My favorite song from each and every album we looked at this year can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Alive 2007 (2007)

Artist: Daft Punk

Link:

One of the first things I’ve done both times I took on this series was to set my end-of-year album. I think it means something - carries a little more weight. We’ve done this three hundred and sixty-four times up to this point, but I think a final sign-off should have a little more meaning behind it than just “wow, this sounds good” - although that certainly doesn’t hurt, either.

I wasn’t quite cogent enough to be fully aware of just how massive Alive was at the time. Looking on eighteen years later, it feels like the mythos and impact have only continued to grow in stature - it’s difficult to think of many more impactful live records, and few have so completely reversed the fortune of an album the way Alive’s mixes salvaged Human. After an angsty couple of years where it felt like Daft Punk had gotten a little high off their own supply, it was such a refreshing - and frankly, blinding - turn to see the band come together with this, a megamix of their first three full-lengths put together in one captivating package.

Each and every track is placed nearly to perfection - the boys know when to let the beat roll, but they’re so wonderfully adept at mixing and it’s probably never been so cleanly displayed as it is here. This is a concert list without any visuals and I still see the colors, three concepts intertwined into a beautiful and entirely new vision, separate from anything I could have expected.

The end of the year is a milestone in many ways - obviously, the turning of a new leaf, but also a chance to look back, see where we’ve come, celebrate what’s been done and enjoy it from the perspective of someone who survived and advanced, granted the strength and fortitude to get through the bullshit. It’s the finish line, another lap to this grand race, and I don’t think many albums get that simultaneously retrospective and introspective feeling so wholly conveyed as Alive does - truly showing what it feels like to be alive.

Rating: 9/10

Best Tracks: Human After All/Together/One More Time/Music Sounds Better With You

Worst Tracks: Da Funk/Daftendirekt

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: LOVETAP! (2015)

Artist: Smallpools

Link:

I’m honestly not sure anything will ever quite compare to the absolute rush that accompanied hearing ‘Dreaming’ for the first time when I booted up FIFA 14 - from the first note, it’s a rush of indie-pop excellence, bright and glorious with full-throated choruses and catchy verses that arrive in brigades. So much of LOVETAP! continues in similar fashion - strong throughout, catchy to the core, full of light and life.

Of course, there are valid criticisms here. This is an album that released more or less over the course of two years, which would be one thing if it hadn’t also slow-dripped all the best material from the beginning. What winds up happening is that the majority of the actual record feels a bit like filler, and the best of it is so top-heavy that there’s an uncomfortable sort of imbalance to the whole shebang.

It’s not nearly enough to really truly ruin the experience, though. I’ve had some people say ‘oh, you’ll get tired of the songs’ - and maybe I will - but til now, I’ve been enjoying what I’ve been hearing from this record enough that I’m more than happy to score it well.

Rating: 8/10

Best Tracks: Dreaming

Worst Tracks: What’s That A Picture Of?

Welcome back to the Daily Spin. For the uninitiated, this is the series in which I review an album every day of 2025.

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: War All The Time (2003)

Artist: Thursday

Link:

This is one of the more enjoyable post-hardcore records that isn’t quite post-hardcore I’ve ever listened to. As an emo album, this bangs with the railing and raging throughout, screams and shouts aplenty. As a hardcore record, this hits with its strong instrumentation and forceful critique of power structures and those that inhabit them.

As music I’d listen to in 2025, this is… well, it’s fine. I think this album did the group a great service in showing they were capable as more than just the torchbearers for screamo, all that they’ve given it the pork and beans here.

However, for all the good I can see in this, it does somewhat feel like a filler record more than one with this much fuel to flame likely should - for all the anti-war sentiment here, too many times I’ve glanced at my watch waiting for something a little more captivating to come along.

Nevertheless - a valuable message, and though I don’t always get down with the delivery, I’d be remiss to write it off on that alone.

Rating: 7/10

Best Tracks: Tomorrow I’ll Be You

Worst Tracks: Asleep in the Chapel

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Warm on a Cold Night (2016)

Artist: HONNE

Link:

Warm on a Cold Night is all the bluster of a very overconfident Tinder match - lots of talk, little game to actually back it up, and plenty of words to explain away whatever it is that happened to mess things up.

It’s a shame, really - the titular track and ‘Good Together’ are great little ballads, as long as you can tune out the awkward couplets that snuck through quality control, but much of this record puts itself in the doghouse by virtue of being so limp-wristed nothing could revive it.

Quality control is unfortunately the name of the game here - as debutants, HONNE show a lovely command of smooth sound, with effortless glide to make these tracks push in a way that sure felt revolutionary in 2016, even if it wasn’t really all that unique. It’s never really ‘slick’ or ‘slimy’, but it carries the heft of a well-produced beat throughout, and that makes this a much more appealing listen than most would be.

Big game it may be, but there are flashes in the pan that might make this one worth a swipe to the right.

Rating: 7/10

Best Tracks: Good Together

Worst Tracks: FHKD

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Deep Cuts (2003)

Artist: The Knife

Link:

Somewhere under a lot of vague winks and nudges, there’s a really fantastic electropop album to be found here, with surprisingly agility and a willingness to dive not found in a lot of other records of this era.

Deep Cuts is unabashedly clumsy at times, with a sort of challenging jut to its lip. This is a record that cannot decide between the smarm and svelte offerings that most of the album contains, and the stark and glittering beauty - surrealism, really - that lead single ‘Heartbeats’ contains.

Most of this record is ultimately not long for my playlists, and I don’t really think there’s any grand takeaways here (except that maybe the original was better than the cover when it comes to Jose Gonzalez’ work on ‘Heartbeats’) - but I think all the same, it’s a good listen. This is a record that showcases duality confidently - it’s just a shame that the two flavors don’t mesh any better.

Rating: 8/10

Best Tracks: Heartbeats

Worst Tracks: She’s Having A Baby

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Passion, Pain, & Demon Slayin’ (2016)

Artist: Kid Cudi

Link:

Scott Mescudi runs one consistent theme through every album he makes, and that one thing can change your perception of every single thing he releases - the only problem is that the single demand is a near-total submission to his worldview.

There’s also the matter of the 87-minute runtime. I could listen to so many albums twice or even three times in the time needed to pass this once. Miserable after a while, and nearly totally kills the listenability.

The music itself is at least strong - for all his storytelling drawbacks, production has never been too horrid an issue for Cudi, and the beats are near their best here. The lyrics, where Cudi is simultaneously beggar, hand out for alms and advice, and soothsayer granting words of cure to all befuddle and leave much to be desired.

It’s all a little much for something that says so little.

Rating: 7/10

Favorites: By Design

Least Favorites: Dance 4 Eternity

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Essex Honey (2025)

Artist: Blood Orange

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I remain consistently impressed with Blood Orange - the English singer and songwriter has long made a career of impactful and soulful indie music, and this, his first release in six years, is no different.

Devonte Hynes develops such a repertoire throughout each album, telling a particular story. With Essex Honey, it feels like he’s coming home - with stories that feel directly relayed to his mother embedded in the lyrics as much as the reaching sounds of want for comfort in each tune.

His vocals always shine, as they do here, but it’s the quality of what they’re saying that makes this a more compelling listen than many projects.

Rating: 8/10

Favorites: The Last of England

Least Favorites: The Train

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: The Dean Martin Christmas Album (1966)

Artist: Dean Martin

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If Sinatra is Ohtani, then Martin is Trout - incredible caliber of player, but one just has that slight edge to push them over the top into true ascendancy.

Still, Martin’s talents are undeniable. His warm baritone settles pleasantly over the tracks on offer, and although he displays a typical-for-his-time lack of urgency here, it aids in creating the feeling of a sleepy Christmas at home, the post-dinner fullness surrounded by family, friends, and loved ones.

It’s easygoing, pleasant, and perfectly comfortable in itself.

Rating: 9/10

Favorites: White Christmas

Least Favorites: The Things We Did Last Summer

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: A Jolly Christmas From Frank Sinatra (1957)

Artist: Frank Sinatra

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Sinatra is so fantastic in so many ways and so truly deserves his status as once of the best of the classics, but he’s never more on his fastball than on his Christmas records.

It’s the best of the season - outside of Guaraldi and Carol of the Bells, I would argue no one comes close to Sinatra’s hit rate. Warm, with the rich vocals and pleasantly vintage sound that all the best carols contain, this is nearly perfect. Tis the season to be jolly, and I’m rarely happier than when this is on.

Rating: 9/10

Favorites: The Christmas Waltz

Least Favorites: It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: A Way Forward (2021)

Artist: Nation of Language

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Comfortably familiar for fans of their first work, this doesn’t quite do enough to expand on familiar territory, but showcases that it isn’t always wholly necessary to engage in those expansions.

With hints of the 70s and 80s throughout, it’s a lot of fun, if somewhat derivative. I’m left seeing a lot of gaps where there’s probably a more compelling way to storytell these songs, but man. The music remains kicking in a way a lot of tracks just struggle to touch.

By staying within the self-imposed borders they’ve drawn, so much of the emotional breadth that could be feel kneecapped - and yet, the steps here are a warm hoodie on a cold day, comfortable and sure.

Rating: 8/10

Favorites: The Grey Commute

Least Favorites: Former Self

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Bloom Mountain (2023)

Artist: Hazlett

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Wonderfully warming, Hazlett chooses a kinder bend to perspective on this 2023 folk offering that, in its bright moments can bring delightful comfort to weary heads, but in equal measures feels a little addled in its hopefulness.

As much as I can appreciate the stated goal here, this record winds up overstepping some pretty clear bounds, forming sounds that wind up feeling much too close to corporate to evoke the real sentiment I think Hazlett was aiming for here. It’s rarely bad, but winds up a little too cheesy for me to really care for it.

Rating: 7/10

Favorites: Skeletons

Least Favorites: Part Time Lovers

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Burnout Days (2025)

Artist: flipturn

Link:

Oops! Realized I never actually scheduled this as intended, and got wrapped up in family Christmas festivities last night to the point I didn’t even think about this series. I’ve made it 700some days and never fully skipped a review - late is better than nothing.

This is a lot of fun, regardless. Flipturn are an intriguing little group, tackling heavy topics with a deft hand and kickass instrumentation. I love that this record gets a little mellower than its predecessors, because it’s a more fitting sound for the group’s emphasis on emotive soundscapes and the fraught nature of living.

One thing I will miss are the hooks, which feel dampened as related to previous records. Despite best attempts, they often just lack a little something - it’s a close thing, but the record comes the tiniest bit short of truly spectacular.

Rating: 8/10

Favorites: Swim Between Trees

Least Favorites: Rodeo Clown

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: True Colors (2015)

Artist: Zedd

Link:

One of the most 2015 albums ever made, for better and for worse in about equal margins.

I loved this record, once upon a time. Off the backs of two titanic hits in ‘Clarity’ and ‘Stay the Night’, Zedd’s skyscraping synths were the perfect pairing for some of the game’s most intriguing female vocalists - Hayley Williams of Paramore, Selena Gomez, and indie luminaries such as Foxes or Sydney Sierota, the frontwoman of Echosmith. It was a match made in heaven at the time, perfectly poppy for the era, full of that life and color.

At least, until the sheen wore off. True Colors, Zedd’s first full-length, winds up feeling much closer to a youth basketball game where no one can score or watching your favorite football team run it up the gut four times for a total of two yards - there are bumps and lurches, but a lot of this feels remarkably faded ten years on.

It’s a difficult thing - I have such fond memories of blasting these tracks driving around to grad parties the summer I graduated high school, and yet turning to it now, the playbooks feels so broken - there’s nothing here to impress all that greatly, and what few changes were made mostly feel like desperate attempts to avoid acknowledging that the product has gotten a little stale more than any genuine effort to innovate something new.

Rating: 7/10

Best Tracks: Beautiful Now

Worst Tracks: Papercut

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Teen Dream (2010)

Artist: Beach House

Link:

This is somewhat like watching Shohei Ohtani play baseball in Japan, or what I imagine seeing Derrick Henry run in high school was like - the building blocks for a truly phenomenal run.

I know that three albums in, it’s a pretty bold and probably silly statement to make about a group that had clearly begun to set the tone for their immense talent in the dream pop arena, but Teen Dream really does feel like the precipice at which the band finds their incredible fastball - with Bloom and Depression Cherry following in close proximity and the evidence of shared pathways glimmering throughout, this is just utterly lovely.

If you’re not much for dream pop or the gauzy sheen of their music, this very likely won’t be for you, but this was an impressive effort then and remains so now, a complete project from a band you wouldn’t be shamed for estimating were well beyond their years in their career.

Rating: 9/10

Best Tracks: Silver Soul

Worst Tracks: Lover of Mine

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Suddenly (2020)

Artist: Caribou

Link:

All at once, it feels as though Caribou has found their footing. Multiple albums down, the lyrics have never felt so tight and the instrumentation has reached a near-peak.

It’s a refreshing new height for a long-time “oh, sure, I’ll listen to them” artist, the type of record that will have me coming back for the chilled-out sound, so artisanally arranged.

Rating: 8/10

Favorites: Home

Least Favorites: Ravi

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: ten days (2024)

Artist: fred again.

Link:

The hubris necessary to think that making an album with ten interludes is the sort of thing that would, in a just society, land your brain in studies after you pass. It’s twenty tracks! Half interludes! Who would ever ask for that???

The worst part is how good the rest of this is - while there are a couple misses downballot, this is some really enjoyable stutter house - and four albums in, it appears that Fred has finally figured out how to mix things up a little bit, dipping into different genres and sounds throughout the entirety of ten days.

I think he’s probably one of the best mainstream names in the game - that rework of Japanese House’s ‘Sunshine Baby’ to close the album hits everything I could have asked for out of it. It’s not quite a Jamie xx-level effort, but there’s a lot of joy to be found here in stones unturned.

Rating: 8/10

Best Tracks: glow, backseat

Worst Tracks: fear less

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Lychee (2022)

Artist: BENEE

Link:

Very David-core music, in the sense that it’s indie pop I have a massive soft spot for. Not very David-core music in that it definitely leans a little too hard into “TikTok” music - not the first time I’ve railed against it, but I’ll be a dead man if I ever pass up on the opportunity to lock in and talk about why short songs are the worst thing to happen to music since the advent of stan culture (it all stems back to the fact that we’re losing the art of the bridge perfected by Timberlake and Timbaland).

All in all, though, this is perfectly acceptable indie music. BENEE sacrifices a more complex narrative in order to make more aesthetically pleasing music, and that’s not usually a trade I’m huge on - this remains true here, as I think the best parts of this record are so slathered in mayonnaise that there’s just nothing to make it actually land. When it’s good, it sounds like an early Clairo or an early Rex Orange County, but it doesn’t really stick with that sound consistently enough for me to think there’s the same star power behind this act.

Rating: 7/10

Best Tracks: Beach Boy

Worst Tracks: Hurt You, Gus

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Between Who We Are and Who We Used to Be (2017)

Artist: Azim Zain and His Lovely Bones

Link:

Earnest, honest, and delicate, with a heavy warmth like a well-loved coat settling over your shoulders, Between Who We Are is one of the most poetically-named records I’ve reviewed over the two years of this series. Pair that with the lovely cover, and you’ve certainly got a recipe for an EP that, on the surface, does everything short of singing the siren’s call.

That’s where the actual music comes in. While I’m a little thrown by the Edward Sharpe of it all (and even then, I never really got too on the hate train for that guy, it’s just not really of its time anymore), the music is lovely - a comforting balm for the soul, light and airy when needed and very capable of soothing in any situation. It’s perfectly lovely for a mildly chilly winter’s eve.

Rating: 8/10

Best Tracks: Anticharisma

Worst Tracks: Dreams I Could Recall

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: wired since 2003 (2025)

Artist: lucidbeatz

Link:

Things I didn’t know before reviewing - this dude’s from Kazakhstan! That’s pretty cool!

The music, on the other hand, is mostly this side of mediocre, with a pretty heavy hand on the bass. Beyond the connections to German rappers and artists that have helped foster the Kazakh-Germany pipeline, it’s easy to see how this kind of music would flourish in die Deutschland.

All this to say it’s fine - there are plenty of better attempts out there, but this is a young kid trying to make something of himself and - for the most part - succeeding! I’m not huge on the song lengths, as there’s never really enough time for the sound to marinate and properly steep in itself, but that aside, I only have minor quibbles with the product on display here.

Rating: 7/10

Best Tracks: waves

Worst Tracks: sleepless

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: hickey (2025)

Artist: Royel Otis

Link:

You know what hurts the most about a record like this? It’s one of those artists who I used to really like - ‘Oysters in my Pocket’ was near the top of my Wrapped in 2024 - who will forever be a little tarnished by a very mediocre effort. You had me! Then you lost me! Now what?

What went wrong here, I think, is that there’s so much history and lineage behind all these tracks - so much indie pop and alternative legend in all of this - and yet it’s slathered so heavily in a whole lot of nothing that the end product feels bland and uninspired entirely. It’s the sort of easily consumable pop drivel that would inevitably land upon a chart, but not the sort of thing that clicks with me day-in and day-out.

I see a few different pop blogs defending the band, while others tend to lean more to play the hater. I am enlightened and will choose neither side, as is my right, because here’s the sitch. This is a good, young band, the sort of talent that has real potential, and I think they can still climb to those mountains. Even the greats occasionally dropped stinkers, and I don’t want this one - as middle-of-the-road as it is - to derail their journey.

Rating: 7/10

Best Tracks: more to lose

Worst Tracks: she’s got a gun