In the final part of our end of year round-up, and following yesterday’s selection from Deputy Editor Paul F Cook, who included an album recorded on the Welsh triple harp, the parting of ways of a Joyzine favourite and the welcome return of hip-hop legends (read it here), today it’s the turn of Joyzine founder Paul Maps to share his picks of 2025.
New Musical Discovery of 2025
This is what Joyzine’s all about, trawling through the hundreds of review submissions we receive each week until you find something that knocks your socks off, and this year my entire sock drawer was sent into orbit by The New Eves, whose heady concoction of post-punk grooves, Wicker Man folk, sumptuous vocal harmonies and pastoral psychedelia tasted of dirt and blood and sea air, spit and Autumn leaves and burnt paper. Like many of the best albums, their debut The New Eve Is Rising transported me to a parallel existence, one where everything is hazy, shot in vintage technicolour, dancing in heathland, talking to the birds and planning for a better world. It still takes a few moments to readjust to normality every time final track ‘Volcano’ floats to an end.
Holly Sewell put things far better than I could in her review, so go and give it a read.
The New Eves: Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp
Favourite Album(s)
At one point in the year it seemed like all of my favourite bands had got together and decide to cluster bomb me with fantastic new music at a rate so fast that it was impossible to keep up – within a few weeks of one another there was How to Swim‘s wonderfully theatrical odd-pop opus Greek Active (the first in a planned series of six LPs), long-terms Joyzine favourites Cassels‘ earthy post-punk swan-song Tracked In Mud and the bitter-sweet indie-pop apocalypse of The Burning Hell‘s Ghost Palace. They were joined by the most anxiety-inducing release of the year – the return of mclusky (a band whose music is so influential on my own musical life that this site is named, in part, after one of their songs). the world is still here and so are we crushed any thoughts of disappointment with the first crunch of guitar and rollocked away, taking the best bits of their original run, whilst making it absolutely clear that the year was 2025 and not 2002.
With all that said, how on earth did another album manage to top that wonderful bunch in claiming my affections this year? Deerhoof, that’s how. That they are still making albums as majestic and ambitious as Noble and Godlike In Ruin 20 albums and almost 30 years in is incredible. It’s a record full of twists and turns, political and magical, full of fantastical flights of imagination anchored by the gravity of thuddingly concrete reality. It’s one that takes in myriad influences, splices them into strange new strands but some ineffable Deerhoofiness holds it all together and keeps it recognisably them. It’s a dream in which you’re aware that you’re dreaming and could wake up at any moment, but don’t want to. And it’s the record that’s stayed with me most throughout this tumultuous twelve months.
Song of the Year
To be honest, picking a ‘best song’ of the year is a ridiculous endeavour and I could have picked pretty much any song released by any of the bands mentioned so far in this article and felt happy with my choice (and on any given day I’d probably pick a different one). With that in mind I’ve picked a track that has particular resonance within the current moment, and especially with the plight faced by grassroots musicians in the modern era. In the manner that U2’s Songs of Innocence was added, uninvited and unwanted, to every single iTunes user’s library back in 2014, Slime City‘s ‘This Song Costs £2,000’ should be automatically played every time a listener opens their streaming app of choice. Not just because it’s an absolute banger – a Mclusky Do Devo post-everything dancefloor filler, complete with a genuine belly laugh inducing refrain – but because it makes absolutely clear in pounds and pence just how much the ‘commodity’ that we’ve come to expect for next to nothing actually costs to produce.
Slime City: Website / Shop / Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp
And with that in mind…
Musical Moments of the Year
Artists have put up with the pittance they receive from Spotify for years as presence on the platform has been seen as a necessary evil, however the news that Spotify CEO Daniel Ek had used the money generated from their music to invest in an AI weaponry company, along with the platform’s promotion of unlabelled AI generated music, has proven too much for some, who took the principled stand to take the hit of lessened profile and stick to their morals. Deerhoof went public with their reasons for leaving Spotify in the summer (“We don’t want our music killing people”) and were soon joined by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Xiu Xiu, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and many others, while Massive Attack also asked their labels and publishers to remove their music (though this doesn’t seem to have happened yet).
In more music community action news, The Music Venue Trust raised over £1.5 million through a Crowdfunder to secure the future of grassroots venues around the UK, adding The Joiners in Southampton and The Croft in Bristol to a group of saved music spaces already including The Snug in Atherton, The Ferret in Preston, Le Pub in Newport, The Bunkhouse in Swansea and The Booking Hall in Dover. They received a further boost through several major artists pledging to donate 1% of their ticket revenues and Sam Fender donating his Mercury Prize winnings to the charity.
Book
I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t read any books published during 2025, but my ever growing book pile threw out plenty of winners, including the predictably excellent Bourneville by Jonathan Coe, which follows the lives of several generations of a Midlands family from VE Day through a World Cup final, royal weddings and funerals, Brexit and Covid-19. It’s a stunning piece of writing from one of the greatest living chroniclers of life in England.
But the most jaw-dropping novel I read this year was A Fraction of the Whole – the debut novel by Australian author Steve Toltz. The tallest of tales, told from a prison cell as an explanation as to how three men from one family became the most hated people in the southern hemisphere. It takes in the inescapable bond between father and son, friendship, betrayal, first love (and loss), death, fame, crime, a labyrinth, an exploding suggestions box and much more besides. It’s a surreal, pitch black comedy and had me utterly hooked from start to finish.
TV
My personal TV highlight of the year was realising that the answer to clue 4 in this question on notoriously baffling BBC quiz show Only Connect was Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs. It’s the happiest a puzzle has made me since Art Brut turned up in The Times crossword a few years back.
Only Connect: iPlayer
In terms of shows, I’ve been a little disappointed in a few that I had high hopes for, but one that exceeded my expectations after a solid first series was the excellent second round of Alma’s Not Normal, which managed to be both hilariously funny and terribly sad (often both at the same time), on topics including mental illness, bereavement and parental estrangement. In Bolton. Whilst wearing a fabulous coat.
Alma’s Not Normal: iPlayer
Radio Show/Podcast
After more than a quarter of a century of satirical sketch comedy, Steve Punt & Hugh Dennis’ The Now Show bashed its last gong in 2024, leaving a gaping hole in the Radio 4 ‘being funny about the news on a Friday afternoon’ slot, which it had shared for so long with The News Quiz and Dead Ringers. Various shows were trialled with mixed success, but standing head and shoulders above them all was The Naked Week, whose willingness to go further and harder in skewering their targets than the venerable Have I Got News for You, coupled with some genuinely impactful investigative journalism and a running joke based on a bad pun about witches, made living in the 24 hour news hellscape of modern life a little more bearable.
The Naked Week: BBC Sounds
Theatre
Telling the 164 year story of an American banking dynasty, The Lehman Trilogy was not only the best play I saw this year, but up there with the best theatre experiences of my life. Starting with the arrival of three Bavarian brothers who open a small agricultural store in rural Alabama and running through generations until the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 which was a key trigger of a global financial crisis, the shockwaves of which are still being felt today, it left me utterly wrung out as only the best theatre can do. Stunningly staged, superbly soundtracked by a single pianist and with absolutely perfect performances from the three actors, who play every role across each generation of Lehmans, this show is the answer I will give from now on whenever anyone asks why people should bother going to the theatre when there’s so much you can see on TV without leaving your living room.
So that’s it for 2025, roll on 2026 and all of the wonderful and terrible things that it will doubtless bring. We’re looking forward to chronicling the music and culture that brings a little joy to our lives over the next 12 months, and if you’d like to join us in doing so, please get in touch – we’re always on the lookout for new writers and photographers of any level of experience.
Article by Paul Maps
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