Top 10 Albums of 2025: Uncle Jeff

Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter – Forever, I’ve Been Being Born (Southern Lord) Sweet return from dusky voiced Jesse Sykes, featuring swirly psychedelic & atmospheric guitar from Phil Wandscher. It’s a beautiful and moody waltz thru genre-bending experimental Americana pastures.

Cameron Knowler – CRK (Worried Songs) This young guitarist breaks the staid boundaries of modern acoustic guitar, with warm memorable melodies that mine what has come before, with a fresh inventive spin.

Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives – Space Junk (Snakefarm Records) This is the best Western Surf record in years! Marty Stuart has crafted a loving paean to the saguaro inhabited spaghetti western/surfboard strewn landscape of the Byrds meeting Duane Eddy & The Belairs in a twangy galaxy far away…

Florry – Sounds Like… (Dear Life Records) Super-tasty mix of ragged female harmonies in a Crazy Horse meets MJ Lenderman rock stew. There is some really great songwriting on this LP that sticks in your head from start to finish. I probably listened to this the most of any release this year.

Jake Xerexes Fussell & James Elkington – Rebuilding (Fat Possum Records) Beguiling soundtrack to a movie I have not seen yet, but the melodic pedal steel/guitar songs on this release have already told me what it’s about. This is a real find for lovers of instrumental theme scores from musicians like Gustavo Santaolalla (The Last of Us, Brokeback Mountain) and Richmond Fontaine (Don’t Skip out on Me).

Grateful Dead – Blues for Allah The Angel’s Share (Rhino) it’s been 50 years since this first came out. I still think this was the best of the Grateful Dead’s experimental growth & musicianship, and with this excellent compilation of outtakes and live performances, you can hear just how much work went into it. Jerry Garcia was at his pinnacle of guitar playing & the time signatures and merger of jazz, with new and adventurous song construction, was something to behold. The live “soundcheck” from the Great American Music Hall in SF (8/12/1975) is worth the price of admission alone, with wonderful remastering and illustrative outtakes of how some of this happened. “Under eternity, under eternity…”

Go Kurosawa – Soft Shakes (Guruguru Brain) Nice soft and breezy solo record from the main man behind Kikagaku Moyo. The Brazilian influences rise to the forefront, with the fine krauty pastoral psych you’d come to expect 🙂

Jeff Tweedy -Twilight Override (dBpm) Arguably there was too much to digest in this three LP set, but the rewards are great with multiple listens. Songs like ‘This Is How It Ends’ & ‘Feel Free’ are some of the best in Jeff’s long and winding career. Looking forward to seeing this played live down in Tucson in March.

Urban Meditation -Headspace (Carpe Sonum) Speaking of a lot to digest, Charles Urban’s five CD set (featuring Si Matthews) took a while to process, but when I got to it I cursed that I’d waited so long… This is classic IDM featuring fantastic melodic excursions in the ‘FAX meets Selected Ambient Works’ era Aphex having a BBQ in Tangerine Dream’s backyard. Check out the lush ‘Into the Void’ drifting into ‘Dreaming of the Stars’ on CD II of this expansive box set. Highly recommended!

Buckingham Nicks – Before the Glitter Faded (Rare Demos 1973-1974)(Dear Boss Records) – Amazingly fresh, and unknown to collectors, I picked this bootleg up at the Record Show in Denver. Most of the magic is in how well the two interplay together. They were obviously in love, and in love with the sound they’d found. A few of these demos surfaced on the eponymous Buckingham Nicks Polydor release (pre-Fleetwood Mac) but most of these songs were abandoned as the lure of fame & powder glossed over these two, polishing them into a shiny LA sheen. Fun stuff!