I am entertained all the time. I carry a dedicated distraction device constantly so I can be stimulated wherever we go. My eyes are never wanting, and failing that, I have my ears. I slide on my headphones and start churning out dopamine in joyful indifference to the world around me. In all of human history, cleaning the kitchen has never been so fun.
I’m told that over the past eleven months, I was streaming music for one of them. I think that’s a lot of time to have background noise going, and I wonder what it might have cost me. That was time I could have spent sitting in silence or listening to the world around me, although there were certainly times where the world needed to be blocked out. But ultimately, I like music more than I like science. While I might have missed out on some things, I had a good time.*
* I generally don’t listen to music outdoors. For all you people who keep asking how I have so many stories about weird people I’ve talked to on the street, this is partially why. Stay alert for weird people always.)
It is a little strange how much music we all collectively listen to. It’s also funny how my use of music as an incentive to do menial tasks can become a habitual need to have the music I want on demand always. And now I’m paying monthly for it. Very interesting.
Anyway. If I’m spending all this time listening to music, I should probably engage critically with it. Here are my favorite albums that came out this year and why I liked them.**
** Very honorable mention: Let God Sort Em Out by Clipse and Stardust by Danny Brown. I liked you a lot but I don’t have as much to say about you.
5. Gem of the West by SENTRIES
Sentries, as far as I know, is one guy doing rounds on the DIY scene in Alberta. For now, I think this works in his favor, because when it comes down to it there is nobody at his level that can tell him no. His 2024 album Snow as a Metaphor for Death (which I only initially listened to because of its name) is maximalist, rambling and loud. Gem of the West, in my opinion, is a refinement and an improvement.
I would describe this album as a dense, layered wall of sound perfect for blocking out the outer world, or the inner one. Also, most of the eight songs are around five to eight minutes length, which I think is the optimal length for any song.
I like to recommend this album to people because it’s niche and eclectic, but I want this guy to blow up very badly. Go stream now so he tours in the US and you can tell people you liked him before he did that.
4. The Scholars by Car Seat Headrest
When I think of The Scholars, I think of its rollout last spring. I remember pacing around my darkroom and listening to the singles, not loving the lead single Gethsemane when it came out, and worrying that Will Toledo has been in the music business for an awful long time and he might have used up all of his good material already. Not so. The following single CCF is a delightfully catchy intro to the album that I often catch myself scatting and third single The Catastrophe was an instant classic. The complete album’s front half is an excellent listen – Devereaux, in particular, stands out – and while Reality and Planet Desperation are a little less accessible because they’re eleven and eighteen minutes long, they are both phenomenal songs when one is in the mood for them. Gethsemane continues to be the only weak point. Sorry, Gethsemaneheads.
It did take me a while to fully come around this on this album. I liked it well enough when it came out in May because I’m a big CSH fan and I’m probably going to enjoy anything they put out, but it took me until September to pause and realize how great it was. It was the morning before I saw CSH live (with my friend Kate shoutout Kate), which is a pretty clutch time to start appreciating a band more.
It’s possible that The Scholars is yet to grow on more people, because I see a decent amount of grousing about how CSH has fallen off. To be sure, the album does deviate quite a bit from its predecessors, but I think the experimentation paid off. No glaze, but I think this album is underrated and will become more appreciated over time. However, if CSH wants to go back to making indie rock, I won’t say no. If they want to go back to making electronic music, I won’t say no to that either, but people aren’t ready for that conversation.
3. Don’t Tap the Glass by Tyler, the Creator
This is the closest thing I have to a 2025 summer album. My first listen was on the morning in my friend’s living room on a weekend trip to Washington (my friend Ben’s living room shoutout Ben), and for some time after that, I was bumping it in the frozen yogurt shop where I worked part time. Because I was situated in a shopping mall that drew a lot of tourists, the album was advertised there heavily, and for a while, Tyler’s photoshopped face on massive ad screens floated in my peripheral vision as I rang up massive bowls for European tourists. It was a welcome break from the usual ads. If there’s anything I like Tyler for, it’s his healthy sense of aesthetics, which is always welcome in a perpetually uglifying world. Unfortunately, I missed the statue of Tyler in a glass cage in the mall atrium, which was only there for the weekend I was in D.C.
Per the listening rules, I try to listen to Don’t Tap the Glass during mobile activities like chores in my apartment or ab workouts on my floor. It’s a wonderful way to kill half an hour.
2. Getting Killed by Geese
My apologies, Geese: I was unfamiliar with your game. I thought New Yorkers making a country-inspired album was cringe. I refused to believe a 2020s alternative band could be good if it was from Brooklyn. I was salty that you generated 3D Country‘s cover art with AI. Mercury was in retrograde.
Getting Killed just oozes sheer atmosphere. Meant in the best way possible, this album is unique. Winter doesn’t sing: he groans, wails and bleats, and combined with the instrumentation, the album builds its own soundscape, a living world I can picture in my mind but definitely do not want to inhabit. Trinidad, with its shouted refrain and its erratic drumming, captures very well, and the intro to 100 Horses will also make me shudder a bit every time.
Geese has sold me. I’m mad I didn’t appreciate them earlier so I could have seen them live, I will hereby respect Geese and Cameron Winter and I will NOT talk down on the future first-ballot hall-of-famers.
1. I Love my Computer by Ninajirachi
I love my computer. I love spending hours immersed in silly one-off video editing projects; I love rating everything I read, watch and hear on cataloguing apps; I love sending Instagram reels to my friends; I love texting people halfway across the world from me and I love this album.
I Love My Computer deeply resonates with me on a thematic level. It represents, to me, the freedoms the computer brings its user: to build worlds, to explore new ones, to know anything and to be boundlessly rewarded for curiosity and creativity. For someone like myself who grew up on a computer making things, ILMC is anthemic. Sonically, this album just fucks.
I really do love my computer, “because no one in the world knows me better.”
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