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Sellin' my soul to a psycho - they say I'm so lucky

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Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  50 best albums of 2025 . #11 : That's Showbiz Baby!  - Jade Pop’s trickiest manoeuvre is crossing the divide from successful group to solo career. After departing Little Mix, Jade Thirlwall didn’t so much jump it as pirouette across: her multi-part debut solo single Angel of My Dreams was completely nuts, impossible to ignore and spent 20 weeks on the UK chart. Could a whole album match up? From trashy ballroom house (It Girl) to disco-funk (Fantasy, Headache), Robyn-esque sad bangers (Plastic Box, Self Saboteur) and waltz-time ballads (Natural at Disaster), she certainly has the range, not to mention smart and sweary lyrics – rhyming Edward Enninful with experimental is a neat encapsulation of what moves her. It’s her voice that really sets it all apart, though: as you’d expect of a talent show graduate turned longtime pop star, it remains stunning on a technical level, but Thirlwall also brings a whole West End musical’s worth of emotion...
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But you hold your love like a weapon in your hand

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Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  50 best albums of 2025 . #14 : pr ivate music - The Deftones This was the US alt-metallers’ first album back after serendipitously getting a huge new following via TikTok, particularly for their sweeter, shoegazier material. But rather than court that audience by cynically remaking Sextape 11 times over, they instead created a balletic cyborg of a record. The riffs could put a dent in concrete masonry, but the groove-metal rhythms are light-footed and, as ever, vocalist Chino Moreno sets out even wider tonal possibilities. It’s as if waves of pain and relief pass across his spirit as he goes from dry croaks to thunderous denouncements to blissful clean singing. The thirteenth album I've previously heard from the list because I met it as a new entry and I'm afraid I won't be relistening to this one because it was (and I quote) " too noisy for my sensitive ears". This debuted at #2 (kept off the top by Wolf Alice) and mana...
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Not a shaman or a showman, ashamed that I was selling the rights

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Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  50 best albums of 2025 . #17 :  Headlights - Alex G What constitutes integrity? Working for love or money? Freedom or obligation to others? On his first album for a major label, standing at a new frontier of success, Alex G weighs these existential questions in appropriately vast, beautiful indie-rock epics, some breathless with anxiety (Spinning), others sardonic (Real Thing) or severe (Headlights). Despite the very contemporary, very Alex G touches – take the sprite-like voices and distortion of Bounce Boy – there’s a comforting solidity to this record that makes it feel as though it’s existed for ever, sharing the same spooked twilight as the best of Yo La Tengo and REM.  Well if The Guardian are going to compare him to the best of R.E.M. then obviously I'm going to be interested (and undoubtedly disappointed).  Hmmm. I kinda see what they're going for and I guess they just about get away with it by saying they share the same ...
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But if you sing along a little fucking louder to a happy song, you'll be just fine

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Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 19/12/25 : That's The Spirit - Bring Me The Horizon This run of three weeks from Xmas to early January generally result in some weird album selections - but I don't think I would have ever imagined that this week we have a '15 album from BMTH (and yet it's still nothing compared to the weirdness of the album at #1 this week).  Until I saw them live , I was never a fan of BMTH - but somehow I found myself enjoying their set at Reading and ended up in the moshpit when they brought Ed Sheeran on. How did that happen? So I was considerably better disposed to this than I might otherwise have been - but even so I really enjoyed it. Yes, the vocals are a bit shouty at times but the songs are very well put together and the lyrics are perfectly understandable - listening to this made me think I fancy seeing them again because the songs all sound like they'd translate well live.  We're all the way down at #20 in ...
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If the spy stuff doesn't work out, you should consider catering.

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Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2024 #15 : Mr & Mrs Smith  Donald Glover and Maya Erskine’s fresh take on the movie that brought Brangelina together might not have been quite as sexy – but they certainly still brought the chemistry. Their coupled-up assassins, John and Jane, portrayed a real relationship (there’s even a first-fart-in-bed scene) set amid the constant paranoia, impressive gun-shooting and deadly glamour of the world they occupied. It was bags of fun, but <spoiler alert> I'd heard this was good, watched the first episode, enjoyed it, forgot what happened and never watched any more. And  I've never seen the original film so I can't compare it with Brad and Angelina, but it can't end any worse than that, can it? Donald Glover (who is probably best known as Childish Gambino, but has also appeared in Community and Atlanta) and Maya Erskine (who's been in quite a few things, but I didn't recognise many of them) p...
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This is culturally inappropriate

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Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  50 best albums of 2025 . #20 :  Hexed! - aya A series of surreal vignettes confronting addiction, panic and the challenges of growing up queer, Aya Sinclair’s experimental electronic masterwork is a wind-whipped dash around the towns and moors of Yorkshire and Greater Manchester. From the rotor blade-whomp of Peach to the infernal pattering snares on Navel Gazer, her sound design hits you like a ton of feathers: a surreal, destabilising flurry of detail. And the lyrics, done as careful mutters or sarky sing-song, are world-class. Her poetry revels in multiple meanings – is she saying “Flemish” or “phlegmish”? – and in the plasticity of language, rhyme and even lived experience, whether retelling a toxic relationship (“Couple rows so we could pop our cysts / as though the pus’d bust right out of the tryst”) or evoking the feeling of being totally cut adrift: “Abseil away another day supine inside the bag.” Well that's a prime slice of nonse...
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