My Top 25 of 2025 (4)

Welcome back to my favourite 25 records of the year. And please remember, I'm an English teacher, not a Maths teacher...

13 and a half. Otis Gibbs – The Trust of Crows

OK, confession time. I made a list. I narrowed it down to 25 albums, because this is 2025. I started putting them in order and writing the posts.

Otis Gibbs - Ditchweed

And then I realised I’d left someone out. Don’t tell Ernie, you know what a stickler he is for numerical accuracy. Fortunately the Maths teacher doesn’t seem to care. Maybe he’s used to English teachers who can’t count.

Otis Gibbs - Raze

Anyway, Otis Gibbs released a new album this year, and a fine collection of tunes it is too – as expected from Americana wordsmith and youtube rock ‘n’ roll folklore collector, Mr. Gibbs. I wasn’t able to buy the CD this time round because it’s only available from his website, and the cost of postage from the US is now more expensive than the CD itself. I blame Trump, and I’m sure Otis does too.

13. Brian Bilston & The Catenary Wires - Sounds Made By Humans

I’d expected this might end up in a higher position on my year end chart, because when I first heard the collaboration between “The Banksy of Poetry” and the artists formerly known as Talulah Gosh (among other things), I couldn’t stop listening to it. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most immediate record of the year, for its winning combination of Bilston’s witty, vaguely misanthropic middle-aged carping and the warm indie magpiery (yes, I said magpiery, I made that word up myself – figure it out) of Rob and Emilia.

Brian Bilston & The Catenary Wires – My Heart Is A Lump Of Rock

Why it didn’t end up Top 10 is perhaps because after a while it started to wear on me, and I began to realise it didn’t have the longevity of comparable discs – say the new album by Half Man Half Biscuit or anything by Simon Armitage’s bands Lyr or the Scaremongers. (Plus, the BB poem/song To Do List… well, it’s a direct steal from our sainted Poet Laureate, and that began to niggle me a bit.)

Brian Bilston & The Catenary Wires - Thou Shalt Not Commit Adulting

Still lots to enjoy here then, but without the longevity I’d expected when I was lauding it earlier in the year.

12. Eric Church - Evangeline vs. The Machine

The latest record from Eric Church continues his move away from his Waylon-esque outlaw roots into far more soulful territory. And I’ve always been a sucker for Country Got Soul. Evangeline vs. The Machine is a concept album, apparently, meaning that the songs all merge into one another and there’s some kind of link going on behind the scenes, but much as I love a good overriding narrative, I’ve yet to grasp the one at work here.

Eric Church – Hands Of Time

Despite that, this is a rollicking good record, one that takes great pleasure in stealing lines and, indeed, whole concepts from the classic country and rock songbook. There are gleeful references to the work of Bob Seger, Tom Petty, ACDC, Johnny Cash and  Paradise By The Dashboard Light (not Eric’s first dalliance with Steinman)… plus a glorious reimagining of The Devil Went Down To Georgia for the 21^st Century, which might well be a subtle dig at the Orange Oligarch,

Mid-Life Crisis Songs #130: Grown Ups

This is my favourite panel from Adrian Tomine's book, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist.

For most of my life, I've dreamed of working professionally in comics... but after reading Tomine's autobiographical account of all the snubs, slights, humiliations and disappointments that have made up his own "successful" career in that industry, I think I probably had a lucky escape.

Do you feel like a normal, competent adult? Or do you still feel like a kid making the best of pretending to be a grown up? 

Two recent songs immediately came to mind. First, this...

Brian Bilston & The Catenary Wires - Thou Shalt Not Commit Adulting

And then this, from the glorious Pulp comeback album, More... it's like they've never been away.

Finally part of the new generation

Finally part of the pub conversation

And somehow this leads to mature life decisions

Like the one that I heard of from Jeremy Sissons

Who said he, he moved near the motorway

'Cause it was good for commuting

And I laughed in his face

Because I, I thought he was joking

But then I, I looked in his eyes

And I saw, he was not joking

No, he was trying

Trying so, so hard

To act just like a grown up

And it's so, so hard

And we're hoping that we don't get shown up

'Cause everybody's got to grow up

Mid-Life Crisis Songs #127: Rules For Mid-Life Rebellion

Apologies if you came along today hoping to find another instalment of Teacher Songs, and my promised tale of a teacher amorously pursued by a student. It's another one of those half-written posts which I need more time with, and as usual, time is not something I have a lot of right now.

Instead, here's another Mid-Life Crisis Song - a proper one this time, not just another excuse for me to have a Victor Meldrew rant.

Another track from the new album by Brian Bilston and The Catenary Wires. It features 31 Rules For Mid-Life Rebellion. All I'll tell you beyond that is that Rule 28 is "Don't listen to songs in the form of lists."

Listening Post #26: Alexa, What Is There To Know About Love?

Brian Bilston is a writer and poet, dubbed both "the Banksy of the poetry world" and "the Poet Laureate of Twitter". Neither title does him justice, if you ask me.

The Catenary Wires (who I always want to call The Catenary Wives) are a band made up of Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey, formerly / contemporaneously of Heavenly, Talulah Gosh, Marine Research, Tender Trap and Swansea Sound. Which you would imagine would keep them busy enough, except that Amelia was also awarded a CBE in 2014 for her work in consumer economics. 

Anyway, Brian, Amelia and Rob have teamed up for a new album, Sounds Made By Humans, to be released in May. It features a number of Brian's poems set to music... with top notch titles including 31 Rules for Midlife Rebellion (I'm sure we'll get back to that one), As I Grow Old I Will March Not Shuffle, Customers Who Bought This Record Also Bought... and this.