Tasting Notes 2025
Hello darkness, my old friend. Winter is here again in the Northern Hemisphere and just as reliably here, therefore, comes our annual tips for success, the feature we like to sub-title “bands/artists that don’t yet have an album, but from whom we’d like one soon”. Catchy, huh? Like always, we’ll kick off by appraising the progress – or otherwise – of last year’s chosen few as what, simply, is the point of a list like this if we’re ultimately not held accountable for it?
So, first up, dreamy London duo deary, who – pleasingly – followed up last year’s spectacular self-titled EP with another strong, six-track showing of superlative shoegaze this year (find out where it lands in our AOTY piece in a couple of weeks!). An album surely beckons sometime soon on spiritual home Sonic Cathedral. At the other of the productivity spectrum – sadly – comes the elementally swooning she’s green, their intangible 2023 EP now that bit more concrete in the face of nothing new on the table twelve months later. Our preferred cop-out, as always, at this point is that we hope the Minneapolis band are just busy in the studio ready to drop a beauty on us in 2025.
Our next three tips for the top all kept us interested while leaving us wanting much more by sneaking out just one single apiece. Does that constitute success? We’ll let you be the judge, although broody Manchester-based three-piece Nightbus’s new’un sure sounds like one. And, interestingly, it’s again the b-side that most appeals, glowering guitar work shrouding massive atmospherics. Album asap, please. Dark-synth duo Graveyard Gossip out of Portland also picked up exactly as they left off with another slice of precision sleaze that promises a long-player, when (not if, fingers crossed) it arrives soon, will surely slap. And, finally, young Chicago outfit Lifeguard, whose chiming new single is full of all the right kind of sharp punk angles and hooks enough to catch the ear afresh, suggesting their tutelage under Matador is paying dividends. Watch this space for the full fruit of their labour.
Anyway, with that round-up done and dusted, let’s head on over to the main event. Make of the below what you will, considering the mixed bag above. Here goes nothing then; 2025’s ones to watch are below.
Near enough all of the shoegaze revival tsunami at this point, megastar-in-waiting Wisp (Natalie Lu of San Francisco) makes otherworldly distortion, crunchy pedals and gentle cooing the coolest thing on the planet once more. Something to do with TikTok, the girl is viral on an epidemic scale with tens of millions of plays of her debut EP out on Interscope. Time to get subsumed completely. Key track:
Another worshipping at the alter of woozy noise, Glixen’s take on a similar shoegaze sound has been warped by the fierce Phoenix sun. Tremulous and mirage-like, it sits on the edge of intangibility before desert storms bring powerful electric storms. Their much-anticipated second EP drops in February on Wichita and it’s sure to toast your speaker-cones and EQ to their very limits. Key track:
Gritty neo-industrial workouts that set the sub at full throb are the order of the day over in Belfast courtesy of local rabble-rousers Chalk, their energetic and anxious takes on beat-led post-punk/noise hitting like full-blown panic attacks. Nice Swan and their ever-impressive roster of young talent hoovered up their stand-out second EP this year and bigger things inevitably beckon. Key track:
The complete package, Manchester-based Tasmin Stephens has the look, the moves and the dreamiest of tunes. Equally lead guitarist of messy post-punk band Duvet, she uses her TTSSFU guise for more sultry, swoonsome sounds and amongst the many ears they’ve caught are those at Partisan where she’s now signed to. Oozing vulnerable, Lynchian star quality on stage the only way is up. Key track:
Undergoing a rebrand early this year, The Solution are now Dantzic and the Goth-leaning, Manchester-based post-punk outfit and their stunning debut EP sound all the more coiled and lean for it. With elastic baselines and the most magnetic of frontmen, they draw from some of the more overlooked and danceable corners of the movement, always ready to pounce on the unwary. Key track:
Got a new band/artist you want to see make an album in 2025? Want to slag these choices off? Know something we don’t about any of the artists mentioned above? Let us know your thoughts using the comments below.