Rambling Fox

February 2025 Music Round-Up

Art by Sancoon/Snouts

February has come and gone, and everyone's album release schedules have properly kicked in. It's been a heck of a busy month for brand new music so we've got plenty to catch up on!

New Music Immediate Impressions

Doves - Constellations for the Lonely
Doves' comeback album a few years back kind of came and went - thoroughly enjoyable but nothing I've really longed to go back to and whenever I have, I leave it with mixed feelings. Doves are largely coasting on the strength of their first three albums for me and I wasn't initially sure if I'd pick this up on release, but they twisted my arm with a website-exclusive special edition with bonus tracks. Joke's on me, that special edition comes in a super cheap cardboard jacket with no booklet like a promo release (apparently the standard release comes in a proper package) and the bonus tracks aren't exactly must-haves. But as for the album itself, after a few spins I am enjoying it but nothing's really caught my ear fully yet - it does feel a little subtler (if you can call Doves that) than any prior album of theirs, but whether that's down to because it is subtle or simply because the songs aren't up to scratch, it's too early to call. I think this is at the moment slightly getting drowned by everything else arriving right now, but I'll make time to explore it further - let's see how it fares towards the end of the year.

Low Roar - House in the Woods
Low Roar's posthumous album is a deeply melancholy, sorrowful album about yearning and loss... so like every other Low Roar album. Which interestingly dampens the inherent sadness of a posthumous album and just makes it fall in line with the rest of the discography. The fact that Karazija couldn't see the album to completion to himself before his tragic passing to an illness mainly comes through in how minimal House in the Woods is throughout. Only a couple of the songs feature any kind of percussion or arrangements that would otherwise grow as the songs go on, and instead it's mostly made out of haunting ballads centered around sparse piano and ethereal keyboard textures. You can't help but wonder if these songs had been more fleshed out if Karazija had been around to finish the record; as it is, it's all very beautiful but also somewhat monotonous. A good album, but perhaps not one that'll ever be able to outgrow the reputation of being 'the last one' on musical strengths alone.

Manic Street Preachers - Critical Thinking
Quick background summary for the uninitiated: Manic Street Preachers have played a humongous part in my life and on my journey as a music nerd. The biggest imprint I have left on the internet is a blog going through their discography song-by-song and the fact that I can create fairly decent entries out of hundreds of songs says enough about how much time and space I have for the Manics. So, a new Manics album is definitely one of the year's big events and I'm bound to be scrutinising this to great length over 2025 (also seeing them live in May!). Current early weeks impressions: I really enjoy it. There isn't a theme or style as such to the record and besides a vague notion of paying light tribute to their 80s indie heroes in sound it's all very disparate - in fact, there are numerous hints that it started out as solo albums for Bradfield and Wire until they realised their hearts were on a Manics album instead and so they combined what they had cooked separately. But somehow it sounds so confident and strong, and even the production has more life to it than the last couple of records even though they're still relying on their best mate Dave Eringa to head the studio desk. I'm super positively taken by this and I've not really stopped listening to this. I might make a small entry about this in itself... but don't hold me onto that.

Scandinavian Music Group - Rakkaani,
Yes, the comma is part of the title. The Finnish band's last record Ikuinen ystävä (2022) was a pandemic record through and through - mostly intimate, sparsely acoustic and vulnerably contemplative. Rakkaani, is a logical follow-up (and even shares the same short eight-song length), continuing with the folksy sound overall but with the full band now back in tow. This actually draws the album closer to the folk/americana sound of the group's late-2000s golden years and for a band who at one point made it a thing to bravely shapeshift every couple of albums, it feels a little... reductive. But I also can't really be too negative about this when the classic SMG charm is so strong here, with these eight very good songs. I'm still waiting for my physical copy to arrive so suffice to say I'll be spending a lot more time with this in the future, but the first impressions are positive.

Antony Szmierek - Service Station at the End of the Universe
Bumping into Szmierek's music in early February was a complete fluke as the YouTube algorithm for once worked in my favour, and after an evening of binging through the singles for this album I was fully ready take the risk and I pre-ordered this record. Glad I did, because this is a real blast. The Manchester-based artist's debut album is a set of charmingly and wittily informal spoken word poetry set to a tightly groove-laden, slightly late 90s/early 00s throwback-y dance and electronica production - it's perfectly breezy and upbeat for the first days of spring sunlight, gets your foot tapping and mouth smiling through its sheer charisma and rhythms alone, and towards the back end the album starts adding more contemplative and emotive colours into its palette to really strong results. It's such a strong debut album with a really distinct personality of its own and I can see this only growing further on me. Super recommended.

Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory - Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory
Van Etten's last album is probably my least favourite of hers, where she emphasises moody synthwork and seemingly forgoed her usually strong songwriting in the process. But then she took it on the road, and I'm now not surprised at all that she found the tour so exciting that she recorded a brand new album with her band mates and even officially credited them. The 80s goth synths are still all over the record but now there's dynamics, a bit of muscle (this is perhaps her most rocking album to date) and a dang strong set of melodies throughout. It sounds like music you'd stumble onto when going down the long stairs to some dingy basement club populated by the kind of people who wear sunglasses at night, and suddenly you're losing yourself to music. Very exciting, very good.

The Veils - Asphodels
The Veils have always centered around their frontman Finn Andrews but Asphodels is very blatant about being more or less a solo album: besides Andrews and a string quartet, there's only one other credited musician (solely for the bass parts) and much of this short 9-track, 30-minute album is made out of minimal singer/songwriter ballads largely centered around Andrews' voice and either piano or guitar. It's a very downstated and subtle record, operating on the same gear throughout its short length without stretching its borders all that much - but it's a beautiful gear, comforting in its melancholy and gentle swells.

Wilco - A Ghost Is Born 20
A Ghost Is Born is my favourite Wilco record, and Wilco are a band whose outtakes can sometimes be just as interesting as what ends on the albums given how much Tweedy and co can tinker with the material and exploring different directions before they land on their preferred approach. So, a disc of alternative takes and demos for this album was a very exciting thing indeed (and just a single disc - I'm not shelling out for that mega box set). Not disappointed - some of the alternative takes could just as well be brand new songs given how different they are to the final versions, and even the more familiar variants have something different and new to make them a fascinating listen for big time fans. What's disappointing is the packaging though, which only reproduces the original booklet with an extra page for the bonus disc credits but otherwise contains nothing you'd expect from reissue liner notes. Probably all saved up to that mega box...

Hoard Updates

New additions to the collection (besides any 2025 albums):

CD

Digital

As per last month, there's a dose of Chumbawamba singles as part of this year's CDS collection project, plus the last of the PSB Further Listening reissues to date. Besides that, I caught up with finally buying the last two Pup albums physically in anticipation of the new album in a couple of months. The other three entries aren't actually purchases - they were part of my dad's music collection and I brought them with me from the old family home this month. The Beatles held a special role in my dad's life and this box set was actually a Christmas present from me and my sisters to him all the way back when it came out; making sure it was ok with my mom, I've now taken ownership of it and slowly going through the Beatles discography again. The other two were just curios I grabbed alongside it that no one else is going to miss.

Not much in the way of digital purchases this month but what's there is enough. I only discovered Bit Depth by happenstance through someone's Bluesky post and quickly fell in love with this album from the first listen: emotional, intense, but also exciting and thrilling bombastic indie rock full of that fantastic passion of people putting all their love and soul into their music. I'm fashionably late to them it seems, and I was actually a little gutted when I realised the release date was February last year instead of 2025 like I first read it as, simply because not only I have no excuse to talk about this more in this year's favourite albums list but my 2024 list is already out of date now - that's how much I dig this. Once again, the furry indie rock scene proves that it is the most exciting scene of its kind going right now and a real gold mine that so many people are missing out on. Their loss.

Most played song of the month according to Last.FM

This is actually really boring this month because my top played tracks of February is basically just a massive tie between most of the songs on the new Manics album, with a couple of specific songs jumping up a little bit further. I already linked to my current highlight of the record earlier so this month, just scroll up...

Next month - it's another horrifyingly busy month in terms of new releases!

#music