The Song Remains the Same

I used to rock and roll all night and party every day. Now, I'm lucky if I can find half an hour a week in which to get funky.

The meat of this week’s newsletter is music-related, but before we get to that, a few other quick topics to hit…

The Heisman, the ACC & the future

Fernando Mendoza won the Heisman Trophy over the weekend. The final vote matched my ballot exactly:

1. Mendoza

2. Diego Pavia

3. Jeremiyah Love

Julian Sayin came in fourth, and while our ballots only ask for three names, he’d have been next up for me (followed, probably, by Haynes King).

That a former ACC QB — a guy no one really wanted out of high school who learned on the job at Cal before transferring to Indiana — won the trophy while leading the Hoosiers to the No. 1 ranking entering the playoff is disheartening if you’re an ACC fan. This is the problem, as I’ve noted again and again. There is a) too little talent coming in and b) too much talent leaving.

For what it’s worth, the only ACC player up for any major awards over the weekend was Georgia Tech kicker Aiden Birr.

Meanwhile guys like David Bailey, Romello Height, Howard Sampson, KC Concepcion, Jaydn Ott, Isaiah Horton, Beau Atkinson and Malik Benson are all playing well for playoff teams while they could’ve made a huge impact for ACC teams. All were starters in the ACC last year. All opted to leave. Most were not players their original schools wanted to leave.

Malachi Fields, Mansoor Delane, Jack Endries and Brandon Cisse had excellent years at bigger schools outside the ACC.

Or look at the AP’s All-America team: the ACC had one first-teamer. It had four guys who made first-team who transferred from the ACC.

That’s a problem, and if the ACC wants to change its image any time in the near future, an investment level that at least allows schools to protect their best players from the portal should be the overwhelming priority.

On this week’s Inside ACCess

We’ll be previewing all the bowls, Andrea has an interview with Miami OC Shannon Dawson, and our pal Kyle Bonagura joins us to talk about Cal and Stanford’s new head coaches and the directions of those programs.

And ICYMI, here’s our interview from last week with Stanford’s new HC, Tavita (i.e. Samoan David) Pritchard.

A few words on Rob Reiner

I don’t want to add too much to this awful story. Others have written better and more expertly on Reiner. But I just wanted to point this out…

Here are the first seven movies Reiner directed:

This is Spinal Tap
The Sure Thing
Stand By Me
Princess Bride
When Harry Met Sally
Misery
A Few Good Men

Now, you can argue some of these, but I’d make the case that his first seven movies include a) the best spoof of all time, b) the best (male) coming-of-age movie of all time, c) the most critically acclaimed Steven King project of all time, d) a top-5 legal thriller, e) the best rom-com ever and f) my wife’s favorite movie ever.

If there are, say, 50 truly re-watchable movies — you stop and watch any time they’re on — I think there’s a case to be made that five of them are listed above.

That is a truly insane run, one that may well never be topped.

Reiner’s work after that doesn’t match up. It’s a bit of a Mike Trout career — a Hall of Fame resume early followed by years of mediocrity.

But man, those seven movies have brought me so much joy, it’s nearly impossible to overstate just how great that run was.

RIP to one of the greats.

For those about to rock

I began 2025, like many of you, with some lofty goals. I did not accomplish very many of them, but that’s OK because I’ve long since given up on being a successful version of myself.

One thing I did manage to focus on, however, was finding new music to enjoy.

Two things had really upended my listening lifestyle in recent years. First, I’m old. At a certain point, people stop making music for you. Or, more specifically, people who matter to people younger than you do not make music for you, because you do not matter to people younger than you. Your favorite artists from, like, 20 years ago are probably still churning out albums, but you don’t care about those either. The music world is a harsh place.

I used to be “with it.” Then they changed what “it” was. Now what I’m with isn’t it, and what’s it seems weird and scary to me.

The second issue is that I no longer listen to the radio, though I suspect if I did, it wouldn’t help.¹ The almighty algorithm has taken control of what I hear -- via Apple Music or Spotify or Pandora -- and it has determined that I will hear more Huey Lewis and the News than any other human on earth, including Huey himself, and I will never learn of a new band again.

So I’d been in a rut that meant all my “new” music actually came out in 2012. Are the Black Keys still touring?

Changing this dynamic required actual effort. There was no external force that was going to make it easy by serving up stuff I was apt to enjoy just because I was looking for it. It was like panning for gold. I’d have to sift through mountains of muck before finding something sparkly.

But... I did find a few nuggets of gold amid all the sludge, and I figured it’d be worth sharing them with you, in hopes that maybe 2026 will open more doors and we can all be old together and still find a tether to the current zeitgeist. And because no one else has ever presented a top-10 list of something at the end of a year before. So, I present to you, my 10 favorite albums of 2025 by artists I was not particularly familiar with prior to 2025.

But first, a quick note about genre inclusion. I came of age between “Slippery When Wet” and “Yield” and so the majority of my tastes rely heavily on white guys with guitars. I apologize in advance for this. I do enjoy other genres of music, but I am not in any way meaningfully qualified to attest to their quality or lack thereof.²

Second, it’s hard to really test drive a band, so I’m trying to help out. I put together a playlist for Apple Music and Spotify based on the recommendations below.

And next, a word on Geese.

There’s an episode of “Parks and Rec” where April and Andy participate in Tom’s fake gameshow, “Know Ya Boo,” which is just a twist on “The Newlywed Game.” Andy gets upset because April says she likes Neutral Milk Hotel better than his band, Mouserat. Andy says he hates Neutral Milk Hotel because their music is, “Sad and depressing and weird and... art.”

I remember listening to “Holland 1945” one time and my buddy who was in the car with me had essentially the exact same reaction.

Andy and my buddy are, of course, right about Neutral Milk Hotel’s music, but it ignores the fact that the weirdness is what makes Jeff Mangum a genius.

In 2025, however, I feel like the music critic world feels this way about Geese³, and I’m playing the role of Andy.

Read any real music critic’s list of the best albums of 2025, and Geese’s “Getting Killed” will be at or near the top. Here’s what Steven Hyden wrote about it, in naming it his clear-cut best album of the year...

You can listen to Getting Killed and hear the continuum of bands that Geese draws from. (Radiohead, The Strokes, Talking Heads, the Stones, any good arty rock band you could name.) You can also hear the album (particularly if you’re young) and believe they have no predecessor, and that old people comparing them to old bands are annoying, and they belong only to your generation. Both things are true — this is a great band in the “classic” sense, and a great band in the parlance of “now.”

There are lots of “inaccessible” bands that I love. Pixies, Neutral Milk Hotel, Radiohead. I loathed “Kid A” the first time I listened to it, and now I would consider it a top-10 album.⁴ I am not averse to enduring an album that takes time to understand, that doesn’t reveal its true genius unless you’re willing to put in the work.

But also, some stuff is just bad, dressed up in the pretense of being art.

I’m not sure “Getting Killed” falls into that latter category either. I actually quite like “Trinidad,” which feels like a Pixies track if they’d recorded an album in Marrakesh. “Cobra” is a banger. “Husbands” and “Getting Killed” have their charms. The rest of the album, however, plays like frontman Cameron Winter cosplaying as Thom Yorke -- and not in a good way. “Taxes” is one of the most unpleasant listens of a song that’s supposedly “good” I can remember. It’s almost as if Winter is purposefully trying to make you dislike it, some sort of anthropological project in which he proves critics will praise anything dressed up as arty. I hate it. Hate, hate, hate.

But again, I also hated “Kid A” at first, so perhaps I’ll come around at some point. I doubt it though.

On the other hand, the fervor over Geese convinced me to dig into their back catalog, and I find it far more palatable. Their first album, “Projector” flat out rocks. “Rain Dance” and “Low Era” and “Disco” are fantastic rock songs. If we’re following the Radiohead analogy -- and I suspect Winter really, really wants us to -- this album is their “Pablo Honey,” the one they’ll distance themselves from years from now as “too commercial.” The point I’ve taken from this, however, is Geese has made a conscious choice to become less accessible, more whiny, and less interesting by chasing some ‘90s arthouse vibe, which I’d wager is the exact opposite of what they (or most critics) think is happening.

And frankly, the love affair with Geese this year is reminiscent of my overall complaint about the current state of indie and rock music — that it’s created to be more interesting than good. I’m all for stuff that’s deep, that’s introspective and difficult and uncommercial. Punk’s entire ethos was about this, and yet listen to any Ramones track and it’s essentially Chuck Berry riffs played at breakneck speed with a sneer. It’s harsh but enjoyable. So much of “Getting Killed” is reflective of a larger ethos today, which is to make music as aurally displeasing as possible, with vocals off key, too-cute-by-half lyrics designed to seem smart without actually saying anything insightful, and faux falsettos replacing the early 2000s indie habit of, as Jason Isbell once sang, “fake British accents.”

Maybe this makes me dumb, a bad music fan, the type of guy Jack Black would’ve thrown out of his record store in “High Fidelity” for asking about Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You.”

But I also just like listening to “Damn the Torpedoes” and “Exile on Main Street” and “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and find plenty of art within, while still feeling like anyone who doesn’t give a damn about the message can still listen to it and dance along.⁵

Anyway, enjoy “Getting Killed” and the hundreds of other versions of shoegaze art rock if you enjoy it. I’ll keep giving it a try, and maybe one day I’ll be cool, too. But for the most part, what’s “it” seems weird and scary to me.

OK, on to the list.

9a, 9b. and 10. The Sharp Pins, “Radio DDR” and “Balloon Balloon Balloon” and Good Flying Birds, “Talulah’s Tape”

I’m grouping these together because a.) The Sharp Pins released two albums this year, and b) these two bands feel aesthetically similar.

Both bands harken back to ‘60s-era rock, with The Sharp Pins feeling particularly inspired by The Beatles, and “Talulah’s Tape” sounding like the best album The Kinks have put out in 25 years.⁶

That’s not to say I listen to any of the three albums from start to finish and enjoy each track. Your mileage will vary. But there are some reliably good rock tracks that feel both very old and entirely fresh.

8. Florry, “Sounds Like...”

The first of two Philadelphia bands included here. This is not due to Philly bias. Just that Philly is putting out some good indie rock these days. Something in the cheese whiz, I suppose.

“Sounds Like...” is just good, old-fashioned country rock riffs that give off an Allman Brothers flair, with lyrics delivered like a Petty song, in that they’re both upbeat and hopeful sounding until you really think about what lead singer Francie Medosch is saying.

7. (tie) Pony Bradshaw, “Thus Spoke the Fool” and Hayes Carll, “We’re Only Human”

This is a cheat for two reasons. First, I obviously am including two albums and counting them as one. I’m doing this because they both fit the Americana-but-also-old-school-country aesthetic, and both Bradshaw and Carll aren’t anything close to new artists. They’ve been putting out music for years, even if I wasn’t super aware of them. Second, “Thus Spoke the Fool” actually came out late in 2024. But I didn’t give it a real listen until ‘25, and doing so actually led me to Carll, so I sort of see them as a pair.

Anyway, both albums are terrific.

“Fool” spends a lot of time on one of Bradshaw’s favorite muses -- Appalachia. “By Jeremiah’s Vision” is a perfect Appalachian story song.

Carll’s tastes are a bit more modern, though delivered with an old-school twang. His vision of our fucked-up society plays throughout “We’re Only Human,” with some solid tongue-in-cheek parables like “Progress of Man” and “Good People (Thank Me).”

I actually saw Bradshaw live this summer, and he was awesome. Carll’s on my list for ‘26.

7. Friendship, “Caveman Wakes Up”

Another Philly band that just oozes Philly goodness. For example, from my favorite track on the album, “Love Vape”

Kind of freaky at the BP down off Locust
I heard they got the cheapest cigarettes on Earth
They still give you plastic bags
Rolling shutters covеred in tracks
Somebody’s name writtеn on the overpass
Did they have to hang upside down?

I’m 90% sure I’ve been to that BP while very drunk and needing to pee after waiting in line for a cheesesteak at 2 a.m. Back then, it was easy to get plastic bags. Now, you’ve gotta pay for them at Wawa.

5. Fust, “Big Ugly”

I recommended this one to my buddy Seth, saying I thought they sounded a bit like My Morning Jacket, one of his favorites. His reply: “There’s only one Jim James.”

Fair enough, but I do think Fust hits similar vibes with tracks like “Spangled” and “Goat House Blues” (the latter of which feels like my favorite MMJ song, “Dancefloors”). But I think what I really love about Fust is it’s a band with a clear vision for who they are and where they’re from (Tennessee through and through). In Hyden’s blurb from his year-end list, he compares Fust to Lucinda Williams and Sun Volt, which I admit I hadn’t considered. But if you’re looking for alt-country with a blues hook, Fust fits the bill.

3. and 4. Brian Dunne, “Clams Casino” and Fantastic Cat, “Now That’s What I Call Fantastic Cat”

OK, I’m cheating a bit again. The Fantastic Cat album also came out in 2024, but they reissued it with some bonus tracks in ‘25 under the new title “Now That’s What I Call Now That’s What I Call Fantastic Cat” which should help sum up what I like so much about them.

Anyway, I’m pairing these two together because Dunne is also a part of Fantastic Cat, so there’s a ton of overlap between the two albums, both of which are fun, straightforward rock-and-roll in the vein of John Mellencamp or Bryan Adams. This may sound like a turn-off, but I swear it’s a compliment.

Dunne’s solo album is chock full of bangers, including the title track, which is a treatise on chasing success you don’t really understand. Fantastic Cat’s album is a bit more wide-ranging, but the Dunne-led tracks, in particular, are terrific and funny and heartfelt with an entirely pop sensibility.

Take, for example, the terrific “The Hammer and the Nail.”

Sometimes you′re the red light
Sometimes you′re the green
Sometimes you’re the ocean
Sometimes you′re the stream
Sometimes you’re the hammer
Sometimes you′re the nail
Lately, I just keep on getting screwed

If this were a different era in which rock music actually mattered to mainstream listeners, songs like “Later On” (which has a distinct Head and the Heart vibe) and “Sometimes Your Heroes Let You Down” would’ve been massive radio hits.

2. Dutch Interior, “Moneyball”

This is the album that grew on me the most this year. There are straight-up rockers that are easy to digest, like “Sandcastle Molds” and “Fourth Street” that hooked me early. But much of the album feels like it could be at home on a Velvet Underground album -- soulful and subtle and subversive. It took a few listens to really wrap my head around it. But I’ve listened to “Science Fiction” and “Sweet Time” and “Christ on a Mast” countless times now and they’re fantastic tracks. The album is good from start to finish, and it keeps growing on you the more time you devote to it.

1. Oldstar, “Of the Highway”

Is this a great album? I haven’t seen it on many year-end lists, so I’m guessing it’s not considered some critical darling. But this album is exactly in my wheelhouse.

I have three primary musical viewpoints. I grew up on classic rock. My formative years were spent listening to grunge. These days, I’m a sucker for some alt-country/Americana stuff (Sturgill, Isbell). Oldstar sounds like a grunge band that happened to be formed in Muscle Shoals instead of Seattle, with a few Stones-level guitar riffs for good measure.

The album is, as the name would suggest, a perfect road trip listen. It starts slowly, builds to a simmer, then bursts into pure energy with tracks like “Alabama,” “Nail” and “Tarmac.”

There’s a definite identity to Oldstar, but a song like “Lowland” that would be at home in a mid-2000s indie setlist, “Alabama” that would fit on a Black Keys album, or “Chrome Drumset” that feels like it owes a debt to Wilco or “Plate Numbers” that, by all rights, ought to be a country hit right now.

There’s no album I enjoyed all the way through this year as much as this one. In an era where the music that’s my wheelhouse doesn’t really get made anymore, this one hit every note.

A few others of note:

Two of my Mt. Rushmore artists released some exceptional, if stripped-down, albums in 2025.

Jason Isbell’s “Foxes in the Snow” is an all-acoustic album that focuses almost entirely on his divorce from Amanda Shires. It’s raw and personal, as you’d imagine. Some tracks work better than others, but “Good While It Lasted” is among my favorite songs of the year. I’ve long said you could take a half-dozen or so of Isbell’s songs and put together a biography of a person’s life. “Dreamsicle” about growing up, “Outfit” on leaving home, “Alabama Pines” on those early years feeling lost, “If We Were Vampires” on falling in love, “Letting You Go” on fatherhood and, sadly, “Good While It Lasted” on the realization that the life you built isn’t forever after all.

Bruce Springsteen released a vast back catalogue in 2025, headlined by the much discussed but little heard “Electric Nebraska,” which is a cool insight into that era that ultimately led to “Born in the USA” but the more intriguing album, for me, comes from the “Tracks II” set. The “Streets of Philadelphia” sessions is so insightful in what it reveals about Springsteen’s “lost decade” in the 1990s, after he split with the E Street Band, released two albums -- “Lucky Town” and “Human Touch” -- that were considered major flops, and reinvented himself again before a resurgence among the aging Gen Xers and younger Boomer set in the 2000s. If the 1990s were a “lost” period, this album really speaks to some of the genuinely great work he did that never saw the light of day, and it helps to re-contextualize the most overlooked period of his career.

And a few more new(ish) artists that I enjoyed at least a little of, if not enough to put an album on repeat:

Colin Miller, “Losin”
Momma, “Welcome to My Blue Sky”
Lifeguard, “Ripped and Torn”
Greg Freeman, “Burnover”
Model/Actriz, “Pirouette”
Good Looks, “Lived Here for a While”
Horsegirl, “Phonetics On and On”

OK, now your turn. Any recommendations?

A few last recommendations

This feels like a very New Coke situation, but Little Debbie is changing its snack cake recipe.

That reminds me of my pal Tommy’s exceptional profile of Jared Lorenzen from 2014 (has it really been that long?!?) that opens with one of the best ledes you’ll ever read.

JARED LORENZEN AND I are in love with the same woman. Her name is Little Debbie, and she makes delicious snack cakes.

It’s a terrific piece with a tragic postscript, when Lorenzen died at 38 in 2019.

But speaking of my pal Tommy… I’d previously mentioned his outside-the-box playoff ranking system that rewards teams for great wins, docs them points for bad losses, and that’s it. Well, he finalized this year’s ranking last week and turns out, Notre Dame didn’t have squat to complain about. It was Vandy that got screwed.

1. I am routinely amazed that the rock station I listened to in college in Philly still plays almost exactly the same playlist it was playing back then. It’s “the best of the 80s, 90s and today” except today, for them, is still 2002.

2. Any list of my all-time favorite rappers is likely to include MC Skat Kat.

3. * By the way, the fact that Geese and Goose are at the apex of their cultural relevancy at the same time is akin to The Verve and The Verve Pipe’s overlap in the late ‘90s or The Who and The Guess Who in the late ‘60s.

4. Though “Treefingers” still sucks.

5. I would not do this, however, as I am a middle-aged white guy who never dances like nobody’s watching.

6. Perhaps The Kinks have put out a far better album in the last 25 years but I do not know of it and I don’t have the energy to Google it.