My pals have been running a Monday \u201cAlbum Club\u201d for a wee while now. Taking it in turns, one of us picks an album to listen to each week. On each Monday evening we jump on Google Meet, blether about \u201cmatters of state\u201d for half an hour and then we discuss the chosen album. One song from the chosen album is added to a playlist. Oh, and we each give a score to the album.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We listened to 49 albums this year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This blog post is my review of 2025; over the festive period I\u2019ve managed to re-listen to a bunch of my favourite albums of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I listened to our playlist this a couple of times and short listed songs which attracted me back to their respective album. I also reviewed the scores I gave to albums at the time we reviewed it to see if I\u2019d missed any important ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This ended up with a short list of 25 albums which I had a target to listen to over the festive period. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our music club has been going since June 2022. The fully Spotify playlist can be accessed at: https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/playlist\/5BFpMLFFz9Dr5fjJHuid9P?si=6aANhCKNS7Ki2kKuxRQwAw<\/a>. The Apple Music version is at https:\/\/music.apple.com\/gb\/playlist\/monday-music\/pl.u-55D6Pj7fAaRqa<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The albums that I most enjoyed listening to this year (in order of listening) were:<\/p>\n\n\n\n My favourite \u201cnew to me\u201d albums were The Cardiacs and then, in no particular order, The Eels, Bloc Party, maybe Funkadelic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This year we picked three of my favourite artists of all time so it\u2019s hard to see past The Second Coming, Solid Air or London Calling as my favourite albums of the year overall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My least favourite albums probably include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n We listened to 49 albums in 2025. These were spread across the decades as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The album we collectively loved the most (highest average rating) was Solid Air which is maybe not surprising since John Martyn was a big part of our lives when we all met and started being best pals. Notable mentions to Time and Tide (for similar reasons) and Physical Graffiti. The most disagreed about albums were Tool and The Cardiacs by far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The full list of albums reviewed is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Introduction My pals have been running a Monday \u201cAlbum Club\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ianrae.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ianrae.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ianrae.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ianrae.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ianrae.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.ianrae.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181,"href":"https:\/\/www.ianrae.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions\/181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ianrae.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ianrae.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ianrae.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}My Favourite Listens<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Top Albums of the Year<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Least Favourite Albums<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Some Overall Stats.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Full List of Albums<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Artist<\/th> Album<\/th> Year Released<\/th><\/tr><\/thead> Led Zeppelin<\/td> Physical Graffiti<\/td> 1975<\/td><\/tr> World Party<\/td> Bang!<\/td> 1993<\/td><\/tr> Richard Thompson<\/td> Mirror Blue<\/td> 1994<\/td><\/tr> TOOL<\/td> 10,000 Days<\/td> 2006<\/td><\/tr> Boz Scaggs<\/td> Silk Degrees<\/td> 1976<\/td><\/tr> The Band<\/td> Music from Big Pink<\/td> 1968<\/td><\/tr> Warren Zevon<\/td> The Wind<\/td> 2003<\/td><\/tr> The Black Crowes<\/td> Happiness Bastards<\/td> 2024<\/td><\/tr> The Jam<\/td> All Mod Cons<\/td> 1978<\/td><\/tr> Cardiacs<\/td> A Little Man and a House and the Whole World Window<\/td> 1988<\/td><\/tr> System of a Down<\/td> Toxicity<\/td> 2001<\/td><\/tr> Split Enz<\/td> Time and Tide<\/td> 1982<\/td><\/tr> The Damned<\/td> Damned Damned Damned<\/td> 1977<\/td><\/tr> Pixies<\/td> Surfer Rosa<\/td> 1988<\/td><\/tr> Eels<\/td> Beautiful Freak<\/td> 1996<\/td><\/tr> Thomas Dolby<\/td> Aliens Ate My Buick<\/td> 1988<\/td><\/tr> Peter Gabriel<\/td> Peter Gabriel 3: Melt<\/td> 1980<\/td><\/tr> Stevie Wonder<\/td> Talking Book<\/td> 1972<\/td><\/tr> Buffalo Springfield<\/td> Buffalo Springfield Again<\/td> 1967<\/td><\/tr> R.E.M.<\/td> Automatic for the People<\/td> 1992<\/td><\/tr> Bloc Party<\/td> Silent Alarm<\/td> 2005<\/td><\/tr> PJ Harvey<\/td> To Bring You My Love<\/td> 1995<\/td><\/tr> The Stone Roses<\/td> Second Coming<\/td> 1994<\/td><\/tr> Sly and the Family Stone<\/td> There’s a Riot Goin’ On<\/td> 1971<\/td><\/tr> Gallery of Stolen Dogs<\/td> I Need to Let it Ride Now<\/td> 2025<\/td><\/tr> Prefab Sprout<\/td> Steve McQueen<\/td> 1985<\/td><\/tr> Magazine<\/td> Real Life<\/td> 1978<\/td><\/tr> Oasis<\/td> Definitely Maybe<\/td> 1994<\/td><\/tr> Ween<\/td> Quebec<\/td> 2003<\/td><\/tr> Sleep Token<\/td> Take Me Back to Eden<\/td> 2023<\/td><\/tr> Stevie Nicks<\/td> Bella Donna<\/td> 1981<\/td><\/tr> Black Country, New Road<\/td> For the first time<\/td> 2021<\/td><\/tr> Sons of Southern Ulster<\/td> Sinners and Lost Souls<\/td> 2020<\/td><\/tr> Surfjan Stevens<\/td> Illinoise<\/td> 2005<\/td><\/tr> Mastodon<\/td> Crack the Skye<\/td> 2009<\/td><\/tr> INXS<\/td> Kick<\/td> 1987<\/td><\/tr> Gretel<\/td> Slugeye<\/td> 2022<\/td><\/tr> The Mute Gods<\/td> Do Nothing till You Hear from Me<\/td> 2016<\/td><\/tr> The Clash<\/td> London Calling<\/td> 1979<\/td><\/tr> John Martyn<\/td> Solid Air<\/td> 1973<\/td><\/tr> The Velvet Underground<\/td> The Velvet Underground & Nico<\/td> 1967<\/td><\/tr> Jefferson Airplane<\/td> Surrealistic Pillow<\/td> 1967<\/td><\/tr> Funkadelic<\/td> Maggot Brain<\/td> 1971<\/td><\/tr> George Michael<\/td> Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1<\/td> 1990<\/td><\/tr> Jellyfish<\/td> Bellybutton<\/td> 1990<\/td><\/tr> Francis Cabrel<\/td> Quelqu’un de l’int\u00e9rieur<\/td> 1983<\/td><\/tr> Idlewild<\/td> The Remote Part<\/td> 2002<\/td><\/tr> Primal Scream<\/td> Vanishing Point<\/td> 1997<\/td><\/tr> Rodriguez<\/td> Cold Fact<\/td> 1970<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"