Nite Songs Top 75 Albums of 2025 - Part 4 (40-31)

 


It's Top 40 time in our Albums of the Year countdown! Cue up your classic TOTP music of choice and let's do this...

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Thirty plus years into their career and Eddie Spaghetti and co show no signs of slowing down with Liquor, Women, Drugs & Killing being a welcome return to form after a couple of so-so efforts. The likes of Maybe I'm Just Messing With You, How Many Turns Will It Take (To Unscrew It Up) and Meaningful Songs are the Supersuckers' sense of humour written large with riffs and chorus hooks to match. It ain't big, it ain't clever but you know what? We wouldn't have it any other way.


One of the first albums I heard this year and it turned out to be a strong contender in this year's rundown. After the storming return that was 2022's Eyes Of Oblivion, Overdriver was a worthy follow-up from Nicke Andersson and his crew with Don't Let Me Bring You Down, Doomsday Daydreams and (I Don't Wanna Be) Just A Memory being worthy additions to the Hellacopters' impressive back catalogue.


Coming on like the Lambrini Girls gone lo-fi, Panic Shack back up their fierce polemic with a mischievous sense of humour to create a strong opening shot across the bows with songs like Girl Band Starter Pack, Gok Wan and We Need To Talk About Dennis packing the same sort of energy that their forebears X-Ray Spex once did. The sky very much does appear to be the limit for them on this evidence.


Sometimes the albums on this list come from unexpected places. Owing a nod to the likes of Lady Gaga and Florence and the Machine, this debut album from Jessica Winter is forty odd minutes of pure bubblegum disco-pop brilliance with a few unexpected twists and turns at its heart and a surprisingly deft knack for good songwriting. For a first effort, this is very impressive indeed.

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Creeper now appear to have embraced their love of bombastic goth-rock full on and Sanguivore II veers at times on being ridiculously overblown (some of the tracks such as Blood Magick almost sound like full-on '80s FM rock that belong on the Lost Boys soundtrack) but never loses your interest throughout. Proof that sometimes the old adage of "go big or go home" is pretty sound advice.


The return of McLusky to the fray could have gone either way to be honest but The World Is Still Here... can sit proudly beside the two albums they brought out in their original incarnation. Song titles such as Unpopular Parts of a Pig, Way Of The Exploding Dickhead and Kafkaesque Novelist Franz Kafka are proof positive that their decidedly off the wall approach is no less intriguingly weird than it was and the music stands up to match. Good to have you back lads.


A worthy follow-up to 2023's excellent Rapture album, Rats In Paradise is another collection of "older but not necessarily wiser" reflections from the wrong side of forty. Breeze remains a sharp-as-a-tack lyricist and the likes of Dating A Model, 1997 and We Were Lovers Redux are by turns humorous, poignant and heartbreaking, sometimes all in the same song. Good stuff.


The prospect of the internet's very own poet laureate Brian Bilston teaming up with veteran C86'ers the Catenary Wires (formerly Talulah Gosh and Heavenly) was definitely an odd one but somehow the DIY approach suits Bilston's poetry down to the ground and the defiant likes of Thou Shalt Not Commit Adulting, As I Grow Old I Will March Not Shuffle and especially 31 Rules For Midlife Rebellion show Bilston on top form here. You really should give this one a listen if you haven't already.


Bloody hell, did we need this more than we thought in 2025 or what? It's been a good seven or eight years since Chuck D and Flavor Flav last put a new album out but the rearing of the ugly politics of Trumpism saw them return to the fray in ferocious mood. They may acknowledge on Sexegenarian and Ageism that they're not getting any younger but the likes of What Eye Said have a fire in their bellies that would be impressive in a band half these guys' age. It's good to have them back.


If You Were To Kiss Me Now... sees former Rachel Stamp frontman David Ryder-Prangley properly nailing his sound on his third solo album. Taking the classic glam rhythms of the '70s and adding a bit of moodiness to them, from the bluesy stomp of Big Bad Wolf through the power pop of Jesus Christ Is Coming To Town to the more introspective musings of Let's Fall Apart Together Tonight and Falling Down To Earth From The Stars, this is a genuine triumph of an album.

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Hope you enjoyed today's rundown, tune back in tomorrow as we breach the Top 30.

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