Nite Songs

  Okay, here we go, the Top 75 Albums of 2025 for Nite Songs starts here. This was originally going to be a Top 70 the same as last year until I realised I could fit fifteen labels into the box and, given there were a few that I thought were very unlucky to miss out on the list, I decided what the heck. So let's get this show on the road. *** 75.     THE WYTCHES - "Talking Machine" The obvious template for Brighton natives the Wytches is the early noughties fuzzed up vein of garage rock that gave us the likes of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club et al and  Talking Machine , their fifth album,   veers between scuzzy pedal-to-the-metal defiance and more mid-paced introspective moments. If there's a fault here, it's that it is a bit front-loaded with the latter tracks kind of losing fire a bit but at their best, the Wytches have got that sort of effortless low-slung cool about them that many aspire to but few can truly reach. *** 74. GOLEM DANCE CULT - "Shamanic Fault...

Okay, time for the big hitters - we did the first half of our Top 100 albums yesterday and now it's ten a day from now until the New Year. Settle down and let's see how the first part of our Top 50 unfolds, shall we?... *** 50. THE KUT - "Grit" Grit  saw the Kut deliver an album more than worthy of their commercial step up in the world, ironing out their old inconsistencies to deliver a well-rounded effort packing plenty of variety and some great tunes and hooks to boot from the driving riff of Not Here For Love  to the shameless power ballad of Satellite . The sound of a band very much arriving. *** 49. CINDY LAWSON - "New Tricks" Something of a local legend in her home state of Minnesota thanks to her '80s band the Clams, New Tricks  is an album that deserves to take Cindy Lawson to a wider audience. Mixing spiky pop-punk, Runaways style gang chants and even the odd bit of grunge and shoegazing for good measure, this is an album with its fingers in man...

  It's probably stating the bleedin' obvious that you never quite know what to expect with Ghost - having made their name as a surprisingly melodic goth-metal band, they've evolved a lot and had more ups and downs than your average rollercoaster in the last decade or so. While 2016's Meliora  was a disappointing effort which saw them trying to hitch a ride on the Kerrang/Metal Hammer bandwagon a bit too obviously and thus losing what it was that arguably made them special in the first place, 2018's Prequelle  was an unexpected return to form and arguably their strongest album to date meaning that Impera has quite a bit to live up to. Even allowing for the expectation though, hearing them slam into opener Kaisarion  which almost sounds like a riffed-up power-pop song (for some reason I can't quite get the image of '80s Swedish hair metallers Europe out of my head while listening to it!) is a bit of a surprise and the Foreigner style staccato piano on Spillway...