X-Press Magazine’s Top 25 Albums of 2025
The world was noisier than ever this year, and the music of 2025 had to hit harder to cut through. While global superstars like Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter continued their pop dominance, it was some old favourites that surprised us with long-awaited returns—Pulp dropped their first album in over 20 years, and Lily Allen came back swinging with a trademark expletive-laden kiss-off of a record. On the local front, WA acts continued to shine, with Tame Impala and Spacey Jane showing why they’re some of the state’s finest international exports at the moment, while Perth punks Last Quokka took the fight to the bastards and indie rock duo Old Mervs proved they truly are the ‘best band in the whole of Kojonup.’ More than anything, though, 2025 felt like a breakthrough year—Geese, Sudan Archives, Rosalia, Ninajirachi and others delivered the albums we hoped they had in them. And in times this weird, it makes sense that the overall winner sounded just as unhinged as the world around us. These are the albums that cut through the noise for X-Press Magazine writers in 2025.
25. Old Mervs Old Mervs
After building their profile with two EPs and several singles over the past few years, indie-rock duo Old Mervs released their debut self-titled album this year. Bringing the mood of ’90s alt-rock together with their signature Australian indie sound, the record brings together introspection, angst, upbeat riffs and subtle production, recalling the work of Aussie alt-rock acts like Something for Kate and Pacific Avenue. An instant fan favourite, the album was featured on triple j, topped the ARIA Australian charts and reached number four overall. It marks a remarkable rise for the duo from Kojonup, a farming community three hours south of Perth, who have supported major touring artists including Liam Gallagher and The Wombats, even scoring a slot alongside the biggest names in the game at Lollapalooza this year.
– JAMES THORN
24. Last Quokka Take The Fight To The Bastards
Last Quokka’s Take The Fight To The Bastards gave 2025 the fierce dose of punk outrage it deserved. Spilling over with garage grit, the Perth band take aim at corporate extraction and cultural erosion on songs like Save Our Pubs, while elsewhere turning their fire on capitalism, colonialism and the damage done. Trent Rojahn’s vocals bite as hard as ever, pairing the rage with sardonic humour (How did I know they were French shrimp? Must have been their moustaches), while the punk hooks will hoick you straight onto a beer-soaked dancefloor. A gritty soundtrack for anyone fed up and ready to fight back.
– BRAYDEN EDWARDS
24. Clipse Let God Sort Em Out
The return of the Thornton brothers in 2025 felt less like a reunion and more like a revival. For well over a decade, the Clipse hiatus stood as one of hip-hop’s great “what ifs,” a schism fuelled by Malice’s profound spiritual pivot and Pusha T’s ascent into the upper echelon of solo stardom. Despite the hiatus, there is zero ring rust on Let God Sort Em Out. Pusha’s surgical precision and Malice’s rediscovered visceral flow prove their chemistry is still hip-hop’s most lethal yin and yang. Backed by Pharrell’s skeletal minimalism (and access to the Louis Vuitton HQ in Paris where the album was recorded), the album strips away modern clutter for “hip-hop noir” production, resulting in a menacing masterclass in longevity.
– CALOGERO ALGERI
22. Car Seat Headrest The Scholars
Car Seat Headrest’s “rock opera for the playlist era” somehow packs an enormous amount into its sprawling 70-minute runtime. Drawing inspiration from classic rock operas like The Who’s Tommy and Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, along with a dash of Shakespearean drama, the album unfolds across the fictional Parnassus University and its clashing factions. Truth and mythology blur together, with even Toledo’s (AKA Mortis Jackrabbit) furry identity hopping into the narrative. It’s as strange as it is ambitious, but its cavalier push into new sonic and thematic territory makes The Scholars well worth the study.
– BRAYDEN EDWARDS
21. Pulp More
With the Britpop revival in full force, one of the most unexpected and welcomed returns this year was Pulp, with their first album in 24 years! The Sheffield icons, fronted by the enigmatic Jarvis Cocker, shot to fame with 1995’s Different Class, with its wry take on class, love and modern society. More is a huge return to form, with a more reflective perspective that comes with growing older, as Jarvis, now 62, ponders ‘adulting’ on the instant classic Grown Ups. Other highlights include the euphoric disco banger Got To Have Love, while Tina is a classic Pulp tale of unrequited lust and fantasy, and Farmers Market is a sweet, fictionalised account of the sliding doors moment when Jarvis met his current wife. This comeback album is more than a nostalgia trip—it’s up there with their finest work, while not dwelling in the past. Pulp prove they’re still in a class of their own.
– ALFRED GORMAN
20. Sharon Van Etten Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory
“Who wants to live forever?” Sharon Van Etten’s rhetorical question on opener Live Forever sets the tone for an album that dances towards an uncertain future. Marking the first time Van Etten fully collaborated with her touring band, The Attachment Theory, the record brings together a rich mix of obscure ’80s-inspired sounds, synthesisers, and electro-dance rhythms while Etten’s ethereal voice, now sounding better than ever, floats above it all. A seasoned artist now seven strong albums into her career, Van Etten effortlessly navigates shifting moods and modes, pairing sardonic lyrics with disco-tinged arrangements, while even the sweet, longing love songs carry subtle shadows. The result is an album that feels like you’re on the cusp of a new adventure, as if something exciting is almost within reach, even though there’s still a slight journey to be made.
– KYRA SHENNAN
19. Water from Your Eyes It’s A Beautiful Place
Between the fluid One Small Step and For Mankind sits eight tracks that work as sonic and perceptive explorations, adding light to the existential discography of the art-rock duo Water From Your Eyes. It’s A Beautiful Place searches the space between the tech in front of our faces and the moon, and then further. Another album that you can’t quite grasp. And with Nate Amos’ persistent, propulsive guitar, the album seems to slip away before you’re done absorbing it. It leads you into a toxic cycle of looping and rewinding with the hopes of picking apart the puzzle, trying to dissect the ideas that Amos and Rachel Brown throw at you. Are they trying to communicate concepts so vast they can’t be articulated in their entirety? Or are they expressing something that they themselves haven’t quite figured out yet?
– PRUDENCE ACKRILL
18. Cameron Winter Heavy Metal
Released in December 2024, Cameron Winter’s Heavy Metal landed at a time when albums can easily be missed amid end-of-year lists, but this one is far too good to overlook. Despite the title, there’s little heavy metal here, with the Geese frontman instead working across a broad, unpredictable palette of folk, indie rock, Americana and soul to craft a sound entirely his own. Winter’s vivid lyricism and inventive arrangements run right through the record’s ten tracks but are best captured on the genuine song-of-the-year contender Love Takes Miles. That Winter followed this little more than six months later with another one of the year’s most important releases, Geese’s Getting Killed, only reinforces the strength of his remarkable creative streak.
– BRAYDEN EDWARDS
17. Deafheaven Lonely People with Power
Emerging four years after their last release, Deafheaven returned under a new label (Roadrunner) for their sixth album, delivering Lonely People With Power and a return to their powerful, aggressively raw roots. In their inventive, evolving approach, the post-metal veterans yield what may be their best album among a discography spanning 15 years, reintroducing the band’s black metal intensity, contrasting 2021’s Infinite Granite and its softer, lush dream-pop tones. A powerful synthesis of their past, Deafheaven have moved beyond genre labels, influences, and audience expectations. Now more than ever, they sound entirely and unmistakably like themselves.
– JONO OUTRED
16. Turnstile Never Enough
Never Enough felt like a victory lap from Baltimore hardcore four-piece Turnstile. Building on 2021’s Glow Up, the band continued to push and shove the boundaries of their hardcore origins with even greater conviction and polish without loss of integrity or raw urgency. The album’s impressive sonic palette ranges from ambient Eno-esque synths to distorted double-time punk riffage drawn into a cohesive package by a poptimistic, relentless focus on melodies and slick production. On Never Enough, Turnstile cemented themselves as one of the top rock bands in the world, eschewing genre restrictions or scene chasing by committing to and trusting their artistic instincts.
– MICHAEL HOLLICK
15. Big Thief Double Infinity
Double Infinity, where things come in twos, sits between past and future, what’s been lost and what lies waiting. Recorded over three weeks in January, the nine-track cosmic trip sees Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek and James Krivchenia lean into their new dynamic as a trio after Max Oleartchik left the group mid-last year. Across sweeping tracks like the kaleidoscopic opener Incomprehensible and album centrepiece Grandmother, the group’s avant-garde sound expansion and close attention to detail make for a repeatable hallucination of a record that is sure to change how most listeners perceive them.
– PRUDENCE ACKRILL
14. Ethel Cain Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You
One of two Ethel Cain releases this year, Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You gave longtime fans the epic continuation of the Ethel Cain story they’d been waiting for since the release of 2022’s Preacher’s Daughter. The years-long speculation on a follow-up to the concept album that acted as a Southern Gothic pop pioneer was answered with ten tracks that not only expanded upon the world built on the last record but further developed an atmospheric soundscape, blending the Americana of Preacher’s Daughter with the ambient drone of the prior 2025 release, Perverts. The record is entirely slow but never overlong, which is an amazing feat given the longest track, Waco, Texas (a career highlight), runs over 15 minutes. Immaculate in concept and style, it’s perhaps the premier example of a ‘sister album.’
ABBY GREER
13. Taylor Swift The Life of a Showgirl
Fresh off the release of her six-part docuseries, Taylor Swift: The End of an Era, Swift has once again dominated 2025. Her twelfth studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, delves into Swift’s off-stage persona, struggles with fame, and romantic relationships, featuring soft pop beats and light-hearted lyrics that echo those of her 2022 album, Midnights. The album opens with The Fate Of Ophelia, a whimsical, melodic dance-pop masterpiece inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, followed by the catchy fan favourite Opalite and the downtempo synth-pop track Father Figure, while the closing track, The Life of a Showgirl, features a well-suited collaboration with Sabrina Carpenter. Across the 12-track album, Swift once again proves she is the music industry’s number one showgirl.
– NATASHA PAUL
12. Wolf Alice The Clearing
Wolf Alice’s fourth album, The Clearing, saw the band move on from their usual indecisive sound and evolve into a sophisticated and confident soundscape, incorporating strings to build out their sound and earmark this record as a more mature offering from the four-piece. Ellie Rowsell’s vocals shift from ferocious rock to intimate reflection whilst sounding more assured than ever. Whilst previously enjoying the band’s ability to cover every genre and do so well on a single record, the cohesiveness of this album is what makes it so striking and a comfortable listen. With its blend of emotional depth and sonic refinement, The Clearing truly stood out as one of the year’s best.
– KIERRA JEFFERIES
11. Spacey Jane If That Makes Sense
Fremantle’s indie darlings turned ARIA winners, Spacey Jane, returned with their third album, If That Makes Sense. Produced by Mike Crossey (The 1975, Arctic Monkeys, The Killers) and with extra helpings from Jackson “Day Wave” Phillips and Sarah Aarons (who co-wrote Miley Cyrus’ Jaded), If That Makes Sense is a soundtrack for those stretched-out, slightly sore days—the ones where it’s not quite heartbreak, not quite healing—just a heavy-lidded sort of limbo. The record is further proof that Spacey Jane now have dreamy pop down to a science—and while the sun might be out, emotionally we’re all just floating face-down in our sad feels.
– RACHEL FINUCANE
10. Sam Fender People Watching
With The War on Drugs’ Adam Granduciel on co-production duties, Sam Fender’s third album continues his penchant for soaring choruses teamed with astute, heartfelt observations of an ordinary life and expansive saxophone solos. Unlike previous records, however, it’s the slower, less anthemic tracks that hit hardest on People Watching. Crumbling Empire, for instance, feels distinctly like a moderated take on Springsteen’s I’m On Fire, while Rein Me In, which has had something of a second coming, having been re-released with contributions from the hugely popular Olivia Dean, exemplifies his talent for nailing melody and feeling. While there isn’t a great deal that’s new here, it’s yet more evidence of Fender’s striking ability to write memorable songs that have surface appeal and, on closer listening, deep resonance.
– RICK BRYANT
9. Sabrina Carpenter Man’s Best Friend
Pop-country superstar Sabrina Carpenter has never shied away from stirring the feminist pot. When the Grammy-nominated Man’s Best Friend pawed its way into her discography in August, it arrived on a saucy leash. Bold, cheeky, and wickedly self-aware, the era was cemented by an instantly iconic cover shot of Carpenter posed on all fours. Co-written with Amy Allen, Jack Antonoff, and John Ryan—and Carpenter herself, with the latter three also pulling double duty as co-producers—the 12-track set leans further into her country roots, lacing them with disco flirtation on Taste and glossy nostalgia on the multilingual hit Goodbye.
– RACHEL FINUCANE
8. Wednesday Bleeds
The cult of Wednesday continues to grow at a rapid rate. MJ Lenderman is a headliner in his own right, and multi-instrumentalist Xandy Chelmis is a gun for hire on an increasing number of ‘it’ records, but it is Karly Hartzman who is at the centre and driving force of Wednesday. Bleeds sees Hartzman sharpen her songwriting without foregoing her range of emotion, as she manages to stay ahead of the curve with Wednesday’s laconic and finely lined tattooed country/shoegaze hybrid. The melodies of Townies and the jangle of Elderberry Wine are Wednesday at their sharpest, and the fuzz-drenched Candy Breath and screamo Wasp ensure that Bleeds never stays still for too long. Wednesday are a band for all seasons.
– CHRIS HAVERCROFT
7. Ninajirachi I Love My Computer
Ninajirachi’s I Love My Computer is a polished debut LP that will be referenced for years to come, whether that be in discussions of her status as an ever-evolving face of Aussie electronic and hyperpop or in those of pre-eminent albums in genres like “girl EDM,” one that she defined her sound with in 2024 with the release of an EP of the same name and explored here in startling detail. Listeners that have only slightly dipped their toes into the world of EDM will enjoy this release just as much as seasoned fans, with a palpable 2010s nostalgia running through the 12 songs and an unavoidable glitchy energy that moves through dubstep, techno and utter anthems while remaining entirely cohesive as a body of work. A danceable meditation on technology that never lets up over its runtime.
– ABBY GREER
6. Lily Allen West End Girl
Lily Allen’s 2025 album West End Girl does not hold back. Raw, emotional and unfiltered lyrics contrast with finely tuned production, highlighting the English pop star’s ability to transform personal turmoil into compelling pop. Built over drum machines and an electro pulse, the record follows Allen’s personal narrative, as though you’re listening in on her inner dialogue as she comes to terms with her partner’s infidelity. Tennis pairs witty storytelling with one of Allen’s trademark sticky choruses, while Madeline cleverly expands on it, mixing in gunshot sound effects. Perhaps Let You W/In’s hard-hitting line “But I can walk out with my dignity, if I lay my truth on the table” perfectly summarises Allen’s vulnerable yet empowered approach in this well-executed return album.
– JAMES THORN
5. Rosalia Lux
As Metacritic’s number one album of the year, it’s hardly a secret that LUX is something special. The acclaimed Spanish artist blends classical and pop with many other styles on her fourth studio album, where she really stretches her wings, putting her musicology degree to good use. She sings in 14 languages to create four “movements” exploring the lives of four female saints. It all sounds very cerebral, and it is, with a head-spinning variety of instrumentation and musical references, but it is also a fully immersive, propulsive, spine-tingling listening experience. So many disparate elements, from a full German choir to flamenco and an appearance by Björk, may sound like they wouldn’t work, but Rosalía’s vision and talent make this a completely unforgettable experience.
– SAMANTHA ROSENFELD
4. Sudan Archives The BPM
On The BPM, Sudan Archives takes a confident leap onto the dance floor. Pulling from club sounds from across the globe and across eras—including Detroit techno, Chicago house, Jersey club and more—she pushes each track into fresh, unfamiliar territory. Highlights like Dead, My Type and Ms. Pac Man fuse pounding beats with glitchy vocals and stirring violin lines as she grooves through themes of self-discovery, heartbreak and joy. A vibrant, genre-bending record that feels fearless and built to move.
– BRAYDEN EDWARDS
3. Tame Impala Deadbeat
Tame Impala’s new album Deadbeat feels familiar but also a bit left-of-centre, pushing Kevin Parker’s sound into darker, stranger territory while still sounding unmistakably like him. The production is super layered and immersive, with warped synths and unexpected chord choices that give the album a slightly eerie edge. Dracula quickly became a radio favourite mainly for its spooky chords that genuinely feel unsettling without being over the top, while Oblivion is another highlight, leaning more into a danceable groove, which is what Tame Impala do best. Few other albums in 2025 showcased this level of creativity, confidence and range.
– MOLLY ELLIOT
2. Geese Getting Killed
In anticipating Getting Killed, it was a wonder how the NY rock band would follow the success of frontman Cameron Winter’s solo debut, Heavy Metal. But entering the textured pocket of Trinidad, there were no questions asked, aside from, ‘Will the whole album be this good?’ And when it seems you’re in for a maximalist, chaotic 45 minutes, Geese hit you with a tenderness that makes even the abrasive moments feel more authentic than frantic. Across 11 tracks, Winter crafts a strange journey of self-enquiry. But beyond attempts to predict where Winter is headed—perhaps towards an outburst of ‘I should burn in hell’ or a wallowed plea, like ‘Baby, you can be free and still come home’—what we are really curious about is what Max Bassin (drummer) will do on the next track.
– PRUDENCE ACKRILL
1. Tropical Fuck Storm Fairyland Codex
Tropical Fuck Storm’s Fairyland Codex sounds like someone fed the nightly news into a broken amp and laughed while it screamed back. A feral, funny, and frightening output for a world sliding into end times. Whilst not always the most accessible to the casual listener, the album’s content looms large as the band weaponise chaos with intent, whilst poking fun under a heavy cloak of twisted satire. The songs seem to unravel just as they begin to make sense, and structured melodies briefly surface before being intentionally dragged under by a riptide of distortion.
TFS’ true talent is to melt the chaos, draw you in and keep you engaged, but not just to see how it ends, but rather to amplify its overall sense of purpose. Guitars scrape and convulse like broken machinery; absurdist lyrics sneer at you provocatively as if they were spray-painted over the walls of a condemned building site, whilst they rain prophecy over the listener channelled through a bleak social commentary of politics, tech, climate and a wasteland of modern collapse. This is paranoid rock music for a poisoned age from an ever-evolving, experimental band at their most focused, unhinged and vital.
– ZAC NICHOLS