Favourite Albums 2020-2025

8/30/2026

Why wait a full ten years in between lists like this? Much excellent music was released in the first five years of this decade. I won’t do a complete ranked list, but will talk about a handful of my favourites.

I listened to this one a lot during the pandemic, as background music while working from home. The suite consisting of “GOVERNMENT CAME” and “Cliffs Gaze” pulls you across a wide emotional spectrum, out of despair and into hope, which I really needed during that time.

The songs on this EP are built on top of looping vocals in the place of instruments. Apparently, the artist recorded and produced the songs by herself, and even though I can’t find any specific sources relating this to the quarantine experience, in my head canon, this album is a pandemic artifact¹. Garcia’s rendition of traditional folk songs sound creepy and alien and cool. The best song in my opinion is “Llorona.”

This two-part release is categorized as “mixtape” rather than a proper album. (I’m not totally sure what that means.) It consists of mostly remixes of songs from another two-part album called The Road, which does not qualify for this list because it was released 2017 and 2019. I heard the Rōnin release first, and subsequently became obsessed with comparing the different versions, even making a playlist so that I could listen to the corresponding tracks back-to-back. In the past, I’ve tended to look down on remixes, because I thought that only the original was… original. But, with this set of songs, sometimes I preferred the more traditional rock/pop sound of The Road, and sometimes I preferred the darker trip-hop sound of Rōnin. It’s the first time I’ve treated remixes on equal footing with their source material.

Their ornate and intricate lyrics evoke old-timey literature², but with a feminist angle. And their musicianship is impressive, with many powerful riffs and catchy hooks. Check out this live performance of “Sinner,” one of my top tracks. Their second album From the Pyre (2025) is just as good. My favourite new discovery of recent years.

For a long time, I named Radiohead as my favourite band, but the truth is that they have been essentially inactive for 10 years at this point (side projects notwithstanding). My point is that this 2024 album and its accompanying tour are when I started to think of Godspeed You! Black Emperor as my favourite band instead. “RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD” has it all: a catchy guitar riff, a lilting violin passage, and an awesome crescendo and climax.

Overall, I think Hollow Knight is a better game than its sequel, but one area in which Silksong wins over its predecessor is the soundtrack. I started listening to the music before playing the game, which helped me appreciate it more, I think. I’m usually in a state of sensory overload in the midst of gameplay and unable to attend to the score, but Christopher Larkin’s compositions are really worth listening to on their own. The tracks “Lace” and “Lost Lace,” which accompany two battles against the same boss character at different stages of the game, are a brilliant example of leitmotif variation. I continue to listen heavily to this album, and it often moves me to tears.