Real Goblin

Music! It’s good. And what a time to be an artist. Record labels, streaming giants, they’re really just at the top of their game when it comes to being absolute garbage-gobbling corporate filth. Anyway, here are the best albums of the year.

Disclaimer: You will not find Cameron Winter’s brilliant debut album on this list. That’s because it came out last year, and we had the patience to wait for the actual end of the year to put our list out. If you’d like to see where it placed in 2024, see the list here (it was high).

50. DYAN – Midwest

This is one of those albums I knew I would like from the first ten notes of the opening track. It’s melancholic, dark, and perfect for when I want to aura-farm in public.

Favorite Songs: “Water Underground”, “Say No More”

49. Frog – THE COUNT

I don’t really know what to make of Frog. To tell you the truth, I found this band by accident, and might have passed them by if not for their 2023 album, GROG. GROG by Frog. And you better believe there’s a big old frog on the cover of that album.

But it was their strange, almost first take sound, that intrigued me. THE COUNT retains some of that energy, but has a fuzzier, darker sound. The opening track is mesmerizing, and I can’t stop coming back for that hook. But at the same time, the whole album kind of sounds like the way my mom probably hears all music that isn’t from the 1980s, if that makes any sense. This feels like something I can’t recommend to most people. Not because it’s too heavy or too abstract, but in a way I can’t really pin down.

Favorite Songs: “BITTEN BY MY LOVE VAR. XI”, “GIRL WITH A PROBLEM VAR.XIII”

48. The Beths – Straight Line Was A Lie

I have always enjoyed The Beths from the outside, as a very casual fan if anything. But even I can tell that they are on a generational run right now and are one of the most consistent rock acts today. Straight Line Was A Lie starts strong and doesn’t let up with some of the band’s best hooks and wittiest lyrics to date.

Favorite Songs: “Mosquitoes, “Best Laid Plans”

47. HITOMITOI – Telepa Telepa

The opener on longtime city-pop legend HITOMITOI’s first album since 2017 is absolute fire. It’s the kind of song that can elevate the whole album, and in the case of Telepa Telepa, it sets the exact tone for what’s to come.

I’m a shell of the man I once was. I don’t even know what I am anymore.

Favorite Songs: “head”, “lover’s spit plays in the background”

46. Laundry Day – EARWORM

On EARWORM, LAUNDRY DAY has a singular focus: making songs that live up to the album’s title. Despite being young musicians, EARWORM is already the band’s sixth album. Their debut, Trumpet Boy, was released in 2018. In just seven short years since then, the band has released a fairly extensive catalog – one that rivals the entire discographies of some musicians.

Some of their earlier stuff is hit or miss for me. But EARWORM is back to back to back bangers all the way through.

Favorite Songs: “LITTLE MISS JADED”, “SUPERMODEL”

45. Tyler Childers – Snipe Hunter

Tyler Childers is one of a small handful of the modern country white guys who remembers what country music actually is. With an emphasis on witty lyricism and storytelling, Childers croons over some of the best country tunes of the year. “Bitin’ List” is a kind of songwriting that’s been missing from country for years. Few others could execute on a song about getting rabies and biting people like Tyler.

Favorite Songs: “Cuttin’ Teeth”, “Bitin’ List”

44. Hayley Heynderickx, Max García Conover – What of Our Nature

This is folk in its truest form. I really enjoyed it while it was on, and the opening track hits hard. For lack of more eloquent praise, if you like the Hayley Heynderickx types of the world, you’ll like this.

The songs are excellently written, and the lyricism punches well above its weight. Several tracks, like “In Bulosan’s Words”, could easily be some unearthed cult classic from the 1960s, polished for modern release.

Favorite Songs: “This Morning I Am Born Again”, “In Bulosan’s Words”

43. First Day Back – Forward

This is like the dinosaurs of albums. Not like…not like it’s old or ancient. Like it’s cool like dinosaurs are cool.

Favorite Songs: “Wait, Do You Hear That?”, “Sure, Ok”

42. Hatchie – Liquorice

Not to be confused with Waxahatchee.

Harriette Pilbeam’s Hatchie is airy, bright, and dreamy. It floats like a bubble blown from a skyscraper window, dripping suds reminiscent of Cocteau Twins and other synth pop legends of old.

Favorite Songs: “Only One Laughing”, “Someone Else’s News”

41. Sabrina Carpenter – Man’s Best Friend

I had a slight change of heart about Sabrina Carpenter’s newest album. I was initially fairly unimpressed, unsurprised, and underwhelmed. And while I do think her schtick is already pretty tired, I simply can not deny how catchy some of these songs are.

Favorite Songs: “House Tour”, “Sugar Talking”

40. Friendship – Caveman Wakes Up

If anyone out there wants to put together a team to design the kind of album that works for me everytime, you should start with Caveman Wakes Up by Friendship.

An emotional baritone on lead vocals, heavy, thick guitars, and melancholy lyricism. Gets me just about every time.

Favorite Songs: “Tree of Heaven”, “Resident Evil”

39. Flyte – Between You and Me

In 2021, Flyte released This Is Really Going to Hurt, a passionate breakup album that felt urgent and cathartic. Their two albums since then, Flyte and Between You and Me, have been quite different.

If TIRGH was a storm, then what has come after is the cleanup crew. Flyte is sweeping up debris, replacing tiles on the wind-battered rooftop, and getting back to basics. Their 2025 release is romantic, sweet, and grounded. It’s an easy listen and the kind of album anyone can find something in.

Favorite Songs: “Hello Sunshine”, “Hurt People”

38. Automatic – Is It Now?

This is the kind of stuff I would be listening to all the time if I were a spy. I’d wear a big black turtleneck and sunglasses and sip coffee at a European cafe and watch my target go to and from work for like a year straight and then I would go to take them out and screw it up somehow and have to flee and live in fear forever.

Favorite Songs: “Lazy”, “mq9”

37. Japanese Breakfast – For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women)

Such a soft, pretty, elegant album and it seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle of many year-end lists. To my ears, this is the best Japanese Breakfast album yet, and it’s a shame that it has gone somewhat underappreciated. She even got Jeff Bridges to feature on this thing. How are you gonna sleep on that?

Favorite Songs: “Honey Water”, “Men in Bars”

36. Momma – Welcome to My Blue Sky

Someday, these albums about what it’s like to be in your early twenties will feel quaint to me. I’m not there yet. But I’m getting old. I suspect that when I do get to that point, something like Momma’s Welcome to My Blue Sky will play something like Catcher in the Rye. The meaning of it changes for you depending on what stage of your life you encounter it at.

Favorite Songs: “Ohio All The Time”, “Welcome to My Blue Sky”

35. Olivia Dean – The Art of Loving

To be fair, a lot of the heavy lifting is done by the album’s singles. “Man I Need” is one of my unexpected favorites of the year. Olivia Dean’s voice is phenomenal, delightfully warm, and rich. But what elevates this above other albums with similarly talented vocalists at the forefront is the instrumentation, which is so well composed and balanced with Dean’s voice that the album ends up being the perfect morning coffee type project.

Favorite Songs: “Man I Need”, “I’ve Seen It”

34. Alex G – Headlights

This one feels weird for Alex G, in the sense that it’s very…normal. It’s perhaps his most instrumentally and thematically grounded project to date. It reflects Alex G’s maturing style, carrying over some of my favorite elements from God Save the Animals. “June Guitar” doesn’t break down into a glitchy, scratchy cacophony. Instead, an accordion plays us out.

This album is like a sunset. Not on Alex G’s career, but perhaps on an era of it.

Favorite Songs: “Real Thing”, “Bounce Boy”

33. Water From Your Eyes – It’s a Beautiful Place

This wasn’t clicking for me until I heard “Spaceship”. Something about the opening minute, that groove that feels like all of it’s disparate parts until it suddenly snaps into place – it got me.

Nate Amos and Rachel Brown’s collaboration culminates in an experimental, broad, and surprisingly catchy NINTH album for the band. Yes, ninth. I was stunned by that too, since this feels very much like one of those groups that forms out of thin air.

Favorite Songs: “Nights in Armor”, “Blood on the Dollar”

32. Rosalía – LUX

Rosalía seems to have broken through to an expanded audience on LUX. And it’s clear to see why. She’s unbelievably consistent with the quality of her discography, and just keeps getting better and better. LUX is a sweeping, orchestral ride through Rosalía’s world. She dips in and out of various genres and excels at everything she tries her hand at. It’s one I really had to sit with. It’s not glamourous to say, but I did have to learn to love this one. It’s dense, but it pays off in full if you can grow into it.

Favorite Songs: “Divinize”, “La Perla”

31. Earl Sweatshirt – Live Laugh Love

Bro is married with kids.

And this is the album you get from a man who is living as normal a life as a musician can. Earl Sweatshirt is fulfilled in a way you won’t find on his previous work. The resulting album is lightweight and easy to swallow.

Earl Sweatshirt, just thirty years young, has already left behind a transformative catalogue for abstract hip-hop. Live Laugh Love doesn’t further that transformation. It comfortably rides the wave Earl started years ago.

Favorite Songs: “Gamma (need the <3)” , “gsw vs sac”

30. Great Grandpa – Patience, Moonbeam

This band is aptly named. Their music feels familial and warm. It feels like sleeping on the couch at your grandparent’s house. I was lucky enough to have a lot of years with my own great grandpa. He was in the air force during WWII. He flew planes over Europe and fought honest to god Nazis. But the part of my life in which I knew him was obviously his later years, when my family would drive up to a cottage that looked out over Lake Ontario. I would lounge in the sun and listen to the waves lap against the rocky shore.

Even when the album deviates from that acoustic sound, like on “Ladybug”, I still picture that place. That feeling is one I consistently find in Great Grandpa’s music. Few share my rocky beach memory, but I hope when you listen to this album, you find your own.

Favorite Songs: “Junior”, “Ladybug”

29. Way Dynamic – Massive Shoe

An interestingly selected name for a band filling the shoes of the kind of Todd Rundgren sound that has been missing from my life for a while. The album is a continuous groove and ebbs and flows from whisper to gentle conversation, but never louder than that. It’s simple and sweet, and it doesn’t need to be anything more.

Favorite Songs: “Miffed It”, “People Settle Down”

28. Wet Leg – moisturizer

This one really grew on me. It’s the softer cuts that really elevated it. Wet Leg delivers more of the sound fans might have come to expect, but it was the non-singles that stuck with me after the album’s release.

Don’t let the deeply upsetting album cover fool you, there is tenderness to be had here.

Favorite Songs: “mangetout”, “pokemon”

27. Nourished by Time – The Passionate Ones

This year was my introduction to Nourished by Time. I first caught his Catching Chickens EP and the hit “Hell of a Ride”. Sometimes you find an artist and learn they just have the one good song. Nourished by Time had a whole sophomore album locked and loaded just for me.

It’s easy to get lost in the rhythm, but these songs are also laden with gentle lyricism and heartfelt pleas for something more out of relationships with others. It’s an extremely promising trajectory.

Favorite Songs: “Idiot In The Park”, “9 2 5”

26. Ho99o9 – Tomorrow We Escape

Ho99o9 (pronounced horror) is heavier and darker than what I thought I would be able to enjoy. Full disclosure, this kind of weighty, angsty, punk-metal is hard for me to get into. It’s sort of my last holdout genre that I just haven’t been able to breach. But Ho99o9 managed to puncture a hold in my shield and find a way to make me start a one man mosh pit in my living room. This rap-punk duo has been toiling in these darker sounds for years now, but I am only just learning of them through this year’s Tomorrow We Escape. It’s grungy and grimy, but if you don’t mind getting your hands dirty, this album is sick.

Favorite Songs: “Escape”, “Upside Down”

25. This Is Lorelei – Holo Boy

I want everyone to remember this next year, when music “best of” lists include this a full year from now because they rushed to put their rankings out with a full month left to go. Clowns. Absolute clowns.

Anyway, this is a nice re-polish of some Nate Amos classics, compiled in a way that would lead you to believe they’ve all been handcrafted for this album alone. Amos is emerging as a deeply prolific songwriter, and my excitement grows with each new project.

Favorite Songs: “My Friend 2”, “Holo Boy”

24. CMAT – EURO-COUNTRY

EURO-COUNTRY is CMAT at her witty, catchy best. It’s less country and more of a cosmic gumbo. We here at the office like to joke about how it’s a cosmic gumbo.

Favorite Songs: “Ready”, “Running/Planning”

23. Horsegirl – Phonetics On and On

Don’t let the band name fool you. I don’t know that any actual horse girls would enjoy this one. Morgan Wallen probably has a chokehold on them.

This one is for a different kind of awful freak: fans of indie music. It feels classic. You can picture someone like Obama putting this on his year-end list and think to yourself, “did he really listen to this? Or did an intern put this together?”

Favorite Songs: “2468”, “Switch Over”

22. Snocaps – Snocaps

Sisters Allison and Katie Crutchfield have combined their talents in the indie-rock realm to form Snocaps, essentially Waxahatchee Squared. The sound is what we’ve come to expect from Katie Crutchfield, but elevated by close collaborators in her sister, as well as Brad Cook and MJ Lenderman. It rules.

Favorite Songs: “Avalanche”, “Wasteland”

21. billy woods – GOLLIWOG

From the first moments, woods demonstrates that he still has new ideas to bring to abstract hip-hop. I can’t say I’ve ever heard a horror-inspired track like this before.

And this eerie feeling creeps and crawls across the rest of the album. Each song feels ominous. Sometimes like you’re being watched, other times like someone is waiting in the shadows to kill whoever is on the mic if they don’t nail their flow. Thankfully for billy and friends, that isn’t an issue here. He assembles a star studded cast of collaborators for this one, but still nobody holds a candle to woods, who is surprisingly adept amidst this nearly hour long project.

Favorite Songs: “Lead Paint Test”, “Corinthians”

20. Kevin Abstract & Friends – Blush

Blush contains some of my most listened to songs of the year. From “Geezer” to “Abandon Me”, the album is a complete scattershot of sounds and ideas. Some of them feel less like they belong here and more like Kevin Abstract wanted to give an artist he admires a chance to shine, like the DERBY cut, which is oddly sequenced between two very different tracks.

No other album this year is more of a sum of its parts than Blush, which is one of the more unique, engaging, and fun projects to come out in 2025.

Favorite Songs: “Russian Roulette”, “Mona Lisa”

19. Dijon – Baby

Dijon’s sophomore album isn’t as emotionally raw as Absolutely. Instead, he takes a more polished, elegantly produced approach. His appeal is something best accepted without question. To dig too deep is to lose sight of what makes Dijon’s sound so alluring.

Baby is catchier, tighter, and bigger than his debut. You feel the highs and lows more deeply than before, and Dijon knows just how to ride both waves in a way that makes for a brilliant album.

Favorite Songs: “HIGHER”, “Yamaha”

18. Truman Sinclair – American Recordings

Truman Sinclair is one to watch. His debut solo album, American Recordings, is a fine collection of modern folk songs. They’re cleverly written, earthy, and well produced (and produced by Truman himself).

Favorite Songs: “Bloodline”, “Black Train”

Further Reading: Truman Sinclair Interview

17. Joanne Robertson – Blurrr

This feels, endearingly, like a first draft. I can’t remember who said it, some musician I guess, but allow me to paraphrase: you can only really perform a song the first few times. After that, it’s mimicry.

Robertson circumvents that by capturing these songs in what sounds like their infancy. They are unpolished, raw, and real. It makes for an album that’s easy to connect to, even when it feels far away.

Favorite Songs: “Exit Vendor”, “Gown”

16. Wednesday – Bleeds

Wednesday’s Bleeds was written and recorded in a time of emotional turmoil for both lead singer Karly Hartzman and guitarist MJ Lenderman. Despite breaking up mid-production, they kept is a secret from the band and pushed onward. The emotion of that situation is both captured on songs like “Carolina Murder Suicide”, and buried in an ignorant bliss on songs like “Phish Pepsi”. This album is a wild ride of emotion, songwriting, and story telling from start to finish, and it’s Wednesday’s best record yet.

Favorite Songs: “Elderberry Wine”, “Townies”

15. McKinley Dixon – Magic, Alive!

Dixon proves that his 2023 album wasn’t just lightning in a bottle. This project leans more heavily into that jazz rap fusion that he did so well on Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?

It flows so well from start to finish that it’s hard to believe that Dixon hasn’t been working on this sound for decades.

Favorite Songs: “All the Loved Ones”, “Magic, Alive!”

14. caroline – caroline 2

This one went right from first listen to the playlist I put on when I’m driving home in the rain at night. It is deeply atmospheric, but additional listens reveal the finer details. The walls of instrumentation by this eight piece ensemble are gorgeous.

The band captures one of the things I love most in any genre: when a song can sound equally haphazard and painstakingly composed at once. This has been a good couple year stretch for bands comprised of eight or more quirky instrumentalists, but caroline’s sound is different. It’s got that intangible, indescribable quality necessary to make this kind of project work. For lack of a better word, it’s got sauce.

Favorite Songs: “When I get home”, “Coldplay cover”

13. Parcels – LOVED

Easy, pleasant, danceable electro-pop from Australia’s own Parcels, who are so consistently good that it’s no surprise at all that LOVED is one of their best projects to date.

LOVED flows from start to finish so well that before I know it, I’ve been dancing around my apartment with a beer in my hand for the whole 45 minute runtime and it’s over.

Favorite Songs: “Safeandsound”, “Yougotmefeeling”

12. Tyler, The Creator – DON’T TAP THE GLASS

This one caught me off guard. I have enjoyed the occasional Tyler song over the years. I am sure I could fall in love with some of his most critically acclaimed works if I put in the time. But with DON’T TAP THE GLASS, Tyler made an album with that exact thing in mind. No buy in, none of that “deep sh*t”. Just dance. I was a fiend for this album for weeks on end. No album this year compelled me more to dance around my apartment, just as Tyler intended.

Favorite Songs: “Sucka Free”, “Big Poe”

11. PinkPantheress – Fancy That

Frankly, it should be illegal the way I was moving to this album. I was sprinting around like one of those over-bred little yappy dogs that has more energy than its biology can support.

Favorite Songs: “Stateside”, “Romeo”

10. miffle – goodbye, world!

A truly left-field, unexpected project from an artist I only discovered very recently. The listening experience of this project is a real journey, but it feels like something best enjoyed while floating in a warm bath with the lights off. This album is composed from the manipulation of old tapes, which leads to some very unique and atmospheric sounds. It’s a lot to take in at times, especially in the final leg, where the whole album feels like it’s burning and disintegrating around you. In the end you’re left in the hazy, ashy ruins. It’s strangely comforting, especially with the very last sounds on the final track, “goodbye, world!”: the jingling of house keys, the opening of a door, and purr of a cat. Coming back home.

Favorite Songs: “long walk home (you exist in my frozen memories forever)”, “digital blizzard”

9. Viagra Boys – viagr aboys

My closest friend told me once, about 5 years into our relationship, that his paternal grandfather has two families and that he splits his time between the original and his mystery family. He spends his licentious half of the year somewhere in an isolated shack in a Louisiana swamp. When I first heard this, I wondered why it had taken five years to come up in conversation. And yet even now, it still only rarely returns to mind. But when it does, I call this man “swamp grandpa”.

Anyway, this is the kind of album I think would soundtrack swamp grandpa’s old age.

Favorite Songs: “Pyramid of Health”, “Medicine for Horses”

8. Hayley Williams – Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party

I can’t define why or how, but I found myself really connecting with this project. I have never been divorced. I am not a daughter nor do I carry generational trauma (at least not that I have discovered yet). And I think all of this speaks to the songwriting ability of Hayley Williams and company. I am not the target audience, but many of these songs struck me like I too had been sneaking around with my lead guitarist.

Favorite Songs: “Whim”, “World on a String”, “The Last Year”

7. Hotline TNT – Raspberry Moon

This is the best possible version of whatever this is.

I love Hotline TNT more than I like waking up in the morning. This is a small evolution from recent albums like Cartwheel. But that small step in sound is a big one for cohesion and polish. Their fuzzy, gritty, noisy sound perfectly walks the line between sloppy and refined. It’s hard to imagine a better version of this album. The band pulled their library from Spotify earlier this year, and while I understand the choice to do so, I feel sorry for anyone unwilling to switch to a platform where they can enjoy their catalogue.

Favorite Songs: “Julia’s War”, “Lawnmower”

6. Jeff Tweedy – Twilight Override

I have long enjoyed Wilco, but I can’t say that I always connected to Tweedy’s lyricism. At some point, I remember hearing that his writing process involved applying words to a melody first, and applying meaning to them in retrospect – which is how I am with tattoos. A cool little frog type character first, then I later lie to people who ask and tell them my best friend’s name was Frog and he died in 9/11 or something.

Anyway, Twilight Override doesn’t feel like my false frog story. These songs, all 30 of them, feel deeply real and meaningful. The production is rich, and Tweedy finds ways to expand his sonic palette without straying from the irreverent, dark folk path he’s walked for so long.

Favorite Songs: “Love Is For Love”, “Feel Free”

5. Geese – Getting Killed

Honk!

Getting Killed isn’t as zany or off-the-wall as the band’s previous album. Vocalist Cameron Winter has since stated that they tried to match that energy, but it felt forced and “cringe”. So instead, they made what came naturally to them. Newcomers would never hear this and call it laid-back, but the resulting album is a more personal version of a Geese project. If 3D Country was chicken wings flavored with a southern hot sauce, Getting Killed is a dry lemon pepper rub.

While watching Geese open for Vampire Weekend in Pittsburgh this year, I overheard one of the worst guys in the world explaining that he thinks Geese is a “band to watch”. And despite how pretentiously he presented the information as though he was the herald of the band’s future, I can’t say I disagree with him. We’re in for a rough few album cycles of hyperbolic worship at Cameron Winter’s feet by music journalism, but I’ll put up with it if it means more of this.

Favorite Songs: “Cobra”, “Taxes”, “Long Island City Here I Come”

4. Bon Iver – SABLE, fABLE

I can’t say I was necessarily excited for this new Bon Iver project. His music since his departure from the folk sound he perfected on For Emma, Forever Ago has been somewhat divisive. I’ve enjoyed some of it here and there, but nothing really stuck with me the way his debut did.

And yet, SABLE, fABLE is instantly one of Bon Iver’s best projects. The first leg of the album will scratch the bare bones folk itch that some fans have been clamoring for since his self-titled album. But the second half also ushers those fans gently into the fold of the kind of electro-folk that Justin Vernon has been toiling in for years. It’s a beautiful and lush album that I found myself listening to again and again and again.

Favorite Songs: “Everything Is Peaceful Love”, “AWARDS SEASON”

3. Oklou – choke enough

My grocery store album of the year! No album better prepared me for those cold winter Sundays when I make the mistake of hitting up Wegmans an hour before a Buffalo Bills game. I would pull into a parking spot between two road salt-coated SUVs, take a deep breath, and que up choke enough on my headphones.

If you haven’t listened to “obvious” while strolling staring blank faced at the cereal wall, you’re missing out.

Oklou’s mastery of atmosphere is unmatched. She somehow makes these quaint, esoteric little melodies feel so danceable and catchy, despite their abnormal song structures. There’s something captivating in the way she articulates English: light, careful, and colored by her native French. It lends the music a floating, atmospheric quality, as though the words themselves are drifting through space.

Favorite Songs: “ict”, “blade bird”

2. Clipse – Let God Sort Em Out

This is like if the NFL Pro Bowl games were a hip-hop album (and also if they were worth watching). The first song alone is enough to kill the emotionally faint of heart. Pusha T and Malice reunite as Clipse for a record that feels like the one they needed to make. Elevated by some of the best production of the year from Pharrell Williams, and a star-studded cast of features, Clipse hasn’t lost a step.

Favorite Songs: “Chains & Whips”, “So Be It”

1. Saya Gray – SAYA

Saya Gray’s newest album is not one I had on my radar until recently. Even as an artist, I am only just learning of her existence. But what a first impression to make. Each song is a beautiful portrait – moments in relationships frozen in time. The details in the production, the abstract vocals, and the surprising hooks add up to a record that stuns at first listen and grows with every subsequent one.

Favorite Songs: “LIE DOWN”, “SHELL ( OF A MAN )”

Happy Holidays from Gubb. If you don’t like this list then tell it to Gubb and see how you like it when he bites you.