#22 on the 2025 Bacon Top 31 — Deep Sea Diver

January 10, 2026 by Royal Stuart in 2025, Top 31

Billboard Heart by Deep Sea Diver

Deep Sea Diver can easily be labeled “Seattle darlings.” Heavily played on KEXP, the band’s fantastic fourth album Billboard Heart and their first since signing to Seattle record label Sub Pop in September 2024, was voted by listeners as their #2 favorite album of 2025 (behind Wet Leg’s moisturizer, which appeared on this year’s Top 31 at #30.) As I, too, live in Seattle, nobody would blame you for saying I might be a little biased.

It’s true, I have liked this band for a long while. Their amazing debut album, History Speaks, was #23 in 2012, and equally good 2021 album Impossible Weight (KEXP listeners’ #1 album that year) was #22 in 2020, but they’re not without their faults: their sophomore album, 2016’s Secrets, did not make it onto the Top 31 at all. #23, DNP, #22, and now again with #22 – I swear I didn’t place them here intentionally, but I feel it does say something about the band if they’ve been featured by never broken the Top 20 in any year.

I’ve written plenty in my past posts about the band’s derivative but no-less powerful delivery. With Jessica Dobson on vocals and lead guitar, Peter Mansen on drums, Garrett Gue on bass, and Elliot Jackson on keyboards, they blast out powerful highs and exceedingly intimate lows. And they can also have fun and not always take themselves too seriously. Watch the video featured above, for their great song “What Do I Know?” It has the band performing in a small room while a cast of characters and excitement happens around them. The video for “Shovel” feels dark and brooding, shot in one take and focusing on the powerful presence Dobson brings to the screen. The video for the lead single from the album, the equally-titled “Billboard Heart,” is your more typical “rock & roll band outdoors in slow-motion” vibe.

For the best view of the band, check out their 2025 KEXP Performance, in front of a packed house at the KEXP Gathering Space at the Seattle Center. You get to hear live versions of five songs from the new album, with the added bonus of Kristyn Chapman on rhythm guitar and backup vocals (Gue is replaced by Michael Dondero on bass). If you still don’t get Deep Sea Diver after watching that, then there’s no convincing you, and we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. But also, you’re wrong. Billboard Heart is a great album, much deserving it’s place here on the Top 31 of 2025.

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#23 on the 2025 Bacon Top 31 — Tunde Adebimpe

January 09, 2026 by Royal Stuart in 2025, Top 31

Thee Black Boltz by Tunde Adebimpe

Tunde Adebimpe, the co-lead singer of stellar 2000’s band TV on the Radio (who are still touring despite having not put out any new music since 2014), has a higher-register voice that is pristine, and it rings through much more than it ever did on the grittier TVOTR stuff. His debut solo album, Thee Black Boltz, more than fills the ten-year void since his full band released their last album.

Born in St. Louis, MO, to immigrant Nigerian parents, Adebimpe has always had a commanding presence on stage, and his star has only gotten more shining now that he’s aged into a man whose dark skin is starkly contrasted by the half inch of bright-white hair atop his head and full beard. Over the past twenty years he’s been able to do so much more thanks to his talents and his looks, appearing in numerous films and television series (such as Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, Noah Baumbach’s Wedding Story, and Disney’s Star Wars: Skeleton Crew).

But it’s his voice that keeps me coming back. On Boltz, he seems to alternate between a few personas within his solo work. There’s some skit-like jokey singing, paired with a couple songs that could have easily been found on a Living Colour album 30 years ago. For the lead single from the album, “Magnetic,” Adebimpe channels his best Ozzy, to great effect. This song also sounds the most like a TV on the Radio song, thanks to the appearance of his TVOTR bandmates Jaleel Bunton and Jahphet Landis.

“At The Moon,” the third track on the album, feels like a lost Nine Inch Nails song with the strong synth rhythm driving the song forward. And then there’s my favorite from the album, “Somebody New” (featured in the video above — it’s fun, you should watch it). Clearly influenced by the New Orders of old, this amazingly-fun hand-clappy dance song could easily have been a b-side to a recent song by The Weeknd.

With the success of this new solo album and with TV on the Radio touring again, Adibempe is just starting the ascent of a new arc in his career as he enters the second half of his century on earth. Check out his full KEXP performance, with his touring band that also includes Bunton and Landis, but distinctly lacks founding TVOTR member David Sitek. Sitek has been on hiatus while the band tours on the 20th anniversary of their smash debut Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes. I have seen no indication of anything new coming out, but if experience tells me anything, there’s got to be something on the horizon. This is all too good not to.

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#24 on the 2025 Bacon Top 31 — Panda Bear

January 08, 2026 by Royal Stuart in 2025, Top 31

Sinister Grift by Panda Bear

The artist at #24 has been with the Bacon Top 31 since the very beginning. Panda Bear, whose real name is Noah Lennox, is a founding and current member of Animal Collective, whose 2009 album Merriweather Post Pavilion was #3 in 2009 and is likely the album I’ve listened to the most from that year’s top 10. (Does that make Merriweather the actual best album of 2009? Likely. But that’s a discussion for another day.)

Born in 1978, Panda Bear started producing music at 21/22 years old, with the release of his self-titled debut album in 1999. His first official album with Animal Collective is their debut album, Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished¹ from the year 2000. Since then, Lennox and his Animal Collective friends have been making music together and in various combinations of solo, duos, and triples ever since. In addition to the 12 albums Animal Collective have released, Panda Bear has released eight other albums, putting him at a pace of roughly three albums every four years for the past 26 years.

That is one hell of a pace for a person to be creating music. Granted, not one of those albums since the release of Merriweather has broken into the Top 31 until now. But to have been making music practically non-stop since 2000 and to still create something unexpected, relevant, and pleasing 26 years later is a huge accomplishment.

Sinister Grift, Panda Bear’s eighth official solo album, is pure joy, and unmistakably Panda Bear. It’s full of bouncy melodies, copious amounts of reverb, and doubled/tripled/quadrupled Beach-Boy-like harmonies. Engineered and mixed by Lennox’s second-grade classmate and Animal Collective bandmate Deakin (real name: Josh Dibb), you could easily mistake the album as being from the full Collective rather than just the two of them.

Numerous people helped with the album, including the other two members of Animal Collective, Geologist (real name: Brian Weltz) and Avey Tare (real name: David Portner), on a handful of songs. Cindy Lee, whose triple album Diamond Jubilee was on the Top 31 at #7 last year, performs on the wonderful song “Defense,” dropping in a masterful guitar solo in the middle of the song.

The video above, for the song “Ferry Lady,” is indicative of Panda Bear and Animal Collective’s trippy aesthetic. Just watch 30 seconds of the video above and you’ll swear someone has dropped something in your orange juice. The video for “Praise” is equally psychedelic.

Lennox put together an actual live band to tour the new album, a first for the Collective. You can watch them perform three songs on their “Tiny Desk Concert” for NPR earlier this year. I had the pleasure of seeing Panda Bear on the band’s tour back in May, and it was lovely if a little underwhelming. Through no fault of their own, I was seeing the band in the middle of my busiest show-going week of the year. Sandwiched between Sharon van Etten, Kendrick & SZA, and Jack White on one side, and Cheekface and Black Country, New Road on the other, my brain and body were experiencing live-show overload, and I was not prepared for the mellow chillwave ² attack that Panda Bear delivered.

I’ve been listening to Sinister Grift on repeat all day today, and I’m now beginning to wonder if I’ve underestimated the staying power of this album. Outside of Animal Collective’s Merriweather and their 2005 album Feels, I have a feeling this new album by Panda Bear is going to keep finding its way back into my rotation. Maybe you’ll feel the same way.

^{1. This album was actually first released as an album by Avey Tare and Panda Bear. It was reclassified as the debut album by Animal Collective sometime later.↩}
^{2. Panda Bear’s unbelievably good 2007 album Person Pitch is credited as the start of the electronic music microgenre “chillwave.” That album, and subsequent songs by Animal Collective and others, carved out a fairly substantial area of the music industry for themselves, resulting in the rise of bands like Neon Indian, Washed Out, and Toro y Moi.↩}

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#25 on the 2025 Bacon Top 31 — Tyler, The Creator

January 07, 2026 by Royal Stuart in 2025, Top 31

DON'T TAP THE GLASS by Tyler, The Creator

Tyler, The Creator, whose real name is Tyler Okonma, was likely the hardest working creator in the world in 2025¹. From February through September he played 96 arena shows in support of his phenomenal 2024 album CHROMAKOPIA (#12 last year) – a performance that had Tyler performing for nearly two hours solo on stage in front of audiences ranting from 12,000 to 75,000 people. During a break between one of the four 2025 legs of the tour (the fifth leg will be completed through March, 2026), he found the time to write, produce, record, and release the phenomenal DON’T TAP THE GLASS, his ninth studio album. As if that weren’t enough, towards the end of the year Okonma made his acting debut, alongside Timothée Chalamet, in Josh Safdie’s amazing period ping pong film Marty Supreme.

GLASS is a short 29 minutes long, but packed end-to-end with greatness, starting with the first song. “Big Poe,” written together with Pharrell Williams (who is also featured on the song as his alias Sk8brd – your guess is as good as mine as to what it means to be a cowriter as well as be featured on the song as one’s alias.) The song evokes LL Cool J of the early 90s, and heavily samples the song “Roked” from the Shye Ben Tzur / Johnny Greenwood / Rajasthan Express collaboration Junun (#10 in 2016).

The single “Sugar on My Tongue” (featured in the video above) is an electro hip hop groove at a fast 126 bpm that forces you to move no matter where you are. Okonma recently released a remix of the song that goes even harder: “Sugar on My Tongue (Freak Mix).” “Sucka Free,” whose chorus has the rapper catchily singing “I’m that guy, tryin’ to get my paper baby,” interpolates the freestyle rap he performed on top of Kendrick Lamar’s “Hey Now” (from last year’s #1 album, GNX) that Okonma released at the end of 2024. The fantastic video for “Stop Playing with Me” features LeBron James and the Clipse brothers, Pusha T and Malice, a clear tie back to Tyler’s recent appearance in the Clipse song “P.O.V.,” featured on their 2025 comeback album Let God Sort Em Out.

But wait, there’s more to Tyler, The Creator’s packed-to-the-gills 2025: he also released a new non-album single, on Christmas Day (the same day that Marty Supreme came out), called “Sag Harbor.” Like GLASS, it is well worth your time to check it out.

The entirety of DON’T TAP THE GLASS, along with this new song, all fit a “dance” motif, an intentional move by Tyler. The day the album came out, Okonma tweeted “more body movement,” paired with a manifesto for the album which ended with “This album was not made for sitting still, dancing driving running any type of movement is recommended to maybe understand the spirit of it. Only at at full volume.”

I’ve loved everything Tyler has made over the past few years, despite only really starting to pay attention to him when CHROMAKOPIA came out in 2024. I cannot wait to hear / see / feel what he does next.

^{1. Apple thinks so, too: in November 2025, Tyler, The Creator was announced as Apple Music’s Artist of the Year.↩}

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#26 on the 2025 Bacon Top 31 — Lola Young

January 06, 2026 by Royal Stuart in 2025, Top 31

I’m Only F**king Myself by Lola Young

Lola Young, the 25-year old South London-born singer/songwriter whose third album I’m Only F**king Myself is #26 this year, follows in the same mold as Amy Winehouse and Sinead O’Connor: generation-defining artists who battled mental illness and rode a roller coaster of emotions in the public eye for all to mock and criticize. As a refresher, Winehouse was afflicted with addiction and the chaos that surrounds it, leading to her death in 2011 of alcohol toxicity at the age of 27. O’Connor had a long, tumultuous relationship with her fame, was diagnosed bipolar at 33 and suffered from the illness that led her to attempt suicide many times throughout her life before finally succumbing to it when she was 56.

Watching troubled, raw performers like Winehouse and O’Connor is a form of spectator sport, not unlike watching an F1 race solely for the major accidents and sometimes death that follows. It’s a sick transfixion, the three-car pileup on the opposite side of the highway that you can’t look away from, and it’s impossible to separate that fixation from the beauty of the songwriting.

The fame and trouble that surrounds Lola Young started early on. She was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and ADHD at 17, just after she was appearing on British television and winning a televised open-mic under-16 competition. She released her first EP when she was 18, and her debut album, My Mind Wanders and Sometimes Leaves Completely, at 23. Her follow-up album, This Wasn’t Meant For You, came out in 2024 and contained the single “Messy” that blasted her to the top of the charts and brought an unexpected level of scrutiny and fame that wore her down even more. (If you’ve not heard “Messy” before, I suggest pausing here and clicking the link above – it’s a fantastic, gut-wrenching song.)

Whereas the latest Taylor Swift album has lyrics that make me cringe and skip a song or two when I’m in the car with my daughter, Lola Young’s excellent third album, I’m Only F**king Myself¹, has the exact opposite problem – it’s raunchy enough that I can’t listen to it in the presence of my family at all. There’s maybe two or three songs that I’d feel comfortable playing in my living room. But there’s no denying the artistry. Young has an ability to sound big and every bit the pop star you’d expect at her level, but then brings you down to earth quickly with her deeply raw, direct, and self-deprecating lyrics.

It’s interesting, learning where these unstated internal parenting lines are drawn for me and my family – Kendrick Lamar (last year’s #1 album, GNX, has been played in my house and car weekly on average for over a year now) can drop multiple expletives in every song he records, and I don’t give it a second thought. His use of “fucking” is rarely (if ever?) about the act itself. And my aversion to the use of that word in certain instances is not itself about the act of sex (I’m happy to field any and all questions that may arise around that topic with my 8-year-old), but, as I’ve learned via Lola Young, is specifically about the crude, often degrading and horrible use of the word to describe sex-without-love that gives me a visceral negative reaction. It’s similar to hearing the c-word, which also features a couple times on the album. You can call someone a cunt all day long and it won’t phase me. But if you use to refer to human anatomy, in a negative and crass way, then it hits differently.

This is a great album, but consider yourself warned. There’s an immense amount of pain and suffering spelled out in these songs, and while I truly hope Young is able to continue her career while avoiding the pitfalls of her illnesses and addictions, I fear the worst. She’s released a video for every song on the album, so there is no shortage of watching Young and learning what she’s all about. I chose “who f**king cares?” to feature above because the lone acoustic guitar and the internal-dialog-as-lyrics are exactly what I love about Young’s songwriting. But know that the rest of the album is much more raucous. I suggest starting with “Not Like That Anymore” or “d£aler” for a taste of Young at her biggest and brightest.

how long will it take to walk a mile? (interlude)
F**K EVERYONE
One Thing
d£aler
SPIDERS
Penny Out of Nothing
Walk All Over You
Post Sex Clarity
SAD SOB STORY! :)
CAN WE IGNORE IT? :(
why do i feel better when i hurt you?
Not Like That Anymore
who f**king cares? (featured above)
ur an absolute c word (interlude)

Find some headphones and put I’m Only F**king Myself on. You’ll be pleasantly surprised, until you start hearing the lyrics, and then you’ll likely be horrified. But if you’re like me, the juxtaposition of the two emotions mixes into a cocktail of aural greatness that will keep you engaged and coming back for more.

^{1. Note the asterisks in the album title are hers – I’m not censoring the title myself, the title is inherently censored by Young.↩}

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#27 on the 2025 Bacon Top 31 — David Byrne

January 05, 2026 by Royal Stuart in 2025, Top 31

Who Is The Sky? by David Byrne

David Byrne released his first album, Talking Heads: 77, with is band of the same name in 1977. Talking Heads released four albums before Byrne released his first solo project in 1981 (his beautiful collaboration with Brian Eno, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts). The band released four additional records before officially splitting up in 1991, while Byrne continued to release solo albums and soundtracks for film and theater during and after the band’s short-but-fruitful existence. All told, then man has been a part of 30 records in the 48 years he’s been releasing music.

He is a true national treasure. (Despite having been born in Scotland, Byrne has triple citizenship between Great Britain, the US, and Ireland. He’s lived in NYC for decades.) He has gifted us with his art via recorded music and a myriad of media for nearly half a century. He’s stage-directed and choreographed dances throughout his musical career (if you’ve not seen the brilliant 1984 Jonathan Demme-directed Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, I highly recommended you put it at the top of your list – you will not be disappointed). He’s been the creative force behind multiple Broadway shows (The Catherine Wheel with Twyla Tharp, his own American Utopia, and a Broadway collaboration with Fatboy Slim called Here Lies Love). He’s written multiple books, on music and many other topics. Since 1990 he’s run a record label focused on bringing international sounds to a global audience, called Luaka Bop. In 2003 he toured a non-music presentation at college campuses called “I ♥ PowerPoint” that I had the pleasure of seeing live at Kane Hall at the University of Washington. He gave a TED talk in 2010. While not a true EGOT, he’s won an Oscar, a Grammy, a Tony, a Golden Globe, and has been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Byrne has a savant-like commitment¹ to making people feel connected, happy, and loved. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Byrne perform on stage six times since 2001, and each was filled with pure joy. One of those concerts was at Benaroya Hall, where the Seattle Symphony performs, promoting his collaboration with St. Vincent (the album, called Love This Giant, featured at #15 in 2012).

To promote his tenth solo album, the fantastic Who Is The Sky?, created in collaboration with a musical ensemble called Ghost Train Orchestra, Byrne built a stage set that saw him and 14 other musicians and dancers all performing on top of and surrounded by giant LED screens. The scenes surrounding the performers alternated through locales as varied as the surface of the moon (while playing Talking Heads’ “Heaven”), a NYC rooftop (performing “Strange Overtones” from Byrne’s second collaboration with Brian Eno, 2008’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today), and a 360° view of the interior of Byrne’s Brooklyn apartment (while playing Who Is The Sky?’s “My Apartment is My Friend,” of course). Each song throughout the nearly 2-hour set featured choreographed dances for the entire 15-person crew, with even the musicians mobilized thanks to special mounts and harnesses for their instruments. It was magical.

Byrne’s solo music over the last 20 years has tended towards more “safe” territory than the Talking Heads ever did. “Everybody Laughs,” featured in the video above, is a prime example. There are no surprises, but there’s also nothing to dislike. Add in Byrne’s electrified presence, and you can see why why we all keep coming back. He’s released another video from the album, a black-and-white animated singalong for the song “What is the Reason For it?,” which features Hayley Williams, the lead singer of rock band Paramore. And then there’s a video for non-album track “T Shirt,” which I first heard and saw as part of the Who Is They Sky? concert.

While it doesn’t compare to the live stage show, you can get a small sense of it by watching the crew’s Tiny Desk Concert from December. They managed to fit all 15 of them behind the desk, performing a few key songs from the show.

Byrne is 73 years old, and showing no signs of slowing down. While his albums alone don’t “wow,” everything else he brings to the world more than makes for it, keeping him near the top of “must see” lists everywhere. I can’t wait to see what he can do in the second half of his century of performing.

^{1. Despite having never been formally diagnosed, Bryne said in 2012 that he felt that music was his way of communicating when he could not do it face-to-face “because of [his] autism”.↩}

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#28 on the 2025 Bacon Top 31 — Sudan Archives

January 04, 2026 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2025

THE BPM by Sudan Archives

Pretty sure until I started the research for this post I’d never heard of anyone self-teaching themselves how to play the violin. But that’s exactly what Brittney Denise Parks did after seeing a group of fiddlers in 4th grade. After that fateful day, she asked her mom for a violin and was finally given one a year or two later.

Parks, whose stage name is Sudan Archives¹, took her love of the violin from her home town of Cincinnati to Los Angeles when she was kicked out of her house after high school. Newly relocated, she started writing her own music while immersing herself in the legendary experimental hip hop and electronic music club night Low End Theory at The Airliner in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of LA. She also started attending ethnomusicology classes at Pasadena City College, where she dove deep into the global cultural origins of stringed instruments (as one does).

Thanks to her ties at Low End Theory, she got a connection at Stones Throw Records, with whom she’s released two Sudan Archives EPs and three full-length albums. I’d heard the name Sudan Archives for years, but had never given her much consideration until a coworker (hi Maureen!) told me they were having trouble putting THE BPM down. Give it a listen, and it’s easy to hear why.

Hit play on the video above, for the song “DEAD.” Parks has taken her violin skills, the ethnomusicology education, and Low End Theory experience and combined it into what my Gen X music-loving mind wants to call “techno music.” If you listen closely, you’ll hear evidence of a violin scattered throughout the album, but at its core, this is dance music, primed to make you want to move. She’s released a few videos from the album, all generally built around the premise of Parks mugging for the camera, barely clothed. Watch “A BUG’S LIFE,” “MS. PAC MAN,” and “MY TYPE” — MS. PAC MAN is the most abrasive song on the album, with lyrics like “Put it in my mouth, then my bank account. Fuck you on the couch in my favorite blouse,” but it’s still great. You’d be hard pressed to not shake your booty to this album.

I’ve not yet listened, but from what I’ve read, the past Sudan Archives albums are every bit as good as this one. We all now have our marching orders. Let’s get out and listen, please report back your findings.

^{1. “My mom nicknamed me ‘Sudan,’ and that country happens to have a lot of violin music, which I thought was really cool. ‘Archives’ refers to the musicologist archives that I always try to find, but it also means if you wanna be yourself, you gotta dig deep.” – “Sudan Archives: She’s Different” article in Pitchfork, August 17, 2017↩}

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#29 on the 2025 Bacon Top 31 — Taylor Swift

January 03, 2026 by Royal Stuart in 2025, Top 31

The Life of a Showgirl by Taylor Swift

Tay Tay continues to have a strong presence in my household. After the surprise announcement of her newest album (her twelfth) at 12:12am on Tuesday August 12, the anticipation in my wife and youngest child – both proud Swifties™ – was palpable and unavoidable. Swift has been releasing music at a breakneck pace of late (The Life of a Showgirl is her sixth album in seven years – her 11th album if you count the four “Taylor’s Version” re-recorded albums she’s release in that same time), and her team is the best in the world at maintaining momentum. Speaking as someone who knows, it’s impossible to avoid getting swept away in it all.

The Life of a Showgirl is a great album, in a long line of great albums. In spite of the pace and ever-present nature of Taylor Swift®, her songwriting continues to be second-to-none. Nobody, aside from the Beatles’ 12-album stretch from 1963-1970, has been able to maintain this level of creative output and universal acceptance.

The word “frenzy” comes to mind when I think of the release of the album, and its lead single “The Fate of Ophelia”, on October 3. Suddenly the conversation before, during, and after dinner was all about Taylor, and there were even choreographed dances being learned. “Ophelia,” the opening track on the album featured in the video above, is perfectly catchy – I listened to part of it this morning and it’s been ear wormed into my brain for the rest of the day. There are other great songs on the album, too – I’m particularly drawn to “Eldest Daughter” and “CANCELLED!”

As an almost 52-year-old man, this album wasn’t made for me. Some of the songs make me question who the intended target of Showgirl actually is. There’s always been a heavily-polished “bad girl” vibe to some of Swift’s music, especially since her 2017 album Reputation, but it’s always felt a little forced, a little out of character for the version of Taylor Swift I have in my head. Some of the songs on Showgirl take it too far, in my opinion. “I can make deals with the devil because my dick’s bigger” is a line in the album’s fourth track, “Father Figure” (George Michael’s song of the same title is better). “It’s kind of making me wet” shows up in the song “Actually Romantic” (which is apparently a diss track in response to Charli xcx). And “Wood,” the ninth song on the album, is a thinly veiled, double-entendre-laden ode to Travis Kelce’s penis. As my eight year old loudly sings the lyrics in the back of the car, I can’t help but cringe.

On the whole, Showgirl is better than her last two albums (2024’s The Tortured Poets Department and 2023’s Midnights) neither of which made the Top 31, and not nearly as good as her two 2020 albums, Folklore and Evermore, that collectively ranked #4 in that year’s Top 31. But I don’t need to convince you to listen to this new record, as I’m sure you already have. It’s unavoidable.

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#30 on the 2025 Bacon Top 31 — Wet Leg

January 02, 2026 by Royal Stuart in 2025, Top 31

moisturizer by Wet Leg

A lot can happen in three years. Wet Leg, the duo out of Isle of Wight in Great Britain, had an insane blast-out-of-a-cannon year in 2022. Shortly after their self-titled debut album came in at #8 in 2022 on the Top 31, they won Best Alternative Music Album at the Grammys and Best New Artist and Best British Group at the Brit Awards.

Since then, Rhian Teasdale (vocals, guitar) and Hester Chambers (guitar) have expanded the band outwards to a fully-fledged group of five, adding Henry Holmes (drums), Josh Mobaraki (rhythm guitar, synths) and Ellis Durand (bass). Together, they’ve put together an unexpectedly great sophomore album called moisturizer, demonstrating they’re not going to be labeled as one-hit wonders, held back by the insane success of their debut single “Chaise Longue.”

To my ears, there’s a straight line from their debut album to moisturizer. The same soft and loud vocals, mixed with a boisterous attack in their songwriting can be found on both albums. It feels odd to use the words “unexpectedly great” yet place the album all the way back at #30 for the year. I have enjoyed listening to this album since it came out in July, but it hasn’t had the draw of quite a few other albums. But I accept that my personal take on the album isn’t the only one available — KEXP listeners voted moisturizer their #1 album of 2025.

They’ve released quite a few videos for the album, most of which have a sameness that mirrors the music: Teasdale front and center, dressed in a bikini top and short shorts, singing in slow motion while mugging for the camera (see “CPR”, “catch these fists”, “mangetout,” and “pokemon”). Of that group of videos, “pokemon” at least has a narrative that breaks the mold a bit, but it’s the video for “davina mccall” that I’ve featured above that is entirely different – stop motion animation for the win! That song has the added benefit of being a stand-out from the rest – allowing Teasdale to stretch her vocal range in a more bubbly pop wrapper.

If you’re not ready to commit fully to the band, I recommend you check out their live performance at the KEXP from September. They play the four singles featured in the videos I link above, and it plainly shows the fantastic musicianship of the new members of the band. And it gives you a good taste of what they’re capable of. You’re going to like it.

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TRON: Ares (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by Nine Inch Nails

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#31 on the 2025 Bacon Top 31 — Nine Inch Nails

January 01, 2026 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2025

Welcome to the 17th annual Bacon Top 31. A quick primer to anyone new here: the Top 31 is my personal blogging platform. I post primarily in January. Every day throughout the month, I’ll count down my favorite albums of the previous year, starting at #31 and ending in my favorite album of that year. There is no committee, no group consensus — this is the culmination of a year’s worth of listening by one aging caucasian Gen-X man.

When I started the Top 31 in 2009, my first child had been born the year before. The expansion of my family didn’t affect my love of music, but the additional mouth to feed hit my family’s bank account in a way that forced me to be more innovative in how I consumed music. I began acquiring most of my music for free (via mp3s) and maintained my live-show diet by getting in for free thanks to my local music blogging credentials. Along with all the free music, a sense of guilt began to fester inside me – I was enjoying all this great artistry but giving basically nothing back to the artists.

Fate intervened, and presented an opportunity for me to alleviate a lot of that guilt: a close friend of mine (hi Ryan!) had been running his own version of a Musical Advent Calendar in the 00’s, and when the effort exceeded his available time, he decided to call it quits with his 2008 list. There was nobody in my circle picking up the slack, so after clearing it with him first, I started up where he left off. I put my own spin on the idea (for one, I expanded from his more traditional 24 advent days to a larger 31 days of the month), bought the URL baconreview.com, and in December of 2009 the Bacon Top 31 was born.¹

17 years later, I’m still here, avidly collecting new music throughout the year, taking in everything I can like a sponge with ears, and then ranking and writing about the artists and albums I’ve loved. The guilt that drove my output in 2009 is no longer there – I spend plenty in support of the artists I listen to, through streaming and vinyl and concerts (just ask my lovely, supportive wife). Today, I share the Top 31 purely out of love — I want you to read, listen to and ultimately fall in love with the albums and artists like I have. And if the artists get some form of additional kickback, all the better. Music sustains us, we sustain music.

Let this year’s spreading of the love of music begin…

TRON: Ares (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by Nine Inch Nails

We start the 2025 Bacon Top 31 with an artist whose debut album came out 36 years ago. I’m fairly certain Nine Inch Nails need no formal introduction. But if you’ve not really paid much attention (like me) to Trent Reznor’s movements over the last 20-30 years, let me give you a quick refresher.

Since releasing Pretty Hate Machine in 1989 (!), Reznor has become quite the auteur. He’s released 14 Nine Inch Nails albums and, together with his writing partner Atticus Ross, he’s created the soundtracks for 21 films. The latest Reznor / Ross soundtrack, for 2025’s TRON: Ares, marks the first time they’ve applied the band name Nine Inch Nails to a soundtrack, implying that until now, all previous soundtracks were not worthy of the NIN name.

I concur: their soundtrack to TRON: Ares feels very much like a Nine Inch Nails from my youth. Prior to this album, I think the last NIN album I listened to and actually enjoyed was 1999’s Fragile. Consequently, despite having released multiple NIN albums since 2009, none of those were worthy of the Top 31. In fact, the only time Reznor has appeared on the Top 31 at all was as a collaborator on a couple songs on Fever Ray’s last album, Radical Romantics (#10 back in 2023). I even saw Nine Ince Nails perform on stage in 2014 (with Soundgarden opening!), and yet nothing recorded was hitting me quite like PHM or The Downward Spiral.

Ares is a return to form for Reznor and Ross. This feels like the Nine Inch Nails I loved in the 90’s. Click play on the video above, for the song “As Alive As You Need Me To Be.” So good! I can’t say if the movie is any good, but I am glad to know that should I see it, I’ll at least be entertained by the soundtrack.

^{1. I’m stretching the truth slightly. The url I bought in 2009 was for royalbacon.com, which I’ve not done anything with. I didn’t buy baconreview.com until January 2011, after two years of hosting my blog on tumblr. This is why the earliest posts on baconreview.com (that I migrated over from blogspot) have different formatting and poorly-managed cross-posting links.↩}

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Full Albums
All albums in their entirety

Radio Station
The best song pulled from each album

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