Clangoring's Favorite Records of 2025 Pt. 3
Both country back roads and sketchy city street corners are represented
Fifteen down now. We have twenty five more to go after this. It’s Clangoring’s favorite records of 2025.
FLORRY Sounds Like… • We’ve discussed Florry a few times since Clangoring has reared its head. In 2025, this in particular:
Looks Like... Florry
Unless this is your first visit here, you probably know my fondness of Florry. A month or so ago, the band announced the follow up to 2023’s The Holey Bible (a top ten album of the year in Clangoring’s rankings) would be coming out in late spring . Titled
We also rocked a track from the album on episode 11 of Radio Clang.
FREDDIE GIBBS x the ALCHEMIST Alfredo II • Judging from my impression of driving through the city more than a few times, I doubt that Gary, Indiana has a poet laureate. And even if they did, I doubt they’d want to pick the born-and-raised-there Freddie Gibbs to be it in hopes of lifting the town’s negative reputation. Freddie would probably tell them all to fuck off if they even floated the idea anyway. As the sequel to Freddie and Alc’s 2020 Grammy-nominated album, Freddie’s wordplay about streets, the rewards and dangers of a life of crime, and talking smack about perceived rivals is always vivid and the way he can flip a phrase is often funny in the darkest ways possible.
The difference here from the first Alfredo is that he sounds more at ease with the narrative, rather than carrying the paranoia that then loomed. I’ve read a few other people describing it as Freddie finding his zen. What makes that interesting is that the production the Alchemist turns out here is still thick with soul and jazz elements, but somehow feels more sinister, which adds some emphatic aural juxtapositions.
FUGITIVE BUBBLE • What Will Happen If We Stop? Olympia’s Fugitive Bubble follow up their great Dangerhouse damaged LP, 2023’s Delusion, with something equal but even more unanticipated. The record stomps, sways, barks and raises questions as wanted. Within that, they throw in some heavy fuzz twangs, hard sole chooglin’ and even a piano suite. Their progression from arty hardcore to art punk keeps getting more interesting.
HEAVY MÖTHER II s/t • Cornbelt oddball psych–contaminated proto-punk headed up by one of the originators of such things, Eddie Flowers of the Gizmos, along with Rocket From the Tombs’ Craig Bell, Joe from the Retail Simps and members of the Cowboys and Circuit Des Yeax. Together, they slither out something that’s not made from maize but definitely brain goo and weird glowing things found beneath sewer grates.
HONEY RADAR Reclining Psych-Out • So many questions. Has Honey Radar’s Jason Henn been one of the leaders of research using harmonic radar technology to study the navigation and flight patterns of honeybees for the last decade and a half? Or, if for the last decade and a half, is he answering the question “What if Syd Barrett hung out with the Monkees and they kept recording songs in a space no larger than a walk-in closet?” So many questions.