Music Year 2025 [Frozen]

This is my year-end list for records released in 2024, frozen as of March 1, 2026. The actual Music Year 2025 will continue to be updated to Jan. 31, 2026, after which point enough is enough.

For records in hand, * identifies an advance copy, ** something borrowed, downloaded or streamed. Some albums released in previous years are included here, noted by a "'NN" (e.g., '24 for 2024) -- these are mostly imports or self-releases, often hard to figure out official dates, but they were unknown (to me, at least) before the current year. In the past, I've also carried over releases from the previous December, since they almost never figure in that year's EOY lists, but I've done very little (if any) of that here.

For a more extensive list of records released in 2025 (plus still-eligible 2024 releases), see my tracking file.

I've also organized this file into jazz and non-jazz lists, which include reviews of all A/A- albums.

New Records

Records in hand, but which haven't yet been graded (sorted by artist, or release date if future). Those marked ** are downloads in hand.

Also Noted:

Records in hand, graded B+ or below, in alphabetical order within grade slots:

Limited sampling: Records I played parts of, but not enough to grade: -- means no interest, - not bad but not a prospect, + some chance, ++ likely prospect.

Reissues/Compilations/Vault Music:

In previous years I tried to separate reissues from compilations, including newly released vault items in the latter. This made sense when I was reviewing a lot of Recycled Goods material, but led to other problems with year-end lists, so anything containing any previously released material is collected here, and anything that is wholly previously unreleased is treated as new, above.

Pending

Records in hand, sorted by artist, or release date if future. Those marked ** are downloads in hand.

Also Noted: