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Well, here we are again for my 63rd, although somewhat belated, annual trawl through last year’s new albums. To be honest, 2025 was not a vintage year for new albums, or new artists, but that happens some times. Nevertheless there were still a steady flow of purchases to be reviewed in my Album of the Year 2025.
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First Gig of the Year for us was Gentlemens Dub Club, one of the bands we have been waiting to see since before ‘the world stopped’ in 2020. We were finally able to make the short trip to the Marble Factory in Bristol to catch them.
The gig was part of a double-header tour with The Skints, in which they took it in turns to headline. On the night they had support from Cardiff singer Aleighcia Scott, who also shares an evening slot on BBC Radio Wales with DJ Huw Stevens. Her set was very tight, and I look forward to hearing her debut album due out later this year..
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We all have albums in our collection that are ages-old, but we still play regularly. Sometimes we may wonder whatever happened to that artist from all those years back; we may even regret never getting to see them live when they were ‘in their pomp’. One such artist, for me, was Toyah.
She appeared towards the end of the short 1970s punk revolution when, ironically, it was her live album Toyah! Toyah! Toyah! that forced its way onto my record deck during 1980. Regular readers will know that I specifically exclude live albums from my annual selection process, so it never featured in my roundup. But when she released her next studio album, Anthem, six months later it was an instant purchase. It made my top three in 1981, and has been a regular play over the intervening forty years. But I never got to a gig – until this weekend.
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