Back with the second installment of my review of 2025 in media. This time, it’s all about sounds, in various forms . . .

Music

Unlike TV, my year in new music in 2025 was pretty limited. That’s probably not the fault of the music world in general (I’ve got several titles scoured from other “Best of” lists waiting for listens) so much as it was me not being into a lot of artists that produced new material last year.

That said, at least there was one gem that came my way, Steven Wilson’s sprawling The Overview.

After a couple of albums exploring more electro-pop territory (not a bad thing, for the most part!), Wilson returned to his widescreen “conceptual rock” roots with this one. Over two side-long hunks of music, Wilson grapples with the “overview effect,” a condition that sometimes hits astronauts when they see the Earth from space and are hit with the insignificance of it all. If that sounds depressing it’s not, particularly if like me you’re not really a spiritual person. There’s some comfort in being galactically insignificant.

This album really came alive for me when I saw him play it live (having dragged my wife along – love you!). Although there was a certain reliance on some backing tracks to get the whole thing out that bug me a little, the playing was all great and the various stylistic sections – from drifty electronics to prog rock workouts and a “day in the life” section with lyrics from Andy Partridge – really flow together. It’s not my favorite album of his, but the more I listen to it the closer it gets.

As for “new to me” stuff for 2025, as it happens the albums that stuck with me most all came out within five years of each other. Let’s work through them chronologically.

The first was Songs from the Wood by Jethro Tull, from 1977.

My Tull collection was pretty much limited to Aqualung and Thick As a Brick, but on the way back from that Steven Wilson concert, in a Half-Price Books, I found a collection of five Tull albums in their own slipcases for about $10 and had to jump on it. Songs from the Wood was the first of those album and my favorite. It reorients Tull toward more of a folky sound, but there’s still some rock and proggy flourishes here and there. That it starts with some great acapella harmonies is a nice hook.

Next up, from 1979, is Supertramp’s Breakfast in America.

Supertramp is frequently referenced as a prog band, but I don’t see it. They’re definitely making arty pop/rock music that was influenced by the fact that bears the influence of prog’s early 70s popularity, but it doesn’t go further than that, for me. Maybe that’s why I like this album better than Crime of the Century, as this one is just full of tightly constructed gems and don’t seem to be trying too hard to be something else. There’s some good snark in the lyrics, too!

Of course, compared to Laurie Anderson’s Big Science, from 1982, Supertramp sounds like a prepacked boy band.

Amazingly, this album, drawn from an eight-hour (!) performance art piece produced a hit (#2 in the UK!), “O, Superman,” which gives you a pretty good indication of what the whole thing is like:

It’s odd, minimalist, electronic in a primitive way. It’s also pretty compelling and an interesting document of the era. Honestly, if the plane’s going down I’d rather have Laurie’s “From the Air” monologue in my ears than the usual platitudes!

Podcasts

My regular collection of podcasts continued to expand in 2025 (for good or for ill), but I wanted to highlighted a few that jumped out at me last year.

The first two serve related purposes of keeping me up to date on my two soccer teams in the UK, Leeds United in England and Hearts of Midlothian in Scotland. The Square Ball covers Leeds, with Hearts Standard covering (you guessed it) Hearts.

I rely on both primarily for post-match commentary. For Leeds it’s much easier these days to watch every game since they’re back in the Premier League, but I enjoy the level of analysis and sarcasm that the guys on The Square Ball bring. The Hearts Standard episodes are more critical, as Hearts are only rarely on TV in the United States (but are becoming more so now they’re top of the table!). Both shows also do episodes about transfer rumors and such that help flesh things out.

My other new favorite listen is, no surprise, another podcast about music, Prog & Progeny.

In this case the “prog” is Marillion keyboard player Mark Kelly and the “progeny” is his daughter, and documentarian in training, Tallulah. Kelly wrote a book about his career a few years ago and that’s been the structure for the podcast, working forward through his life as a musician. So far the reading of things from his book has been broken up by interviews with various folks from his past, including an engineer and (most recently) a roadie, so it’s getting some different perspectives on the band.

That’s it for sounds – a return to visuals next week with my year in movies.