Nite Songs Top 75 Albums of 2025 - Part 2 (60-51)

 


Well, we're underway now so let's keep this thing moving! Welcome to Part 2 of the Nite Songs end of year rundown...

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60. SELF-ESTEEM - "A Complicated Woman"


Rebecca Lucy Taylor's third solo album continues the rich vein of form of its predecessors. Angry and defiant on the one hand but sated with tunes ready to drag you to the dancefloor on the other, the likes of Mother, I Do And I Don't Care and 69 brim with a mischievous sense of playfulness and a serious message in equal measure.


The Puncturists have been slogging it out on the West Yorkshire punk circuit for a few years now and in I'm Not Alright, they've come up with a debut album which puts their experience to good use. Sounding like a poppier version of Vice Squad, tunes such as Pissing Me Off, They Don't Pay Support Bands and recent single 55 mix an angry energy with some surprisingly catchy hooks to come up with a winning formula.


Yup, the Turning Japanese lot. I didn't have huge expectations for this but fair play to the Vapors, it's not often you'll come across bands from their era who are not only still going strong but putting material out that's arguably better than the stuff from their commercial heyday. Wasp In A Jar takes the classic power-pop formula and puts a 21st century sheen on it to good effect and mark this out as one of the more impressive comebacks of the year.

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The idea of merging pop punk with C86 style jangle-indie isn't actually as far a stretch as it sounds and Leeds natives Nervous Twitch have done it to good effect on this debut album. Sounding like a midpoint band between the Buzzcocks and Johnny Marr, songs like Don't Get In Touch, My Mum's An Anarchist and The Day Job Gets In The Way mark this lot out as a band with an undeniable amount of promise.

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56.    BUSTER SHUFFLE - "Together"


Still valiantly plugging away nearly twenty years into their career, Together is another strong effort from East London's answer to Madness and the likes of Shows How Little You Know and If I Were Wise are definitely the sign of a band with plenty of fire left in the tank. It's nothing you won't have heard before but quite simply Buster Shuffle are very good at what they do and long may it continue.

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55. ALICE COOPER - "The Revenge of Alice Cooper"


The reunion of the classic Alice Cooper band line-up at least showed that there's signs of life in the old corpse-rocker after 2023's rather lacklustre The Road album. Remaining true to the classic early '70s Coop formula but putting a bit of a 21st century spin on it, the material varies from the sinister Kill The Flies and One Night Stand to the more humorous Crap That Gets In The Way Of Your Dreams and the touching closing tribute to late guitarist Glen Buxton See You On The Other Side. It may not be the best album Alice has put his name to since those halcyon days but there's certainly an argument that it's as good an album as we could have expected out of this particular reunion.

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If, like your friendly writer here, you previously had Wolf Alice down as a bit of a style over substance band, The Clearing will come as a pleasant surprise. By some way this group's most accessible album, it sees them aiming for poppier waters not a million miles away from Kate Nash et al and they deserve commending for their ability to build on their sound and evolve well.

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53.    SCOTT LAVENE - "Cars, Buses, Bedsits and Shops"

Similar to fellow Essex native Billy Bragg, there's something enjoyably down to earth about Scott Lavene's style of songwriting. Tales of everyday life with a self-deprecating streak, the likes of Pound Shop Al Pacino and Bus In July mark the guy out as a definite talent and even if it doesn't quite hit the mark every time, this is still a commendable effort from him.

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52. THE ZIPHEADS - "Rock 'n' Roll Renaissance"


First album in almost a decade from St Albans psychobilly-punks the Zipheads and certainly a comeback that defied a lot of expectations. Barrelling through the likes of How Do You Like Me Now? and Top of the World with commendably reckless abandon, this might just be this group's strongest offering to date - hopefully we won't have to wait as long this time for its follow-up!


No less than the sixth album from Oxford power-poppers Los Pepes and rest assured they are very much still going strong. Still trading in the sort of naggingly insistent hooks that get in your brain and don't let go, songs like Molly Coddle and Future History are a good representation of what makes this band so good and why they've managed to prolong their career as well as they have.

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And now for a much needed breather! We'll pick things up here again tomorrow as we head into the Top 50. Till then...

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