Nite Songs Top 75 Albums of 2025 - Part 7 (The Top Ten!)
Here we are at the final frontier then. Read on to see what the cream of the musical crop has been this year at Nite Songs Towers...
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It's been good to see Evil Scarecrow creaking back into action in recent years and Silicon Tea shows that they're certainly no less silly than they were first time around, making the new Ghost album seem a bit...well, half-arsed in the process to be honest. Veering from the '90s pop-punk pastiche of Green Bin Day (see what they did there?) through the thrashy riffs of Master of the Dojo to the none-more-cheesy '80s rockout of The Future Machine, this is the sound of a band who could have been on their last legs following recent membership changes making their comeback in fine style.
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9. DANKO JONES - "Leo Rising"
Similar to the Darkness who we mentioned yesterday, Danko Jones' new album saw a band who a few of us feared maybe now had their best days a while behind them give themselves a much needed shot in the arm and turn something out which could have easily sat alongside their imperial years material. Reining things in to reclaim the tightness and killer riffs that informed the DJ3's best work, songs like Diamond In The Rough and Every Day Is Saturday Night is the sound of the fire in this group's bellies being well and truly rekindled. This might just be their best album for years and shows that they're anything but a spent force.
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8. JIM BOB - "Automatic"/"Stick"
Okay so technically we know this is two albums but they deserve to be grouped together. Jim Bob's decision to release two albums at once saw him taking a more reflective look at things on Automatic (picks - Danny From Nowhere and Can You Hear Us At The Back Of The Hall?) and a more angry punked-up approach on Stick (picks - I Will Still Be Here, Every Day's A Discotheque). Mixing the usual colours of despair and hope in way that Jim seems to do particularly well, this is another two very worthy additions to the guy's extensive back catalogue and both of them deserve your attention.
Quite honestly, groups that have been around as long as the Chameleons (and been in the musical wilderness for a fair bit of their recent history) should not by rights be making albums as good as Arctic Moon. Even though it only covers seven tracks in it 43 minutes, the key is that you don't feel short changed with the epic likes of Feels Like The End Of The World and David Bowie Takes My Hand showing the sort of inventiveness and energy that would be impressive in a band half this lot's age. Comeback of the year? It's certainly up there.
Ming City Rockers have been hanging around as an upper mid-table punk group for a while now but Clementine, their fourth album, sees them well and truly raising their game to thrilling effect. A feral howl of despair at the futility of everyday nine-to-five existence, the likes of I'd Like To Assist You But My Head's Too Small, Oh My God and I Wanna Find A Way So I Don't Feel Like Me Ever Again are the sound of a band well and truly hitting their stride after a few near misses. Give it a listen and let's get this band up to where they deserve to be.
The return of Eureka Machines from the wilderness was one of the more welcome musical events of 2025 and Everything might just be their strongest album since Remain In Hope over a decade ago. Chris Catalyst remains a man with a keen eye for a prescient lyric as evidenced on Back In The Back of Beyond and Canaries In The Coalmine while the big production allows this group to really shine through in terms of their sound. Good to have them back again and hopefully it'll be for the long term - in the meantime, go and get a copy of this album pronto if you know what's good for you.
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Blood Ties is exactly the sort of album you want Ricky Warwick to be making - big, bold and chock full of meaty riffs and inspirations drawing from every stage of his long career. With a guestlist including the likes of Lita Ford and Billy Duffy, this is hook-laden rock 'n' roll which wears its heart proudly on its sleeve as proven by the likes of Angels of Desolation, The Crickets Stayed In Clovis and The Hell of Me and You. He may have been in this game for well over three decades now but there's no sign of Warwick slowing down and on this evidence, long may it be so.
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3. BLACK SPIDERS - "Cvrses"
Think riffs. Think hooks. Think choruses to die for. Think the record that the new Wildhearts album should have been. Cvrses is the album that Black Spiders have always threatened to make and sees them properly upping their game. Packing tune after tune that practically invites you to bang your head until your neck snaps (Never Enough, Sorry Not Sorry, Up All Night) along with the odd detour into darker waters to keep things interesting (Dia de Muertos), this is the sound of these sons of Sheffield properly establishing themselves in Britrock's premier league. Essential listening for those who like good straightforward rock music - in fact it might just be one of the best Britrock albums of the decade so far.
When I was growing up thirty years ago in Bradford there used to be a bit of a joke among me and my mates that when someone asked you the age-old question of who you preferred out of Oasis (Lancastrians) and Blur (southerners) that the only acceptable response as a Yorkshire Britpop fan was "dunno mate...I bloody love Pulp though." And as More showed, all these years later, that sentiment still stands. More could have gone either way - let's be honest, there's plenty of Pulp's one time compatriots from Britpop who've attempted comebacks in recent years only to only offer pale echoes of what once was but this album is anything but, reconfirming everything that made Jarvis and co such a great band to begin with and building on thirty years of added learning from the none-more-Cocker every day observations of Tina and Farmers Market to the panic attack psychosis of Grown Ups. Best of all though is Got To Have Love, a huge slow-building five minute epic which, as anyone who saw them on tour this year will know, is up there with their best known stuff in terms of a live singalong. For once, a comeback that was every bit as good as you'd dared hope it would be.
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And there we have it. Thanks again for tuning in for our annual trawl through the past twelve months and we hope you all have a top New Year's Eve tonight. Same time same place next year then?...
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