This is my last Growing Fins post of the year! I managed to be a lot more systematic and dangerously organized about my listening this year. The result is this list which I am posting earlier than in previous years. I’ll do a separate listing for Ambient and New Music titles, but that’s a 2026 problem! These are in an especially particular order because there were so many excellent albums in 2025 and I listened to so many. It was difficult to limit this list to just 25 and picking a #1 was torturous. But I decided that Geese’s Getting Killed fully deserved to be #1 followed by my two most obsessive listens of 2025, Florence + The Machine’s Everybody Scream (with a special shout-out to the Chamber Version) and Djo’s Crux Deluxe which I am still drunk on.
- Getting Killed — Geese
- Everybody Scream — Florence + The Machine
- Crux Deluxe – Djo
- Paradise Now and Forever — Obongjayar
- For Melancholy Brunettes (and sad women) — Japanese Breakfast
- Ace –Madison Cunningham
- The Cosmic Selector Vol 1 — Lord Huron
- Animaru — Mei Semones
- Adagio — Σtella
- The Passionate Ones — Nourished by Time
- Taurus — Peel Dream Magazine
- Glory — Perfumed Genius
- Dance Called Memory — Nation of Language
- Forever Howlong — Black Country, New Road
- Ultra Saudade — Kevin Kaarl
- Blurrr — Joanne Robertson
- The New Eve Is Rising – The New Eves
- Thee Black Boltz — Tunde Adebimpe
- purity ring — Purity Ring
- moisturizer — Wet Leg
- SABLE, fABLE — Bon Iver
- Neon Grey, Midnight Green — Neko Case
- Forever is a Feeling — Lucy Dacus
- From The Pyre — The Last Dinner Party
- mark william lewis – mark william lewis