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Benefits by Tom White
As 2025 draws to a close, take a look back with Live4ever at some of our favourite albums from the past twelve months.
Benefits – Constant Noise
Such a stylistic turnaround shows a prodigious talent at work, and while Benefits had mastered textbook anger, their ability to channel it into something deeply moving and musically experimental while retaining their essence makes Constant Noise an essential listen.
Emma-Jean Thackray – Weirdo
Ostensibly seen as a modern jazz powerhouse, on Weirdo Emma-Jean Thackray has explored a variety of genres to confront the immense grief of her partner’s passing in 2023 and create an undeniably powerful piece of music which she’s credited with, ‘saving my life’.
bdrmm – Microtonic
Microtonic closes with The Noose, a resigned draw of breath as bdrmm view the world around them with the weight of it on their shoulders, yet the smattering of uplifting keys convey a modicum of hope of better times to come.
Snapped Ankles – Hard Times Furious Dancing
Nor does Hard Times Furious Dancing sound much like The Fall (think instead of a more charged Das Koolies or I Like Trains), but there the promise of liberation through dancing is always hard to resist, as are the album’s fascinating sub plots.
Doves – Constellations For The Lonely
As with all Doves albums, Constellations For The Lonely reveals something new on each listen, but the overwhelming message is that this is a band strengthened and emboldened by hardship, ready to face the world, as ever, on their own terms.
Sam Akpro – Evenfall
There’s intent evident, even if Sam Akpro lacks the ego to determine it as ambition. Moreover, this is a record anchored in the South London communities he’s called home, especially the now hipsterfied borough of Peckham.
Billy Nomates – Metalhorse
The punky grit remains, grounding even the album’s grandest moments in something real. Equal parts fist-pumping and tear-jerking, Metalhorse is Billy Nomates’ most expansive and confident work yet. A triumph over adversity, she hasn’t just survived the carnival, she has become its star act.
Olivia Dean – The Art Of Loving
Olivia Dean sings of the hardship of putting your faith in the wrong person; she thought she was secure in this relationship yet found herself let down (‘If you knew me at all, you wouldn’t try to keep me small’). It’s moving and poignant, and will be sure to pull at the heart strings of anyone who’s ever experienced heartbreak.
Viagra Boys – Viagr Aboys
Viagr Aboys might not convince you about Viagra Boys, its nasty in-jokes knowingly tossed like fireworks in an oven, but there are a gazillion safe bands out there happy to take your uncurious dollar – and all they’ll make you is boring.
CMAT – EURO-COUNTRY
These were not places even 5 years ago that pop most likely would have chosen not to go to, but this is one of the few remaining places the establishment doesn’t write the rules. New stardom though means that CMAT can just split from the whole fucking programme, and with EURO-COUNTRY she’s made a brilliant, thought provoking, relatable album which should deservedly hand her the keys to celebrity, whatever she wants that to mean.
For Those I Love – Carving The Stone
David Balfe has reinvented For Those I Love as a vehicle for stories and soundscapes, the only way in which his first album could ever be followed up. Carving The Stone presents in this limbo more resignation than resolution, because answers are impossible to find when the questions are too blurred to read off a phone screen at 3am. As brutally original and compelling as what came before, it’s a brilliant twin to a brilliant, non-identical twin.
Upchuck – I’m Nice Now
It used to be the accepted wisdom: that everybody counts, or no-one does. Now, perversely nobody it seems feels everyone counts. Upchuck have distilled, negated the rage they feel at what’s around them, and on I’m Nice Now have brewed up a vital antidote to our punch-drunk existence. You may feel sick for a time, but then it all comes out and you’ll feel better.
Sprints – All That Is Over
Karla Chubb said she couldn’t give less of a fuck, but not about her art, about the songs which make Sprints one of the must hear Irish bands from a long line of must hear Irish bands. All That Is Over is very much only the beginning.
Baxter Dury – Allbarone
Paul Epworth’s production strips away the warmth and replaces it with neon, resulting in a sleek but not sterile piece of work; Dury’s jagged humour still cuts through every track, only now refracted like light through a prism. There’s a risk in moving this far toward futurist electro-pop, but Dury sounds energised while still sneering at Shoreditch loafers and middle-class gangsters. The walls of Baxter Dury’s house may have had a lick of paint, but the foundations remain.
Ethel Cain – Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You
Knowing Cain’s talent for world building and the requests from fans to expand the Ethel and Willoughby narrative, it seems only natural that a prequel would come in time. The opening track Janie provides perspective from Ethel’s best friend; Janie realises that Ethel has a new connection with Willoughby that she can’t provide and recounts the heartbreak of losing a friend: “I know she’s your girl now, but she was my girl first.
Brògeal – Tuesday Paper Club
The finale though is something else again. Like a demented Celtic soundtrack to High Noon, Lonesome Boatman ushers itself in with an air of foreboding only to tin-whistle itself into a shit-losing frenzy that will send pints flying like rain and cement your new found best mates in sweat, smiles and shouts for more. They say never get fooled twice. Brògeal are flogging this wonderful, riotous, romantic Stramash because they want to, out of love.
Water From Your Eyes – It’s a Beautiful Place
All things change, and although Water From Your Eyes have seldom been capable of not jolting their listeners in the past, with In A Beautiful Place they’ve curbed these tendencies whilst still reinventing themselves times over again mid-record. Your T Rex will love it.
Daniel Avery – Tremor
On it, Daniel Avery has inspired and been inspired by the people he worked with, reshaping his music in the process and channelling the diverse threads and inclusivity of thought which many forms in this arc are in serious danger of forsaking. In his own way it just confirms once more that he’s a superstar – but he’s also a DJ.
