Following on from yesterday’s piece where I counted down from 20-11, here are my top ten tracks from 2025 which for me form the heart of the website and why I still love editing it after all these years with its endless surprises from artists both established and new, from this side of the water and the other (the clue is in the name) and beyond. The only thing guaranteed with next year’s list will that there’ll be artists out in the wild now who I have no clue exist. That’s if we make it to next year of course (just to leave you with that depressing thought, you’re welcome).
10. CMAT “When a Good Man Cries”
How zeitgeist are we this year? CMAT for the uninitiated few is an Irish singer-songwriter who did a barnstorming set at Glasto back in June and whose new album “EURO-COUNTRY” has song titles such as ‘The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station’ (“That man should not have his face on posters”) and ‘Lord, Let That Tesla Crash’. She’s also outspoken on Gaza in a way a certain other very high-profile female singer-songwriter isn’t which is obviously a credit to her. ‘When a Good Man Cries’ brought indie-country to the masses, being playlisted on both Radio 2 and 6 Music which is something of a feat and can only be a good thing.
9. Caamp “Porchswing”
Caamp are a five piece who’ve been around now for some time with a name to drive autocorrect nuts but who we’ve not really covered extensively on the site up until this year when they released “Copper Changes Color”, their first studio album since the release of the much-praised “Lavender Days” in 2022. The album was recorded in Texas, Oregon, and New York with co-production from Beatriz Artola (Fleet Foxes, Sharon Van Etten) and Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket, R.E.M.), and you can hear that wide range of influences on the record which moves away from their folk-rock roots into electric guitars and expansive arrangements, but it’s one of the more traditionally Caamp songs ‘Porchswing Lover’ which is the biggest earworm for me from the album.
8. Michael Weston King “La Bamba in the Rain”
As is now well known, Michael Weston King and his wife Lou lost their granddaughter Bebe in the Southport attacks in July last year, and it’s difficult to know how you’d ever get your head around such an event, but King has made a start with the first cut from what promises to be a really special album. Partly recorded in rural Wales and partly recorded in not so rural Sheffield, the new record is called “Nothing Can Hurt Me Anymore”. According to Michael, it’s not ‘country’, or indeed ‘Americana’, but is in essence “an instinctive musical reaction to the events of last summer, influenced and affected by that unimaginable personal loss.” As he continues, “To be honest, it was almost impossible to write about anything else. I hope I am now creatively exhausted on the subject, but I think it affects my writing for ever, just as indeed, the loss of Bebe will”. Both the melody and the words of ‘La Bamba in the Rain’ are hugely moving.
7. Them Coulee Boys “As Long as You Let Me”
Sometimes an album will cross over into two different years’ lists, as is the case for “No Fun in the Chrysalis” which we described in our review earlier this year as Wisconsin’s Them Coulee Boys’ biggest Avett Brothers moment yet, and they do it better than the other imitators whose attempts sometimes feel sorry when compared to this album’s rollicking energy and introspective explorations of change and growth. The band’s name is a nod to the glacial melt-carved river valleys they call home, known by early French fur trappers as coulees and ‘As Long as You Love Me’ just has that great live in the studio feel with echoes of Golden Smog at their best. As we noted, the band’s songs embrace sentimentality and memory, but aren’t overwhelmed by melancholy.
6. Charley Crockett “Game I Can’t Win”
There are few more prolific americana artists around these days than Charley Crockett whose “Lonesome Drifter” which we glowingly reviewed earlier this year was only one of two full studio albums released over the course of 2025, and of which we said that “This vibrant, confident and thoroughly engaging record may just be his best so far.” Pick of the crop from the record for me is this tune which trundles along nicely before a banjo kicks in midpoint and the tempo moves up a notch, and as always the video is a hoot too. It’s hard to think of anyone who’s done more for the genre this past year. We look forward to the 15 new albums due for release in 2026.
5. Paul Kelly “Rita Wrote a Letter”
When Paul Kelly announced his latest album, “Seventy”, to say that the first track to be taken from it was a while in the making is an understatement – it’s a follow-up to an all-time Aussie classic from the 1990s. As Kelly notes, “I’ve been mulling over the idea of a sequel to ‘How To Make Gravy‘ from Rita’s point of view for quite some time. About five years ago I wrote down the words, ‘Rita wrote a letter,’ and thought, “there’s my title”. I scratched away intermittently and fruitlessly for several years but never got very far until Dan Kelly sent me a recording of something he’d written on piano with a rough melody over the top. The words started rolling after that. As often happens, they took me by surprise. You could say the song took a dark turn but to my mind it’s a black comedy. A ghost story. You hear Rita’s voice loud and clear but Joe talks even more. I couldn’t shut him up!” The song is musically nothing like its predecessor but none the worse for it. Australia has Gravy Day already but maybe they’ll have a Rita Day in the future too.
4. Peacemode featuring Jonah Kagen “Money Train”
This was a bolt out of the blue towards the end of the year by an artist I’d never come across before. Born in Bath in this neck of the woods, Peacemode has quickly gained momentum since the release of debut single “My Love (Is Like A Waterfall)” with a unique brand of California vintage folk-rock that evokes the spirit of a bygone era with warm tape-recorded instruments and vocals. At the helm is Joe Janiak, who has penned songs for artists as established as Lewis Capaldi and Ellie Goulding, but it’s difficult to imagine anything quite as affecting as this song from his debut album, “The Heart & The Hope” which he describes as being about “growth and perseverance.” The arrangement more than anything is just sublime, with an excellent contribution from Georgian musician Jonah Kagen.
3. Briscoe “Roughnecks”
So enamoured have I been by Briscoe’s latest album “Heat of July” that the personal highlight evolved every few weeks – it in the end though settled on the impossibly lovely ‘Roughnecks’, a song inspired by a photo of Truett Heintzelman’s great-grandfather, who made his living working gas lines and in the oilfields of Texas. “The song tells the story of a man who spends his long and strenuous hours of work in the fields reflecting on his past decisions and the girl he left behind, with instrumentation and lyrics that pay homage to the trades that are so integral to our Texas heritage” notes Truett. For me, they really are the best new americana band who’ve come along in years and their signing to ATO Records is a much needed vote of confidence from a label who have a hallmark for quality. I can only hope my reverse-Midas touch fails me on this occasion and the band becomes massive (well, not too massive, arena gigs will always be shit).
2. Dar Williams “All is Come Undone”
If I had to choose one album that reminded me of my twenties more than any other record, I’d go for New Yorker Dar Williams’ “The Honesty Room” released back in 1993. It takes me back to little gigs in Telford’s, Chester with a painted lounge backdrop and Williams’ gentle played songs which as an angst-ridden twenty-something after 3 pints I struggled to get through without sobbing uncontrollably. Although I have stuck with her over the years, nothing has landed with me in the same way her first three albums did, so it was a surprise to come across this song from her latest album “Hummingbird Highway” which to these ears is as good as anything she’s ever released. Following a 24 year gap, I returned to sobbing the first time I heard it but unsure why since I have to confess I don’t really understand some of the lyrics other than something about some cows escaping. Maybe it’s that tug towards the past and everything lost since then. It’s just a beautiful song I haven’t been able to get out of my head since.
1. Truman Sinclair “Joel Roberts”
My Spotify Wrapped this year told me that my most listened to song of the year is Truman Sinclair’s ‘Joel Roberts’ which was no surprise to me at all since my 11 year old son has been absolutely obsessed with it since he first heard it – it’s had around half a million listens according to the app and I’m convinced half of them are my son. It’s a testament to the song’s strength that I have never grown sick of it, although I said when I first posted it on the site that I was worried my son might get referred to Prevent given the subject matter is a good old-fashioned country gunslinging murder-ballad. There’s something so inventive about the storytelling, the arrangement, the pace of this song and the melody which deeply embeds itself into your consciousness. As I noted yesterday, his debut album “American Recordings” pivots from his background in the emo and punk scenes of Los Angeles when he was still in high school to a new sound which has a more americana bent which may be partly down to his upbringing where his parents apparently listened to the likes of Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and Woody Guthrie. The fact that he’s only 23 years old is astonishing really and you get the feeling that one day ‘Joel Roberts’ will be a dark classic that everyone knows to the point where people whose surname is Roberts avoid calling their kids Joel. There’s a great live performance of it here too. You can be sure of one thing – you’ll see a lot more of this artist in years to come. No pressure there Truman. And talking of my son, scroll down if you will humour me for one more song I can’t help mentioning this year.
And one more thing… Icarus Phoenix “Mark and Kyle”
I never in my wildest dreams ever figured I’d have a song written about me and this little guy I decided to adopt a few years back so when longtime friend of AUK Drew Danburry suggested I send him some thoughts on the whole experience, I didn’t know what to expect. When he sent the demo over, it blew me away, but that was nothing to hearing the version played by his full band and immortalised forever or at least until the apocalypse. I feel like without being overly sentimental it’s the most special thing that I will ever give Kyle, and it’s all the more special as I’ve always had an aversion to songs parents write for or about their kids, but Drew has managed to make it warm but not cloying, humorous and playful and specific but not overbearing. It’s just perfect. It felt too egotistical to put it as my song of the year but in reality it’s the song of my life, for which I can’t thank Drew enough. I promise not to mention it again (well maybe just occasionally).
