Steven Hyden’s Favorite Music Of January 2025

Every month, Uproxx cultural critic Steven Hyden makes an unranked list of his favorite music-related items released during this period — songs, albums, books, films, you name it.

1. Ethel Cain, Perverts

The record is aptly named — it will sound to more pop-inclined ears like the most perverse project put out by a budding star in quite some time. The songs, often, barely sound like songs at all, but rather 10-plus-minute blocks of noise and doom-y room tones with only ghostly snatches of threadbare melodies hovering in and out of the blurry morass. It feels less like a proper album (or EP) than an act of public insouciance, akin to an ear-splitting squall of feedback you unleash on an unsuspecting audience when you want 80 percent of them to leave. Depending on your perspective, that will either register as a devastating criticism or the highest praise imaginable. I, for one, lean toward the latter.

2. Destroyer, “Bolonga”

Whatever else you want to say about Dan Bejar, the man is a genius at naming things. Take “Bolonga,” the first single from his forthcoming album, Dan’s Boogie. “Bolonga”? Dan’s Boogie? Putting titles on songs and albums simply does not get any better than that. As for the song itself, “Bolonga” has the same louche swagger than long-time listeners will recognize from 2011’s landmark Kaputt, with the nocturnal vibe of Bejar’s more recent electronic albums. It is, in other words, great.

3. FKA twigs, EUSEXUA

Speaking of naming things, I’m afraid I must report a crime against album titles with EUSEXUA. It’s awkward to pronounce, and it makes talking about this record with the seriousness it deserves feel vaguely silly. Having said that: This is the club-friendly art-pop album of 2025. For those of us who wished that Brat summer had more of a Kate Bush vibe, this music is for you.

4. Craig Finn, “People Of Substance”

My friend and podcast co-host Ian Cohen often talks about being suspicious of certain music because it seems a little too catered to his own interests. I, on the other hand, have no problem embracing songs that might as well have been designed by an algorithm programmed to satisfy me. So, for instance, if you give me a Craig Finn song that is produced by Adam Granduciel, and you have the entire War On Drugs band backing him, and the final product sounds like a cross between A Deeper Understanding and the version of “When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky” where Dylan is backed up by three members of The E Street Band, I’m all in, baby.

5. Rose City Band, Sol Y Sombra

This is the fifth Rose City Band record. I have all the others, and I really like them all. I also can’t tell them apart. This band does one thing — breezy, indie-accented jamband music — and they do it extremely well. My only complaint is on seasonal grounds: The patio at my house is currently closed until (at the earliest) late March, and Sol Y Sombra demands to be heard outside.

6. Silver Synthetic, “Yr Gonna Be Happy”

More patio music, and more “extremely my thing” material. I was a fan of this band’s self-titled LP from 2021, which set out to choogle as hard as possible but in a slightly stoned, sitting-in-a-comfortable-lawn-chair kind of way. It sounds like they have doubled down on the approach on this song from the forthcoming Rosalie, which resembles the Rolling Stones’ early seventies country-rock era if Mick and Keith had invited Jerry Garcia to sit in on pedal steel.

7. The Tubs, “Narcissist”

This London band’s 2023 debut Dead Meat made my Top 10 list that year, so I am definitely interested in the upcoming follow-up, Cotton Crown, due in March. The early songs released from the record indicate that they haven’t shaken up their formula, which is zippy punk-rock with a distinct British folk flavor, akin to Richard Thompson-influenced music that Bob Mould made after Hüsker Dü. If that comparison means anything to you, I assume you are already rushing to pre-order this album.

8. Cameron Winter, Heavy Metal

I have defended putting out year-end lists at the beginning (rather than the end) of December, and I’ll stand by that position. However, it’s inevitable that albums released at the end of the year sometimes miss out unfairly. This is the first of two mid-December releases I will highlight now in this column. I’m a fan of Winter’s band Geese, whose 2023 album 3D Country is one of the wilder and most fascinating indie rock records of the past few years. As a solo artist, however, Winter pivots from the jammy, muscular funk-rock of his usual band. Instead, Heavy Metal is a theatrical, convoluted, and totally idiosyncratic singer-songwriter album. If he hadn’t already used the title 3D Country, it would have been possibly more apt here.

9. The National, Rome

This is the second mid-December 2024 release that I’m shouting out later rather than sooner. Is this the most satisfying National album in a decade? If you belong in the “I just wish they would rock again on record” camp, then the answer is a resounding yes. If nothing else, this is the first time that Bryan Devendorf — one of modern indie’s greatest, and frequently under-utilized, drummers — has been fully unleashed on record. And he dominates like Neil Peart on All The World’s A Stage, particularly on unearthed deep cuts like “Murder Me Rachael” that positively explode out of the speakers. More of this on the next studio record, please!