We’re slowly easing into 2026; last week, we crammed three different Pressing Concerns in before the New Year and revealed the results of the Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll. The December 2025 playlist is a bit of a grab-bag, pulling stuff from all over last year and some odds and ends, too. There won’t be a Tuesday post this week; we’re probably looking at two a week for at least part of January.
Laika Songs, The Michael Character, and Moviola all have two songs on this playlist.
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal (I added a couple of extra songs to the streaming versions this time, because this month was unusually heavy for non-streaming picks). Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one, or visit the site directory. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
“Little Act”, Izzy Oram Brown & The Bird Calls
From Little Act (2025, Rock for Sale)
Nico Hedley and Léna Bartels launched a series called “Splits for Sale” last year, in which their record label Rock for Sale “pair[s] artists who have previously never worked together and invite[s] them to collaborate”. The second Splits for Sale EP links together two New York City folk acts: The Bird Calls, aka the solo project of Sam Sodomsky, and Izzy Oram Brown, a Brooklyn guitarist and songwriter who also played on Bartels’ most recent solo album. Little Act’s title track, in which Brown and Sodomsky share lead vocals, is a late entry for the best pop song of 2025: it’s the best of “lo-fi, drum machine indie pop” and “folk rock” all in one. Read more about Little Act here.
“Days of the Atom Bomb”, Endless Mike and the Beagle Club
From The Forest Is the Trees (2025, Sidewalk Chalk)
Endless Mike and the Beagle Club are new to me, but I feel like I immediately understood the Johnstown, Pennsylvania act’s whole deal after just one listen to their latest album, The Forest Is the Trees. Endless Mike, aka Mike Miller, is a Rust Belt troubadour making alt-country, cowpunk, folk rock, “Americana”, “heartland rock” and touring the underground circuit for two decades. The Forest Is the Trees has a lot to like on it, but it boldly starts with its best song, a bottle rocket cowpunk/country punk rocker called “Days of the Atomic Bomb” that burns brighter than anything on the LP. Read more about The Forest Is the Trees here.
“Mario Party Crashout!”, Addicus
From A Story About… (2025, Acid Punk)
Over ten scrappy indie-pop-punk songs, Addicus made their case as a notable name in the Upper Peninsula music scene with their 2024 self-titled debut album. The trio didn’t wait long to return, as we were given a sophomore Addicus album, A Story About…, a year and change later. It’s a shorter record than Addicus, but it’s their strongest one yet. Their bread and butter is still three-to-four-chord wreckers of punk-pop songs: see “Mario Party Crashout!”, a shining example of the form hidden in A Story About…’s second half. Read more about A Story About… here.
“Over & Over”, Summer Blue
From Summer Blue (2025, New Morality Zine)
I associate Chicago label New Morality Zine with a certain muscular kind of music sitting at the intersection of hardcore punk, alt-rock, and shoegaze, but recent signee Summer Blue don’t quite fit the mold. The San Jose-based quartet (“Victoria, Matthew, Eric, and Syed”) call themselves a power pop band and reference groups like The Sundays and Velocity Girl as inspiration for their self-titled debut EP. I’m happy to report that Summer Blue nails this sort of wistful but euphoric dreamy 90s power pop sound, and the bursting-with-hooks “Over & Over” is one of the best pop songs I’ve heard in recent memory.
“A Little a Lot”, Dan Darrah
From Vacationland (2025, Sunday Drive)
Toronto’s Dan Darrah ended 2025 by quietly dropping his second album of the year, Vacationland; unlike his last couple of LPs, this one is digital-only, and it doesn’t appear that his regular backing band The Rain play on this one. Maybe Vacationland is subsequently supposed to be a more casual or lower-stakes Darrah record, but there isn’t a drop-off in quality compared to his last few albums here. Vacationland is pretty laid-back and meandering as a whole, but the drum-machine-propelled opening track “A Little a Lot” is a lively exception. Read more about Vacationland here.
“Friendly Competition”, Constant Greetings
From Good Sports (2025, Retriever)
I called New Brunswick indie rock group Constant Greetings’ sophomore album an “intriguing collection of somewhat hazy, somewhat dark, yet fairly catchy 90s-indebted indie rock” at the time, and I’m pleased to report that Good Sports, their third LP, lives up to and even expands upon that record’s foundation. Constant Greetings favor a relatively unadorned setup, but their songs are sneakily quite layered, and there’s a throughline from more garage-y indie-punk-rock to hook-y, melodic, punched-up pop rock like “Friendly Competition”, maybe the best song on the album. Read more about Good Sports here.
“Anxiety”, The Max Levine Ensemble
From Sad State (2025)
Before his work in Rosy Overdrive fixtures Bad Moves and Dim Wizard, Washington, D.C. musician David Combs led the pop punk trio The Max Levine Ensemble alongside bassist Ben Epstein and drummer Nick Popovici in the early 2000s (a bygone era in which figures like “Plan-It-X Records” and “Ben Weasel” carried now-unthinkable weight). The first Max Levine Ensemble record in ten years isn’t “new music”, per se, but it’s three newly-recorded versions of previously-unreleased Max Levine Ensemble songs from the 2010s put to tape as an acknowledgement of the group’s 25th anniversary. The Ensemble is also playing a show with The Ergs as part of the anniversary commemoration, which saves me the trouble of making up a more tenuous excuse to reference The Ergs as a band to whose fans these songs will also appeal.
“Break It Down Again”, Sting Pain Index
From The Revolution Somewhere Else (2025)
Sting Pain Index are a self-proclaimed “punk rock supergroup”, and I suppose that their newest EP, The Revolution Somewhere Else, is punk rock–sometimes of a noisy, abrasive, and “post-” variety, and sometimes not like that at all. The Revolution Somewhere Else ends with a shockingly faithful cover of Tears for Fears’ “Break It Down Again” (if the title of the EP sounded familiar but unplaceable to you–it’s a paraphrased lyric from this one). Sting Pain Index clearly saw something in this also-ran pop song that speaks to their agitated underground Americana, and its inclusion on The Revolution Somewhere Else is, ironically, successful at building this connection up. Read more about The Revolution Somewhere Else here.
“Optimism Shame”, Laika Songs
From I Can Feel an Ending (2025, Two Worlds/Galaxy Train)
I Can Feel an Ending, Laika Songs’ second album in as many years, is an incredibly comfortable one: it’s just as large as 2024’s Slowly Spiraling Towards the Light is and has at least as many great pop moments, but it’s even less concerned with presenting them punctually or linearly. So many of the most immediate tracks on I Can Feel an Ending come in its second half, including the gentle power pop charms of “Optimism Shame”, which is my favorite song on the LP at this exact moment. Read more about I Can Feel an Ending here.
“Telling You Nothing”, Moviola
From Glen Echo Autoharp (1998, Spirit of Orr)
I took a trip over twenty-five years back to listen to an early album by the long-running Columbus, Ohio alt-country group Moviola, whose most recent album, Earthbound, appeared on this blog in 2025. Glen Echo Autoharp is a distorted, fuzzy example of Midwestern 90s indie rock that has legitimate twang in some places and sounds more like Guided by Voices, Sebadoh and the like in others. “Telling You Nothing”, the album’s opening track, is the “hit” of Glen Echo Autoharp if it has such a thing; it’s a beautiful, earnest pop rock ballad run through a substantial number of filters in between inception and appearance on-record.
“Sydd”, Pelted
From Effort (2025, Broken Cycle)
One of the countless bands currently making music that features some degree of shoegaze and alt-country influence in Philadelphia is called Pelted (they call it “horse rock”), but there’s just something to their debut EP Effort that kept me returning to it as 2025 wound to a close. I think the third track, “Sydd”, is my favorite. It’s (I believe) the only song that band co-leader Dan Hanna sings; the vocals remind me a lot of Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner, and the lyrics–an offbeat character study of the titular unsavory figure–enhance the comparison in my mind. Read more about Effort here.
“Old Friend”, Erie Choir
From Golden Reviser (2025, Potluck Foundation)
Eric Roehrig is a North Carolina indie rock veteran, probably most well-known as one of the two singer-guitarists in the late 90s/early 00s Saddle Creek group Sorry About Dresden (alongside the late Matt Oberst). Roehrig’s quasi-solo project Erie Choir has existed for nearly as long, though, and the group returned last year with an album called Golden Reviser (featuring contributions from ex-Sorry About Dresden members and other Saddle Creek-associated acts). It’s a solid record of relaxed folk rock and indie pop, but the rest of Golden Reviser didn’t prepare me for how much I ended up loving its closing track, “Old Friend”. It’s a really captivating roots/country rock finale, something that owes more to names like Robert Earl Keen and Lyle Lovett than Bright Eyes (but with a little bit of Saddle Creek edge to it, still, sure).
“Quit with Suzy (75K)”, Humbug
From Open Season (2025)
Pasadena’s Humbug bill themselves as a “new power pop band”, but they don’t really slot into the jangly, wistful version of the genre happening upstate in San Francisco, nor are they necessarily really loud Weezer-worshipping alt-rockers, either. On Open Season, Humbug really sound like a band out of time, landing closer than anything to offbeat, catchy turn-of-the-century indie rock; not really 2000s “post-punk revival”, aware of XTC and The Beach Boys but not directly imitating them. This adds some dimension to Open Season–for instance, how many other bands would write about middle-class angst so directly and melodically as “Quit with Suzy (75K)”? Read more about Open Season here.
“Scared to Dance”, Hermetic Delight
From Vagabond Melodies (2025, Facultative/October Tone)
The Turkish/French trio Hermetic Delight (currently based in Strasbourg) checked in last year with Vagabond Melodies, which is I believe their third LP since 2012. It’s a solid album sitting at the corner of “art pop” and “indie rock”, exploring the realms of synthpop, post-punk, and dream pop over its nine songs. My favorite song on Vagabond Melodies is a six-minute wrecking ball of a dance-pop song called (of course) “Scared to Dance”; the trio keep the energy steady, slick, and undeniable for the entirety of the track.
“Start Making Sense”, The Kyle Sowashes
From Start Making Sense (2025, Anyway)
Kyle Sowash is a Columbus, Ohio indie rock institution who’s been stubbornly leading his eponymous band in gruff, punk-adjacent underground rock music for coming up on twenty years now. Start Making Sense, the Kyle Sowashes’ first LP in six years, is thirteen songs of The Kyle Sowashes experience, which can be described in loose genre-based terms (pop punk, “orgcore”, 90s-style indie garage rock) or more basic, kind-of-backhanded-sounding descriptors (“no-frills”, “workmanlike”, “everyman”, “barebones”). The title track is my favorite one; its beleaguered chorus feels like the big cathartic moment towards which it feels like the entire record was building up. Read more about Start Making Sense here.
“Mind Like a Tool”, Caution
From Peripheral Vision (2025, Dust’s Delight)
I’ve written about Birmingham, Alabama musician Cash Langdon’s solo records before, but this is the first time I’ve touched on his duo with Nora Button, Caution. Following an EP in 2021 and an album in 2022 on the sorely-missed Born Yesterday Records, Button and Langdon have closed 2025 out with a new one called Peripheral Vision. It’s an impressive collection of fuzzy, distorted pop music, too sleazy and scuzzy for “dream pop” but too casual for “shoegaze”. Maybe just queue up “Mind Like a Tool”, the enthralling, somewhat hypnotic opening track, to get an idea of what Caution are up to here.
“The Impermanent Coffee Can”, The Michael Character
From The Impermanent Coffee Can (2025)
On their eighteenth LP, The Impermanent Coffee Can, the vibrant, sweeping Michael Character sound is used to tackle the “divorce album”, with bandleader James Ikeda taking us to some understandably difficult places in his writing. The prolific Boston project’s rollicking folk rock/folk punk/somewhat jittery singer-songwriter material remains intact for this journey, but Ikeda and his collaborators veer away from it in the right places, too. The title track is the most beautiful song on the album, an unflinching and subtle account of what it’s like to have permanency blink out in front of one’s self along with all its taken-for-granted mundanity. Read more about The Impermanent Coffee Can here.
“Choices”, Fust & Merce Lemon
From Cup of Loneliness / Choices (2025, Trouble Chair)
I’m not sure if you heard, but North Carolina alt-country stalwarts Fust made the best album of 2025, according to the influential music blog Rosy Overdrive. The Durham group spent some time on the road this year with similarly-minded Pittsburgh folk rock musician Merce Lemon, and they commemorated their time together by recording and releasing a 7” of George Jones covers. Fust take the lead on “Choices”, although Lemon does provide backing vocals–there’s not a whole lot for me to say about this cover other than it’s very well-done and shows how seamlessly the traditional side of country is sewn into Fust’s sound (which, of course, is more so than a lot of their peers, but it’s easy to take it for granted with how recognizable Aaron Dowdy and his band have made their “style” over three albums).
“Lace”, Boreen
From Heartbreak Hill (2025, Bud Tapes)
The Portland, Oregon project Boreen had an impressive ten-year history leading up to Heartbreak Hill, their fifth and final album. I don’t know why bandleader Morgan O’Sullivan decided to end Boreen now, but I do know that the fourteen-song, fifty-minute Heartbreak Hill is an impressive send-off of adventurous and wide-ranging indie rock, folk, and pop music. There are lovely, sweet indie/jangle/power pop songs hidden in the midst of this tape, if you’re a fan of the diamond-in-the-rough experience; my favorite song on the album, “Lace”, is a second-half gem of the sort. Read more about Heartbreak Hill here.
“Go Home”, Space Jaguar
From Every Room Is an Escape Room (2025, Subjangle)
Earlier in 2025, Ireland’s Mark Grassick debuted his new power pop project Space Jaguar with its debut album, If You Play Expect to Pay, which nailed the 90s-inspired jangly-power pop sweet spot. We didn’t have to wait too long for the second Space Jaguar record, thankfully, as Grassnick (once again with The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness and Dropkick’s Andrew Taylor on production) put out a surprise seven-song EP called Every Room Is an Escape Room in the middle of December. Every Room Is an Escape Room is every bit as capable at throwing out perfect power pop as its predecessor was; see “Go Home”, perhaps my favorite Space Jaguar song yet. Read more about Every Room Is and Escape Room here.
“Pleasant Obstacle”, Vulture Feather
From Craving and Aversion (2025, Felte)
The vocals don’t kick in on Vulture Feather’s latest EP, Craving and Aversion, until nearly three minutes into the first track. Colin McCann, Brian Gossman, and Eric Fiscus take their time in setting up “Pleasant Obstacle”, giving the opening instrumental a lackadaisical undercurrent that nonetheless oddly retains a bit of the power trio’s trademark quiet intensity. At around the two-minute-thirty mark, though, Vulture Feather get serious, lock into a groove, and McCann’s intonation begins not long afterwards. They’ve done this for four records since June 2023, and it hasn’t gotten old a bit. Read more about Craving and Aversion here.
“Last Night on Planet Earth”, Pigeon Pit
From Leash Aggression (2025, Ernest Jenning)
Last January, Olympia folk punk group Pigeon Pit released Crazy Arms, a triumphant culmination of all that Lomes Oleander and her band had been working towards that was one of my favorite albums of 2025. Leash Aggression, surprise-released in November and featuring a more stripped-down sound, seems designed to comparatively fly under the radar, but these ten songs are ten more examples of Oleander’s songwriting strengths and Pigeon Pit’s exuberant skills (even in a more barebones package, sure). “Last Night on Planet Earth” kicks off Leash Aggression with a pretty undeniable, infectious folk punk anthem–it may be a more subdued experience than Crazy Arms overall, but that’s a very relative descriptor.
“Thank God for Keepin’ Me Sane”, Baby Grand
From Check’er Lee (2025, PorchDog)
The Virginia-originating sibling folk duo Baby Grand (Haley and Colby Ellis) welcome drummer Cody Wade to the group for their fourth album, Check’er Lee, and the three of them have put together a charming fourteen-song collection of laid-back but clever banjo-led folk-country music. Haley, who wrote and sings the majority of Check’er Lee, gives us a folk-y whirlwind to start the album with “Thank God for Keepin’ Me Sane” (first lines: “I bought a coffee for an arm and a leg / And now I’m alright because I don’t have the left”). Read more about Check’er Lee here.
“Miss Sweet Missives”, Friends of Cesar Romero
From Spider Dreamer Sweet Tooth (2025, Fluorescent Brown/Doomed Babe)
One-man South Dakota power pop machine J. Waylon Porcupine has stayed busy into the close of 2025, putting out a solid three-song EP called Cars, Guitars, Girls, but the selection for this playlist comes from an earlier Friends of Cesar Romero release: Spider Dreamer Sweet Tooth, which came out back in April. I overlooked it at the time, but there’s some classic garage-power-punk-pop Friends of Cesar Romero material on this record, not the least of which is the sub-two-minute piano-banging “Miss Sweet Missives”.
“Butchery”, Wave Generators
From Run Away with a Wild and a Rare One (2025, Fused Arrow)
I stole Run Away with a Wild and a Rare One from Zachary Lipez’s year-end list, which I always make a point to inspect sometime in late December or early January. Here we have a new punk-rap duo from New York comprised of Nosaj New Kingdom and Height Keech; they put out an album in 2024 called After the End, and they’re on their sophomore one already. There are a lot of these quick really crunchy, punk-pummeled rap tracks on Run Away with a Wild and a Rare One (“Bonjour” and “Beyond Beyond” are a couple other good ones), but the sub-two-minute rush of “Butchery” is probably my favorite here.
“Take It to the Night”, Rocket Bureau
From Party Armz (2025)
Rocket Bureau is a band from Madison, Wisconsin, although the recorded version of Rocket Bureau is the one-man project of one Kyle Urban. The latest Rocket Bureau record is a five-song EP recorded entirely on an “analog tape machine from the early 1970s” called Party Armz, and it is a seasoned, expertly-wielded collection of classic power pop touched with bits of early punk rock, garage rock, and straight-up rock and roll. My favorite song on the EP is the closing track, “Take It to the Night”, which sends us out with surging, windows-down retro summertime power pop. Read more about Party Armz here.
“50s Song”, Dorothy
From Sea Songs (2025, Fire Talk/Angel Tapes)
Dorothy are a new trio from London whose members are all pretty accomplished artists running the gamut from folk to ambient to slowcore to electronic music; Jude Woodhead, Marco Pini, and Francesca Brierley do their best to make a coherent five-song pop EP out of that spectrum. I suppose you could loosely call Sea Songs “dream pop”, although it’s on the more scattershot side of Dreamland, if that. The glitzy, (relatively) maximalist retro-pop of “50s Song” is a highlight, evoking acts like Flotation Toy Warning in its distorted but intense pursuit of pop music. Read more about Sea Songs here.
“Coast”, Snocaps
From Snocaps (2025, Anti-)
Rosy Overdrive readers really liked the Snocaps album, ranking it in their collective top five; while it wasn’t quite that high up for me, I still did enjoy Katie Crutchfield’s long-overdue return to making music with her sister, Alison (Swearin’), as well as a return to making actual rock music again instead of perfectly fine Americana. Snocaps doesn’t meet the impossibly high bar of P.S. Eliot and those early Waxahatchee albums, but as a casual collaboration between two talented siblings (and also MJ Lenderman is there); well, I’d rather it exist than not exist, I can say that. Snocaps peaks with its opening song, “Coast”; it has the somehow-dramatic-but-barebones flourishes of the best Crutchfield material (like Swearin’’s “Big Change”, another classic opening track), but it’s a more low-key take on that kind of thing.
“That Was Yesterday”, Silk Daisys
From Silk Daisys (2025)
Silk Daisys are the Atlanta-based duo of Karla Jean Davis and James Abercrombie, who made the jump from “occasional Soundcloud project” to “full-fledged rock band” in 2025 with their self-titled debut album. Pick your favorite dream pop/shoegaze-straddling band to compare them to–Silk Daisys is a nice, even-keeled survey of a wide array of fuzzed-out, poppy indie rock. Some of Silk Daisys is effectively just straight-up jangle/power pop, including “That Was Yesterday”, a gorgeous jangly guitar pop song hidden away in the second half of the album. Read more about Silk Daisys here.
“One Weird Trick”, DANA
From Clean Living (2025, Budget Living)
The Columbus group DANA appeared on a few year-end lists by people whose taste I respect; maybe they were already on my list to check out, maybe not, but I think it was settled when I saw that they’re a post-punk/“egg punk”/self-described “avant-garage” group from Ohio. Apparently they’ve been around for a while: Clean Living, which came out back in June, was their first album in six years. And, yes, if you like weird, garage-y, offbeat, “Devo-core” rock and roll, Clean Living provides–“One Weird Trick” sums it up pretty well, marrying dark, rhythmic, muttering verses with a new chorus yelp.
“Forget the Tradeoffs”, Daddy Fell Through
From Daddy Fell Through (2025, Olly Olly)
As one-half of Higher Selves Playdate, Fairfax, Virginia musician Steve Fitzpatrick enthusiastically melds “Athens, Georgia sound”, new wave, psychedelia, and synthpop together in glitzy pop songs; Fitzpatrick now has a new project called Daddy Fell Through, and it’s just about as far away from Higher Selves Playdate as he could get, stylistically at least. The self-titled Daddy Fell Through EP is five songs and eight minutes of Fitzpatrick strumming pop songs alone on an acoustic guitar. It’s acoustic, yes, but it’s not really “folk”–I can hear Fitzpatrick writing pop music for Higher Selves Playdate here, reaching for ideas that he and Jessica Kallista can tinker around with eventually. At the same time, though, I like the simplicity of songs like “Forget the Tradeoffs”, which can certainly stand on their own. Read more about Daddy Fell Through here.
“Malagradecido”, CuVa Bimö
From Malagradecido (2025, Cuva Groove)
It’s been about a year since I first heard of Oakland punk group CuVa Bimö; the trio dropped their debut album, CB Radio, back on January 3rd of 2025. The “Bay Area garage punk”, “dark and distorted post-punk”, and “trashy noise rock” band decided to end the year with Malagradecido, a new EP (well, a new song and some live versions) that picks up where their first LP left off. Aside from being in Spanish, “Malagradecido” fits well with the leaner, more punk end of CB Radio; whether CuVa Bimö’s sophomore album (supposedly coming this year sometime) leans harder into this sound or if it’s similarly a grab bag remains to be seen, but it’s a pretty strong start.
“2024 Anecdote (The Strangest Places)”, The Michael Character
From The Impermanent Coffee Can (2025)
The Impermanent Coffee Can speedruns the set-up to the breakup at the album’s emotional core–we aren’t given a chance to breathe until the middle of the album. As it turns out, slowing down there is a pretty uncomfortable place to be for James Ikeda, and he subsequently takes The Michael Character through the three “Anecdote” songs that flash away from the present. The jolt of the moody “2024 Anecdote (The Strangest Places)”, however, leads us right back to the current status of The Impermanent Coffee Can. “Feeling sentimental / Everything was ten years ago / People who I don’t see anymore / Show up in the way I play guitar / Show up in the way I say most words / Show up in the strangest places,” Ikeda sings, enjoying the gift of hindsight one last time. Read more about The Impermanent Coffee Can here.
“Press Coverage”, Laika Songs
From I Can Feel an Ending (2025, Two Worlds/Galaxy Train)
This Laika Songs album is growing on me. I liked last year’s Slowly Spiraling Towards the Light, and I Can Feel an Ending felt like its equal as I was initially listening to and writing about it, but here in January I’m pretty sure now that it’s Evan Brock’s best work yet. “Press Coverage” was my first favorite song, and while it may have gotten outpaced by “Optimism Shame”, I still really like it; specifically, I like how it goes from a laid-back guitar pop strummer in its first half to a fuzz-pop Sparklehorse-type soaring number in its second half, and that it does so casually in just over two minutes. Read more about I Can Feel an Ending here.
“Stelissi”, Capsuna
From Can’t Versus Can’t (2025)
I first wrote about Capsuna at the beginning of 2024–the Brussels-based quintet had just released their self-titled debut album of “charmingly fuzzy and lo-fi” indie pop rock. They’ve experienced some lineup changes since then, but their sophomore album Can’t Versus Can’t more or less picks up where Capsuna left off. It’s perhaps a bit more subdued, but Capsuna still pull out effortless-sounding jangly indie pop with stuff like closing track “Stelissi”, which is as bright and sparkly as anything on their first LP. Read more about Can’t Versus Can’t here.
“Tonight’s the Night – Live”, Neil Young & Crazy Horse
From Neil Young Archives Vol. III (1976-1987) (2024, The Other Shoe/Reprise)
I’ve had Neil Young’s Archives Vol. III on ambiently over the holidays a lot this year; there were times where I thought about switching away from it permanently (I think I’m full-up on live versions of “Cortez the Killer” for this life and the next by now), but I’m glad I pressed on long enough to get absolutely rocked by this live version of “Tonight’s the Night”. Apparently this is the one from Live Rust, which I know I’ve heard before, but it really shines here, on Disc Number 10 (Sedan Delivery, which is mostly made up of live recordings from 1978). I made it through all 17 discs eventually.
“Pigeon Shot”, Moviola
From Glen Echo Autoharp (1998, Spirit of Orr)
A second song from this Moviola album, because I’m really enjoying it and I can do weird things like this in the December and January playlists. “Pigeon Shot” is a little clearer than “Telling You Nothing”; it could very nearly be called an “alt-country ballad” if you were so inclined. It’s got a bit of “slacker” energy to it; imagine a more Midwestern, rusted-through version of Grandaddy’s shiny defeatism.
“Round These Walls”, Tall Dwarfs
From Fifty Flavours of Glue (1998, Flying Nun)
I’m pretty sure I called this song the greatest song of all-time at one point recently, and I’ve never put it on a playlist, so I guess I have to make room for it here. This is one of these Tall Dwarfs songs that comes out of nowhere with simplicity and beauty and timelessness and a discipline for which the New Zealand duo aren’t typically known. Chris Knox has moments of this in his solo work too, and there are a couple other Flying Nun-associated acts that can pull it off, but this is still a rare thing. Appreciate it!
“Whistle and I’ll Come to You”, Soft on Crime
From Noz Mat (2025, Eats It)
Dublin trio Soft on Crime have been one of the most reliable purveyors of power, jangle, and psychedelic pop ever since their debut album, 2023’s New Suite. The five-song Noz Mat cassette EP is slighter than the last couple of Soft on Crime records, sure, but that doesn’t lessen the thrill of hearing a handful more bursts of guitar pop straight from the garage. Noz Mat actually seems to get stronger and more solid as it goes on, right up to closing track “Whistle and I’ll Come to You”. It’s the only thing on the EP that could even be partially described as a “ballad”; it’s “pastoral’’, but only because that’s what makes sense for that hook. Read more about Noz Mat here.
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