The best albums of 2025: Scotsman critic Fiona Shepherd names her top ten
From Jacob Alon’s beguiling debut to Saint Etienne’s impeccable swansong, these were the outstanding albums of the last 12 months, writes Fiona Shepherd
Stereolab: Instant Holograms on Metal Film (Duophonic UHF Disks/Warp) Beloved analogue synth stylists Stereolab return with their first new album in 15 years. Instant Holograms on Metal Film is a mouthful of a title for an album that is easy to digest, from the glorious, aqueous pop of Aerial Troubles, with its devotional intertwining voices, to the pastoral electronica of Immortal Hands, one of a number of tracks which unfolds over more than five minutes and several movements. They offer song titles to conjure with, too. Electrified Teenybop! is as fun as its name, all hectic bubblegum arpeggios with some disco kicks, while Esemplastic Creeping Eruption is not some death metal odyssey but a blithe pop number with shades of sci-fi shudder.
Say She She: Cut & Rewind (drink sum wtr) Brooklyn vocal trio Say She She (Nya Gazelle Brown, Sabrina Cunningham and Piya Malik) dispense more sheer sonic delight on third album Cut & Rewind with an audacious soul, funk and disco-influenced sound which makes ravishing use of individual, unison and harmony vocals. Afrofunk and spiritual jazz collide on Take It All while Shop Boy is a tasty slice of New York punk-funk in the Tom Tom Club style. Disco Life calls out Chicago’s racist and homophobic 1979 Disco Demolition, She Who Dares is a shimmering feminist treatise and Do All Things With Love takes it right up into the stratosphere with Minnie Ripertonesque whistle tones.
Faith Eliott: Dryas (Lost Map) Edinburgh-based singer/songwriter Faith Eliott is something special, following up debut album Impossible Bodies with another imaginative dive into science, nature and mythology. Dryas is a gorgeous, gentle, poignant and hopeful folk pop fantasia, where the elemental intersects with the digital. Eliott dives into apocalypse stories on snowglobe, weaves a sparse, gothic anthropomorphic yarn on thys creatur and presides beautifully over an ode of unrequited love from a hagfish to a giant isopod, where the needy meets the unavailable on the ocean floor.
Jacob Alon: In Limerence (Island/EMI) Dunfermline-born, Edinburgh-based singer/songwriter Jacob Alon demonstrates their ability to combine the sacred and profane on their beguiling debut album which explores the state of limerence – essentially being crazy in love/lust. Comparisons with Nick Drake and Jeff Buckley are not over-stretched. Alon possesses a bewitching, elastic voice accompanied by mesmeric acoustic picking and occasionally a sensation of brass or a martial drumbeat. The soft waltz of August Moon belies its poetic account of a violent attack while Sertraline is a delicate folk drone inspired by their anti-depressant medication.
Divine Comedy: Rainy Sunday Afternoon (Divine Comedy Records) Neil Hannon returns on top form with the first album by The Divine Comedy in six years. There are no particular curveballs on Rainy Sunday Afternoon, just an exquisite distillation of all that Hannon does best – torch song vocals, witty lyrics, earworm melodies and sumptuous arrangements. He recounts some domestic travails on the Bacharachesque title track, offers a study in lassitude on the Fifth Dimension easy listening vibes of The Man Who Turned Into A Chair, and there are also satirical barbs aimed at VIP meet-and-greet culture and gated privilege on I Want You and Mar-A-Lago By the Sea.
Lavinia Blackwall: The Making (The Barne Society) Trembling Bells frontwoman Lavinia Blackwall is a similarly bold stylist. Her latest solo album is a full folk band fiesta in the spirit of Pentangle and Steeleye Span with her own soaring vocal as the star instrument. Maggie Reilly of Moonlight Shadow fame guests on My Hopes Are All Mine, a bitter tale of inequality, themed round the creaky turning of the wheel of fortune. Laura J Martin adds ye olde recorder part to the folk fable Scarlett Fever, while Blackwall veers into plaintive baroque pop on We All Get Lost and lets loose her inner Kate Bush on the glam eccentricity of Morning To Remember.
C Duncan: It’s Only A Love Song (Bella Union) Chamber pop composer C Duncan continues to conjure sophisticated sonic rapture from his Helensburgh home studio – writing, arranging, playing most of the instruments and layering his heavenly tenor to transcendent choral effect. His fifth album, It’s Only A Love Song, is another ravishing affair, inspired by marital bliss but also by the loss of loved ones. The opening title track has a retro Top of the Pops feel, from the lyrical piano intro to the lavish strings, while Lucky Today is a Seventies reverie, with swooning backing vocals intimating the bliss of romantic satisfaction.
Rebecca Vasmant: Who We Are Becoming (New Soil) Glasgow jazz maven Rebecca Vasmant’s second album may be home-recorded, but that doesn’t mean lo-fi. This is a sumptuous, silky suite with breathy vocal incantations, percussive shimmers and brooding brass from a Who’s Who of the grassroots jazz scene, including singers Emilie Boyd, kitti, Terra Kin, Paix and Gaia Jeannot, drummer Graham Costello and saxophonist Harry Weir. This time it’s extra personal for Vasmant, who adds her own spoken word to Mother Earth and Poem for My Grandparents, both Holocaust survivors who have inspired her own prayer of gratitude and defiance.
Little Simz: Lotus (AWAL) Mercury Prize-winning rapper and Top Boy star Little Simz experiments with her vocals in the laidback and airy setting of her sixth album. Lotus is a social gathering as much as an introspective affair with exquisite contributions from guests including her London peers Michael Kiwanuka, Sampha and rapper Wretch 32. Simz sounds initially soft but insistent on Thief, but a latent anger erupts with stridency over atmospheric twanging guitar backing. She maintains a whispery flow on Flood, accompanied by the patter of tom drums, and satirises a privileged trustafarian character on Young before unleashing a punky chorus in the impish style of The Streets.
Saint Etienne: International (Heavenly) Saint Etienne go out in impeccable style with what will be their final album, International. Members of the Chemical Brothers and Doves join in on the bittersweet sampledelic pop of Glad, and Confidence Man’s Janet Planet is the perfect partner on the pure pop of Brand New Me. Shimmering dance track Dancing Heart radiates Kylie vibes, while the airy rave of Take Me to the Pilot is not to be confused with the Elton John song of the same name.
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