I love an end of year list, so I’ve decided to round up some of my favourite music of 2025 and share it. I’d love to hear your favourites, so come and find me via the links to my social channels below and share your thoughts!
Albums of the year
1. I’m With Her – Wild and Clear and Blue
I totally fell in love with this record in a way I haven’t in ages. It works best as a complete journey so, if you can make time to listen to it from start to finish I’d really recommend it. My interview with Sara Watkins about the album was also a highlight of my year (and of the last 5 years of doing this podcast)
2. East Nash Grass – All God’s Children
Nobody else makes a sound quite like East Nash Grass. They sound ancient, current and timeless all at the same time and their groove is a thing of joy. I got to see them play for the first time at IBMA this year and it was fabulous (I also chatted to Maddie Denton about the record the morning after she became IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year…which was fun!)
3. Billy Strings & Bryan Sutton – Live at the Legion
I knew I was going to like this record but was totally unprepared for just how much! It’s a glorious thing – the playing, the singing, the chat….the playing! The version of Groundhog alone made me a bit teary at how possible it is for two humans to be so utterly, ridiculously proficient at a thing, yet never let that get in the way of communicating something joyful. Billy’s singing on this track is incredible. Just stunning from start to finish. (I didn’t get to interview them about this one but would have loved to!)
Instrumental albums of the year
Regular listeners to the podcast know I love an instrumental album and there have been some great ones in 2025.
1. Chris Thile – Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 2
This record is astonishing on every level. Chris takes Bach to new places, quite literally in the physical sense as these sessions were recorded in a studio, a park, a concert hall and a farm and movements cut between takes midway through. Thile also takes huge liberties with the music, but I mean that in an entirely positive way – ‘liberty’ means freedom and there’s an astonishing sense of freedom about these performances. It’s almost as though he wants to take Bach and ‘re-wild’ him into the modern world, so we can all hear this music as a part of daily life, not as some dusty period piece. Wonderful, life-affirming stuff.
2. Ben Garnett – Kite’s Keep
I love this album. The use of texture is amazing. Taking a core band of Brittany Haas and Ethan Jodziewicz, with guest appearances from Darol Anger, Paul Kowert and Chris Eldridge, Ben weaves a series of beautiful sonic worlds. I loved getting to chat with Ben about this record for the podcast back in September.
Check out my interview with Ben Garnett
3. Wes Corbett – Drift
Another wonderful record from Wes Corbett, following on from 2020’s fantastic ‘Cascade’. Wes makes great records, pure and simple. The tunes are great, the playing is superb and it just sounds damn good. What more do you need? If you do need any more reasons to listen to this one, they come in abundance in the form of guest appearances from Sierra Hull, Sam Bush, Tim O’Brien, Bryan Sutton, Jason Carter and many more. Love it.
Songs of the year
1. I’m With Her – Wild and Clear and Blue
To be honest, I could have picked any of the songs from this record, but I went with this beautiful homage to the songs that raised us. There’s a lovely nostalgia to this but it’s not just simple sentimentality. There’s a line that gets me every time:
“Breathin’ in the sand of the sagebrush
Tears cuttin’ lines across my face
Now the static is slowly replacing
The sounds of my childhood days”
It speaks so beautifully to how noisy life can get and how we sometimes feel we’ve lost that connection to who we were as kids, but how music can be the thing that reconnects us with ourselves.
Check out my interview with Sara Watkins about this record
2. Watchhouse – Glistening
Sometimes I need a song to lose myself in and this is one of those. It’s like stepping into water – it envelops you and takes the weight for a few minutes. Just beautiful.
3. Daniel Kimbro – Loyston
When I first heard Daniel’s album ‘Carpet in the Kitchen’ it was this song, amongst many fantastic songs, that first hooked me. It’s like a short story, as so many of my favourite songs are, up there with the best of Nanci Griffith or Steve Earle. It’s a song about change and nature and what we sometimes lose in order to gain something and I love it.