01/15/2026
The first 20 = 5 stars, then 21-55 = 4 star picks, 56-119 = 3 stars and below. Thanks to everyone who gave me recommendations this year.
1. Western Teleport (Emperor X)-- Just beautiful all around. Expertly crafted. I love science fiction rock -- this may not be what you expect.
2. Glory (Perfume Genius) -- No words. Amplify.
3. Face Down In Meta (Pet Shimmers & Goat Girl) -- I just fucking love music.
4. Soft Airplane (Chad VanGaalen) -- It’s a shame this is off spotify!! Gentle & terrifically creative. Some of my favorite lyric writing.
5. Get Lonely (The Mountain Goats)-- Nothing like a TMG divorce album to get you through the first month after a breakup #EVERYBODY GET LONELY #IN THE HIDDEN PLACES
6. Vespertine (Bjork) -- I had a religious experience listening to this wandering in the woods by a river.
7. The Dreaming (Kate Bush)-- Would you believe me if I said this is my go-to gym album?
8. Songs In The Key Of Life (Stevie Wonder) -- This album made me understand my mother so much more.
9. Perverts (Ethel Cain)-- I’ve upset the Me Community by putting this so low but because its so ambient drone I felt that the content of the other albums surpasses it. But this is a loadbearing album for me for sure.
10. Believo! (Enon)-- YOU HAVE NOT HEARD AN ALBUM LIKE THIS ONE. RUBBER CAR FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!
11. Going Steady (North Americans)-- My favorite song is Stanley :)
12. Songs About Jane (Maroon 5) Just foundational shit. This Love. Harder To Breathe. Don’t even get me started. Sunday Fucking Morning.
13. Beats And Breaks From The Flower Patch (Kitty Craft)-- This is how I know I won. Think about me once and a while.
14. Person Pitch (Panda Bear)-- Came late to the game but super impactful. My deep dive on the members of Animal Collective were extremely fruitful.
15. Either/Or (Elliott Smith)-- Yeah don’t even get me started on this one
16. Pink Moon (Nick Drake) -- And this one too.
17. Sleep Cycle (Deakin) -- I LOVE SOUNDS SO FUCKING MUCH. I also love that all of his lyrics are stream of conscious & not pre-written
18. The Best Of: Kites Are Fun (The Free Design) -- I love sunshine baroque pop.
19. Appalachian Fiction (Christian Camarao) -- Experienced this on one of my most life-changingly simple days of the summer. I got lost on a sand dune.
20. The Voyager Golden Record (Earth)-- Ok this is less of an album and more of testament to the human spirit. Iziel je Delyo Hagdutin is my favorite.
21. Depression Cherry (Beach House)-- Some of the most devastating music I have ever laid my ears on. Good god
22. People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (A Tribe Called Quest)-- Instant classic for me. I put this one on constantly. A slightly unexpected crowd pleaser, too.
23. LCD Soundsystem (LCD Soundsystem)-- Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah, Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah
24. Endless Flowers (Crocodiles)-- Crocodiles is easily one of my best kept secrets. I love everything about this album, especially the crazy scary German interlude.
25. Harlan County, USA (Various Artists)-- Soundtrack for the documentary of the same name. Did so much for me & my thesis this year.
26. One More Lonesome Cowboy Song (Jonathan Something)-- GOT REMOVED FROM YOUTUBE AND SPOTIFY AND I’M DEVASTATED. MR. SOMETHING PLEASE I NEED THIS ALBUM BACK.
27. Invitation to Her’s (Her’s)-- They had so much potential. I heard a rumor that Crash Tense Dummy is actually about Her’s but I couldn’t find concrete proof. My mom loved this album which surprised me.
28. Intergalactic Warp Terminal 222 (Lionmilk) -- SO GOOD if you like Great Mother in The Sky by Lionmilk then this album is 100% worth it. Gentle & has many dimensions.
29. Greatest Hits (Johnny Mathis) -- I do not fucking play about Johnny Mathis.
30. Midnite Vultures (Beck) -- Don’t even get me started. Nobody knows what is going on with Beck except for me, Red, and my dad.
31. shrines (Purity Ring) -- Couldn’t believe I hadn’t found this sooner. lofticries is one the songs from my original music library and is the foundation for a lot of my taste in electronica!
32. Yellow House (Grizzly Bear) -- Walked for miles in the summer listening to this long ass album for the first time. On a Neck, On a Spit knocked me off of my feet when that one verse hit.
33. Wide Awake! (Parquet Courts) -- Just adored this. I just adore this band.
34. Heaven or Las Vegas (Cocteau Twins) -- Everything I expected & more. Spiraling & drowning in luscious tones. I LOVE MUSIC
35. Everybody Scream (Florence + The Machine) -- Oh my god. Like oh my god.
36. Freedom (Amen Dunes) -- I’m honestly surprised it ranks this high for me because as an album I don’t find it very cohesive but I genuinely love the uniqueness of so many of the songs off of it. Miki Dora wasn’t in my top 5 played songs of the year but it felt like it.
37. Mirror Might Steal Your Charm (The Garden) -- I love goofy music. Just ridiculous metal. I think about it constantly tbh. Thanks [REDACTED] for the suggestion.
38. Are You Alone? (Majical Cloudz) -- Yeah go ahead and shoot me in the head. I rarely revisit these songs because they just make me cry and cry and cry. Downtown has held a place in my heart since 2016 and it was awesome to get absolutely wrecked by the rest of this album.
39. Sea Lion (The Ruby Suns) -- Discovered when I googled “albums like Person Pitch by Panda Bear” and this was a unanimous answer of indie rock redditors. Thank you, indie rock redditors, because I can’t stop thinking about There Are Birds.
40. Bundle Of Joy (Land of the Loops) -- I listened to this right after Sea Lion, so it feels strange to separate them. To me they are side A and side B of a fantastic experiment in sound. Highly recommend it if you love weird samples and loops!!!
41. Mercurial World (Magdalena Bay)-- I got to see them live this year for Imaginal Disk #STAY JEALOUS. Thanks Olive for suggesting!!
42. Jolene (Dolly Parton) -- Y’all need to get on this one. I’m so serious.
43. Rumors (Fleetwood Mac) -- This is so low because I had heard literally 80% just in my life growing up and it’s hard to comprehend them all on one album. Like they don’t really match each other, I guess because all the songs have been through billions of different contexts for me. But Lindsay Buckingham you are going to fucking pay for what you did.
44. Soft New Magic Dream (Black Moth Super Rainbow) -- This was one of those that just found me at the perfect moment and I fell in love. I remember the exact day I listened to it, and how light the world felt for a week after.
45. Temporary Forever (Busdriver) -- Thank you to Frank for introducing me to Busdriver when we were in Nantucket! I loved the theatricality of this album so much and had the best walk of my life listening. I think constantly about the song where it’s just him freestyling in a McDonald’s drive thru and the employee is really confused.
46. Goths (The Mountain Goats) -- Had heard a lot of these as singles but overall such a cohesive album. I have many favorite TMG projects, and unfortunately this doesn’t break into that category, but I find myself coming back to Rain in Soho & Shelved.
47. Tapestry (Carole King) -- Thank you to Caro for the suggestion! This was a perfect summer listen… so dreamy & soft.
48. Debut (Bjork) -- 2025 was my year of Bjork. I named my car after her #BJORK BELISPEAK FANTASY FOREVER
49. Painting With (Animal Collective) -- This one just flew by. Extremely layered and I felt like I was trying to decode it & still be present in the moment.
50. Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You (Ethel Cain) -- I was super late to the game on this one, but I figured that I might like it more than Preacher’s Daughter because she made this one after Perverts. And you can tell what she learned making Perverts and what she is going to continue with her work, and I find that exciting, even if this whole album wasn’t exactly what I like. (Because I think she needs to make 400 more albums like Perverts)
51. The Kick Inside (Kate Bush) -- As well as Bjork, this was the year of Kate Bush for me. Forget Running Up That Hill, have y’all heard James and the Cold Gun? Y’all heard Oh to Be in Love?? THE SAXOPHONE SONG???
52. Art So Small You Can Barely See It (Jonathan Something) -- But Mr. Something, I saw it. And I quite liked it.
53. Dreamboat Annie (Heart) -- A reminder that I love 70’s music. Like fuckkkkk guys you have to listen to more 70’s music. It's just good for you.
54. Hex Key (Mamalarky) -- I remember adjusting to this one gradually, I wasn’t very convinced by the first few songs. But I come back to Anhedonia every now and then!
55. Oceans on Azimuth (Lola de la Mata) -- Guys. Tinnitus is a real sound, not an illusion. And she found a way to record it. A fantastic project mixing real recorded sound from her ear canals! I tend to exclude these types of ambient art albums from my official rankings each year, but I felt very inclined to share this one!
56. The Orlando Sentinel (Emperor X) -- Honestly this one should be higher but I’m not reshuffling this list. I think this album maybe just has all the songs in the wrong order. But I'm really obsessed with a lot of them individually.
57. Real Estate (Real Estate) -- Alright, from March to May this was on loop for me. Very similar experience to Face Down In Meta, but simpler. But I barely remember any of the songs off the top of my head except Pool Swimmers. Which has to be in my top 5 songs of the year.
58. Since I Left You (The Avalanches) -- Foundational. I have nothing to say about this album that hasn’t already been said.
59. Dreamin’ Wild (Donnie & Joe Emerson) -- I don’t even remember how I discovered this one but HOLY FUCK. Listen to this one. I fucking beg you.
60. 2 (Foxwarren) -- Tbh just mad as fuck they aren’t coming to my city on tour. Andy Shauf You Love It Here Please.
61. Shapeshifting (Young Galaxy) -- Yeah the title track actually did something permanent to me and I’m a different person now.
62. Hypnic Jerks (Spirit of the Beehive) -- For some of the rest of these, I’m running out of things to say, so I’ll just tell you my faves off the album -- and these are new discoveries, not any singles I knew before this year. For this album, (without you) in my pocket.
63. Halcyon Digest (Deerhunter) -- Helicopter
64. Pioneering Women of Bluegrass (Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard) -- Coal Miner’s Blues, The One I Love Is Gone
65. Virtue (The Voidz) -- Lazy Boy, All Words Are Made Up
66. Scott 3 (Scott Walker) -- Rosemary, If You Go Away
67. Deluxe (Omni) -- Siam, Afterlife
68. Power, Corruption, Lies (New Order) -- Your Silent Face, We All Stand
69. Antics (Vundar) -- Greenland
70. Walls (Apparat) -- Hailin From The Edge, Head Up
71. After Laughter (Paramore) -- Thanks Red for the suggestion! No Friend
72. Celestial Blues (King Woman) -- Golgotha, Celestial Blues
73. Looking In (Spencer Radcliffe) -- Alright listen. I listened to this one on a day at the end of May, and I think I have a photographic memory of that entire day, and how it flipped my life upside down. I listened to the first half of this album while walking to see my friends and it was hot and I was so angry about everything. And then I went and saw my friends and felt better and listened to the second half, while walking, when it was so fucking hot. And then a million other things happened and I fell asleep that night knowing things would be different. I’ve expressed with a few previous albums that they were listened to on a beautiful walk, because that was my main method of listening to albums all the way through. But this album is truly so interesting in my memory. If I listen to any of these songs for a moment, not only can I relive the day, but I can get back in my exact mindset from that day, and it’s so jarring. I don’t even particularly like this album, it’s really weird in a way that I kept asking myself “Is this an album worth finishing? I guess…” Anyways go stream Looking In by Spencer Radcliffe and you may be able to experience a day like Stan’s May 25, 2025.
74. Hot Rats (Frank Zappa) -- It Must Be A Camel, Willie The Pimp
75. Beware of The Maniacs (The Dodos) -- Jess if you are reading this I think you would love The Dodos. Trade & Tariffs, Chickens
76. Sasami (Sasami) -- Morning Comes
77. Chet Baker Sings (Chet Baker) -- My Ideal, That Old Feeling
78. Untogether (Blue Hawaii) -- In Two II, Yours to Keep
79. Super Low (Warehouse) -- Oscillator
80. Nostalgia For Infinity (Sound of Ceres) -- Kingfisher, Dagger Only Run
81. Iowa Dream (Arthur Russell) -- Thank you Wills for suggesting! Barefoot In New York, Just Regular People
82. Care (Temporex) -- Hi, Care
83. Double Exposure (Kelley Stoltz) -- Storms, Inside My Head
84. Hats (The Blue Nile) -- Over The Hillside, The Downtown Lights
85. Fancy That (Pink Pantheress) -- Stateside, Romeo
86. Another Diamond Day (Vashti Bunyan) -- Glow Worms, Swallow Song
87. Badmotorfinger (Soundgarden) -- Thank you to Red for suggesting! Jesus Christ Pose, Slaves & Bulldozers
88. Standing Too Close To The Elephant In The Room (Seafoam Walls) -- Cabin Fever
89. Shadow Expert (Palm) -- Two Toes
90. WWCD (Griselda) -- I love Griselda but this was boring.
91. White Men Are Black Men Too (Young Fathers) -- Get Started, Still Running
92. VANISHING ACT II -- ULTIMATE REALITY (Clarence Clarity) -- CLARENCE COME HOME THE KIDS MISS YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Greatest Living Musician Found Dead, juliano so cute lowkey
93. Cupid Deluxe (Blood Orange) -- Clipped On, No Right Thing
94. Antics (Interpol) -- Not Even Jail
95. How’s Your Process? (Play/Work) -- Mission Creep
96. Adore (I:Cube) -- Adore
97. Summer of Hate (Crocodiles) -- I definitely ranked this too low. I have to listen to it again in 2026 and reevaluate because I literally love Crocodiles so much. Here Comes The Sky, Summer of Hate
98. Stankonia (OutKast) -- Xplosion, ?, Kim & Cookie (Interlude)
99. Testarossa (Yoni & Geti) -- Wassup (Uh Huh), Allegheny
100. Some Girls (The Rolling Stones) -- When The Whip Comes Down
101. Gemini Rights (Steve Lacy) -- Thank you Sasha for suggesting! Amber, Buttons
102. Tasmania (Pond) -- Tasmania, Burnt Out Star
103. The Shadow (Naked Giants) -- Unpeeled
104. Bathful of Ecstasy (Hot Chip) -- Spell, Hungry Child
105. You Forgot This About People (Broken Social Scene) -- Thank you Winslow for suggesting! KC Accidental
106. Never Trust A Happy Song (Grouplove) -- Colours
107. Taster (Hovvdy) -- Thank you Joe for suggesting!
108. Cool Dry Place (Katy Kirby)
109. The Rabbit That Hunts Tigers (YIN YIN)
110. Pray For Paris (Westside Gunn)
111. Dry Food (Palehound)
112. Three Love Songs (Ricky Eat Acid) -- Okay way more than 3 songs and also is just really bad dance music in the middle. But I liked: “in rural virginia; watching glowing lights crawl from the dark corners of the room” and how long all the song titles were.
113. Carrie & Lowell (Sufjan Stevens) -- I am sorry. This album is beautiful but did not make me feel anything. That’s okay. But I genuinely feel bad for putting it this low.
114. Mondo Tempo (Freak Heat Waves) -- Thank you Red for suggesting!
115. Deathconsciousness (Have A Nice Life) -- This album sucks and no one wants to admit it. The worm song is one of the greatest songs ever, though. Makes the rest of the album such a disappointment.
116. HOMELESS STAR (Sam Austins)
117. Briefs (Baseball Gregg)
118. Places Like This (Architecture In Helsinki)
119. Tribute (John Newman) -- I would rather be repeatedly kicked in the head by a horse than be forced to listen to this album again.
I decided against last year’s format of a formal review for each one, but as always, if you care to talk about any of the albums on this list, for the love of god hit my line. I have so much more to say about every single one of them.
Here is my playlist of curated hits from this year. I hope you find great music this year. Happy listening!