- 07 Dec, 2025 *
This post is partly prompted by Meatcastle Gameware’s exhortation to not just post our Spotify wrapped summaries without some kind of commentary, but mostly because I felt like it1 – several of my favorite artists released new albums in 2025.
Molly Nilsson: Amateur
Molly Nilsson is one of my most beloved artists, and while the album before this one never quite clicked, Amateur ranks with my favorites like Zenith & Twenty Twenty. It showcases her range quite nicely: her signature reverberant art-pop, some down-beat electroni…
- 07 Dec, 2025 *
This post is partly prompted by Meatcastle Gameware’s exhortation to not just post our Spotify wrapped summaries without some kind of commentary, but mostly because I felt like it1 – several of my favorite artists released new albums in 2025.
Molly Nilsson: Amateur
Molly Nilsson is one of my most beloved artists, and while the album before this one never quite clicked, Amateur ranks with my favorites like Zenith & Twenty Twenty. It showcases her range quite nicely: her signature reverberant art-pop, some down-beat electronic tracks, & an odd but moving cover of Joe Hill’s Last Will.
Amateur is self-consciously about Nilsson’s DIY artistic ethos, emphasizing the etymological root of "Amature" in "amare" – love, as a grounding for both artistic practice and politics.
Favorite song: Big Life brims with buoyant, life-affirming energy.
Beirut: A Study of Losses
Another of my all-time favorite artists. This album has the subtler, more mature sound of Hadsel but with more compact, reserved songwriting.
It’s hard to articulate in words, but Beirut’s sound and use of place names as song titles evokes a very specific wistful feeling that I am chasing on some level when making maps of imaginary places.
Favorite track: Guericke’s Unicorn
Glenn Gould: Goldberg Variations
My go-to concentration music, what I play when I want 51 minutes of flow state. I don’t really have strong feelings about Glenn Gould’s performance but I do appreciate him as an eccentric personality. The audible humming in the background never fails to amuse me.
I would love to write a 39-level concept dungeon based on these but I lack the understanding of music theory needed to map the variations onto a set of dungeon themes/gimmicks.
Jeffrey Lewis: The Even More Freewheeling Jeffrey Lewis
Yet another of my favorite artists released a new album in 2025. He’s another source of DIY "just make stuff" inspiration – in addition to churning out dozens of anti-folk songs, he writes underground comics and recently self-published a genuinely good piece of outsider scholarship on Alan Moore’s Watchmen.
I’ve been fortunate enough to see Lewis in concert three times and strongly recommend going – his shows are amazing, and usually in independent, intimate venues.
Favorite track:
Blixa Bargeld & Teho Teardo: Still Smiling, Christian & Mauro
A peculiar collaboration between a composer and a former member of Einstürzende Neubauten, Teho & Blixa evoke a wry weirdness that consistently fills me with delight. I’ve been a fan for quite a while but recently added them back into my regular rotation.
The mix of classical & industrial soudns, English, German, & Italian lyrics, and eclectic. oblique subject makes for a pastiche that I find very inspiring. In ways that are hard to pinpoint I get a similar feeling from Terry Gilliam films and parts of Disco Elysium.2 I find myself wanting to capture some part of their vibe in a dungeon.
Favorite track: Defenstrazione
Misc other tracks I enjoyed this year
- Loudon Wainwright: The Swimming Song
- hehehe: Inside
- Morrissey: Every Day Is Like Sunday
- Vangelis: Theme from Antarctica
- Caroline Polachek: Welcome to My Island
- John Cale: Antarctica Starts Here
- Robbie Basho: Hymn for The Warriors of The Rainbow
- Gordon Bok: The Final Trawl
- David Byrne: Glass, Concrete, & Stone
- Louise Farrenc: Overture No. 1
- R.E.M. Shaking Through
I would enjoy more off-topic posting from trrpg bloggers; I really enjoy the fact that (e.g.) Anne of DIY & Dragons posts book reviews,NBateman (obliquely) posts about his lifting regimen, & Skerples sometimes writes about history. I think elfgames generally benefit from hobby/interest cross-pollination.↩ 1.
The song What if? is quoted in one of the DE thought cabinet thoughts.↩