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,