And now, I continue with my favorite album releases of 2025.
CHUCK D.
Released May 16, 2025
If only this man was at the forefront of the pop cultural zeitgeist right now, for how much we still need him.
This album, the first of a proposed trilogy of releases from what Chuck D.'s liner notes refer to as him existing in his "Wings" era or "Foo Fighters" era, a la both Paul McCartney and Dave Grohl's musical projects after The Beatles and Nirvana, respectively, fulfills exactly what I have been needing to hear. While Chuck D.'s flagship of Public Enemy still exists, this specific side project is another 2025 release that reaches back while remaining firmly in the present, meeting the moment heroically.
Public Enemy's "Fear Of A Black Planet" (released April 10, 1990) remains one of the best albums I have ever heard, regardless of genre. Its cacophonous assault, its blitzkrieg of sound all surrounding the God Of Thunder vocals of Chuck D. is an unmatched experience...even through the vehemently urgent continuing discography of PE. That is, until now.
"Chuck D. Presents Enemy Radio: Radio Armageddon" uses the sonic barrage aesthetic to grand effect propelling Chuck D.'s voluminous voice and peerless lyrics and wordplay to grand effect over its ever shape shifting bedrock of sound during the furious briskness of the album's running time. This album not only inspires immediate re-listenings, it creates tremendous anticipation for the next two installments.
FISHBONE
Released June 27, 2025
I am just going to say it and leave it right here, after creating two of the best releases of the 1980's with the "Fishbone" debut EP (released September 21, 1985) and the tremendous "Truth And Soul" (released September 13, 1988), plus three of the best albums of the 1990's with "The Reality Of My Surroundings" (released April 23, 1991), "Give A Monkey A Brain And He'll Swear He's The Center Of The Universe" (released May 23, 1993) and the incendiary "Chim Chim's Badass Revenge" (released May 21, 1996), it still amazes me to no end that the untouchable Fishbone never broke through to scale the height of heights.
Certainly, race has a large portion of this travesty as this all Black band possessed the audacity to create a musical amalgamation of funk, punk rock. soul, jazz, metal and whatever else they threw into their musical stew. Additionally, interpersonal tensions have caused the band to nearly implode several times over their 40 year history. But, after a period during which nearly all of the OG members of the band reunited, implosions occurred again, leaving the band with only two OG members--the titanic Angelo Moore (vocals, saxophone, theremin) and Christopher Dowd (vocals, trombone, keyboards) and shockingly without the fraternal founders of the band Norwood Fisher (bass, vocals) and Phillip "Fish" Fisher (drums, percussion).
As difficult it is to imagine a Fishbone without one of the members who created the band, it is miraculous that Moore, Dowd and their new bandmates have crafted a new Fishbone album at all-the first in19 years-but that is is an excellent one, e that easily stands as tall as their classic 90's trilogy. "Stockholm Syndrome" finds Fishbone sounding precisely, exactingly like themselves despite the band lineup changes. The requisite musical amalgamation of punk, funk, rock, metal, reggae, soul, jazz and whatever else they can think to include remains as paramount and as explosive as ever and provides the perfect soundscape for their crucially politically charged and deeply poignant lyrics tinged with their trademark Doberman Pincher's satirical bite.
Opening with "Last Call In America" and continuing onwards with "Secret Police," "Racist Piece Of Shit," 'Why Do We Keep On Dying?," "Dog Eat Dog," "My God Is Better Than Your God," and "Living In The Upside Down," plus more, Fishbone meets the moment in 21st century America with the same fearless urgency as their best work but now fueled with a staring at the edge of a cliff intensity which does indeed match how it feels to be alive in 2025. And even with the apocalypse looming, there is still space for the utopian ballad "Love Is Love" because really...it is all we really have left.
"LET ALL THAT WE IMAGINE BE THE LIGHT"
GARBAGE
Released May 30, 2025
As I always say on Savage Radio concerning this band, they are worldwide, but they will always belong to us right here in Madison, WI.!
The 8th album from Madison's very own is sparkling, sprawling, dynamic, booming, luxurious, snarling and again, devastating in its poignancy. It is also their finest release in many years, quite possibly since "Not Your Kind Of People" (2012). Like Fishbone, Garbage's album spirals from their previous album "No Gods No Masters" (2021) by speaking directly to what it means to live at this point in time as evidenced by tracks like "There's No Future In Optimism," "Chinese Fire Horse," and the dream state of "Sisyphus."
For me, where the album skyrockets are in two of frontwoman Shirley Manson's finest vocal performances and lyric writing: the ominous, enveloping warmth that houses the album's finale "The Day That I Met God" (if for some chance--hopefully not--this is the band's final album, what a way to go out) and the Hell hath no fury scorched Earth of "Have We Met (The Void)."
ARCADE FIRE
Released May 9, 2025
It's odd but when this band existed as the critic's darling band, I was a little soft on them. Now, that they have seemingly fallen out of favor, I have embraced them more closely with the first half of their double album "Reflektor" (released October 28, 2013) grabbing my attention much greater than their then previous three albums, and the, I feel, unfairly maligned "Everything Now" (released July 28, 2017) and the gorgeous "We" (released May 6, 2022) plunging reverent emotional depths while providing deeply immersive listening experiences, of which this new album reaches further.
Where "Year Of The Snake," "Circle Of Trust" and the speaker shaking "Alien Nation" make for a stunning early album tryptic, they are surrounded by the eerie yet romantically atmospheric soundscapes of "I Love Her Shadow," "Ride Or Die," the jittery "Stuck In My Head" and the David Lynch-ian "Open Your Heart Or Die Trying," a perfect sentiment for life in 2025.
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