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The best albums of 2025 so far
Bon Iver straddles stark indie-folk and poppy R&B while PinkPantheress makes an unarguable case for going out out as we revisit six months of the music you mustn’t miss
While the sultry beats and period-specific dial tones are on point, Lifetime transcends homage thanks to De Casier’s innovative vision: the celestial rave synths that glimmer through Seasons; how Two Thieves disintegrates from chilly Y2K futurism to dank, time-warped dub; contrasting the immaculate melody of Delusional with a whinnying horn sampled from Insane in the Brain. Dan’s Boogie is another masterclass in it, paring back the dancefloor precision of 2022’s Labyrinthitis for the haunted opulence of Bologna, which seems to reverberate across the empty marble floors of a deserted hotel; the title track’s decadently spiralling arpeggios knocking his rakish lounge act off their piano stool; the darkly manic power pop of Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World. There’s a sense in which Mike Hadreas’s seventh album as Perfume Genius feels like a culmination, a collection on which you can hear aspects of all the musical personae he’s inhabited over the years – from the stark confessional singer-songwriter mode of his debut Learning, to the synth-pop of 2014’s Too Bright to the left-field Americana of 2020’s acclaimed Set My Heart on Fire Immediately.
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