Three Great Albums From 2025 That Don't Have to Do with Birds
We love Geese but there's other great stuff happening, too
Today the illustrious Niall Fitzgerald gives us three under-appreciated, great music albums from 2025. We listened to each top to bottom and loved ’em, especially when paired with Niall’s commentary. If you listen, let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Also, if you want something to get you through the rest of this frigid winter, we still have copies left of the Winter 25/26 print edition. It’s available for purchase through a Substack subscription and on our website. Every copy sold allows us to support artists and host events. In the words of James Orsetti, “[i]t’s incredibly well put together and doesn’t feel like [the] Amazon self print trash that other Substack journals use.” Can’t beat that.
mark william lewis - Mark William Lewis
Apple Music | Spotify
It’s tough to sum up mark william lewis’s self-titled record because there’s so much going on yet everything feels familiar. It’s dark, gritty, and atmospheric; it sounds how the album art looks. His husky baritone sets an ever-present tone, and he pairs it with a lot of interesting sounds and styles. He sounds a little like Neil Young when he plays the harmonica on “Still Above,” the opener and one of the stand out tracks on the record. His collage-like, springy guitar playing invokes Vini Reilly on “Socialising” and “Petals”; it generally seems like he can rotate through influences—which include T. S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, and James Joyce—at the drop of a hat while maintaining his own feel. “Spit” reminded me of Elliot Smith circa Either / Or, double-tracked vocals whizzing around the mix. Like a lot of my favorite music from last year, this album would rip in headphones alone walking the city at night just as much as it would in a shitty basement while you’re getting fucked up and partying.
mark william lewis - Still Above [Official Audio]
Wednesday - Bleeds
Apple Music | Spotify
Over the past few years, Karlee Hartzman has steered Wednesday into becoming an alt-country-rocking-doomy powerhouse. The group has evolved to be figureheads of whatever “guitar music” is today. Bleeds builds on 2021’s Twin Plagues and 2023’s Rat Saw God and further establishes Hartzman and co. as cut from their own cloth. One of the best world-builders around, Hartzman’s writing calls to mind some contemporary combination of the witty observational style of David Berman with the punchiness of Lucinda Williams. She is only getting stronger with each record. It seems like so many groups today are going for what Wednesday has made cool over the last few years (in more ways than just the fact that everyone wants to put a slide guitar on their tracks now). You can drink beers, go wild, and crank Bleeds. You can cry in your soup and crank Bleeds. That is a rare combination and one of the hallmarks of a great lyricist and songwriter. Hartzman frequently cites Drive by Truckers as an influence, which makes sense given the Southern grit and charm evident in both of the group’s lyrics and general atmospheres. Wednesday had already established themselves as one of the best and most exciting bands of the 2020s with their first two records. Bleeds is the one that’ll be cited and looked back upon for years to come as Wednesday continue to grow in stature.
Wednesday - Townies (Official Video)
Jim Legxacy - black british music
Apple Music | Spotify
Released in July on XL (Legxacy’s debut for the label after years of honing his reputation in the London underground scene), black british music puts Legxacy on the map as a leader of the next generation of rap and hip hop voices not only in the UK, but across the globe. Several tracks (“stick”, “father”, “i just banged a snus in canada water”, “new david bowie”) already sound like classics, toeing the line between contemporary chaos and a classic rap feel. The record feels of the moment with a tinge of nostalgia throughout. The hype man doing the track intros reminds of a bygone era of downloading mixtapes off of DatPiff. The whole record has an element of taking the best of the past and pushing things forward. Legxacy has a pretty yet gritty voice. He utilizes incredible samples. One could envision hearing the tracks in the grime of a basement party just as well as on the terraces of a football ground—it would make total sense in both contexts. black british music will continue to grow in stature as the rest of the 2020s roll by, but it already feels like an instant classic.
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The Legxacy pick is spot on. That album captures something rare where the production feels both archival and forward thinking at the same time. The way it bridges basement grime energy with stadium ambition without losing any grit shows real understanding of whre UK rap is headed right now.