The Best Albums of the Year so far

Today is the middle day of the year, so here are the Loud And Quiet Top 20 albums released so far in 2025

Jul 02, 2025

Loud And Quiet has never put together a midway AOTY list before. Don’t they ruin the surprise of end-of-year lists? Aren’t people living for that kind of climax right now? How we’ve preserved that high here is by a.) not preferentially numbering our 20 favourite albums of the year so far, and b.) by asking 10 L&Q writers to select their favourite 2 records from the first half of 2025. Fortunately, the entire team has excellent and varied taste.

We hope you find something new and rediscover a release or two that slipped by in the week that Donald Trump Swiss Toni’d a Cybertruck, or when Katy Perry checked to see if no one can hear you being ridiculed in space. It’s been a noisy 6 months.

*Note: If you’d like to listen to the embedded albums all within this post, you can do that by viewing this post in your browser rather than you email inbox, at loudandquiet.substack.com or in the Substack app.

YHWH Nailgun – 45 Pounds (AD93)

Debut albums don’t come much more lean or uncompromising than 45 Pounds. It’s a staggering entrance to the international stage for the NYC band, whose gristly, wild-eyed noise-rock submerges their home city’s rich tradition of funk-infused post-punk beneath endless atmospheres of dissonant pressure. Sam Pickard’s drumming is astonishing, forcing each track inside out with spiralling rototoms, pig iron clanging and indecipherable polyrhythms; Zack Borzone’s tortured vocals and discomfiting lyrics, meanwhile, provide a visceral counterpoint. What’s perhaps most impressive is how cohesive it all is, perhaps thanks to the sleek, glue-like contributions of Saguiv Rosenstock and Jack Tobias, their guitars and synths holding everything just about together for these 21 vital minutes. Luke Cartledge

Read Luke’s review with the band

Maria Somerville – Luster (4AD)

Luster just swallows you up and makes you feel like you’ve known County Galway’s Connemara all your life – or lived there in a past life, maybe. After several years in Dublin, Maria Somerville was drawn away to make her coming-home album, her tribute to Ireland’s stuff-of-dreams western coastline, and it sounds like it: like the shoulder-sinking relief of coming home from the unknown, but like the literal landscape of Connemara, too. These are misty, windswept capsules of ambient dream-pop blessed with space and patience and filled with little secrets. Best of all, Luster feels like a true album, a corrective to playlist culture that pulls you in, over and over, until it becomes your home too. Hayden Merrick

Oklou – Choke Enough (Because)

Music obsessives are often guilty of developing a detached shorthand when recommending new artists to our mates. I’ve caught myself doing it with Oklou: she’s Enya for people who use Discord; it’s hyperpop without the hyper – that sort of rubbish. The longer you live with Choke Enough, the more it defies irony or easy classification. These minimal pop songs spill out in grand and mysterious ways, full of depth while working in negative space. At its heart is an enticing weightlessness that has to be felt more than explained, and a timeless quality that’ll outlast any cute descriptor we throw onto it now. Skye Butchard

billy woods – GOLLIWOG (Backwoodz)

As a rapper who performs in pitch black and has never been photographed with his face in plain sight, New York’s billy woods has never made a breezy hip hop record, but previous sort-of crossover album Maps is all of a sudden sounding like ABBA. GOLLIWOG revels in horror both real and camp, working with daft Hollywood samples and real people discussing waterboarding and Gaza, as he raps the slowest and clearest he ever has on a record of atmospheric Afropessimism. It’s probably woods’ most overtly cult record (and with El-P, The Alchemist, Kenny Segal, Shabaka Hutchings and more on production), but it’s also his most perversely fun, like watching a virgin descend into a basement on the big screen. Stuart Stubbs

PinkPantheress – Fancy That (Warner)

After a disappointing debut LP, Gen Z’s breakout producer/singer returned to the medium that made her with this exceptionally moreish mixtape inspired by Y2K dance-pop. Playing fast and loose with perceived notions of good taste, Pink’s frenetic productions give the same reverence to samples by Just Jack, Jessica Simpson and Panic! At The Disco as they do Basement Jaxx, Underworld and The Streets. ‘Stateside’ is particularly inspired, pairing The Dare’s throbbing, electroclash-inspired synths with the vocal melody of ‘Freak Like Me’ and a chorus so huge it can be seen from space. As a collection, it’s brief, it’s busy, it’s bubblegum and – most importantly – it’s bags of fun. How many other records can you truthfully say that about in 2025? Gemma Samways

Anna B Savage – You & I Are Earth (City Slang)

Midway through the last song on her previous album, Anna B Savage sang, “Don’t want kids or a partner”; four songs earlier went, “I’m happy alone / Please believe me”. Guess what came next then, of course: the follow-up You & I Are Earth, one of the most beautiful, tender and relatable love albums in recent memory, packed with swooning melodies and turns of phrase that make you long for the rush of being head over heels, as Savage waxes giddy about her new beau and adopted home of Ireland. It’s a perfect album by itself, made even sweeter by the visceral and disarmingly honest stories of heartache, bad sex, and self-realisation that had preceded it. Sam Walton

Baths – Gut (Basement’s Basement)

Will Wiesenfeld describes his fourth Baths album – the first in eight years – simply as “stomach music.” And true to the name, Gut is music to be felt physically, bodily – intrusively in the gut – uncomfortable, nihilistic but oddly grounding. His confessional tales of the undulations of gay love are well-masked by brawny electronics and a lust so emo and exaggerated it borders whimsy, but when he paws at the flesh wound, Gut bounds with a sore confidence. Self-doubts break into ornate dance music, online humour breaks into screamo; before you know it, you’ll be shedding a tear, singing along to “fucking all the men in droves.” Tristan Gatward

Model/Actriz – Pirouette (Dirty Hit)

For all its brashness, Pirouette is a more grounded coming out tale than you might expect. Through a set of tough and tender dance punk songs, Cole Haden lets himself be self-deprecating and needy, as we often are in a state of vulnerability. Every swaggering diva tendency matched with a fragile lyric or disarming vocal. For a New York band that excel at extremity, softness becomes the secret strength, as does their ear for pop melodies. They pull from Britney as much as they do Xiu Xiu or the noise rock around them, making for a fresh and surprising listen that’s always teetering on the edge of collapse. Skye Butchard

Jenny Hval – Iris Silver Mist (4AD)

What if I told you this is Jenny Hval’s most accessible album? Ok, sure, there’s a concept (scent as a trigger for memory/substitute for physical intimacy) and its title was inspired by a Serge Lutens fragrance reportedly “smelling more like steel than silver.” But melodically, it’s her most direct record so far, and yet still littered with so many marvellous left-hand turns. Take ‘To Be A Rose’. Beginning with the skeletal patter of a drum machine, eerie nature sounds and bursts of brass, it unfurls like a flower to reveal the most triumphant chorus the Norwegian polymath has ever produced. Brimming with brilliant ideas, Iris Silver Mist is – like its namesake – a record of intoxicating incorporeal beauty. Gemma Samways

Bb Trickz – 80’z (Sony)

With every hangover from Brat Summer – lazily opening reviews with it notwithstanding – there’s a silver lining that feels culturally exciting, even still. The brightest of those silver linings is Catalan rapper Bb Trickz, whose version of ‘Club Classics’ was a standout of last year’s Brat reworks, and whose latest project 80’z is some of this year’s most addictive, compelling pop music. Its eight tracks barely hit twelve minutes – all rough-edged and impulsive, flying from High Life to drill – but if TikTok music is to become a genre catered to our shortening attention spans, then let it be as fun, effortless and perfectly braggadocio as this. Tristan Gatward

Richard Dawson – End of the Middle (Domino)

There must be people out there enjoying their early 40s but Richard Dawson isn’t one of them, and a lot of us are thanking him for that and his eighth album. The titular ‘middle’ isn’t confirmed as the middle of middle age, but here the avant-folk musician uses his unique super powers to express the anguish of getting older with all the humour and heartbreak we’ve come to expect, on an album stripped back to one guitar and drums so quiet you’re not sure if they feature at all. None of what makes End of the Middle so relatably loveable comes as a surprise: Dawson has been exploring the banalities of life for 15-odd years via lyrics so straight-talking and hilarious it feels like he’s been waiting to shepherd us through an adult life that finally can’t be ignored. It almost takes the edge off. Philippa Carrow

Read Stuart Stubbs’ essay review on End of the Middle

Welly – Big In The Suburbs (The Vertex)

It’d be too easy to put on your good-music-critic hat and pick holes in Welly’s debut collection of bratpop bops, for the Brighton man-about-town and his band of fellow post-patriot subversives are excruciatingly British and certainly not for everyone. Theirs are whizzy, witty, chit-chatted songs about suburban hell, lawn mowers and bank holidays – like Bart Simpson-does-Pulp but in Sussex. I love it because it’s not actually possible to be stressed or sad while listening to Welly. You don’t sit down and ponder Big In The Suburbs. It’s an album to loosen ties, limbs and lips, all your worries strewn across the open road outta the ‘burbs, even if that road is the A27. Hayden Merrick

caroline – caroline 2 (Rough Trade)

If caroline’s first album sought to stretch small ideas over long timeframes, and beautifully so, their second crams complexity into tight spaces, and experiencing the fallout is a joy. But although caroline 2 is nominally “difficult” – not much traditional pop structure and unorthodox recordings of voices and instruments – it’s never alien, as earthy arrangements and soothing melodies cut through even its most hectic moments. Evocative of one’s own internal monologue, songs undulate but never repeat, and in the moment, and internally, it all feels fairly reasonable. But, also like one’s mind, it’s only when you have cause to describe the contents for the benefit of someone outside your own skull do you realise quite how nutty and knotty it might all be. Far better just to put the record on and let it seep into you. Sam Walton

Read Sam’s interview with the band

Shearling – Motherfucker I Am Both "Amen" and "Hallelujah" (Mishap)

For me, personally, the trend of the last few years has been that we are in a true golden age of rock and also post-rock. My personal top three albums from last year, Still House Plants, Geordie Greep and High Tide, all took great joy in playing with the idea of 'rock music', prising it apart and gluing it back together again. (Possibly) my favourite album to date in the year of our lord 2025 does this just as exquisitely, and it’s one I have been honoured to cover in my column, The Drift. The debut album by Shearling, a phoenix project from the ashes of Sprain, is comprised one hour-long song – a hurtling and maniacal post-rock opera that melds the best parts of Swans, Pere Ubu, Xiu Xiu and US Maple together over it's whirlwind runtime. Alexander Gregory Kent's lyrics are red-eyed, unflinching vignettes of rural American mayhem, whilst the group's super=heavy guitars are frequently offset by a range of mandolins, banjos and horns. An inventive and wild ride. Cal Cashin

Lael Neale – Altogether Stranger (Sub Pop)

Born in rural Virginia and now back in LA after a pandemic break from the West Coast, Lael Neale makes you want to buy an Omnichord, the retro-futurist electronic harp her signature instrument and one that she’s mastered with seemingly casual ease. You can’t sing in Neale’s beguiling Lana-Del-Rey-laying-down-a-demo way, and you have no idea how her lo-fi garage nursery rhymes surf on waves of US gospel as much as Spaceman 3, but you need that goddamn Omnichord! All great DIY music makes you want you give it a go yourself, and Altogether Stranger is Neale making what she does (and the self-sufficiency and romance of making minimal symphonies with such little – and old – gear) feel like a walk in the park. Stuart Stubbs

Panda Bear – Sinister Grift (Domino)

Noah Lennox definitely didn't intend it to be, but I can’t shake the feeling that Panda Bear’s Sinister Grift is the secret soundtrack to this year. His first album in half a decade, and the first time all of the members of Animal Collective have pitched in, it’s a remarkably tight yet sonically adventurous departure from the usual Panda Bear schtick. Seeped in a fractured, anxious energy, it unintentionally mirrors how I feel watching the world right now. When I listen, I feel like I’m hearing the opening credits to a future Adam Curtis film about the mess we're in. Dominic Haley

John Glacier – Like A Ribbon (Young)

John Glacier’s presence around the February release of her debut album was sparse to say the least. Since, she’s all but vanished from the face of the earth. The shadowiness feels fitting for the music of Like A Ribbon and a London rapper who doesn’t quite feel like a rapper at all. The only other thing that sounds like this record is Glacier’s previous work. It’s an album of downbeat, mumbled bars that sound like they’re being read off iPhone Notes – sketches of thoughts jotted down as Glacier leaves a shop, delivered over wiry guitars instead of beats on ‘Money Shows’, which features Eartheater. When drums do appear across the record they’re skittish and blown-out like everything else here (piano loops, more guitar, a fizzy hiss), making all those comparisons to Dean Blunt understandable, even though John Glacier is a complete one-off. Philippa Carrow

Weed420 - Amor de encava (Deprerreo)

Venezuelan experimental rap group Weed420 are a weird and unruly bunch. Their debut album is perhaps the most inventive and chaotic thing I've heard this year, as the group combine furious Spanish-language rap with a collage of unheimlich beats – from sources as disparate as shoegaze, vaporwave and reggaeton. This is truly 21st century music, with a DJ screw approach to beatmaking and a soundbank that spans the whole of time and space. Weed420 forever. Cal Cashin

Ezra Furman – Goodbye Small Head (Bella Union)

Ezra Furman’s new album isn’t a record about pain; it’s the sound of it. Forged in the crucible of a mysterious illness, it explores the final ego death that comes with losing control of your own body. And yet, it's not painful to listen to. Sounding like a collage made from the raw nerve of Suicide, the gothic drama of The Bad Seeds, and the street poetry of Lou Reed, it's a record that flits between darkness and light, swinging between snatches of chiming, manic pop and moments of stark desperation like a fever dream. Dominic Haley

Joseph Futak – Walking the Sea Wall (Blue Flowers)

If you’ve been paying attention to the South London scene beyond the headline-grabbing clutch of Windmill regulars over the last few years, you may well have heard Joseph Futak’s work at some point, with or without realising. As a producer and session player, Futak has quietly honed a distinctive audio style through his collaborations with the likes of Piglet, Lilo, Baggio and many others: subtle, restrained, foregrounding organic flow over shiny precision. It should come as little surprise, then, that his new solo record applies this approach to his own songwriting. This is a beautifully understated collection; songs like ‘Light of Day’ and ‘Emily’ reveal themselves gradually, with a Cassandra Jenkins-like sense of poise. Once you’ve spent enough time with Walking The Sea Wall to apprehend its full form, it’s remarkable. Luke Cartledge