I’ve decided to start keeping a monthly music diary, more for my own purposes than anything else, so I can look back on what went on in my musical world every month. It’ll include a playlist of the songs I’ve been enjoying this month, the shows I’ve been to, and commentary on musical events and discourse.

December felt like the first month of 2025 where I actually listened to a lot of music from 2025, as I caught up with year end lists and other music I had made note of during the year.

My 3 favourite songs of the year were

Water From Your Eyes : Playing Classics

I have found Water From Your Eyes a frustrating band at times. They are extremely prolific but inconsistent, brilliant at their best, inconsequential much of the time. When I saw them live they failed to connect (or I did). But Playing Classics is up there with their very best, throbbing, pulsing, indie-dance (but very current sounding, not a throwback to the 1980s or 2000s)

This Is Lorelei & MJ Lenderman – Dancing in the Club (MJ Lenderman version)

I didn’t especially enjoy the hugely acclaimed Manning Fireworks album that MJ Lenderman put out in 2024, finding his lyrics annoyingly arch and giving me strong Father John Misty vibes. Here though, singing someone else’s song, his voice fits to perfection. Being emotionally direct seems to suit him, and this is a beautifully crafted song. I hadn’t realised until after hearing this that This Is Lorelei is a project of Nate Amos from Water From Your Eyes, meaning he played a major role in 2 of my 3 favourite songs of the year.

CMAT – Lord, Let That Tesla Crash

A lot of great songs on CMAT’s latest album, but this one just pips ‘The Jamie Olver Petrol Station’ for me

Elsewhere on my December 2025 playlist (which you can find at the bottom of this post) there were great new tracks from artists I was already fond of, such as James Holden, Haley Heynderickx, Big Thief and Juana Molina, as well as new (to me) discoveries such as Camp Trash, Alexa Tarantino and DJ Koze.

Much of the music discourse, as is usual for December, was on end of year lists. Geese seem to the band with the greatest variance of opinion, everything from refusing to believe to anyone could dislike them to, well, refusing to believe that anyone could like them. My own personal view, is that they are fine, but I can’t quite see why they have had such great reviews (I do like Cameron Winter’s solo album though). Of the most highly rated albums of the year, CMAT and especially FKA Twigs stood out for me (although I haven’t got round to listening to the Rosalia album yet). FKA Twigs perhaps suffered on some lists from being released very early in the year.

Although December was a quiet month for live music, as usual, I was lucky enough to see jazz saxophonist Xhosa Cole play a set of Thelonius Monk pieces for free at the University where I work. They have free lunctime shows almost every week during term time (which partially inspired this piece I wrote a while back ), but it is rarely an artist who I have heard of and would have othwerwise gone out of my way to see.

I also finished reading Liz Pelly’s ‘Mood Machine’ all about the rise of Spotify. I enjoyed it, although there wasn;t perhaps quite as much new to me information as I hoped. However, I hadn’t realised the extent Spotify were both comissioning and promoting music where they has obtained a preferential royalty rate. Turns out Spotify is even less of a level playing field than I imagined.

You can find my playlist of the month below (TuneMyMusic can be used to convert to the streaming serivce of your choice). Hope you all have a great 2026.

https://www.tunemymusic.com/share/hQzcN8XKD9?edit=true