scaryblog

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  50 best albums of 2025 . #5 :  Mayhem - Lady Gaga With the absolute integrity that has become his trademark, Bad Bunny shone his inestimable spotlight back on his roots in Puerto Rico for his sixth album, singing of sacrifice, colonial oppression and the importance of preserving tradition. He’s an incredible conduit, synthesising the past – salsa, bolero, perreo – with the present, bringing local artists including RaiNao and Lorén Aldarondo along for the ride. As if it needed stressing, Debí … also underscored his own legacy, and his incredible range: heartbroken that life must one day end on Baile Inolvidable; lovelorn in the rave on Perfumito Nuevo; seemingly cast in moonlight on the heavy Bokete. The 21st album I've previously heard and the seventh I've written up - I remembered I'd enjoyed it but I'd not been back to in the intervening months. I also didn't revisit the write-up before I relistened to the album, so I was...

Starting my trip up Empire's   top 20 films of 2025 #20 :     Warfare After imagining a brutal US conflict in last year’s Civil War, Alex Garland continues in military mode – this time seeking the truth, or as close to the truth as subjective recollection can provide. Warfare is an exercise in memory-as-movie, aiming to recreate a real-life battle fought by Ray Mendoza (who co-directs with Garland, portrayed in the drama by D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai) and his platoon in the Iraq War. There’s a stripping back of narrative beats and movie-movie theatrics, then, in favour of hard, bloody, painful reality – every moment drawn from the memories of the real events that Mendoza and his men experienced. With a stellar ensemble – Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor, Michael Gandolfini and Joseph Quinn among them – and deeply immersive filmmaking, Garland and Mendoza deliver an unforgettable 95 minutes that’s hard to shake. I imagine Alex Garland (only our second visit with the lad, a...

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  50 best albums of 2025 . #8 :  DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS - Bad Bunny With the absolute integrity that has become his trademark, Bad Bunny shone his inestimable spotlight back on his roots in Puerto Rico for his sixth album, singing of sacrifice, colonial oppression and the importance of preserving tradition. He’s an incredible conduit, synthesising the past – salsa, bolero, perreo – with the present, bringing local artists including RaiNao and Lorén Aldarondo along for the ride. As if it needed stressing, Debí … also underscored his own legacy, and his incredible range: heartbroken that life must one day end on Baile Inolvidable; lovelorn in the rave on Perfumito Nuevo; seemingly cast in moonlight on the heavy Bokete. The eighteenth album we've heard and when we met this as a new entry back in January, I generously declared there to be nothing wrong with it, but I was mystified by its success. And, having revisited it, I can assure you th...

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...

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...

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 ...