A lot has happened since Miguel released his 2017 album War & Leisure, a deft mix of electro-laced R&B, Rock and Funk that cemented the California native as a worthy disciple of Prince.

Trump 1.0, Black Lives Matter, the COVID pandemic, the separation from his longtime partner, the birth of his first child, Trump 2.0 and more couldn’t help but alter Miguel’s headspace over the last eight years. Cue his long-gestating fifth album, CAOS, which dropped last October to a curiously muted response. (For context, he released four albums between 2010 and 2017, less time than it took for CAOS to surface.)

The measured reaction to Miguel’s latest isn’t a surprise — it’s darker and more ominous than anything he’s yet produced, the sound of a man at a crossroads. Album opener “CAOS,” which is Spanish for chaos, is an intriguing mélange of Miguel’s signature sensuous elements (penetrating falsetto vocals and Latin-flavored acoustic guitar) with dense beats and dark-hued atmospherics accentuated by one of the few lyrics sung in English, “I’m inches from a sabotage.” 

The next song, “The Killing,” opens with dirge-like menace, a metaphorical scene setter for an extinguished relationship despite likeminded sexual proclivities.

“This album has a much more aggressive, angsty outlook, not necessarily in the sound, but definitely in the lyrics,” Miguel said in a recent interview with Grammy.com. “There’s a raw honesty running through it, a kind of underlying tension that comes from confronting what’s no longer working. It reflects the evolution of my internal operating systems, learning to face the broken parts of myself head on instead of avoiding them.”

The sounds on CAOS are in fact grittier and more experimental, marked by electric guitars that dip into psychedelia and unexpected, frequently discordant rhythms. 

“Nearsight (SID)” is perhaps the best example of Miguel’s current melding of introspection and sonic restlessness — it’s an ambient, slow-burning look at how transcendental meditation has altered its often-indulgent creator’s life before jump-cutting in the final third via driving drums and an urgent vocal delivery. 

It culminates with this statement of intent: “Breathe it in now/Let me meditate/We going in now/Till you levitate.”

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Sound Advice gives CityBeat readers a preview of local shows. This week, Jason Gargano previews The Descendents and Frank Turner.

The Descendents have been causing a ruckus since before Ronald Reagan became President, before Mt. Saint Helens erupted and before Sid Vicious left this world.

The Southern California quartet — led by singer Milo Aukerman and drummer Bill Stevenson — were kicking around for five years before they dropped their full-length debut, 1982’s landmark Milo Goes to College, a snotty punk record with enough melodicism and adolescent angst to prick up the ears of rock and roll normies and anarchists alike.

“We didn’t fit in with normal society, but we also weren’t copacetic with the punk scene,” Aukerman said about their early days in a 2025 interview with It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine. “I was a nerd, so to me it felt like I wasn’t cool in either world. Nonetheless, part of what was appealing about punk for me is flipping the bird to everyone so that you can just be yourself.”

More than four decades in, Aukerman and Stevenson, along with longtime bassist Karl Alvarez and guitarist Stephen Egerton, are still performing their catchy brand of punk and power pop — a sound and vision that has infected multiple generations of likeminded pranksters.

Once such devotee, British singer/songwriter/guitarist Frank Turner, has teamed up with The Descendents for another co-headlining tour across the U.S. 

A generation younger, the rabble-rousing Turner has released a torrent of music and toured relentlessly since surfacing from the south of London in the early aughts. His most recent studio album, 2024’s Undefeated, is typically all over the place, teeming with wordy ruminations about everything from his music-loving childhood to pandemic PTSD.

The sonics are just as restless, moving from acoustic-based introspection (the intriguing “Ceasefire”) to rollicking stompers (the Pogues-like “Never Mind the Back Problems”) with equal conviction.

Turner is typically to the point when addressing his admiration for The Descendents. From a 2024 Instagram post about playing live with the enduring SoCal punks: “I can’t exaggerate how much I fucking love this band. This was an absolute life highlight for me.”

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January 30 • Woodward Theater

Singer/songwriter/guitarist Kai Slater is a wisp of a guy armed with shaggy hair, stylish thrift-store clothes and enough memorable melodies to make Bob Pollard stand to attention. The 21-year-old Chicagoan is having a moment, the result of two stellar 2025 solo albums as Sharp Pins — Radio DDR dropped in May, followed by Balloon, Balloon, Balloon in November — as well as contributions to his other band, Lifeguard, a post-punk outfit that also put out a well-received album last year.

Sharp Pins fuses the lo-fi, DIY ethos of punk and indie rock with the catchy songcraft of classic rock and pop, yielding tunes both familiar and idiosyncratic.

“I got really inspired by The Jam, Television Personalities, The Times, Dolly Mixture,” Slater said in an interview with Demo Magazine early last year when comparing Sharp Pins to his other projects. “I’ve always been influenced by The Beatles and The Who. That was the core of what I was trying to write for a lot of my life, so I was like, ‘I’ll try to hone in on that in my solo music.’ ” Balloon, Balloon, Balloon is especially ear-wormy — 21 songs in 44 minutes, each a brief but distinctive world of its own. Album opener “Popafanout” burrows into one’s cortex via jangly, Byrds-like guitars and Slater’s affecting delivery of oblique lines like, “All the silverstone creep/Sludging around on the Puget Sound/Oh, what it means to me.” Yet there is little doubt about the topic of “I Don’t Have the Heart,” which sounds like A Hard Day’s Night-era Beatles, a Rickenbacker guitar ringing as Slater sings, “I’ve waited so long to be near you/But I don’t have the heart/To show how I feel.”

Slater’s touring version of Sharp Pins features bassist Joe Glass and drummer Peter Cimbalo (per the album’s liner notes, “two young freakbeats of America”). Like those of their creative forefathers Guided by Voices, Sharp Pins songs explore a different dynamic in a live setting — the sound of lo-fi gems breaking free into a new realm.

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How do you sum up a year in music at this late date in our fractured cultural history, an era in which AI slop is encroaching at a rapid pace and traditional media outlets — by which I mean those that dutifully edit and fact-check content — are going the way of the floppy disk? Consensus is useful to a point — that many people like the new Geese record that rabidly? But there is just too much music in the digital era to absorb even a tiny fraction of what’s currently flooding the interwebs. Attempting to create a definitive “best of” list is as futile as trying to limit the ways in which Vivek Ramaswamy is annoying.

But that’s not to say it isn’t fun and/or useful to seek out “favorite” album lists at a time when context and discerning taste are in short supply. On a personal level, it’s surreal that I’ve put together a list for publication every year since 2001 — initially for CityBeat, followed by several years for The Village Voice’s now-defunct Pazz & Jop critics poll and more recently for the also now-defunct Uproxx poll. With that in mind, here are my 10 favorite albums of 2025 (in alphabetical order), a few of which could drop out in favor of a dozen more (possibly even the new Geese record) depending on mood, day of the week or the latest Bengals debacle.

Alex G — Headlights

Alex Giannascoli is a tunesmith of the highest order. His Elliott Smith fetish is in full bloom on a set of intimate songs that revel in texture and mood. Some worried that his major-label debut might yield a compromise, but Headlights is as transportive as anything in the Philly native’s bountiful discography. Things crest early with the sweetly swaying “Real Thing,” the jaunty, mandolin-driven “Afterlife” and the slow-burning “Beam Me Up,” which finds Alex in rare autobiographical mode: “Some things I do for love/Some things I do for money/It ain’t like I don’t want it/It ain’t like I’m above it.”

The Beths — Straight Line Was a Lie

Straight Line Was a Lie contains wistful, hook-laden power pop driven by an ample rhythm section and crafty, intertwining guitars. New Zealand-based singer, guitarist and lyricist Elizabeth Stokes digs deep through introspective ruminations about a lack of joy, best laid plans and this heartfelt plea: “Mother, don’t cry for me/I have done enough injury/I wanted to hurt you for the hurt you made in me.”

Deafheaven — Lonely People with Power

Stanley Kubrick would love these guys — Deafheaven’s “blackgaze” offerings conjure epic cinematic vistas. I wrote this in 2018 about the San Francisco fivesome’s newly released Ordinary Corrupt Human Love: “Yet another immersive experience, more than an hour of dynamic soundscaping that deftly moves from corrosive guitar riffage and jackhammer drumming to pensive, piano-laced atmospherics, often within the same song.” Well, here we are again, complete with an album title that can’t help but nod to the sad creatures currently wielding power.

Hannah Frances — Nested in Tangles

Unpredictability runs through Nested in Tangles’ mixture of folk, jazz and progressive ambient music. Compositional U-turns appear out of nowhere, altering moods as if a sunny day has gone dark. Frances’ versatile voice (think a less grandiose version of Joanna Newsom) and guitar work shift from the highly technical to free form, resulting in an evocative, sometimes elusive set of songs from a performer who seems like she could go anywhere.

Momma — Welcome to My Blue Sky

Where have you heard this before?: Wistful, hook-laden power pop driven by an ample rhythm section and crafty, intertwining guitars. Brooklyn-based singers, guitarists, lyricists and best buds Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten dig deep through introspective ruminations about lust, broken relationships and this observation: “My dad is getting older/Got a lot on his cold shoulder/Their world is getting smaller/But they did it all for their younger daughter.”

Nourished by Time — The Passionate Ones

Marcus Elliot Brown (aka Nourished by Time) brings a refreshingly earth-bound approach to his lo-fi R&B and pop tunes. The Baltimore native’s sophomore LP exists on its own wavelength, as if early Prince and a scrappier version of Blue Nile collaborated on songs both lovelorn and politically astute. Choice, emblematic admission from “Idiot in the Park”: “Everybody’s out there protecting their heart/I need a love that leaves a scar.”

Stereolab — Instant Holograms on Metal Film

It’s as if they never went away. The Euro institution — led by onetime couple/songwriting duo Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier — returns with their first new album in 15 years, 13 songs in nearly an hour with nary a dud in tow. While not as adventurous as their 1990s peak, it’s reassuring to find the familiar ingredients — hypnotic, krautrockian grooves and oblique, politico lyrics sung with sweetness — are as tasty as ever. 

Jeff Tweedy — Twilight Override

Warm and inviting, this is the best thing Tweedy has been a part of since at least Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky. A world-building triple record consisting of 30 songs that range from the rip-roaring “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter” to “Parking Lot,” a desolate spoken-word tone poem that is somehow among the most affecting things this tireless artist has yet conjured. 

Wednesday — Bleeds

Creative head-honcho/singer Karly Hartzman continues to refine Wednesday’s ramshackle aesthetic over time, just as her personal relationship with bandmate MJ Lenderman took a turn — the duo’s romantic breakup couldn’t help but influence Bleeds. The North Carolina outfit’s sixth studio album is sleeker but no less visceral, carried by Hartzman’s vivid storytelling and unorthodox vocal delivery. Multiple tunes here recall early Pavement crossed with The Mekons, twang-injected gems that transcend that description.

Billy Woods — Golliwog

I saw Billy Woods at what ended up being the final Pitchfork Music Festival in 2024, a low-key but penetrating performance anchored by his winding wordplay and Kenny Segal’s slow-motion beats. Golliwog is even darker than usual — the sound of a 47-year-old man coming to terms with his country’s ongoing corruption and complicity. Cue the addictive, guest-aided “BLK XMAS,” which is simultaneously alarming and amusing, the aural equivalent of a fascinating nightmare.

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Chris Isaak’s obsession with Elvis, Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison has rarely been as obvious as it is on his two holiday albums, 2004’s simply titled Christmas and 2022’s Everybody Knows It’s Christmas. Isaak’s swoony croon is in full bloom on rockabilly-inspired covers of “Jingle Bell Rock,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “Help Me Baby Jesus,” “Blue Christmas” and “Winter Wonderland.” Isaak also throws in some original tunes, including one celebrating his favorite animal — “Dogs Love Christmas Too” finds the now-69-year-old singer/songwriter/guitarist in a playful mood: “Dogs love Christmas too, just like me and you/No, they don’t go shopping or hang up a stocking/But there’s lots of things they do.”

It’s then no surprise that Isaak’s 2025 Holiday Tour is again partnering with the BISSELL Pet Foundation from Dec. 1-15 to draw attention to Empty the Shelters, an adoption program. The collaboration encourages fans in participating touring markets to adopt dogs that Isaak literally brings on stage with him.

“I’ve been working with musicians and actors most of my life, so getting to bring animals on stage was a natural step up,” Isaak said in a press release announcing the tour. “I knew that they could be counted on to steal the show, and they always do! Partnering with BISSELL Pet Foundation again this year feels like a great way to both celebrate the holidays and help get dogs and cats a home. It makes our Christmas show much more special — the pets get out of the shelter for the evening, and hopefully you will get to find a forever friend!”

If Isaak’s past holiday tours are any indication, expect some of his non-Christmas staples to find their way into the set list: “Two Hearts,” “San Francisco Days,” “Somebody’s Crying,” “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing” and, of course, “Wicked Game.” Dogs, Christmas and love gone bad — three of Isaak’s favorite topics in one evening.

Chris Isaak plays Hard Rock Casino on Dec. 19 at 8 p.m. More info: casino.hardrock.com.

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Dec. 10 print edition.

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The first thing one sees upon visiting Ricky Skaggs’ website is the headline “A Hall of Fame Career.” Below that is a list of the various halls of fame that have inducted Skaggs: Country Music, IBMA Bluegrass Music, The National Fiddler, Musicians, GMA Gospel Music Association and Kentucky. That’s an impressive list for those who care about such things. Even more impressive is that it’s impossible to argue against Skaggs’ inclusion if such institutions must exist — the 71-year-old singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist is a pillar of bluegrass, country and whatever adjacent genres you can conjure, a man of multiple talents and an unceasing devotion to the music he loves. Then there is the fact that in January 2021 President Trump awarded Skaggs the National Medal of the Arts — a sign of the recipient’s enduring Christian faith, if questionable sense of optics and political acumen.

Skaggs grew up in Cordell, a tiny Kentucky town 150 miles southeast of Cincinnati. He started singing and playing mandolin at age 6, soon after performing onstage with Bill Monroe, the “Father of Bluegrass.” At 16, he joined Ralph Stanley’s backing band, the Clinch Mountain Boys, the beginning of a road-dog life that shows no signs of slowing. Skaggs has been touring since 1997 with his revolving backing band, dubbed the Kentucky Thunder, a crew more than willing to support their leader’s impeccable taste and technique. Then there is Skaggs’ mastery of genre, which critic Robert Christgau succinctly described back in 1983, the same year the Kentuckian won the first of his many Grammys: “Nothing if not an astute traditionalist, Skaggs understands that what makes country music go is the tension between heaven and hell.” 

That tension is there in Skaggs’ pair of Christmas albums, which include his takes on staples like “Joy to the World,” “White Christmas,” “Silent Night,” The First Noel” and more. In a world gone mad, there’s something reassuring about Skaggs’ straightforward, largely acoustic-based takes of these holiday classics. And, as consistent as the change in seasons, he and his band are back for a Christmas tour through the heartland.

Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder play Memorial Hall on Dec. 12 at 8 p.m. More info: memorialhallotr.com.

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Dec. 10 print edition.

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Soul Coughing broke up rather acrimoniously 25 years ago. Despite rumors that frontman Mike Doughty was open to reconnecting with his mates — keyboardist/sampler guru Mark Degli Antoni, drummer Yuval Gabay and stand-up bassist Sebastian Steinberg — over the last decade, a full-band reunion remained elusive … until 2024 when the original lineup announced a tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their debut album, Ruby Vroom.

For the uninitiated or those who have forgotten, the off-kilter New York City foursome used jazz-injected, polyrhythmic grooves and Doughty’s sing-speak/beat-poet vocal delivery and acerbic wit to gather a sizable following over the course of three stellar albums (1996’s Irresistible Bliss and 1998’s El Oso followed the debut) before flaming out in 2000. Yet the long layoff didn’t seem to faze them: The 2024 tour garnered a rapturous response, leading the band to release the simply titled LIVE 2024 earlier this year. The double album features 21 songs from across their genre-jumping discography, including fan favorites “Bus to Beelzebub,” “Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago,” “Casiotone Nation,” “Rolling,” “Screenwriter’s Blues” and “Super Bon Bon.”

Last fall’s successful tour led to another set of shows this past spring, and now they’re back on the road for what they’re calling a “Soul Coughing Still Loves You” tour of the Midwest. All of this is a surprise for longtime fans aware of the various internal dramas that led to their demise the first time around. Curiously, the band has done almost no press since reforming. But Antoni — whose mood-altering keyboard and avant sampling work remain one of Soul Coughing’s secret ingredients — briefly spoke with Medium back in September, revealing how they decided on a set list for the live shows: “We picked songs that were important to us, that we’d always played well. Wasn’t a lot of fussing.”

And how are the guys getting along these days? “We’re all being super professional, committed to our shared legacy, appreciating the love shown by our audiences.”

It’s hard to tell whether this vague assessment will lead to even more touring or new songs, but it’s easy to be pleased that Soul Coughing finally reconnected.

Soul Coughing plays Madison Theater on Dec. 7 at 8 p.m. More info: madisontheater.com.

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Nov. 26 print edition.

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Stevie Nicks is still doing her thing. The 77-year-old singer and songwriter has survived a rollercoaster life, more than 50 years of it in the spotlight, becoming one of the most iconic musical figures of the 1970s and beyond in the process. She’s done so despite multifarious issues in her personal life, dramas no doubt exacerbated by her copious use of drugs and alcohol, of which she’s supposedly been free of since the late 1980s. The romanticized era of Fleetwood Mac’s creative and commercial zenith is the stuff of legend (tipping into mythos) — the kind of fame, fortune and indulgence that too often yields ruinous results. 

But Nicks and her voice endured, altered by time but still affecting. Then there is her visual aesthetic, which is as much a part of her creative aura as her vulnerable vocal emissions. How many artists have their own Barbie doll? Surreal and oddly appropriate, check this recent press release from Mattel: “From Fleetwood Mac frontwoman to massive solo star, Stevie Nicks is an icon of free-spirited talent and style. The second Barbie doll tribute to the queen of rock is an homage to her Bella Donna era, the album that launched her multiplatinum solo career.” The doll comes replete with a flowing white dress, top hat and high-heeled boots, which Mattel describes as a “hallmark of Stevie’s iconic bewitching boho style.”

Nicks’ current tour, which might be her last, covers her entire career — of course, heavy on Fleetwood Mac hits (“Rhiannon,” “Gold Dust Woman,” “Landslide” and “Dreams”) and her best-known solo work (“Edge of Seventeen,” “Stand Back” and “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”), as well as a couple of covers (most often Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’ ” and The Crickets’ “Not Fade Away”). The recent and upcoming shows were makeup dates after Nicks suffered a fractured shoulder in August 2025, which she describes as “a bad break in every way.” Bad breaks are nothing new for this flawed but resilient woman.

Stevie Nicks plays the Heritage Bank Center on Nov. 30 at 7 p.m. More info: heritagebankcenter.com.

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Nov. 26 print edition.

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The guys in Daddy Long Legs are not happy with the state of the world. That’s not exactly a bold statement these days, but the New York City quartet — which includes guitarist Murat Aktürk, singer Brian Hurd, keyboardist Dave Klein and drummer Josh Styles — isn’t shy about proclaiming their impressions of modern living via elemental songs that often draw from the grimier aspects of rock and roll history. 

Cue “Feelings” from their fourth and most recent studio album, 2023’s Street Sermon: “There ain’t no use to pretend/This world has come to an end/We’re livin’ a nightmare/And this world is condemned/I’ll see you if this nightmare ever ends.” Hurd’s manic vocal delivery and harmonica squawks are backed by a bluesy ruckus that recalls everything from Exile on Main St.-era Stones to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion minus (most of) the irony. Yet the album’s title track offers a way out, as Hurd sings amid a ramshackle arrangement marked by a persistent shaker, a circular acoustic guitar riff and backing vocals: “I’ve come to the conclusion/There’s only one solution/Work with one another/Not against each other.”

That’s not exactly a revelatory insight, but it’s right in line with Daddy Long Legs’ primal approach to music — say it (and play it) plainly and with feeling. The relatively recent addition of Klein on keys has injected an extra element into Daddy Long Legs’ sonic exorcisms. 

“We wrote and recorded a new album (Street Sermon) while we had time off the road in 2020 and 2021, and our producer Oakley Munson played piano and organ on a lot of the tracks,” Hurd said in a 2022 interview with UnderTheRadar, a website based in New Zealand. “We really liked what it added to the sound. A little later when live shows started up again, we wanted to showcase the new material, so we got our good friend Dave the Wave to step in, and he’s been a great addition. We boogie even harder these days thanks to him.”

And boogie they do, gyrating around the stage as they emit the sound of a band yearning for salvation in a world gone mad.

Daddy Long Legs plays Southgate House Revival on Nov. 18 at 7 p.m. More info: southgatehouse.com.

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Nov. 12 print edition.

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Rhett Miller is tireless. Need proof? Check the Texas native’s ceaseless creative itch over the last three decades: 22 studio albums between his work fronting alt-country mainstays Old 97’s and his poppier output as a solo performer. He even started offering songwriting classes and workshops in recent years. Yet a recent development interrupted the 55-year-old singer/songwriter’s ability to perform: Doctors found a cyst on Miller’s vocal fold in late 2023. Rather than having surgery immediately, Miller decided to record his recently released solo effort, A lifetime of riding by night, before undergoing a procedure to fix the issue.

“I was trying to put on a brave face during the (recording) sessions,” Miller said in a recent interview with NPR. “And I love making music, so being in the studio was a joyful thing. But at the same time, I was really scared. I know that the success rate of the kind of surgery I had is pretty high, but I also knew that it wasn’t a 100 percent chance of success.”

The resulting songs on A lifetime of riding by night reveal a new level of vulnerability, as Miller’s voice struggles to reach notes previously attainable amid stripped-back, acoustic-laden tunes produced by Old 97’s bandmate Murry Hammond. There’s also a more personal element to Miller’s lyrics, which often address the listener directly about his move from untamed loverman to dedicated partner.

“I’ve learned to open up as an artist, as a songwriter,” Miller said in the same NPR interview. “I’ve learned to think in a more analytical way about songwriting. Like, if I sing to a ‘you,’ if I sing the word ‘you’ in a song, it’s like this little spell that I cast on the listener.”

Curiously, it looks like Old 97’s songs dominate Miller’s current solo tour setlist, which will thrill fans of the conversational, ache-ridden flirtations that dominate his main band’s catalog. The casting of spells might also occur despite the sparsity of tunes from A lifetime of riding by night. 

Rhett Miller plays Madison Theater on Nov. 15 at 8 p.m. More info: madisontheater.com.

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Nov. 12 print edition.

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