album comes out at least a year later. None of this like a month later or end of the year.

AF: Alan, are you echoing any of these sentiments?

AP: Absolutely. Where I stand on EUSEXUA is that conceptually speaking, it sounded way more promising on paper than it does. It's a wooly, vague execution. It doesn't mean I don't think it's good. It's an undeniably great record. But I do think it's a shame with what she's done with the repackage situation. I feel like when you present a work that's supposedly so conceptual and then put it out again with four whole songs swapped out, it does lessen my regard for the original work in a way. But I don't know how... It's quite recent, so I'm still coming to terms with it.

AF: I'm going to say I politely disagree. However, I do feel similarly about some of this of like, EUSEXUA Part 2 discourse, because I do feel like the whole Afterglow concept was oversold a little bit in terms of this being like, yeah, this is basically this part of the night out or experience and da da da da da da. And honestly, there's a lot of tracks there that just sound like leftovers. These just sound like songs that were not good enough to be on the original album. You know what I mean? This doesn't sound like I'm listening to a different part of the same experience or whatever. This is literally just extras, and I think we're building it up just maybe a little bit too much.

VB: There's a beautiful thing called an EP, and I wish more people would know about it.

AF: EPs are beautiful. However, However, and artists have spoken to this, and I wish this wasn't the case, because I agree with what you're saying here, because I think an EP would have been amazing from a music aficionado standpoint. But unfortunately, on streaming services these days, I feel like artists are disincentivized from doing that. EPs don't get as prominent promotion as albums because usually – especially on Apple Music and stuff like that – you've really got to dig to get to the singles and EPs sections of an artist's page and everything. Sometimes if you have new work and you really want people to see it, you've got to put it out there as an album. However, I don't see what was wrong with, as you were just saying, maybe also just doing this as a deluxe. A year later, do a deluxe, just add a whole album's worth of tracks to it on the back end. Everybody's doing it. We could have gotten all of those tracks that are also great and not have messed with the original tracklist, if people had strong feelings on it.

Speaking of very interesting and different bits of album presentation here, I don't know if this is something that either of you guys have strong feelings on, but I thought it was really interesting that the Skrillex record landed at number nine. It was a record that I had pretty positive feelings on, and I had a lot of good things to say about it. But I think one of the refreshing things about it is that it essentially is a DJ set parading as an album, which I think was a cool approach for Sunny to take, why the heck not? The thing is, there are mixes and stuff like that that artists come out with. But I feel like part of what makes it difficult, at least for me, to enjoy some mainstream DJs and electronic music and EDM artists' albums is that there doesn't really seem to be a whole lot of flow or cohesion to the tracklist, and it just seems like a bunch of random one-off songs that they're putting out there to see what hits, what doesn't, so they can later decide what's actually going to go into the DJ set down the road. Rather than going through that rigmarole process of coming out with a mid-album of a bunch of loose songs. Just put the damn DJ set out. Just make the DJ set the album. I feel like there's something in this record, even for people who aren't necessarily a fan of his work, because just the pacing and the flow and the momentum in between each moment, even if it's not your style, is definitely something to behold.

There's a lot of attention to detail paid and in terms of each transition and segue and how each moment moves. Again, even as somebody who's not the biggest EDM guy in the world, there's definitely something cool and raw about what he did here in terms of his approach.

AP: Yeah. When I first listened to it, I struggled to see the appeal. It felt like chaos for the sake of chaos. But as I listened to it a bit more, I did pick up on, as you were saying, the transitions were, it seemed to be a bit more thought put into it. I'm fully aware that I'm not the target audience for this record, and my thoughts on it are a little moot. I don't know how it got to number nine, but good for him.

AF: Again, I do think it has a strangely wide appeal, considering that for years, and I don't know if this may be a generational shift thing, but obviously, I've been reviewing long enough to remember that in certain music circles, you couldn't dare say a nice thing about Skrillex, or else you would be taken as as completely unserious in every possible way: 'You don't really know anything about electronic music. You don't know anything about music. To even like a single Skrillex song is heresy.' Now it's interesting with him, slipping into obscurity a little bit and making a slight comeback and teaming up with guys like Four Tet and so on and so forth, that he's almost got this weird cool factor about him now, for some reason that has come into fruition. I don't know. I'm happy to see it. I'm happy to see him doing something interesting. I'm happy to see people just being... not that you can't be critical, but just being overly contentious just for the sake of it just seems unnecessary.

But with that being said, Victoria, could you hype up the new Water From Your Eyes record a little bit? It's a bit of an obscure indie release that dropped this year that I had a hard time getting into myself, though I did appreciate some tracks off of their last record for sure. It seems like they're just dropping another quick follow-up and trying to keep the momentum up of the hype they built off their last LP. Where are they going on this album? And for any rock fans out there, of which obviously there's a bit of a burgeoning interest in indie again, with Geese being as hype as they are at the moment, who do you see this album appealing to? For anybody who might not be turned onto it yet?

VB: I mean, I think it's a peculiar album. I get it. And I think that when it came out, there was also a personal connection with it because of the subject matter and Rachel Brown's lyrics. They have this very interesting perspective of we're all trapped on Earth, and Earth is really bad right now. There's so much going on. It's really hard to keep up and preserve mental health and preserve happiness and joy when everything is outpacing that. But through the music, through Nate Amos' guitar sections, the bits and flourishes of electronic production, and their combination of what they perceived what indie rock in the early 2000s in New York City was like, I think, really makes this album a very scrappy, very rock, very of-the-now moment.

What I haven't seen a lot of critics say is the New Yorkness of the album. They're a Brooklyn bass duo, but they're not originally from New York, but they've lived here long enough to be New Yorkers. I'm not a gatekeeper. They have a really good vocabulary and good musical knowledge, I think, when it comes to the way that they construct the guitar riffs. They said in interviews that they were very inspired by Red Hot Chili Peppers. Not a New York band. Do not yell at me.

AF: Oh, no. We know. We know. And we know that you know.

VB: But I think that there's also, when it comes to "Playing Classics", which is their disco-punk track, that has very New York, electroclash dazzling moments to it, even though it is this punk track at the end of it being like, I'm poor and scrappy, but I'm going to go have fun anyway because I'm in the greatest place in the entire world. But yeah, and I think that there are the moments like "Nights in Armor", which takes on this more like early 2010s dream/synth-pop run to it. And there's also "Blood on the Dollar", which is this slower, drearier, almost shoegaze revival-y track, even though I hate calling things shoegaze revival. And that just pulls the album together in a really fun patchwork way that is DIY at its core. I think that the people who have built the cult following for this band, and for this record, are people who appreciate that DIY scrappy feeling, even though they're on Matador. Granted, Matador is an indie label, but it's one of the big indie labels, and they've produced some incredible records, some indie-rock masterpieces throughout the years.

So, yeah, just that DIY feel to it. It still feels like two people in their bedroom making music and rocking out. That has such a charm to it that I think that a lot of indie people, especially in the local scene, have really resonated with this entire year. Well, since it came out in August. But yeah.

AF: Okay. For the rest of the list, I would really love for you guys to check it out, read the blurbs, check out the records that you're unfamiliar with, that the staff are hyping up. There are some other underdog favorites for me this year that I'm really happy landed high, be it either the Ninajirachi or the Nourished by Time. Two incredible records. To me, creatively speaking, those are two of the bigger and best breakouts of the year, you know what I mean, by my taste. But we also need to bring the G-word into the conversation and talk about Geese being on the list and dominating in the way that they have, and just putting it to both of you. In your view, is this, and obviously, our site is not even the only site to be saying it. But is this the best album of the year, or is this just the album that we can all just seemingly agree on is really great? It becomes the best of the year by virtue of it being what we can all come to by consensus. Like, yeah, this is pretty good.

AP: I feel like I'm going to make a few enemies here, but...

AF: I'll protect you. I'll jump in front of you.

AP: Personally, I could quite happily never listen to this record again.

AF: Damn. Okay, sorry. I revoke my offer to jump in front of the bus. I didn't know you were going to go that hard, Alan. I didn't know. Okay, you're on your own, man. You're on your own now.

AP: It's not bad in any way, and I do get why people have latched onto it so tightly. I mean, it's all the things that I should love. It's opaque, it's challenging, it's bold, but I just don't love it. I'm just going to pass on to Vic, who I know loves this record, and I'm sorry.

AF: Okay, Vic, come in and save it.

VB: Well, how much time do we have? I'm kidding. Again, the same thing with Water From Your Eyes. I think Geese has been taking over the local scene way longer than they have internationally, where they exploded overnight this year. But as someone who has seen them grow over the years, for me, it's nice to see them come into this sound and come in and take the best parts of their first two official releases and go really crazy and big, and as Alan said, opaque and challenging with it. I think it is really nice and refreshing to see this grassroots explosion at a time where for the past five years, a lot of the big acts have had to deal with industry plant allegations, even though nobody knows what industry plant means.

AF: Yeah, the term has lost all meaning at this point.

VB: Yeah. It just means that your parents are rich at this point, which is also not true. But I think that with this grassroots appeal, it's refreshing first that there is this rock band. I understand why there's a lot of attraction to the band, specifically, whether it be their live performances, where it's just a very simple rock show, where they have a bunch of instruments on stage. They have just a few spotlights, and then they just go. They don't necessarily patter around and talk to the crowd. They just play. And then there's a lot of community in the crowd. I think their personas, the way that they look, I think is engineered in the lab to make everyone on the internet go crazy. Aside from that, I think that the music itself really stands as a good album, a fantastic album. I think that it is, at the end of the day, just an indie-rock record. I recognize that it may not be this crazy thing like Geordie Greep's The New Sound. It's not like that at all, where they're not going jazz, they're not going theatrical, they're not doing any of that. They just wanted to write a really, really good rock record.

But I do think that combine Max Bassin's drumming, combine Emily Green's guitar and Dominic's bass and Cameron also with the guitar – and the piano, especially – and his voice. I think that. like Black Country New Road, it is a band that has such great communication with each other and a band that can riff off of each other and feed into each other's craziness. And that's why we have songs like "Long Island City Here We Come", where it is this six-minute track of just percussion and a gospel-like key section and these crazy lyrics about getting kicked in the stomach and going back to New York City and having this insane religious experience. I throw this word around a lot but it is refreshing to hear something this crazy get so much acclaim, not just from the critics, but from the listeners themselves. And it shows that people want a challenge. It shows that people want creativity, and they don't necessarily want these overly personal confessional lyrics. Sometimes they want things that don't make a lot of sense, but they sound good, or they just appeal more to your emotions and your heart than it does with your brain or your Twitter, 280-character meme account, where you just post lyrics out of context.

I think it is just a very strong album that, as I said in my blurb, is going to be a great awakening in rock, and it is going to change the way that people approach connecting with audiences through their lyrics, through their sound, through their live performances. That for a longtime fan, I'm finally glad that they're getting their flowers.

AF: No, same here.

VB: Even if it means battling it out in the ticket queues, I'm very, very glad that people are platforming... not just critics, but people in general are platforming a band like this.

AF: Yeah. I mean, anybody watching this, I would hope at this point have seen my review of the new record and their last record, too. I mean, if you haven't, please go back. Not just to what I've said, but also make sure that you listen to 3D Country as well. I love that record, but as much as I was enjoying the band and liking what they were doing, I just could not have possibly foreseen the level of hype that we're seeing behind this record. And even Cameron's solo LP that dropped toward the end of last year. Again, just something that I couldn't have foreseen for a lot of different reasons. I mean, as much as rock has been making a little bit of a comeback in the underground over the last few years, Geese's old-school hard rock and classic rock influences, to me, didn't necessarily read as on-trend. So there's that element to it. You also were speaking to the band playing live, which I had the an opportunity, thankfully, to see them live twice before this record came out. I loved the live show. However, and maybe this is just because of changing tastes and the way that live performances have shifted over the years with respect to rock bands, pop artists, and the like.

But I had seen so many negative reviews of them live prior to them blowing up, of people just whining and complaining it's too improv-y, it's too jammy, it's too all over the place. You've got these shorter songs that get extended two, three times the length or whatever. And I was like, but that's great! I grew up listening to bands who did that. It further bolsters theories that you can read in books like David Byrne's How Music Works, in terms of the way that listening to recordings have shifted audience expectations when it comes to the live show. They expect the live show to mirror the recording and not be a different experience entirely sometimes, which is unfortunate. I feel like it kneecaps the potential for certain artists to get out there when people come into live performances with those types of expectations. But despite all of that, and this record not nearly being as visceral as 3D Country, because 3D Country just has some crazy riffs on it. This album is a little more relaxed, and the instrumentation is a bit more chaotic and difficult to translate on first listen, and yet, despite all of that...

Let's not even get into the fact that, as far as recent vocal trends in rock music in the underground over the last several years, Cameron Winter does not fit the mold. He absolutely does not. He does not fit the mold. But that's part of the reason it works. He stands out. The band stands out. The thing is, it's so out there to the point where if you just, even at a quick glance, just scanning the landscape really quickly, you're going to be like, 'What the hell is that?' It's going to draw your attention, positively or negatively, because it just stands above everything just by virtue of its sheer eccentricity, whether it appeals to you or not. I think that has been enough for the band to buoy themselves and garner the attention necessary to get this album as hyped up as it is.

VB: Yeah. I guess what I will say, addressing his voice, is that it's something that I've been thinking about a lot with music, and what do I consider good music or effective music. The craziness of what's going on here, of you never knowing where he's going to go next. Every single show, he's going to sing it a slightly different way. He has this very spiritual presence. Like, he lets the music come to him. That's how it sounds like. And he just follows it. He doesn't necessarily... He relinquishes a bit of control as he sings. And what I think is so powerful about that is that it may be a voice that people don't like, it may be a voice that people love, but it is a voice that produces a visceral reaction in people. I think when we think about music and what is considered impressive and what is considered good, I do think that people need to step outside of the box of, Oh, music that sounds nice is good music. I think that it should be a much more emotional process. It should be a much more like, This voice hurts, therefore, the feelings behind these lyrics.

The lyrics may not make sense, but I understand this anguish. I understand this hurt, this longing, this anger that he's communicating not just through the words, but through the way that he just shifts from through-the-pavement vocals into this Bee Gees falsetto in the same breath without barely moving his face muscles. So I think that, again, speaking back to the band and what they could do for music, I think it is stepping outside of this mold of what is considered good music and letting people embrace challenge and letting people embrace more difficult feelings and more difficult reactions to music, because I'd rather feel repulsed and crazy than nothing at all. That's my issue with a lot of pop music, is that it sounds pleasant, but I don't feel anything from it. And that's just not how I personally listen to music. I very much want it to be a centerpiece. I don't want it to be in the background. And this is definitely a centerpiece album. It is not one that you can talk over. It's just one that you have to listen to.

AF: Yeah. And one more thought on the vocal. There's just like, I think for a long time, especially with an autotune becoming as prevalent as it is. I think it's become very narrowed, what people's views of what good and bad vocals could or should be. And anything that isn't as cleaned up as we could possibly make it and as presentable as we could possibly make it, it seems like there's too many chances for people to redo things, fix things, perfect things, overthink things without letting the eccentricities fly that might come through without having to edit yourself too much. The thing is, if you allow those things that make you different as an artist that you might clean up in post, that maybe might sound weird in a digital recording or whatever, if you prevent those from coming out, I think you prevent risks from happening. You prevent variations from happening. I understand that there's a lot of anxiety around success in the music industry and being as appealing as possible because it's really difficult to get eyes. It's really difficult to get ears. It's really difficult to get people to pay attention to anything anybody is doing with all the oversaturation of everything.

But I take a bit of, I guess, solace in the fact that the greatest songwriter who was considered by many, many publications, many lists to be the greatest songwriter of all time, Bob Dylan, has a widely hated voice. You cannot have, even today, after decades and decades of critical acclaim and even a movie with Timmy Shama-Lama playing him. You can't get through a single conversation about Bob Dylan without somebody being like, 'Yeah, but his voice is ass, and I can't listen to his music.' The guy is still an amazing songwriter and even his biggest haters have to admit there's something to the songs. I say, if you have a weird voice, if you sound like Kermit the Frog on quaaludes, just let it be. Let it happen, because you never know where you might end up. It could make you stand out.

AP: I feel like I need to defend myself a little bit here because my favorite album of the year is also super opaque, super challenging, super weird voice.

AF: Alan, we know you have taste. We know you're not a normie, Alan, okay? You're not a sheep, Alan.

AP: I'm just going to say ICONCOCLASTS, for me, is far and away the best album of the year. I was fortunate to see Anna play it live, like last week, and it totally blew me away.

AF: Just to put it boldly for everybody who's watching, Alan is talking about the new Anna von Hausswolff album, which is a very powerful and immense record. It is true. Just quickly, why did it end up being your album of the year?

AP: I mean, I've been following Anna for a very long time, since her first album in, I think, 2012. She's taken such interesting diversions into purely pipe organ music, some very dark, very intense brooding music, so for her to totally reinvent her sound with this art-rock, massive sounding album... the saxophone by Otis [Sandsjö] is insane. Everything about this album is so detailed. I know it's very long, and I know that some of the songs... In your review, which was really well-informed and interesting. I think not everything hits for everybody, but I've been sitting with this album for a long time. I took my dog up on the train to Gothenburg and did an interview with Anna, and I feel like I've really lived in this album, and it's just really affected me in a way that no other music this year has managed to do.

AF: Yeah, the high points on the record are really high. Some of the vocal performances are incredible. I would, again, as I said in my review, recommend this to anybody who's big into Lingua Ignota, Julia Holter, singers who come through with a very big, very abstract sound. I know that I've thrown out names here, and not all of these artists have the most crossover audience. But also, if you're into guys like Colin Stetson but maybe you've wanted to hear those wild winding, never-ending saxophones used in maybe more of a super aggressive, explosive rock context. Because that's the thing. As big and as refined and as artsy as this album is, it's very visceral. It's very aggressive at points. It's very explosive. This is some of the craziest sax I've heard on an album in years. The way it's mic'd up and it's recorded, it really feels like you're inside the horn of the mouth of the saxophone. It's just squelching and wailing and just screaming in your face and the drums are going off and Anna's voice is just soaring above all of it. It's really a crazy experience in some pockets.

Thank you guys for coming on. Thank you to the rest of the TND writers who came through with their favorites. The list is linked in the description box for you guys to check out, of course. Victoria, Alan, thank you very much.

Both: Yeah, thank you for having us.

AF: There you have it. Thank you guys very much for watching.

Anthony Fantano, 2025 albums, forever.