Albums of the Year: Emma Wilkes & Sean Adams Pick Their Standouts

0:012025 is coming to an end and that means listing season is here so we get to share our favourite records of the year in this episode of the Drowning Sound podcast because they're not the best, they're just our favourite and they might be the best in our hearts but in your mind you might disagree and that's the joy of music.

0:32This episode is presented in partnership with Cobuzz, the independently owned streaming platform designed for music enthusiasts, where you can rediscover music. Head to DrowningSound.org forward slash playlist to hear songs from all the artists on this show, some of my favourite tracks of the year, and get a free trial to Cobuzz. I will tell you a little bit more about the platform halfway through this episode, and there's a link to a special offer in the description of this show. My co-host today is Emma Wilkes, Drowning Sounds newsletter writer and a journalist who writes for Kerrang! All sorts of other music publications which we get into in this episode.

1:06This episode was recorded just before Christmas at Shaw Studios. And I think if you finish this episode without finding at least one new record to go check out, I will be very concerned for you because we are very excited about a few records. And we talk about some of the most talked about records of the year. this is the Drowning Sound podcast I will be back with a bit more information in the middle and the end of the show speak to you soon

1:38If Hayley Williams hasn't made the album of the year who has? I do have an answer to this but I also think Hayley Williams as album of the year is a very very good answer and I'm very excited about literally just having the promo code through to try and battle the masses to get a ticket for her tour. But my personal album of the year was from a band. I've got no idea how many people here have heard of them. If this is the first you're hearing of them, then hopefully you can get it on nicely quickly. An Atlanta mathcore band, mathcore-ish, called the Callous Dow Boys. They had an album out called I Don't Want to See You in Heaven earlier this year.

2:18And I think I might have mentioned mathcore and that's kind of where, that's kind of where their roots are, but they've grown a lot and they've come to encompass much more. Like twiddly, twiddly, twiddly. Twiddly, twiddly, weird time signatures. The time signature is yes. And screw you this. You have to do the maths to work out what's coming next. But also I always thought, I mean, I thought that was what it was but I always thought, I always interpreted it as it was just being like silly time signatures because it's like numbers and stuff. That's kind of what I thought it was. Ever clever. Yeah, no, like I don't want to see you in heaven.

2:48Like it goes to so many different places. it has like some of their it might be a cliche for bands to say we've gone heavier but more melodic but they actually have. There's some incredibly catchy bits, there's even like a little bit of like groove a bit of even I think new metal I think when a member of Limp Bizkit died a few weeks ago I remember their vocalist Carson saying that without Limp Bizkit there wouldn't be the Callous Dowboys but they crib from all over the place. It's one of those heavy records that is obviously that's got depth to it. And it's obviously like personal because I think it deals a lot with him sort of struggling to be accepted, especially like struggling to be accepted as a musician from people around him.

3:34But, you know, it's one of those heavy albums that's also just really fun. And I think there's definitely a huge place for that. So I'm going to interrupt you because you're talking 100 miles an hour. I have just had a coffee. Your passionate infection, infectious passion. passionate infection is something that our readers and listeners and viewers um it's funny there's three mediums isn't it um but they don't know who you are emma so you're emma wilkes you're the writer drowning sounds newsletter and you are a very much a specialist in rock and metal i very much am i deal with i i um that is kind of my uh that is my home turf i do sort of branch outside of it here and there and i'll try different things but things of genuinely of a crunchy guitar based variety are kind of my my sorts of things but in within that realm i try and be as much of an all-rounder as possible like there's a lot of metal i listen to punk alternative rock i mean a bit of an emo at heart um and i start like massively into what's going on with hardcore at the moment and then actually that circles back to what i was about to say beforehand that i actually think there's just a huge place for heavy movers that's just genuinely fun like obviously it's great to have things that sound absolutely disgusting and just make you want to batter the person next to you but there is actually i think the current iteration of hardcore being so successful i think there's actually a real joy in that that sometimes kind of leaks into other sort of element like head styles of heavy music as well the stuff that actually just makes you want to run through walls and go yeah and punch the air and run around and feel like free and alive etc i think there's a massive place for that and i think there's definitely there's definitely moments on that dow boys record um and i think they're really really getting to a special place i mean i've seen them alive a few times um most recently at the fighting cox in kingston and that was the first time i've actually been to that venue and that is a great venue shouts out the fighting cox and i've never been to actually is i guess kingston doesn't always feel like london so i don't ever yeah it does i think i asked i asked somebody when i was there is Kingston, London or Surrey.

5:40I've heard people say one or the other or both. And someone went, we've got so many buses here. I think it counts as London. It's just inside the M25, I think, so it probably counts. Anyway, that's a small detail. Yes. That's like a small grassroots venue, isn't it? Oh, yeah. No, it's pretty small, very punky. It was a bit of a mission for me to get to, but I did not care because I just really wanted to see them live and hear the new songs live. And whereabouts are the band from? They are from Atlanta, Georgia. Oh, yeah. And the atmosphere in there. Everyone was just loving it. There was, I mean, there was such joy in it.

6:12There was such camaraderie as well. I think I've worn, actually, I think I'm pretty sure I've worn one of their shirts. That's the green shirt I have that I have worn in meetings sometimes. But I think they're doing really, really special things. I think it's, and. But have they made the album of the year? In my opinion, yes. And I've been of that, and I've been of that opinion for quite a while. That album came out in May. I first heard it in February, as I did a Koran cover with them. and that was an absolute pleasure um you know the the small business of being the person that writes cover features for crying literally my dream when i was 14.

6:49it's so funny though the amount of conversations i have with people around about about karen because then people will go well so what is it you do and i'm like well i'm a journalist what sort of journalism music journalism where do you write for well then i have conversations about this and people are oh i read it when i was a teenager i used to collect all the posters and i go into promo mode and go we still still exists and we have a digital cover every wednesday and print magazines from time to time as well so um that's i feel like i'm i'm in part i'm part of kerrang hype woman but i'm as a freelancer i wear many hats including including this one here in the studio now the reason i wanted to ask you about your favorites of the year because i don't really believe in best and top albums and i think that's always been a bit of a i think i really like the drannan sounds always just shared its favorite albums of the year like just kind of like even our polling of our staff it wasn't the records that got the most votes that topped our lists like i often editorialized like our hip-hop editors choice would often make the top 10 yeah because i knew that they knew what they were talking about and if a couple of other writers were into it it didn't need to get 15 votes to be in the list and a few times there's just been like the core staff that have written maybe like 60 % of the site and I've taken their number ones a bit more seriously than someone that's maybe written one thing that year and so it was like controlled democracy not quite a dictatorship but like yeah not quite the first past the post system we've got in British politics that's a flawed system anyway but um it makes a lot of sense though because that's the thing like you'd have to there's so many albums out there as we were saying and then everybody sort of tends to lean more towards certain genres there are some genres that you're instantly going to sort of be attracted to there's some of those you might not listen to as much there's some of them you might not even like as much like you know if like well no no or necessarily know what what would what would stand out as a good album versus a bad album but i suppose everyone can have a sort of a scope of that to it to a degree like even i've reviewed i've reviewed hip-hop records every so often that's not something i don't know i wouldn't i remember i I reviewed a Denzel Curry album once because I think he gets covered in Kerrang a bit.

8:56And even though it wasn't like my usual wheelhouse, I still think it was the album. It wasn't his last album. It was the one before that. It was called Melt My Eyes, See Your Future. And I still very much enjoy that. I really enjoyed the new Batwash album this year as well. So it is very much in that sort of world and kind of came from an industrial background. But her new album is much more hip hop. That's like alternative hip hop that I kind of managed to learn. I love when industrial artists switch genres because they bring all that weight to like a whole different Sonic palette. Yeah. Like on the flip side, like Joe from the Icarus Line has made loads of really like beat forward records.

9:34And he's got that like howling, like Iggy Pop, Sonic Youth kind of thing to it. Oh, I can see that working. But with these like thick beats. Yeah. But those cultures like borrow from each other so much, like especially in like modern times when you'll find people moshing as much as they do it. at hip-hop shows as much as they do at rock shows like brockhampton like change the mold didn't they i mean even if you're going to see if you're going to see like run the jewels or rico nastia or something like that you will get that and you will get that kind of vibe going on and there is quite a bit of crossover like you'll see jpeg naffia playing at outbreak festival for example because there's loads of crossover there um but no as as for as for what i asked for what i was saying no i think it wasn't it wasn't in my top 10 but that backwash album it's called only dust remains and it came out in march yeah really really got on with that i was actually just listening to it again i was literally just listening to it again the other day and it's also just heavy as well because she's obviously she's had a um she's had quite like she's had quite the life um she's grew like growing up in growing up in zambia moved to canada coming out as transgender when she was 25 had a lot of issues with addiction along the way as well um but there's a lot of story in that oh there is a lot there is there is a lot of story in there then she just kind of go i think she had it she had a trilogy of albums and this new album it's the first album she's made outside that trilogy she didn't write music for ages i mean she usually has quite small gaps between her albums but this one was a bit different um she took a little bit longer with it um but no that was whilst we're talking about artists that have changed their sounds somewhat one of my favorite records this year was catherine drayseff's record it's called we were made prey and she previously was a bit more sort of gothy joanna newsome like really kind of widescreen big like bleak folk songs um and just like some of the most moving music i've ever heard wow and this new record the sonic palette is full of synths and drum machines like there's some piano and her voice is still extraordinary but it's really interesting to me to hear an artist that's maybe come from more traditional sounds even though her music didn't fit a lot of those molds um just like really expand their palette and i guess similarly the new fk twigs record just felt like a dance record yeah it wasn't like magdalene was one of my favorite records of all time and then this new record is just like this propulsive dance record yeah it's extraordinary like it's kind of still got all the like glistening shattered kind of feelings that you get in her music but i really really love you sexual and at the time of recording i haven't heard you sexual afterglow which is like the second part of the record which is coming out for the end of the year um but yeah i think like another artist that really shifted their sound this year was ethel kane with perverts oh i did listen to that funnily enough i was actually is listening to i was listening to some of the songs from preacher's daughter on i was on my way here i've not heard her new one yet but i did listen to perverts just to see what that was like i just kind of struggled to sit through that one a bit because i was like okay this is testing me not in it's not like so some music that really does just break your brain and that can be really really cool and i'm very here for that but it was breaking my brain i was like i absolutely adored it i got proper obsessed with it it's a record that's almost like a drone record yeah it's like a lot of the songs sort of feel like i don't know if you've been in scandinavia and winter no i've never been to scandinavia but i'd love to go so the sun doesn't really come up yeah like it gets light but then you're like the sun's gonna rise and it just goes down again yeah and the record feels like that it's like it's all submerged in the darkness and like ethel kane i guess is probably better known for stuff that's a bit more kind of larnery and a bit more kind of big voiced songwriters a little bit but she can do so much and i massively respect her intentions for creating a project like perfect she's like i just like drone music here is something that does not an album fair play to her but there's already so much that she does like the variety of things that i've heard that i've heard her do i i'm gonna have to listen to the new one when i'm on the way home but like even listening to a song like american teenager next to a song like tolomare i think tolomare is probably my favorite ethel cain song which maybe which might not surprise you because i mean it's quite chelsea wolf like and i'm very here for that it's the sheer range of what she is able to do well actually also making it cohesive and telling a story and there's some really beautiful parts while listening to listening to a house of a house in nebraska earlier i was like am i gonna cry on the bus i've heard this song before but like i just got pulled into it again even though i was just listening to american teenage and i was like i'll dabble i'll probably put ptolemyra on next wait hang on i remember this one this is a good one so we've talked a little bit around a few different genres there and i think one of the big things for me when i was thinking oh should we do an episode and just talk about our favorites of the year and try and get give people a bit of an overview of music this year and then i started going through album of the year lists top rated on metacritic and any decent music i started to quickly realize there's so much i haven't had time to listen to but i think going back to like the late 2000s you could kind of grasp like the critical consensus you could sort of grasp what was good in a certain genre like i could dip into Kerrang!

14:49and Metal Hammer and find out what was really good in metal and rock then I could dip into Mixmag and kind of find like a Fortet record or something and like now I think that the overlap and the overwhelm isn't like the overwhelm is there but the overlap isn't as much like there aren't as many artists crossing over the noise around an album is going to exist in quite a small pocket of people yeah um like like we talked about in the kind of review of the news of the year like the fontaine's dc record i feel that exists in quite a specific bubble of people and there's going to be a lot of other people that are not familiar like the the like ongoing like dads posting who underneath a post on social media of because they've not heard of someone who's maybe sold like a million records like and i think that trying to get critical consensus was always a bit of a myth anyway because when there were like 500 to a thousand journalists oh yeah like they were not going to agree anyway no but i think that like now like certain record shops have released their lists and i'm like oh am i really out of touch like i've only heard like seven of the top 30 albums or something um and it's not even that i've not like not that i haven't heard the record it's like i've not even heard of the record like i normally i could feel the excitement emanating like either through twitter or messaging threads or and part of it is like oh i'm older and i'm not as in as in touch and part of it just feels to me a bit like well there's 120 000 songs released every day oh yeah exactly every friday there's like seems to be 30 to 50 albums worth listening to god absolutely there's have some sometimes it's literally just like it's like christmas coming every month in a way just because there's so much that comes out i think maybe also the nature of digital platforms and how you engage with other people like i've definitely like twitter has been obviously massive for me and like and that was often that was kind of how i could build up built up a career in a big way especially during the pandemic but like those kind of sense of community has fractured a lot just because of the way those platforms have changed the way people some people have left them especially twitter um so and i do i do very much miss that aspect of it but it is a little bit more it's not like everybody's in one space that sort of that town square idea that i think i mentioned to you earlier has kind of like it's like it got a bit it was it was bulldozed a bit um so put up a parking lot um because like for instance the model actress record i think you listened to it the other day i did listen to it the other day because i mean i had been i'd been meaning to but like after i saw your list of albums i definitely was like okay let's give this let's give this a go and i didn't listen to a couple of your list and i mean it's an extraordinary record yeah like a theatrical kind of i think i need to spend more time with it though because i don't think like i don't feel like it's a one list and you immediately get a record definitely not it's quite dense i mean it's like it's like a proper weirdo rock record but at the same time it sounds a bit like i guess like girl band in battles and that like rhythmic kind of like stuff that almost sounds like i don't know it's like it sounds like it's come out of the industrial scene but it also sounds like it could be like they sound like they could open for both falls and the prodigy that's really true actually and like that's the thing i i think i've seen people some people refer to them as like a rock act that that wouldn't that's not immediately what i could have pinned them down as but they could at least have that sort of spirit but then again i think i have only heard it once just a few days ago so i think i would need to listen more to make a judgment i could imagine them playing like the shakespeare globe like as much as i can imagine them playing like a dive bar or like there's something really theatrical about the record yeah like i think lyrically he's really clever yeah it's like this there's so much personality there yeah it's like all of the visuals kind of fold in on themselves and like just poetically amazing yeah um the other record that really took me by surprise this year was alan sparhawk from low um and it's quite a brutal listen like he lost me me his wife and low bandmate um about two years ago and there's one song where their daughter sings and she sounds just like me me wow and it is one of the most heartbreaking because it's such a beautiful hopeful song as well oh and like that record it's a really extraordinary record and like again it's not for the faint of heart but it's powerful powerful special record i mean lower one of my favorite bands so um but yeah his first solo record was a bit weirder and a bit more like hiding behind machines whereas this one is i mean it feels like a low record but it's got maybe like the same energy as like push the sky away the knit cave record and i really really loved that one other record that um we interviewed her at reading was the heartworms record glutton for punishment um i really love that record it's like i love how much she geeks out about planes in the lyrics which we talked to her a bit about and um maybe we can drop in a little clip of our interview with with her here Tell people why they should go to the museum.

20:12Okay, there's an Italian biplane which is a Comstiat, I can't remember the actual name, but it crash landed and the Italian pilot was so done with the war, I think I'm going to get this right, that he, because he went into, was it a prisoner of war? but he was happy to be part of it because he was like i'm gonna be fed it's not somewhere to sleep you know but he crash landed i think somewhere in the uk and they like took him in but that was quite interesting kind of like that

20:50funnily enough i did actually listen to that album yesterday when i was on the bus and i really actually got on with it but to be fair i think i did think yeah you know what this might be something I would like when it's like in my wheelhouse enough but it's also slightly outside of it but tell you one thing I really sort of appreciate it obviously I love the sense of melody and the slightly gothic sensibility but also just the amount that she was able to do within that remit Cowbell the loose of Cowbell I think that's a very underappreciated instrument

21:24guess what I got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell

21:34like when you add cowbells to something in the right context it pops off and i've not found enough about people who appreciate it and it's not even the sort of thing i can consciously think about but then sometimes i'll hear that and like that someone will have like a cowbell on their on their drum kit i'm like oh yeah no that's that's scratching something in my brain i don't know what it is having lived through the punk funk moment of the thousands of like radio four and the rapture and lots of stuff in the DFA world and like I guess just coming out of Scar was quite big in the late 90s. Oh yeah.

22:06And there was a lot of cowbell involved. I have seen Scar bands. I've seen Les Than Jake twice actually. I interviewed them when I was a student. They still have a fire breather? Not when I saw them. I saw them open for Bowling for Soup last year and then I saw them at Slam Dunk. They are great fun. I think this is the third time Les Than Jake can be mentioned on the podcast this year. Unexpected item in the backing area. I love that. I use that phrase all the time.

22:37Hi there, it's Emma here. I'm gatecrashing the podcast to quickly tell you about the Drowned in Sound newsletter. Every Wednesday, I invite myself into your inbox, with permission, of course, to share opinion writing and resources, tell you about cool things that you should be involved in within the world of music, activism, etc. I also bring track of the week and a little bit of hopeful news for you because we all know that the news cycle can be grim at the best of times. Drowned in Sound newsletter every Wednesday in your inbox. Sign up now.

23:16I was just going to quickly run off some of my honourable mentions of the year just to give a sense of what a great year for music it's been. but actually how overwhelming it is that some of these records have had lots of attention and some have not had much so i wrote down little sims dice bits who we've oh i do like i do like dice bits really like they're signed to jack white's label and they're like yeah and then usually heavy band for jack white's label but they just they're incredibly cool the girls are they're so cool they like all individually they all look like they could be like superstars and oh yeah the um they're touring in february i'm gonna have to go and catch them and give that album a little bit more give album a little bit more attention and then there was a lily a lily allen record that was kind of surprise released a few weeks ago which is just an extraordinary piece of work um really powerful i've got pussy palace stuck in my head um then you mentioned lambrini girls a minor birds laura who's been on the podcast a few times this year like that she's just released a great record wolf alice turnstile i really love the ambient track and i haven't got into the rest of the record quite as much so it's not in my top 10 i really love the addison ray record it's sort of like a leekly kind of robin-y kind of pop record it's like that odd thing of like she's got a song diet pepsi yeah definitely felt definitely has that vibe to the record it's sort of fizzy and thin like i say thin like there's not like a heft to it um but at the same time that goes down nice and easy yeah um but i wouldn't necessarily choose it as my first choice of drink when i walked into a bar um you get that weird thing when you order a coke and someone's like we've only got pepsi i'm like okay i don't mind honestly yeah no i think i've been there before and somebody said that like they it all tastes the same to me yeah me too um sharon van etten had a record this year which I really liked and I'm a huge fan but I didn't get into quite as much as the other we mentioned Nova Twins on our year in review podcast which they made a fantastic record Marissa Nadler again one of my favorite artists like I really enjoyed that record Anna van Hauswolf that is a extraordinary record with organs and huge overdramatic vocals if you liked the Rosalia record I'd really recommend that as well as like an accompaniment um the sedan archives record was extraordinary the horse girl record one of my friends turned me on to that like they're like a jangly in like they definitely own bell and sebastian and sonic youth records um jade record was really amazing the manics had a great record out and then i started listing the records i haven't heard yet like the health record isn't out yet melody's echo's chamber record isn't out yet um i heard a bit the dave record i thought that sounded really good garbage i'd so that garbage album was really good i really enjoyed that there's some stuff in there that really really stuck with me i actually interviewed shirley manson earlier this year and she actually i think might be one of the greatest people i have ever met and um i was wearing some fishnet tights she's like oh i love how you like rip your fishnet tights just like that looks really cute and i was like i think she kind of found me endearing which was uh quite nice but there's there's a couple of really strong songs in there including chinese fire horse which is about her being asked by journalists if she's going to retire and she's like excuse me your point's in that question to me not Mick Jagger not Mick Jagger or not her bandmates either who are much older than her um then there's a I think there's a song at the end of the record called the day that I met God and I've never been able to forget I think the refrain is I think I found God I found God in Tramadol and I've never been able to forget that that's stuck in my head I've got no idea how or why um there's one record we both really like this year called by Scowl yes I have so much time for that band honestly um you caught up and you described them to people oh okay so scowl sort of very much started as a sort of rough and ready kind of hardcore band but there was always more there was always more to them um and then when they put out their ep psychic dance routine in 2023 they got a little bit they were kind of finding that balance between like the heavier stuff and something like like just having loads of really catchy melodies um and they built on that with their second album it's called are we all angels um their vocalist cat is singing a lot more and i think they think i did also fun enough i actually did a koran cover with them as well and they talked to me about how much they had to work on their voice and how much it was that they went through um as the band got so much bigger but i think it's almost like one of these records i think i'd like a little bit like turnstile a little bit like high viz that can easily sort of bridge a gap between people who like between the hardcore world which they do sort of very very much have a foot in and something a little bit outside of that so even if you don't necessarily aren't that familiar with their sort of music it could be really a really good entry point i guess in a way they're a bit like deftones in that way of like bridging like heavy music for people that are not that into heavy music like and like they sort of feel like a heavier like wolf alice or something like that like they're not completely outside of you don't need to have a phd in black sabbath to appreciate what they do which i feel like sometimes with rock music there's like like i watched bring me the horizon at reading and i just didn't really get it like i know that people love them but i was like come on when's there going to be a big bit i can like get my teeth into or like emotionally connect to and i just just kept skidding past me um which is interesting that they can be that big a band and i think there's a lot of music in like my tastes i like heavy music but i've always found myself like i'd go i'd listen to lots of stuff and just like i just don't connect to it and i don't know whether some of it is like there's a certain energy or a certain like set of reference points that maybe i just like it's not unlocked for me so it's like but also it's like i like music that's political emotional melancholic and like a lot of heavy music can have that yeah but you sort of have to be tuned into it and a certain frequency and i don't think i am so yeah i think there is like an i think there is an element of wider things that i think when i ended up talking to cat we did end up talking quite a bit about capitalism and systems and abuse and stuff like that i think like like i think flashed out sort of does this quite well i like that like that line i think they talk about you want to talk about feeling unsafe and you hook into that and just like yep you've obviously like dealt with like the politics of hardcore and how and how they felt moving as a feminine presenting person through that space and i'd love to see them i think they i think i feel like there's obviously a lot of sort of hype around them that's been built and i'd really sort of love to see them get that trajectory like like bands like that have like like like especially obviously like turnstarts a very very obvious example but like a band like high vis who can sort of exist in both those spaces another band i have a lot of time for and are also really really good live and um i think they'll be about in the uk as well a little bit next year they're doing a couple of festival shows scowl so but i will scowl and if that didn't make sense i'd spell the name s-c-o-w-l scowl scowl

30:33this episode of the drannin sound podcast is presented in partnership with cobus I am thrilled that they are our partner for a few episodes to come and you will be hearing lots more about them if you tune in every week. I have personally moved across to the platform. I think it would be a bit weird for me to have put out the episodes that we have done this year where we've looked at the alternatives to the dominant platform in the market. and the platform that pays artists four times more than the industry standard that has high quality audio that has human curation which as a human curator is something that I truly value over the kind of algo slop that you get on some platforms and I know lots of places talk about the audio qualities and as soon as I moved across it sort of felt like I was rediscovering music which is one of the platform slogans.

31:26If you're worried about your playlists, you can use Soundiz. It's a really good tool that's part of the sign up process when you join Cobuzz. It just transfers everything across. And in my case, that was hundreds of playlists. It also can transfer across your favorite artists and bits like that. And you can be selected with it. If you do not want a running playlist that you made in 2016, you can deselect it if you want. I think that the platform has exceeded my expectations, not just because they are the partner for our podcast, but because I've really liked learning more about the platform in order to put together this little ad in the middle of the show and reading about the way some of their teamwork and how they curate music.

32:09It just feels much more like a record shop and a lot less like a digital platform trying to extract money and spend it on who knows what. If you'd like a free trial of this platform that's independently owned and made for music enthusiasts, head to drownedinsound.org forward slash playlists, where you can hear not only our playlists, but get a free trial. You can also find these details in the show notes to this episode. And now back to this episode of the Drowning Sound podcast brought to you in partnership with Cobuzz.

32:49so we come back to the question we started with which was a very loaded question um i think hayley williams has made the record of the year i think she's made the record of her career and i say that as someone that loves paramour um loved the two previous solo records one of them i made album of the year when drowning sound was just me because i had that power yeah and i think what's special about the record is yes there's like good hooks to it there's the silly reference the bloodhound gang oh yeah there's some weird auto tune on one of the tracks i was listening to um i was listening to that album again earlier i think because i knew this was going to be coming up and i just i just really sort of stunk it and took in the way in isomyogy at the first track so just her intention where she goes cold hard bitch love it and it's sort of got a similar energy to like a phoebe bridges record where it does actually yeah it shimmers in the edges of it yeah like actually the record itself for some people is going to sound quite pedestrian and like quite middle of the road and like but i don't think there's anything about it that's that no i think that It's very varied as well.

34:00And I think then there's the extraordinary bits where she's dealing with like race relations in the South in America and how she went on stage on Jimmy Fallon. Yes. She had Mississippi Goddamn written on stage, which is from, I've got a mind blank. I'm going to have to look that up. Yeah. While you're doing that, I can sort of add some more details to it. I think one of the really impressive things as well is that she played, I think the orchestra who played with her, She was sat at the back on the piano and she had an orchestra full of people of colour, which is actually such a brilliant moment.

34:34I think people noticed that she was styled in a slightly similar way to Kurt Cobain's legendary MTV Unplugged and performance. But to like take that moment and take that space and actually really it really felt like she was in the song. She was sort of reflecting what she wanted to put across in the way that it was arranged and performed. And I absolutely that's one of my favourite songs off that album. And I think the thing that really sort of pricked my ears up a little bit is the fact that this is the most political she's ever been. And I'm like, you knew she had that in her. And I absolutely love that she brought more of that into the music and everything that she had to say, even from like the bit about the club, the hardcore clubbing turned to a dominoes, race relations.

35:11I think she referenced the hard bargain is the town, I think, near where she grew up that was primarily, primarily the population is primarily people of color as well. So I think that was that's like such a I think that was such like a landmark moment for her songwriting. It was quite obviously Nina Simone. I love the song. I think there's even a documentary entitled Mrs. Ibrie Goddamn. It was, I don't know, to me, what really stood out was what a great songwriter she is. But also this feeling of like, have you seen some kind of monster, the documentary? I really need to see that, to be fair. It's a documentary about Metallica.

35:49Therapy, yeah. And it's got a great energy to it. but weirdly this record feels like hayley's the one that's gone to therapy and the rest of the band like like it's almost like she's having band therapy on her own um because there's a few references in there to like distance and things and i think what she's also incredibly capable of doing is filling a record with easter eggs like she changed some of the lyrics between the record that she leaked when she put it out on her on the good die young website which is her vegan hair dye company who are actually sponsoring the tour that she's doing which I thought was kind of cool and interesting I'm assuming the merch desk you're going to be able to buy hair dye I do I was going to say this actually is a great idea for the merch desk to be fair and yeah there's like these little references where she changed the lyrics when the record came out on streaming services it came out as individual songs originally and now the finished album version she's changed a few of the lyrics to change slightly the meanings of some of the songs um and someone else i saw on tiktok said there seems to be a line from a different film buried in loads of her songs and they've been finding all these like lines from like tom hanks films and things like just random sentences that she's obviously just collected um and kind of magpied and put into the lyrics um i just think everything about the way she's done this campaign feels like i mean i know that she's a big music fan like if you followed her online online long enough she talks about the music she likes all the time and i'm surprised other artists their fandom doesn't come out as much yeah and that's it doesn't feel calculated that's that's the thing as well i think it's one of the most like endearing things because everyone will have been a fan first before they actually go into music and she sort of very much wears it on her sleeve and bigs up all sorts of different bands i think she even she even and plugged loath at one point very very different band but also a band i absolutely love like i've got so much time for loath and that that little crossover moment there and she knows our hardcore clearly as well when i worked for max richester she tagged him a few times because she was listening his music i love the idea that the average paramour fan has gone out and discovered some of like max's beautiful ambient classical music um i think it's hard to think of another record that's come from our world, that's standing up for grassroots music, that's standing against the kind of Trump regime, the rise of authoritarianism.

38:21Like, I know there's only subtle in the record that's calling out racists, that's calling out senators with holding guns on their Christmas cards. Like, did you ever see those pictures? Like, she references it in one of the songs. Yeah, no. They literally make Christmas cards with their, like, I don't think I'd seen that. I didn't think I'd seen those particular things, but, like, she gets across, like, you know, the sort of depravity of that image really really well but like that's the the other thing that i love about her as well is that she does allyship in such a way that feels so genuine and so authentic and you can tell that you can tell that i think from the way that sort of she's interacted with them i think there's this whole this whole thing i might not be like the best person to speak on this but i think i've definitely read a piece about how popular paramour is with the black community as well and like the fact that there's that sort of symbiotic relationship there um i think is a really really powerful thing and you know you know you know she's doing it from like the most genuine place possible um so daniel james's production is also really amazing as well i think sonically the record's really interesting yeah um previously he was involved with after clang who are one of my favorite bands um and yeah i just think the record sounds great feels great yeah like and i was waiting to be disappointed because most most of the time when artists shift to being solo projects and things like and also because the last two solo records were so good like one of them had sort of a bit more of a like elliott smith feel to it and the other one second one isn't it because she made that one in lockdown and then you can you can sort of see you can sort of see how the sort of environment she was in made i think it's flowers of flowers of arses um i think you can see you can see how that sort of filters into it but i easily think that ego death at a bachelorette party is the easily her best solo album and obviously it very much holds up with the high moments of paramol's discography or no no all of them all of them are if i might have been you know high moments but some are kind of higher than others so do we just mic drop and just end let's not drop these mics we're getting trouble no we should not we should not do that i think in general it's been like every year is a good year if you're a music fan but i'm finding it hard like and actually one of the things i think drowning sound hopefully does is remove that signal to noise ratio of how much music there is out there to just try and focus in on a few things worth spending the time on and not the reams and reams and reams of other things we could sort of recommend i've actually always thought this to be fair and when especially when people like do we even need music critics anymore do we need reviews anymore i've always hated that perspective maybe it's actually an element of bias as somebody who writes album reviews and very much enjoys writing album reviews but i've always thought that actually having that sort of curation from somebody who's like seen a lot of it can be really really helpful and actually maybe makes it even more relevant because there's you only have so much time and there's so much so much music out there and you want to obviously want to spend your time listening to like the best stuff you can i think there's a huge difference between critical skills and being critical yeah i think sometimes deconstructing something to work out if it's really special is a skill yeah and sometimes that deconstruction leads you to thinking that's not quite as good as i thought it was but actually the the kind of 90 of music that i listen to that i'm not that into like and don't want to recommend to people makes the 10 that i do all the more yeah special you've got two sort of you've got sort of two things that very much sort of weigh on me when i'm putting it in an album on a year list because i can listen to something and go this is objectively good and have my critic card on and go yeah no this is a lot of skill and i appreciate it for what it is and then there's the records you connect with more that like get into your bloodstream whether that's like sometimes i've points aligned sometimes they don't um but generally I've there's there's there is like lots of stuff in my album of the year list that I have come back to sometimes the stuff that makes it quite hot my list I've not always come back to a lot but I know it's because it's objectively good but generally I think I do slightly more a favor I do like listen to my heart when I'm putting these together and thinking about what I've come back to a lot what has like meant a lot to me like in my I think I've mentioned I've mentioned Jules in my top I think in my top 10 they're definitely in my top 10 their album Violent Delights is a really really special debut album but like I think that's obviously very musically accomplished but like i've seen them twice this year and the second time i saw them i cried three times during that set and i like that like that's a lot for me who very ray cries at stuff i mean i think there was one song i've heard twice them do twice live that means a lot to me and i cried a lot both times i've heard it but i think there's other moments as well it's a really they have some quite intense emotionally intense moments in their set and you listen to that and you just go wow you made something incredible out of this so shout out jewels any other records you want to mention before we oh yes yes i'll do a quick fire quick fire run through um fever eaten by witch fever which you've written incredible band sort of doom punk is kind of where they sort of started but they've evolved into so so much more than that it is actually sort of quite fluid you can actually maybe see a tiny bit of ethel cain in there especially sort of with thematically as um and a singer amy grew up in the charismatic church and that's a lot of what the music deals with but But that album is an incredible evolution and I reviewed that very, very positively.

43:37Deaf Heaven, Lonely People With Power. Deaf Heaven being very, very good at being Deaf Heaven. Going back to their sort of black gazey stuff rather than going a bit soft like they did with their album, which I like. Not everyone likes it, but I like it. Deaf Heaven. Oh, God, what was the other one? Lambrina Girls, we've already mentioned, Who Let The Dogs Out, full of bangers. Jewels, I mentioned. Scala mentioned. Sprints, All That Is Over. I think that's once again that's a gorgeous progression as well like Letter to Self was brilliant but then it's a very obviously Carla is in sort of a very different frame of mind embodying lots of different things but like it's that nice sort of first album was brilliant but second album you can sort of see the maturation and the evolution of that Earth Keeper by Pink Shift is incredible like they started out as like slightly more pop punky then they've got heavier and heavier like they've worked in bits of new metal and hardcore and stuff like that but there's like I love in your generation new metal isn't like us.

44:32No, there's been so much written. I think that new metal means something very different now. And it's very, very different from what it was. It's not like... No, Linkin Park and Headline Festivals. Not just... I have seen a bit of noughties new metal revivalism, but it's filtered through a different lens now. And especially coming out of the pandemic as well, people noticing there's more women and more people of colour having a go at this and actually using it to express, you know, like the idea of feminine rage. It's like it's going more it's going a little bit more substance now and a little bit more a little bit more swagger.

45:01It doesn't quite feel like, you know, like posturing. And no, I think Pink Shift is such an underrated, such an underrated band. And they've really, really grown. I think two more. I think there's two more or less. Spirit Box. Always here for Spirit Box. They're going to be they're going to be in arenas and headlining festivals one day. I can't remember what was the other one on my list. I think it was Creeper. Actually, I just have a real soft spot for them. It's like rocky horror-ish, big, over-the-top theatrical. Started in punk, like a little bit ghosty, that sort of thing. There is a very fabulous cabaret song about, like, hacking off the heads of troublesome men, which is quite something.

45:42It's quite entertaining. But, yeah, that is my top ten. And amazingly, I could do that off the top of my head. Yeah, straight off the dome. Fueled by a lot of caffeine. You can definitely tell I had a cup of coffee before recording. this well i'll just drop two on the end then so there's an artist called postcards um it's on a label for beirut called ruptured it sort of feels like all those like christy feelings of like cocteau twins um it sort of reminds me of an artist called remy zero who most people know is the people that did the small film music um but actually like they were like a weird rock band and the cedric from the band i think it is manages war paint and they've got a similar kind of feeling to the way their songs sort of all sort of spread out and stretch um suspending you in time kind of vibe and then the other one is the dark side record which is nicolas jar's side project it's a like he does grooves but it's also like there's it's like really orchestrated like clever electronic music and like some of his songs build up to this like really intense like liars or something like kind of heavy groove and then like the song deconstructs and you think it's the next song playing and then it just comes back in again and it's like what um i just like i recommended that record in the newsletter back in i think february or march so many people messaged me afterwards going thanks so much like that was it like and that happens a bit but it happened a lot with that record from people who are not really into the kind of music that he makes they're just like something clever in the grooves and everything that he's doing so that was dron and sound take on the albums of 2025 i'm sure there were loads we missed i'm sure someone in the comments is gonna point out that we've got some song titles wrong and that's what the comments are for please don't attack us please be nice um i've been sean adams i've been emma wilkes this is the dron and sound podcast and you've been you see you next time

47:53well that was a fun 45 minutes or so with emma wilkes i hope that we at least mentioned one of your favorite albums of the year and if we didn't head to community.draninsound.com and you can join in our annual poll because our readers are currently picking their five favorites and voting for the drowning sound communities album of the year um That episode was a little bit different for me. I think technically it's the first episode I've recorded in person, which to get 60 episodes deep into the podcast and to have recorded every episode, apart from the one you heard with Tori Choi a couple of weeks ago, which I actually recorded after this episode, because that's how time works.

48:40not always chronologically um the experience of just speaking into a microphone and speaking to someone is obviously something that I have done before but knowing that it was a podcast and it had to be edited and I'm so grateful to Shaw who let us use their studio space in central London and we'll be recording quite a few more episodes of the Drowning Sound podcast and a few other projects we're developing there over the coming weeks and months. I wonder if there's a record I should have heard this year and I would love it if you messaged me on social media and told me you should listen to this because the stuff you were recommending on the podcast sounds similar.

49:24As always if you enjoyed this episode please consider popping it in a DM to a friend that might enjoy it or dropping it in a WhatsApp group or something like that. Word of mouth is how podcasts like this grow and we appreciate it. This episode was presented in partnership with Cobuzz, the independently owned streaming platform designed for music enthusiasts. Head to dranninsound.org forward slash playlists to hear all the tunes that we talked about on this episode. When I say all the tunes, you can hear a selected tune from each album because all the tunes would be a very, very, very, very, very long playlist.

50:01Thank you for listening. I've been Sean Adams. You've been you. This has been a Drowning Sound podcast. Bye for now.