Our Top 10 Lists have been named in honor of late Blog Director and DJ Clarence Ewing, who pioneered and published this annual feature for nearly a decade.
Our next list is from Bobby Evers.
10. Send A Prayer My Way by Julien Baker & TORRES (Matador)
Okay full disclosure, this album is a sore spot for me. I liked both of these artists individually so just the thought of a collab was very exciting to me. They teased several singles and I was getting super hyped, but decided I would buy the album when I saw them live. I had tickets to see them on tour in Iowa. They had not announced a Chicago date, but they were booked as the headliner for the Mission Creek Music Fest in Iowa City, my alma mater. (On the tour page, it said "Chicago" and then you click it and it was just... Iowa City, which is 4 hours away and in another state). But then they fucking cancelled because one of them got a concussion, and they were cagey about who. I was like, OK, they'll do a makeup date or announce a Chicago proper show, or something. Nah. They cancelled the WHOLE TOUR. I never saw them. Then the album came out and I was like, I guess???? but I never sat down and listened to it. I'm listening to it now, and I stand by my decision to say it is the 10th best album of the year.
Listen: Bandcamp
9. Songs for Other People's Weddings by Jens Lekman (Secretly Canadian)
I have been a long time Jens Lekman fan but go through periods where I forget he even exists. I went down the rabbit hole of the albums I used to love by him and then when this album came out I was very on the ball of getting it and also going to see him live. It is an ambitious experiement with interesting results, some very good moments here. And the live show was interesting too.
Listen: Bandcamp
8. Cosmovisión by Half Gringa (Teleférico)
I got to write the library review for this one, for CHIRP, just the album write-up that the DJ's see. Here's what I wrote: Good news everyone! Chicago's own Venezuelan-American singer-songwriter indie darling, Isabel Olive, is back with her third full-length album full of sad missives. The word "cosmovisión" translates to "worldview" in English and is used as kind of motif or thematic throughline for the whole album. It is the first for her new label Teleférico, which is a tram or cable car. Her band, both studio and live, is a bevvy of Chicago indie scene heavy-hitters including Quin Kirchner on drums, Victoria Park (Pictoria Vark) on bass, Sam Cantor (Minor Moon) on guitar, with other percussion by Daniel Villareal. She's got synths! She's got horns! I also thought I heard harmonica but could be wrong. Izzy started writing this in 2020 and has said that it felt urgent and pertinent in the midst of Greg Abbott bussing migrants from the Americas to Chicago and cities like it. She wants her main takeaway to be that there are myriad experiences of being multicultural in America, and that there is a lot of gray area, not a monolith. The lead single [Track 6] is still as incendiary as when she first released it, and "The Optimist" [Track 10] closes the piece with a hopeful note.
Listen: Bandcamp
7. Ripped and Torn by Lifeguard (Matador)
Oh guess what, I wrote the review for this one as well. Here's what I wrote: By this point in their lives, the members of local trio LIfeguard surely must be out of highschool (by my math they would be 18-20) but these hometown boys truly sound plucked out of another time and place. The DC hardcore scene of the 80's? The post-punk movement that followed? They might as well be from another planet with how inspired the licks are on this, their second full-length. It's their first full-length on Matador, (along with two EPs, and this is all new material), but to call this their debut full length is to ignore the self-released 9 track album they put out in 2020. They've graced us with 2 singles already [Tracks 2, 4] and the rest is just as much noisy abrasive fun as the others. There is an effect put on the vocals in the studio that give them an echo quality that sounds like an 80's postpunk track and it is the most ingenius thing ever.
Listen: Bandcamp
6. Forever is a Feeling by Lucy Dacus (Matador)
Crazy when your #6 album of the year is a love album about your #10 album artist of the year. If given the opportunity I would die for Lucy Dacus. Between this and Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers is the only one who did not release new music this year.
Listen: Bandcamp
5. The Art of Loving by Olivia Dean (Capitol)
My girlfriend kept playing this in the car to the point where I was like, damn, this is so good. The album is like a less messy Amy Winehouse.
Listen: Olivia Dean webstore
4. For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) by Japanese Breakfast (Dead Oceans)
This album took a bit longer for me to warm up to than their past work but once I did I was all in. Honorable mention to the single they released a few months later for the soundtrack to The Materalists, "Orlando In Love."
Listen: Bandcamp
3. Nothing Sticks by Pictoria Vark (Get Better)
Victoria Park is a presently-local artist originally from Iowa City, and a core member of Half Gringa's band. This is her second solo album under the inverted consonant moniker Pictoria Vark, and it just got a 4 star review in Rolling Stone by Rob Sheffield, so catch her before she leaves town forever. Nothing Sticks is honestly an Earth-shattering album in terms of songwriting, composition and production for this music scene or genre, and it just gets better and better as the album continues, unfolding like a novel. It is a dreamy guitar album full of heart and distortion, with the singles being Tracks 3, 6, and 7, though Track 5 has strings on it, and Track 8 is the slowburn secret heartthrob. Also, I feel like she unlocked the secret Coca-Cola formula of what gen-z is now calling "Midwest Emo" and is crushing the form. If you are a fan of sad-girl-with-guitar songs, then this will be right in your wheelhouse (and if you're not, it's never too early to start). Hard not recommend every track as this is virtually a no-skips album. Like I am literally going back and unchecking early tracks so I can recommend later tracks and feel remorse in the unchecking. It's just that good.
Recommended if you like: Soccer Mommy, Phoebe Bridgers, Chastity Belt, Squirrel Flower, your journals from your early twenties, the healing power of sad music.
Listen: Bandcamp
2. West End Girl by Lily Allen (BMG)
My relationship to Lily Allen goes back to 2007 with her album Alright, Still. I enjoyed her cover of "Somewhere Only We Know" and her later torchburner, "The Little Things." She kinda fell off after that, as one does. But just give her something to write about! Enter David Harbour (and exit David Harbour). Writing in a dissociative state in the studio, she just poured her heart out making the best album of her pop career at age 40. Now she's selling out concert halls again, getting on SNL, and just killing the game. She will never have to worry again.
Listen: Lily Allen webstore
1. From the Pyre by The Last Dinner Party (Island)
London baroque pop quintet are back with a bullet. Keeping the momentum alive from the very buzzy Prelude To Ecstasy, a stint opening for The Rolling Stones and playing the summer festivals, Abigail Morris and co returned to the studio in 2025 to properly record their second album. In the summer they started teasing singles (3, 4, 9) and a music video dropped for track 2 simultaneously upon the album's release. A blistering followup, they stay playing to their strengths, with the theatrical bravado of Queen or Dresden Dolls, the songwriting sensibility of 70's rock, the 80's goth energy of Siouxsie and the Banshees or Cocteau Twins, with apocalyptic imagery and metaphors for gender inequity. It is drenched in guitars, strings, and piano, and some of the most insane harmonies you'll hear this year, especially on Track 5, which sounds like a coven of witches dancing around a bonfire (though the song isn't about that). This is less confessional songwriting and more narrative storytelling, with death imagery as a metaphor for a breakup, particuarly on Tracks 1, 9, 10. They share songwriting credit, likely with Morris writing most, but Lizzie on lead guitar sings Track 5, and Aurora on keys writing and singing Track 7. "Second Best" sounds like T-Rex "Bang a Gong (Get It On)" and "The Scythe" is lowkey song of the year.
Listen: The Last Dinner Party webstore