I am always poking and prodding at what lists mean to me, especially when I try to write them myself. Lists can be used as shorthand for objectivity, in the blandest sense, or they can be used to take a chance on something, to reveal something about the objects being listed, or better yet, the list maker themself.

In this collection, one which I have done no groundwork for over the course of the year, I’m going to dig around in my listening and watching histories, and let things put themselves into this collection with as little filtering from my consciousness as possible. If it speaks to me, it is worth sharing why.

This one is tough, because my physical media listening is expanding, and I have been trying different streaming platforms throughout the year. I feel discombobulated, but I also feel closer to being locked into systems that will allow me to dig deeper into works and deeper into documenting what I want to hold on to.

What many people felt about Geese this year – a band really coming into their own and taking the world by storm – I felt about Horsegirl’s 2025. I knew their name, and I thought I knew their sound, after enjoying their premiere record in 2022, Visions of Modern Performance, but what they accomplished in their sophomore effort with a new producer is something completely different, something that feels so genuine and pure and delightful. It was my favorite record of the year as soon as I heard the first note of the first song. I have listened to it many times, I’m listening to it right now, and it has not lost one joule of energy and effectiveness and infectiousness.

I’m not putting Geese’s new record on here, as I am still journeying to find my perfect connection to it, but I am having a fulfilling time doing my homework with that one. Give it a couple spins, if you haven’t already.

This one took me a minute, which was a surprise after listening to Michelle’s work for weeks while writing about her career thus far, leading into this new record. Jubilee, her record prior, was a leap in scope and creativity, and so is Brunettes, though despite that similarity, I was thrown asunder upon first listen. After several weeks of poking at it, I finally gave it the space all great music deserves: a full listen while driving a long distance, alone in your car. There I was able to get my feet on the bottom of the album’s deep pool, to stay sunk in its depths, to really hear what it is saying, how it is saying it. Of course this record is amazing; Zauner does not miss.

This album sounds like it was made by who I would have thought was the coolest fucking guy ever in high-school. This is the kind of music dudes want to make in their basement, and it sounds like it was recorded in one. It’s scruffy, it’s cute, it’s blending a lot of styles and instruments, and it is low-stakes. This is my “I’m getting back into drumming” record of the year, as the mix places the drums, to my ear, right in front of you, with varying snares and cymbals that I just love the textures of. This is the hang-out record of the year. This is my type of shit.

Big Thief makes music that sticks to my ribs, especially this record, and especially the work done by drummer James Krivchenia, whose rhythms and methods and choices excite me so deeply.

Is it weird to call a 60 year old album one of my favorite new albums? Absolutely not, you numbskull. It’s 2025, we don’t judge the sporadic and infinitely complex timelines of discovering art anymore. 2024’s A Complete Unknown was a surprise treat for me, a movie that I have already watched again since seeing it in theaters, and I think it accomplished one of its major goals: showing me the context and content of Dylan’s work in this period, and placing it against his reality at the time. Taking the journey through Dylan’s first handful of records was mesmerizing once I had some understanding of the history. That is the power of a good biopic, a good essay, and good music. I’ll listen to this thing forever, forever fascinated by who this kid was, and what he was creating.

Just incredible vibes, on this and every Yoshimura record, an artist I discovered in 2025.

Yeah, this took over pop culture and a couple of generations this year, as well as the ultimate team I coach (comprised of “adults”). But KPDH, which I watched twice in the span of a month, also totally works on me. I love its ideas, its views on modern life, and its messaging, its themes, its morals. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty, it’s smart, and the music is genuinely great. The finale, both song and accompanying story and visuals, have brought me to tears upon each viewing, and will again if I think about it too long sitting here in this coffee shop. I’d better move on before my fellow patrons start to worry.

Two movies sit just above the fray of other great movies of 2025, and this is one of them. I’ll never forget the insanity I felt when, after finishing what felt like the “opening scene” of this movie in the theater, I glanced at my watch to note how long that segment was so I could note it in a potential review. And, somehow, it had been like forty-five minutes while feeling like seven. The rest of the movie continued to move breezily, and was effective in telling a wild and wacky story. I loved being taken on the ride, and I continue to appreciate the worlds that Paul Thomas Anderson and his many talented collaborators build.

This is the other movie that is floating above the rest, and it is doing so in its simplicity, its earnestness, and its lack of genre. It’s a story about people figuring stuff out, and I found it moving, beautiful, and particularly catered to my generation, I think, and I am happy to be targeted.

Expertly crafted genre, with layers of meaning and kick-ass action. Simply great shit.

Expertly crafted hang-dog of a movie, with a couple layers of meaning, and meandering stakes. Simply great shit.

I saw these movies on back-to-back nights, and they are both superb creations with expert craftsmanship, both created on a razor’s edge of an idea. I really enjoyed both of them, and I couldn’t pick one over the other with a gun to my head. Add both to your list.

There is nothing better, and nothing more vital to this entire pursuit of mine, than finding an old movie that you’ve never heard of that completely blows you away. This year, it was Crossing Delancey.

Just behind Delancey for older discoveries is Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, which I have heard recommended from a dozen really cool people, that I have had on lists for years to watch, and finally did the damn thing this holiday season. Kinda like Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, it is a film about young people of a very specific time in history that is portrayed with modes and models of storytelling that do not match the era of the content. It’s a bit dizzying, and definitely electric, and the mismatch creates something effervescent and delightful.

If you want to track every movie I’m watching (real friends do), you can follow me on Letterboxd here.

God, I love a tomb of a non-fiction biography. I love being transported to real places in the world in different times than my own. I love learning that many of the coolest people I have ever learned of were just sitting in rooms together all the time, and that all of the art I have ever consumed was created by a couple of people, who mostly knew each other, and who passed things on hand-to-hand, mouth-to-ear, piece-by-piece. We’re all just a couple degrees away from each other. Lou lived a strange life, and made strange art, and I loved learning about it, and I love listening to the unbelievably long playlist I made while reading it, which has so many tracks that Apple Music literally won’t tell me how many songs are in it, nor how long it is. Lou’s work simply cannot be measured concretely.

Harrowing, insightful, educational, and above all a web-weaving biography and analysis of the lives of three immortal jazz musicians, and their paths crossing to change music forever.

Spotify made a great product, got a bunch of users in, and then started making dumbass changes so they could make more money. If they make more money, someone else is losing money. Who? Human beings who make the art you’re listening to. That is, if the music you’re listening to on their playlists were made by human beings at all. A great case of Enshittification, and a great case of “we gotta wrench ourselves out of these technological ecosystems that we’ve built for ourselves”.

My least consumed popular mass-culture format had some real heat this year that broke through my typical barriers. Life was better for it!

The most exciting and electrifying show I’ve seen in a long time. It makes me feel things – mostly intense, very negative things – and shocks my system in a way that I find very refreshing and fulfilling and rewarding.

Vince Gilligan. This mf’er don’t miss.

We live in Hell. Andor is a show about surviving in (outer space) Hell. You’ve gotta see this show through, if you haven’t already.

My partner Caitlin has not seen much of this, and I’ve never seen it through as a functional adult. The observational comedy of this show is aging strangely, and beautifully. It is bizarre how funny, and weirdly thrilling, this show is right now. Caitlin and I have never looked at each other to gauge the other’s reactions so frequently, both of our mouths typically agape at the audacity, the insanity, the unbelievable things that the characters in this show are routinely doing. We are routinely guffawing in the dark of winter. It has been a blessing.

There is much I will have left out. There is much I am still catching up on. Life is a decades-long exercise in catching up on good art. We’ll never see it all, but damn it, we should try.

See you next (this) year.