It’s been a good year for music! So good it demanded a slightly different format this time around. You can read my original reviews of my 40 or so favorites from 2025 at the article links that precede each listicle. Listings include the types of release as laid out below, with Top Favorite listings in bold italics (as well as pictured above)!
- New Releases:
- New Albums
- Live Albums (audio and video)
- Christmas Albums
- Back Catalog:
- Reissues
- Box Sets (minimum of 3 CDs)
- Discoveries (unheard until 2025)
- Rediscoveries (heard before, forgotten, loved again in 2025)
- New Music Books
Clean-Up on Aisle 24 (January)
- Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs, Virgins, Vagabonds and Misfits – discovery from 2024
- Wilco, Hot Sun Cool Shroud – discovery from 2024
Gotta Lotta Live If You Want It (February)
- Steve Hackett, Metamorpheus – reissue from 2024
- Soft Machine, Drop – reissue from 2024
- Soft Machine, Floating World Live – reissue from 2024
- Sonic Elements, IT: A 50th Anniversary Celebration of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis – new album
- Wilco, A Ghost Is Born Deluxe Edition – box set
- Yes, Close to the Edge Super Deluxe Edition – box set
Phil Keaggy: The Progarchy Interview (April)
- Phil Keaggy & Sunday’s Child – rediscovery from 1988 – Top Favorite Rediscovery!
- Phil Keaggy & Malcolm Guite, Strings & Sonnets – discovery from 2024
Lightning Round Reviews (April)
- Black Country New Road, Forever Howlong – new album
- Andy Summers & Robert Fripp, The Complete Recordings 1981-1984 – box set
- Imminent Sonic Destruction, Floodgate – new album
- Sons of Ra, Standard Deviation – new album
- Haken, Liveforms – live album & video
- Ian Leslie, John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs – Top Favorite New Music Book!
- Louise Patricia Crane, Netherworld – discovery from 2024
- Markus Reuter with Fabio Trentini and Asaf Sirkis, Truce ❤ – new album
- Dave Bainbridge,
- On the Edge (Of What Could Be) – Top Favorite New Album! (tie with Brad Mehldau below)
- Veil of Gossamer – discovery from 2004
- Celestial Fire – discovery from 2014
- Celestial Fire Live in the UK – live album; discovery from 2017
- Bioscope, Gento – new album
- Discipline, Breadcrumbs – new album
- David Gilmour,
- The Luck and Strange Tour – live album
- Live at the Circus Maximus – live video – Top Favorite Live Album! (tie with Snarky Puppy below)
- Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here 50 – multiple formats – Top Favorite Reissue!
- Ring Van Möbius, Firebrand – new album
- Kate Rusby, Christmas Is Merry – live album – Top Favorite Christmas Album!
- Sigur Ros, Takk – remastered reissue
- The Zombies, Odessey and Oracle (Mono Remaster) – reissue
- Brad Mehldau, Ride into the Sun – Top Favorite New Album! (tie with Dave Bainbridge above)
- Elliott Smith
- Either/Or – discovery from 1997
- XO – discovery from 1998 – Top Favorite Discovery!
- Elliott Smith
- Snarky Puppy
- Sylva (with Metropole Orkest) – remastered reissued live album
- We Like It Here – remastered reissue
- Somni (with Metropole Orkest) – Top Favorite Live Album! (tie with David Gilmour above; audio & video)
- Tenebrae, A Prayer for Deliverance – live album
- Tortoise, Touch – new album
And Shockingly Unreviewed Until Now:
- BEAT, Neon Heat Disease/Strange Spaghetti – live album. Read my concert review from 2024 here.
- Nick Drake, The Making of Five Leaves Left – Top Favorite Box Set! An utter original who died far too young, Drake’s wistful, sturdy, thoroughly unique British folk-rock gradually rose from turn-of-the-1970s obscurity to be embraced by aficionados worldwide. While his three albums (and another disc of studio leftovers) speak for themselves, this lovely box traces his progress over two formative years, from impromptu dorm-room recordings through a breathtaking audition and simpatico sessions (especially those with double bass magician Danny Thompson and master orchestrator Robert Kirby) to the uncluttered, spacious beauty of his debut. If Drake needs any advocacy beyond the sheer communicative power of his songs, here’s all the evidence you need; and as a bonus, long-time fans will find treasures they may not have known they were missing.
— Rick Krueger
Across three years and three albums, Nick Drake produced singular, autumnal music that in its vision and genius defies era and genre. An extraordinary guitarist, lyricist, and gifted writer of melody, Drake was a lone wolf, debilitatingly shy, and thus his records were midwifed, by producer Joe Boyd — to this day Drake’s champion — and arranger Robert Kirby, along with various luminaries from the British folk rock/jazz scene. Richard Thompson, one of the players, estimates Drake probably sold only 5,000 albums in total when they first appeared, and it would take a VW ad a generation after his death to bring his music to a wider audience, but Nick Drake’s discography carries a timeless beauty, the light of late fall, and I hear in it the expressiveness — pain, humor, love — of Van Morrison and the soft, breathy sway of Joao Gilberto. “Northern Sky” from Bryter Layter is to my mind a perfect song of deep love and yearning, informed by the sensitive playing of John Cale, Dave Pegg, and Mike Kowalski. It wasn’t the breakthrough Drake expected (Island Records declined to release it as a single), and, perhaps disillusioned by his own overt attempt at and ultimate failure to make a commercial record, it’s believed to be one of the reasons he stripped down his sound for Pink Moon. And yet “Northern Sky’s” shimmering, jazz-inflected pronouncement, “I never felt magic crazy as this,” and its bell-like arrangement, is as fitting and whole a description of Nick Drake’s music as any I can imagine.
Progarchy 