Words by Sean Victory
Sean Victory is a lifelong artist, tinkerer, and musician. In addition to the Far Out Sounds column, his current projects are Nightmare Frontier and World Hum, having also contributed to the groups Famished Ghosts, Future Toys, and Owl & Swan. Here are his top ten albums in no order.
Colter Wall— Memories and Empties (LaHonda Records)
I’ve probably listened to Country more than any other genre this year. So very little of it was actually released this year. I like country music with some dynamics, with a conscience— Waylon, Hank, Loretta, etc. I’m not wasting my hearing on the cold beer, perpetual-summer, flag-waving advertisements that pass for Country these days. Despite being Canadian, Colter Wall has much more in common with the classic voices than most contemporary country musicians.
These are simple songs, universally relatable in their reconfiguration of banal everyday life. It’s music about love, patience, working, drinking, and the enduring hum of the human spirit. Wall’s distinctive voice, deep and whiskey-wracked, is a pleasure all on its own. He could read a page out of the phone book and the timbre of his voice would impart a sense of melodic narrative to the recitation.
The lack of pretension along with the neutral relatability of the subjects he explores mark his music as Other. Look no further than opening track “1800 Miles,” where Colter points to the outsider nature of his music. He documents the literal and spiritual distances between his Canadian home and the homogenous sound of the Nashville juggernaut. There’s a distinct lack of the pageantry that pervades the “great” “Country” “hits” of today. Wall’s songs find the common denominator between disparate experiences, instead of distilling a song’s listless content from a focus group of the American South. As Wall put it on his 2023 album, “You’ve got to fill the big empty with little songs.”
Håndgemeng — Satanic Panic Attack (Ripple Music)
If you’re a big fan of Norwegian metal but maybe you’re like me, finding Kvelertak less compelling now that Erlend Hjelvik has hung up his owl mask, then a reasonable pivot toward Håndgemeng is likely in order.
Håndgemeng is not here to reinvent the wheel. The group is much more interested in perfecting, honing a sound. The band drops heavy riffs, focusing on melody and hooks rather than the flashing pyrotechnics of technical skill. The guitar solos sound much closer to something you’d hear in a classic rock song— crystal clear, overdriven and bright, foregoing the muddling strangulation of a cascade of distortion pedals.
I sincerely hope you like songs about Lucifer because there might be two songs on this album that don’t name check God’s most defiant child. In subject matter as much as aesthetic the music is heavily tinged with classic metal concerns: riffing, brooding, reveling in darkness, and the joy of finding freedom in music that spits in the face of the sacred. Also, I love a portmanteau.
Waylon Jennings — Songbird (Son of Jessi)
One of the greatest voices in country music, resurrected for 10 songs. A labor of love by his son Shooter, composed of unheard tracks from Waylon’s personal studio. From the first strum of the guitar on the opening track, you can hear the hiss of tape. Emulsion as the dust of years between hitting Record in 1970/80-something and hitting play now.
While most of these songs were near enough to completion, Shooter recruited some of the surviving members of Waylon’s band to fill out the compositions where appropriate. It is done so quite tastefully. Any new additions fitting firmly on top of the sketches that Waylon laid down. Seamlessly blended together across the decades it retains the charm of his songwriting, and the sonic jus of his best albums.
After you’ve sat with this record for a while and let the songs work their magic, it’s touching to think of this diary of Waylon’s unearthed by his son. It’s not exactly an epiphany, but it’s much like cleaning out the home of the recently deceased. There are odd moments that sparkle with humanity, affording us another fleeting glimpse of a vanished soul. The music doesn’t illuminate some Alter Ego of Jennings. It’s more of what he’s always written about: the working class, barroom vignettes, mythologizing The Cowboy, wrestling with the handcuffs of monogamy, the moans of heartbreak, and cozying up to the comfort found only in song.
Scalp — NOT WORTHY OF HUMAN COMPASSION (Closed Casket Activities)
Some bands don’t need a lot of time to get their point across. In a similar fashion to Gulch, Scalp crams fifteen megatonnes of destruction into a concise 18 minutes. Blast beats and the tumult of guitars writhe across the speakers like a cloud of quarreling cartoon characters. Unintelligible vocals give personification to nihilistic, bitter and angry lyrics. Even beyond the hollering, the words themselves conjure imagery more than assembling coherent thoughts.
At a minimum, the fury barely contained in this album can serve as the soul’s pendulous trip across emotional abandon. An indulgence in the drug of dismay, where societal ills are placed back on the burner so they may boil over, cleansing the spirit in a white hot light. After swaddling your head in this unrelenting chaos, one can venture back into this puppet show called reality with a soul better tempered against the uncleansably rich and their practitioners of forgetfulness.
Cameron Winter — Heavy Metal (Partisan Records)
Look, this is sort of like cheating, but I’m going to insist that it’s okay and I should get away with it. Technically, released in December of ‘24, but giving myself the grace (I deserve!) to let this album sink in well after the new year. It’s making the cut.
This album was probably spun more than any other on this year’s list. I’ll also go ahead and say the Geese record that actually came out this year is pretty good, but I’m going with Cameron’s solo album.
These songs are incredible. They are tastefully balanced, the instrumentation is delicate and lush—say whatever you will about Cameron’s vocal delivery. His writing is humorous, heartfelt, and piled high with gorgeous absurdist imagery. “Songs are all meant for bad singers,” he belts out on “ Cancer of the Skull”. While he may be motioning in his own direction with this one, it might just as well be directed out to the audience. These are songs to sing along to. Perhaps while stuck in traffic on the way back from your job at the vet’s where an old woman brought you her weeks-dead cat in a shoebox tied with twine.
Winter is a supremely talented songwriter. His mighty skill as a pianist and arranger allow him to take the kind of detours and creative risks that almost always pay off. If there are any instances of youthful naivety on display—he’s only 21 after all, they are promptly forgiven when the next chorus rolls around.
Juana Molina — DOGA (Sonamos)
In putting together my Top Ten I try to focus on music that doesn’t fit in my monthly column, Far Out Sounds. Technically, I mentioned Juana Molina’s DOGA in last month’s article, but it was only a mention and I didn’t really write about it. I also didn’t spend enough time with it to fall under its spell. A few more weeks of listening finds the album earning a spot on this list.
I was a huge fan of Juana’s 2017 Halo for its collage of genres forming a sound far beyond the trappings of its constituent parts. DOGA continues in a similar vein. There is an electronic backbone to the music, but its footprint is subtle. The tones are round and pure, leaving air between each instrument and Molina’s vocals. This approach casts a radiant shadow across the duration of the album. Spare and simple compositions consisting of delicate sounds impart a sense of introspection to the songs. They allow plenty of room for the listener to occupy the sonic space between the notes.
Unfortunately, my knowledge of Spanish is severely limited, and my assumptions about the subject matter will have to go unsaid, my critique strictly based on the music’s aesthetics alone. Either way, DOGA finds Molina pushing her sound further into stranger realms. It’s like pop music translated through a broken kaleidoscope, where the melodies are just slightly off. The focal point of the songs continually evade the listener, flitting somewhere along a horizon we should never stand upon.
Teen Mortgage — Devil Ultrasonic Dream (Roadrunner Records)
It’s the same Teen Mortgage you know and love. Hey now. That’s fine. If your band was this good and you were having this much fun you’d probably see little reason to alter course now.
Sounding heaps bigger than just a two person operation, this album burns swiftly at both ends. The music is as heavy as it is hooky, earworms abound. The group retains an approachable pop sensibility in the structure of their songs, without losing any of the crunch and pit-writhing crush of punk rock. Songs about the life of a cog trapped in the capitalist death machine. Socialism for the rich, and full-contact bloodsport for the rest of us. Those fucking bastards!
Somewhere in my spirit my inner teen is twirling around in a pit, elbowed, bruised, sweat slicked, gonged in the head by a crowd surfer. I’m down a shoe but happy all the same. This lad, likely too caught up in the rush of the music to let the words sink in, guided toward the disinfecting light of rebellion all the same. There’s an inexhaustible energy on tap in Devil Ultrasonic Dream.
Prostitute — Attempted Martyr (Mute Records)
Christ. This record is a lot. From start to finish the record just rolls songs end over end, speeding downhill into a pile of smoldering rubble. Beyond its sharp and noisy edges, there are even dangerous protrusions. The Dearborn, MI band focuses their American musical influences through their experience as being young Arab men growing up in the midwest, post-9/11.
In an interview with Stereogum, Moe Kazra talks about the fury and xenophobia that affected his self-image as he navigated his teens. Like any good punk finding himself boxed in by a society that fails to honor his humanity, he lashes out, directing the aggression and judgement right back where it came from. Dissecting the mind of a mass shooter. Winking and nodding to our bureaucrats who insist violence has no place in political discourse, funding endless warfare the whole world over.
It’s an exhausting listen in the very best way. There are only a few quick moments to breathe, before getting smashed over the head by guitar turbulence, blown out samples, or perforated by a verse. The maximalism and breathless rush of Attempted Martyr feel particularly felicitous in this, The World Without Off-Switch. Anticipation and terror: handheld, punctual, ceaseless.
Hooveriii — Manhunter (Reverb Appreciation Society)
I’m always keen on Hooveriii. With each release they swerve ever so slightly into synchronization with a particular influence. There’s a little tell-tale residue discernible on the edges of their usual tricks. Along Manhunter there is an overabundance of Brit-rock razzle-dazzle, a guitar doing a David Gilmour impression over a spacey synth pad, Thin Lizzy indebted licks, tandem guitar solos spiraling onward and upward. Oddly enough, there’s a lot of Wand/Cory Hanson imitation going on here as well. There are the discursive interludes, and melodic guitar runs that are equal parts catchy ditty and blistering technical demonstration. It’s nothing too unexpected from the band, but it’s plenty good at what it does.
Jeff Tweedy — Twilight Override (dBpm Records)
Holy smokes! Sometimes you get more from Jeff in a single serving than you get from four servings of Wilco. I’m not just talking about the 3 discs and 2 hours of music, but inside these 30 songs there is a Rolodex of emotion.
I will concede that diving headfirst into this collection, time and time again, I came up against a wall. Forced to climb back on the diving block, backsliding through songs I’d only partially discovered. It’s difficult when the emotional center of the album—the key that unbinds the colors tangled up and hidden in the album, is buried all the way at the end of disk two.
“Feel Free” is both an intimate unspooling of the heart’s troubles, but it’s also a sort of protest song from the spirits curbed by the horrors of 2025 in an America built for monsters. “Feel Free//Get yourself born in the USA.// Love with a love they can’t take away.” How real is a love that someone else can take away, or worse, trick you into abandoning? The wrong question posed the right way, we usher a furtive shade inside to further the work of belief. This, the tool of our fallible minds, poorly matched for work that demands the altruism of a child’s heart, growing dustier still.
Jeff Tweedy has long written with an emotional intelligence that sculpts the ineffable parts of the human experience into words that so easily evade the majority of us. With a sympathetic resonance, his music arrives at our ears, measured precisely, in an imperceptible upward motion that sees us gliding along an emotional crescendo. Mirroring a catharsis, painting a memory in our minds, Jeff finds a way to fan the ashes of an exhausted soul into an ember, defiant and kindled against a world of blustering hardship.