Today it’s the third in our series of 2025 recaps, looking back at some of the highlights and lowlights of the previous 12 months.
James Spearing takes us through everything musical that moved or menaced him in the year just gone.
Best album of 2025: Complete Fool – Chloe Foy
As soon as I heard ‘Blinkers’, and when (yes it really is this oddly specific) the variation in the chord progression in the third line of the chorus gave me goosebumps (it still does), I knew I was on to something special. I’d listened to Chloe Foy before, but Complete Fool definitely stepped things up for me with end to end quality. A casual listen might leave you feeling as if you’ve heard a very cheery album, but delving beneath the lush instrumentation, and into the lyrics, will show you a different side. Refrains like “I wish I was a joyful person / I wish I was a joyful person” reveal far more breadth and depth. Seeing Chloe perform flawlessly in a tiny venue in October only cemented how skilled she is as a performer, musician and songwriter. Go and listen immediately if you’ve not done so before.
Best gig of 2025: Kelly Lee Owens, New Century Manchester
It was tough to pick just one gig this year (my first time seeing Skunk Anansie after being a fan for nearly 30 years and the vitality and energy of Lambrini Girls being among the other options), but I’ll pick the very welcome return of KLO for a few reasons. Number one, my appreciation for the level of noise it’s possible for one person alone to make. Two, for how grateful and humble Kelly is every time I see her – genuinely enjoying the music, the experience of performing and the audience. And finally, because going to a 9 til 10.30pm gig of techno is pretty much as close as I was going to get to clubbing in the year I turned 40.
Best new discovery of 2025: Ellen Beth Abdi
Ellen accelerated into my life around the middle of 2025. I zoomed rapidly from seeing her name recommended in a weekly release email from a record shop on a Friday, to being at her album launch show the following Tuesday night. Her self-titled debut is full of diverse sounds from the awkward bossa nova of ‘Kingsway Bouquet’ to the soulful pop of lead single ‘Who This World is Made For’, to an inspired Rae & Christian cover in ‘Spellbound’. In my review of her launch show at Manchester’s Night & Day, I called Ellen, “the post-Sheeran saviour” of loop pedals. And having been fortunate enough to see her perform for a second time in 2025 (supporting Holysseus Fly, below), ‘The Bad Dream’ was even more impressive – a saviour indeed. If being in a whirlwind romance with a debut album is indeed a thing, this was very much it.
Albums to look forward to in 2026: Dog Race and Holysseus Fly
Nothing concrete like a title or release date to go on here, but both acts have been steadily touring and releasing EPs and have both spoken or posted about, at the very least, the possibility of recording an album this year. Whether this means we see the thing released in 2026 too remains to be seen. But I’m excited about both whenever they do arrive.
Biggest disappointment of 2025: Frat summer (Oasis, Kendal Calling and Sam Fender winning the Mercury prize).
I’ll get a small confession out of the way first – I did enjoy seeing Travis at Kendal Calling and singing along at sunset to songs I’d forgotten I knew all the words to. But…we’ve had hot girl summer, we’ve had brat summer and…well the summer of 2025 was truly white man summer (aka frat summer), ending with crowning the Geordie Springsteen as having the best album of the year. It was like an anti-woke nightmare happening before our eyes, already watering from the £90 band-branded football shirts for sale at the merch stands. Living in Manchester, the existing painful ubiquity of Oasis was amplified beyond comprehension. At Kendal, it was like landfill indie had never died. And if you feel like this is an unfair characterisation of an otherwise glorious few months of weather and taking an easy swipe at a festival not known for its diverse line-ups, then take a look at Glastonbury (The 1975, Rod Stewart, Neil Young) and Reading/Leeds (Bring Me the Horizon and Hozier) for further evidence that these acts still dominate our summers of outdoor music. There is movement in the right direction with Chappel Roan, Travis Scott and Olivia Rodrigo hitting these heights too, but the industry still needs to do better. A lot better.
An album the other bastards were wrong about in 2025: Getting Killed – Geese
“Hey you’re a man who likes his music, have you listened to Geese they’re definitely the sort of thing you’d listen to”. This or, something along these lines, was an encounter I had with several people in the second half of 2025. And yes, I did listen to Getting Killed, with a level of anticipation in line with the level of recommendation, in order to see what all the fuss was about. And, honestly, I’m still wondering. For a guitar band, I guess it’s reasonably inventive, but that’s not saying much when it sounds like could easily have been released pretty much any time in the last 25 years. Plus the singer’s voice is kind of annoying. In short, I was unmoved by it and Matt and Tom and Rick are all wrong.
Words by James Spearing
Picky Bastards 