My halo tried to punish me

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2025.

#23 : Michelangelo Dying - Cate Le Bon

Where two of this year’s most prominent breakup albums were savage (Lily Allen) or spectacular (Rosalía), Welsh innovator Cate Le Bon’s hypnotically murky seventh album reflected the circular sadness of love faltering – the catch-22 of wanting to escape heartbreak while knowing that letting go means relinquishing something that was once profound. Michelangelo Dying contains some of her very best choruses and melodies, powerful enough to penetrate the album’s billowing haze of guitar, sax and synths, like a hand reaching out in the dark.

Our second visit with Cate and I wasn't overly impressed last time - maybe I'll be more in the mood for her nonsense now.

Actually, I didn't mind this at all - it's in the "moody female indie singer-songwriter" vein which there are countless examples of, but it's got decent tunes, a lot of well played instruments and some fine vocals. So what more do you want? It certainly feels like it could be a grower, but I feel it's unlikely to the chance.

This is another one that almost made the proper chart, getting to #86 in the mid-week chart update. The Wikipedia entry tells us it's her seventh album (her first one was way back in '09) and the album cover art was inspired by artist Colette Lumiere's installation "Recently Discovered Ruins of a Dream" - but you knew that already, right? It was well received critically and has made quite a few year-end lists - and that's your lot.

#22 : Lotus - Little Simz

Simz’s sixth album came amid a dispute with the Sault producer Inflo – she has sued him for allegedly failing to repay a loan – and a couple of tracks target him in all but name (“You talk about God when you have a God complex / I think you’re the one that needs saving”). But Simz seems to be having a wider reckoning: she revels in how far she’s come from once just having “a dream and a pushbike”, and reflects on self-preservation, creative frustration and – in a gorgeous, naturalistic back-and-forth with Wretch 32 – push-pull family dynamics.

The eighth album I've previously heard on the list which was met in passing as a new entry - when I listened to it, I was very impressed and wrote some very nice things about it. And so, obviously, I've never listened to it again. Until now.

Yeah, I still really like this. It all lives under the general label of R&B but there's a decent amount of variety here - I particularly liked "Young" (a Streets style rap but from a very different viewpoint) and her duets with Wretch 32 ("Blood" - a interesting tale of familial love and guilt) and Michael Kiwanuka ("Lotus"). This isn't a genre I can claim to know loads about, but it feels like a very mature work to my ignorant ears.

Commercially, it debuted well, charting at #3 - and then disappeared never to be seen again, which feels like a shame given some of the stuff that gets to hang around. Wikipedia tells us it's her sixth album (I had no idea she'd been around so long, with her debut having come out in '15) and there's not loads in there except for telling us that she sued Inflo over a loan of £1.7million! Critically, it was very well received by pretty much everyone, although some found it an uncomfortable listen (which completely passed me by) and commercially it did pretty well across Europe making the top 20 in a load of places.

#21 : Like A Ribbon - John Glacier

For all that you can link her to trip-hop and cloud rap, what British MC has ever really sounded like this? It would be easy to call Glacier monotone, but in truth her careful, even flow holds so much musicality: her deliberately limited melodic and rhythmic range means that the subtle distinctions in her vocals are fascinating, as she goes from bored to wry to boastful to poignant within one-degree turns on the emotional thermostat. The grainy, faintly corrupted beats are superb, but it’s that delivery, and her lyrics themselves – stoic and even amused as life blows her from place to place – which make this album an all-timer in UK rap.

And we're back to artists I've never heard of - The Guardian's description above intrigues me whilst not exactly exciting me. 

Hmmm - now I'm intrigued as to exactly what got them so excited! I mean, it's fine, but I feel "an all-timer in UK rap" may be going slightly overboard. I wouldn't call her monotone but she's certainly controlled and I didn't find myself engaged by this - the lyrics may be great but I have to admit to not really paying attention. It's a bit different from the norm I guess but, for me, pretty unremarkable.

Chart-wise, this album just scraped into some minor charts, with #24 in the Hip-hop & R&B chart being the best it did anywhere. The album does have a Wikipedia entry (unlike John herself) but it doesn't tell us a lot other than it's the second consecutive album that features Sampha on a track. It was well received critically, but didn't trouble any "proper" charts anywhere. 

So another all-female round and whilst I liked Cate a lot more than I was expecting it to, Little Simz easily took the round for me - I'm surprised more people haven't been raving about this album.

#26-24 - Another interesting bunch.