Chris’s Picks 2025 volume 1
One of the things I learned in 2024 is that I still enjoy letting a challenging listen unfold over time. I don’t get that chance as often as I would like, but a rewarding listening is the primary reason I collect records and seek out new music all the time. In 2024, Cindy Lee’s masterpiece of an album Diamond Jubilee proved to be my favorite album of the year because it was so rewarding to enjoy in its entirety, all 2+ hours of it. Because of that, I entered 2025 with the explicit intention to give more weird records a chance. And although we’re only a couple weeks into the new year, I’ve already found a handful of wonderfully weird songs that play nice with my more traditional interests. With that, and in an attempt to collect some of the end of 2024 releases that didn’t make my year end best of lists, the first volume of Chris’s Picks for 2025 now exists for your listening enjoyment.
If you’re looking for some of that weird new stuff, you might try Squid, Ethel Cain, Crack Cloud, or Cameron Winter.
If you’re looking for my more typical aesthetic, Superchunk covers Dead Moon, Young Widows make their long-awaited return, and there’s even a couple of emo-adjacent tunes from PUP, Greet Death, and Karate.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6Wyx2MI42R8uYxMzSjXwwL?si=OzVCSYawRt-urkFPxn6qKw&pi=u-TxqOjfM-T6Os
Track list
Horsegirl - “Switch Over”
Franz Ferdinand - “Night or Day”
Squid - “Crispy Skin”
Julien Baker & TORRES - “Sugar in the Tank”
Ethel Cain - “Punish”
Mavis Guitar - “Stars”
Sharon Van Etten - “Southern Life”
Momma - “Ohio All The Time”
PUP - “Paranoid”
Lambrini Girls - “Love”
Dead Pioneers - “My Spirit Animal Ate Your Spirit Animal”
SISS - “New Drag”
Guided By Voices - “Dawn Believes”
Superchunk - “Fire in the Western World”
Les Savy Fav - “Yawn, Yawn, Yawn”
L.S. Dunes - “Violet”
High Vis - “Guided Tour”
Young Widows - “Call Bullshit”
Ekko Astral - “baethoven”
Fucked Up - “Smoke Signals”
Mary Timony - “Curious Tides”
Thurston Moore - “Sans Limites”
Kim Deal - “Crystal Breath”
Karate - “Rattle the Pipes”
Meat Wave - “Voicemail”
Greet Death - “Same But Different Now”
SPRINTS - “Feast”
The Men - “Pony”
Porridge Radio - “Sick of the Blues”
Crack Cloud - “Ballad of Billy”
Being Dead - “Goodnight”
Waxahatchee - “Right Back To It”
Cameron Winter - “Drinking Age”
