Words by Kris Kropff
Kris Kropff parlayed a band nerd childhood and an undergrad music history and literature degree into a career in music business. The last few years especially have felt more like business than music, so she was particularly geeked to start writing for Off Shelf earlier this year. In 2026, Kris is looking forward to upping her sous skills; dialing in a Board role in her beloved Dayton, Ohio; reconnecting with her alto sax; finishing her Nightshift shawl; and maybe getting her motorcycle running again.
Earlier this year, I heard Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!, say at the Dayton Literary Peace Prize’s Conversation with the Authors, “I want everything to be everything at once.” It will take a lot to bump that from my Top Five All-Time quotes. It also explains a lot about the list of albums that follows. (Is list rather than Top Ten foreshadowing? Do I overuse alliteration?)
Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Chris Potter, Eric Harland, Larry Grenadier – First Meeting at Dizzy’s Jazz Club (5Passion Records)
Released in July of 2025, this album was recorded live during the quartet’s August 2022 engagement at the famous jazz club. Does this make it a tush push Top Ten? Maybe. Does that bother me? Did it bother the Eagles when they hoisted the Lombardi? Along with showcasing the best of combo jazz, masterfully executed in all its high-wire handoff glory by some of the best players working today (who played this run after meeting each other for the first time one day before the first show), the real gift of this album is in its construction. It opens with Chick Corea’s “500 Miles High.” From there you hear one tune by each of the four members, along with, fittingly, Dizzy’s “Con Alma.” To hear Rubalcaba solo on Harland’s “Eminence” and get to compare that to how he approaches his own “Santo Canto,” and then to hear that three more times doesn’t make this a tush push TD. It’s an easy toss from the pocket to a wide-open receiver in the endzone.
David Byrne – Who Is the Sky? (Matador Records)
I’m sure my affinity for this album has a good deal to do with catching the Who Is the Sky? tour. (This live-follows-live connection is why this album is slotted here, and also marks my abandonment of a ranked order). It was my first time seeing Byrne and, while I might have traded this for seeing him in his prime, I loved this show. I loved the honesty of a 71-year-old performer realizing he had to better choreograph getting his guitar on while getting his reading glasses off. Of seeing a legend engaging with the artists, all of them younger – many of them much younger – as peers and in places, as teachers. But most of all, and this is where this album comes in, doing new material. Plenty of critics have pilloried this album as a subpar retread of Utopia, and if I were ranking David Byrne albums, Who Is the Sky? wouldn’t be two, but that’s not the exercise. My 2025 is better for this technicolor pop joy, and for knowing that aging doesn’t have to be angry and that social commentators can use their voices as they choose.
The Beaches – No Hard Feelings (AWAL)
More pop, more commentary—this time on that most universal of themes, heartbreak—and a band I really want to catch live earned No Hard Feelings this spot. Like the four musicians in First Meeting, this quartet has some serious chops, and the resulting execution is a big part of what elevates the album. Is it as complex as First Meeting? No, but provolone isn’t as complex as 50-year-old Parmigiano Reggiano, and there’s only one of those I want on my sandwich. The Beaches’ 2023 single “Blame Brett” could have easily landed the band on a One Hit Wonder list, but instead, they landed a pretty perfect pop album.
Car Seat Headrest – The Scholars (Matador Records)
“The Catastrophe (Good Luck With That, Man)” hooked me—and the spot just after The Beaches “Sorry for Your Loss” on my pick-me-up playlist—the first time I heard it. When I found out it was a cut from a rock-opera concept album (Will Toledo prefers “rock ballet”) everything in my heart lit up. You’re reading this on Off Shelf so I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but I will forgive some musical and lyrical overreaches to celebrate music that takes risk, has vision, and is created to be just that, music, not a series of data points designed to snag spots in playlists built by analytics programs. If you need a pop pick-me-up, find “The Catastrophe,” and then find some time to give the full album a listen.
Jason Isbell – Foxes in the Snow (Southeastern)
Jason Isbell is a favorite. This album? It wasn’t on first listen, and probably not on second either. But once I let go of what I expected from it, Foxes in the Snow let me have it with the simplicity of its songwriting. You know the phrase, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one”? This album is the short letter. It strikes me as the album you write once you’ve let go of showing everyone you’re the smartest songwriter in the room. Isbell didn’t say that (or anything close to it) on his sit down with Norah Jones on her Playing Along pod, but he said a lot of other great stuff. Along with helping me connect my own dots on why this album took work as a listener, it showed that Isbell is one of the smartest songwriters building music today.
Tamar Sagiv – Shades of Mourning (Sono Luminus)
Is cellist-songwriter a thing? If not, it needs to be, because that’s what Tamar Sagiv is, and this album is her Highway 61 Revisited (or her Blood on the Tracks, if you prefer). It’s also a testament to how important the Bach Cello Suites are to her. Not a surprise for an artist who started the #BachInThePark project (and you can’t really be a cellist of her caliber without knowing them well), but her love and deep appreciation of that seminal chamber work is prevalent throughout. So too, is her love of emotion over precision. In the hands of a more cautious player, these would still be wonderful pieces, but in her Rostropovich-like hands, they rip out your heart in best way, in the way only the best music can.
Brad Mehldau – Ride into the Sun (Nonesuch Records)
Mehldau’s discography screams that of an artist who wants “everything to be everything at once.” It also makes clear he’s a generational musician with the talent to do it. From straight-ahead trio jazz to film scores to synth prog punk, you’d be hard pressed to find a Top Ten list of jazz albums from the last three decades that didn’t have “Brad Mehldau, piano” in the liner notes. Ride into the Sun takes the same approach as After Bach and Your Mother Should Know—taking influential works and distilling them into arrangements that set off the inspiring element of the original. This time, it’s ten Elliot Smith songs (along with Nick Drake’s “Sunday”), with Mehldau’s four originals on the album showcasing the breadth of Smith’s inspiration and furthering the explanation. Each arrangement serves the individual song, so there’s a range of personnel (some have vocals, others have orchestra) and textures. All have everything I want from, well, everything, though: reasons to think and wonder.
There were several other albums released this year that resonated with me, but I found myself fighting to fit them into the arc of this article. I fought some more; then I remembered something else Akbar said—“concurrent awareness…not a sequence, not a cardinality”—and I stopped at seven.
Such insightful thoughts and reflections on these projects. Thank you, Kris!