The first ten-year anniversary I remember caring about was Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity, in 2009. The album came out when I was seven, but by the time I was seventeen, it had attained legendary status to a burgeoning emo obsessive. I remember playing the CD on the bus, my disappointment when I couldn’t go to Chicago for the anniversary tour, and my jealousy when a friend texted me from the show.
Anniversary tours have become kind of passé since then, often feeling less like a celebration than an easy cash-in (not that I begrudge anyone who can make a buck playing music), but I still tend to have a good time with them. This year, though, the anniversaries felt different. It’s not my teenage years I’m looking back on now, but times when I was already fully an adult, working and living in Chicago. That made the memories of No Closer To Heaven and Tell Me I’m Alright and The Force Awakens feel both closer and further away somehow.
These anniversaries also all came amid a very full 2025.
Lily was born in February, so Liesi and I spent the early part of the year navigating having two kids under two and everything else that comes with a new baby. I was very worried about being overwhelmed, but between Lily definitely being the easier of our two babies and having done it all once before, it ended being less challenging and more fun than I could have hoped. (Until we all got sick the week before Christmas — that was very challenging and not fun).
I also kept busy with creative projects, even though the list below isn’t long. Matt and I have been doing Noise Floor for well over a year now, and recording is still something I look forward to every week. All of my bands were writing and working on other cool ideas too, so lots more to come on both the music and podcast fronts in 2026.
Stuff I Made This Year
- Noise Floor – A weekly music discussion podcast I co-host with Matt Kistler
- “Richardson” Richardson – The Wizard’s Riff (mixing, mastering)
Music
My year on Last.fm
I really do try to listen widely, but if you’ve followed these lists for a few (or, oh god, 17) years, there are a lot of familiar names at the top. Among the 130-ish new albums I checked out this year, I was most drawn to the new entries in the careers of artists I’ve long loved. This isn’t just falling back on old favorites, I don’t think — many of these artists have released duds over the years and found their way back by making something fresh and vital. I’m especially interested in how these artists that I’ve grown up with confront aging in their music. I rang in my 34th year with a Motion City Soundtrack song that wrestles with “[putting] on the nostalgia crown” and the lingering feeling that your best days are behind you. Happy birthday, right?
But nearly every album I loved this year has something to do with growing older. La Dispute decamped to Australia to explore the rediscover the sonic and poetic intensity of their early albums, the band playing like their younger selves while Jordan Dreyer’s lyrics question how much control we actually have over our lives. Yellowcard wrote about the joy and anxiety of becoming a parent, while Suzzallo worked through the unfathomable grief of losing a child. There are reunions, like the first Spitalfield and Moving Mountains music in over a decade and the Crutchfield sisters teaming up again in Snocaps, and there are solo efforts released in novel formats: Hayley Williams’s Ego Death At a Bachelorette Party showed up online one summer day, free of free of expectations, with no tracklist, on a Windows 98-style website. It was both a weaponization and confrontation of nostalgia, and the songs are so good.
I did discover some new bands I loved this year. Beauty School pulled me in with a Dan Campbell feature, and I spun that album a ton. G Flip’s “I Don’t Wanna Regret It” had me rolling down the minivan windows for months. The Armed hollowed out my skull with some of the most exciting, chaotic music I’ve heard in a long time.
I found so much to love in music this year. I’ll go into more detail on the next episode of Noise Floor, but for now, here are the lists. Give something a spin.
My Favorite Albums of 2025
- La Dispute – No One Was Driving the Car
- Suzzallo – The Quiet Year
- Motion City Soundtrack – The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World
- Hayley Williams – Ego Death At a Bachelorette Party
- Moving Mountains – Pruning of the Lower Limbs
- Coheed and Cambria – Vaxis III: The Father of Make Believe
- Hot Mulligan – The Sound a Body Makes When It’s Still
- The Mountain Goats – Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan
- Yellowcard – Better Days
- Beauty School – From Now On
- Snocaps – Snocaps
- The Armed – The Future Is Here and Everything Needs To Be Destroyed
- All Get Out – Side A
- G Flip – Dream Ride
- Pool Kids – Easier Said Than Done
- Lambrini Girls – Who Let the Dogs Out
- Jason Isbell – Foxes In the Snow
- Elway – Nobody’s Going To Heaven
- Lorde – Virgin
- The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid To Die – Dreams of Being Dust
- Laura Stevenson – Late Great
- Empty Heaven – Swear
- Bon Iver – SABLE, fABLE
- Winona Fighter – My Apologies To the Chef
- Weakened Friends – Feels Like Hell
My Favorite EPs of 2025
- Spanish Love Songs – A Brief Intermission In the Flattening of Time
- The Wonder Years – Burst and Decay (Volume III)
- Spitalfield – Play + Record
- The Paradox – NSFW
- Harrison Gordon – Spring Break
Live Shows
My Big Show Spreadsheet
I attended or played 24 shows this year. I’m cheating a bit on this list, admittedly, because I had too many great experiences to pick just five sets. I got to see the Wonder Years twice, send Foxing off (for now), and scream “Brutal” with a zillion teenagers, among so much more. This year’s Riot Fest was my favorite yet, whether I was seeing Rilo Kiley and Texas Is the Reason for the first time, coming out of mosh retirement for Knuckle Puck, or just hanging with all the friends I’ve made through shows over the years.
And then there’s Adjy.
I had been trying to see Adjy since before the pandemic, but the timing of their tours never worked out until this summer. I ventured out well past my bedtime to see them in the tiny back room of Cole’s Bar, on a stage that could barely contain their six members and at least as many keyboards and mallet percussion instruments. It was transcendent. There are so few bands in the world that transport me the way Adjy does, taking me back to all the places I’ve fallen in love with music since I was a kid, from the Coffeehouse to the dusty fields of Cornerstone Festival to the massive arenas that Adjy deserves to headline (and even those couldn’t hold the grandeur of The Idyll Opus). Maybe I’m overselling this band, but maybe not. When I saw them a second time in October, it was with a bunch of friends who can all now vouch that they are actually that good.
- Adjy at Cole’s (and also at Reggie’s with Future Teens)
- Riot Fest: Rilo Kiley, Texas Is the Reason, The Wonder Years, Knuckle Puck, and more
- The Wonder Years (Burst and Decay Tour) at Thalia Hall
- Lollapalooza: Bleachers, Olivia Rodrigo, Orla Gartland, and more
- Foxing and Pool Kids at Thalia Hall
Movies
My year on Letterboxd
I saw, as of this writing, 26 new releases this year. The usual caveats: Too much comes out at the end of the year to keep up, and I’ll try to see all the big stuff by the Oscars. But will anything top Sinners and Weapons for me? Seems unlikely. Worth noting that I saw three of my top five in theaters, something I want to get back in the habit of doing as the kids get older.
- Sinners
- Weapons
- Eddington
- Wake Up Dead Man
- Black Bag
- 28 Years Later
- One Battle After Another
- No Other Choice
- Bugonia
- Thunderbolts*
TV
I stopped paying for Trakt VIP when they doubled their prices, so I don’t get the fancy recap page, but that won’t stop me from making a list. I once again tried to keep my TV intake to returning favorites and only start new shows that seem particularly interesting or critically lauded (both true of Pluribus and Adolescence). Season 2 of Andor was a runaway favorite for so many reasons, but primarily because it’s proof that there are still relevant stories to tell in my favorite sci-fi and fantasy worlds.
- Andor (Season 2)
- Pluribus (Season 1)
- Adolescence (Season 1)
- The Bear (Season 4)
- Slow Horses (Season 5)
Podcasts
My year on Overcast
Blank Check dominant, no surprise there. It’s still my favorite podcast after three years of listening.
I really do listen to every episode of my own podcast — if I start getting bored of it then I assume everyone else will too.
Also, I’ll shout out my favorite new podcast of the year, In the Key of Brie, a delightful and insightful interview show that has introduced me to a ton of great music.
Books
My year on Goodreads
I read 29 books this year, a lot of which was catching up on Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere. In a surprising turn, my two favorite reads of 2025 were new releases.
Mark Z. Danielewski has been my favorite author since I read House of Leaves at the tail end of high school. Tom’s Crossing has very little in the way of the ergodic structure or crazy formatting that Danielewski is known for, but it’s still some of his best writing, with an immersive setting and a deep sense of care about the nature of stories and who gets to tell them.
If you care about music at all, Mood Machine is essential reading. Liz Pelly’s book is not only a great explanation of how (and why) the way we consume music today is broken. It will make you want to do something about it.
- Tom’s Crossing by Mark Z. Danielewski
- Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Cost of the Perfect Playlist by Liz Pelly
- Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson
- O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Next Year
I want to:
- Release new music with all of my bands
- Attend my 1000th show (only 25 to go)
- Grow Noise Floor and guest on more podcasts
- Run a half marathon
2015 Revisited
I was scrolling back through the archives recently and realized that I never actually made a list in 2015. I cited some albums I liked, but I hedged a whole bunch in the blurb about not being a critic and didn’t even rank them. Must have been having a weird winter. So as a decade-late update, here are my 15 favorite albums of 2015 (with the benefit of hindsight).
- The Wonder Years – No Closer To Heaven
- Desaparecidos – Payola
- mewithoutYou – Pale Horses
- The Mountain Goats – Beat the Champ
- The Sidekicks – Runners In the Nerved World
- Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly
- Jason Isbell – Something More Than Free
- Jeff Rosenstock – We Cool?
- Death Cab For Cutie – Kintsugi
- David Bowie – Blackstar
- Hop Along – Painted Shut
- Julien Baker – Sprained Ankle
- Sufjan Stevens – Carrie and Lowell
- Dawes – All Your Favorite Bands
- Knuckle Puck – Copacetic
Don’t let them make you go numb
Don’t let them dull your compassion
Don’t let them tell you you’re wrong
Don’t let them claim this is balance, no
Don’t let them question your love
-The Armed
Troy Sennett 
