Nite Songs Top 75 Albums of 2025 - Part 5 (30-21)
We're well into the top half of our albums of the year list now
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30. THE DIVINE COMEDY - "Rainy Sunday Afternoon"
Neil Hannon's first album in six years and it sees him in a more reflective mood in keeping with the times. Yet even in his more downbeat moments, the guy's skill as a songwriter can't help but shine through from the political anger of Mar-a-Lago By The Sea to the poignant The Last Time I Saw The Old Man and Invisible Thread. The sound of a master of his craft at work.
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Honestly, I'd completely missed Du Blonde prior to this year but having been introduced to their work via Sniff More Gritty, I'm definitely going to check some of the back catalogue out. Mixing icy electro with a snotty punk anger, the likes of Dollar Coffee and Solitary Individual are angry diatribes on the superficiality of 21st century life. A confident blast of an album which is well worth a listen.
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There's an endearingly ramshackle DIY feel to this new effort from indie veterans Comet Gain - a band who slipped off my radar some time in the mid-'90s. With spoken word interludes breaking the songs up, there's a real wistful quality to the likes of The Ballad Of The Lives We Led and Danbury Road which show David Christian's skill as a songwriter. A great comeback when we least expected it which, if there's any justice, should hopefully start a new wave of interest in this very underrated band.
Tipped as ones to watch for a while now, Who Let The Dogs Out? sees the Lambrini Girls put their gigging experience to good use and deliver a hell of an accomplished debut album. Mixing furious political polemic with a sly sense of humour, songs like Bad Apple, Big Dick Energy and C**tology 101 are that most rare of things in that they fill you with righteous anger while putting a smile on your face at the same time. It feels like a matter of when, rather than if, they go on to bigger things on this evidence.
There's really no way that bands like Cheap Trick should be producing albums this good a full half century into their careers but All Washed Up represents another excellent latter-day effort from messrs Zander and Nielsen with the soaring likes of Twelve Gates and the appropriately titled The Riff That Won't Quit being the sort of things you can see them easily slipping into the live set without them being overshadowed by their better known counterparts. Great stuff.
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25. THE LEN PRICE 3 - "Misty Medway Magick"
The Len Price 3 remain one of British music's great secrets although on the evidence of great albums like Misty Medway Magick, it's difficult to escape the feeling that they should be so much more if this was a fair world. Sure, this tightwire garage rock (Margate Sand, Arthur's Whirlwind, You've Changed) with the odd foray into gentle psychedelia (She Brings The Morning, the title track) is nothing you won't have heard before but the truth is that these guys are simply damn good at it. If you're still unlucky enough to be unaware of this band, you really need to put that right asap.
It says a lot about the quality of the Lovely Eggs that even when they put out an odds 'n' sods album comprising of songs that didn't make the cut for their last few releases, it still knocks the spots off a lot of the competition for this year. The spiteful energy underpinning The Grind and album highlight (You've Been A) Shit To Me is the sound of this band writ large but the key is that this in no way sounds like a cast-offs album and all of the 15 tracks on here could comfortably hold their own on the Lovely Eggs' rightly celebrated other albums.
It's rare that you'll get a group who can aim full tilt for that Big Rock Sound without sounding overly indulgent or retro but Star Circus are definitely such a group. Throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the mix here, the key is that they're a group with an undeniable ear for a catchy riff and a hook that won't leave your brain for days and the likes of Over And Over, One Hit Wonder and Two Odds Make An Even have the sort of energy that a lot of the also-rans in the British rock scene would sell their last Led Zep album for. This really could be the start of something big for them.
Another group who I've sort of encountered in passing a few times in the past without properly giving them a listen and ended up kicking myself this year on finally doing so. If you had Pete Bentham and the Dinnerladies down as a comedy punk group, Art, Religion & Chocolate Biscuits proves that they're actually so much more than that - yes, the likes of Punks Don't Jam, Stand By Your Nan and Is There Life In Rhyl? will almost raise a smile but at the other end of the scale, the gentle dreamy psychedelia of Mermaids In The Mersey shows that there's a lot more depth to this band than may be apparent on first sight. Again, a group you need to introduce yourself to pronto if you're unaware of them at the moment.
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With Metalhorse, Billy Nomates (aka Tor Maries) has served up her strongest offering to date. Evolving from the sparse electro-punk of their earlier efforts, there's a pessimism hanging over the likes of Nothin Worth Winnin and Moon Explodes yet Metalhorse somehow manages to come across as a rousing and uplifting album which shows real artistic growth and leaves you with the impression that three albums in, she's just getting started on showing us what she can do.
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And thus concludes today's section of the countdown. Tune in tomorrow as we head into the Top 20.
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