Follow all our Best of 2025 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.
Hip-hop oldies become jazz instrumentals. Cult folk songs become grand spaghetti-western soundscapes. Blink-182 hits become DIY bedroom jams. We’ve got ’90s hardcore bangers shredded on acoustic guitar, Spanglish Latin-pop takes on Air Supply and Elvis, and, maybe most outrageously of all, a wild experiment in turning everyone from Chappell Roan to Smash Mouth into emo/screamo.
It’s an especially unruly set this year, but a rewarding one. Enough preamble. Dive in.
Jason Molina was the man, the inspiration, the words and, most of all, the voice behind Songs: Ohia, and Magnolia Electric Company. A major force, he died too young, aged 39, a victim of his battle with alcohol, and it is perhaps only now the importance of his legacy is making itself extant. Had he got sober, and maybe a bit happier, he would undoubtedly be where Jason Isbell is now today, Kindred spirits both, each had a canny way around a maudlin melody, built over with keenly observed lyrics, often those born of experience. And boy, was he prolific, issuing a torrent of albums, often more than one a year, as well as leaving a cache of tapes behind for his record company, Secretly Canadian, to slowly sift through.