Arson Cafe: December 2025

Dec 23, 2025

Albums of the Year 2025

When we take stock of the events of any given year, we discover that our judgements are shaped not by what has occurred, but by the way in which we have been compelled to interpret it. The process of reflection is never a transparent window into the past, but rather a re-construction of reason out of the debris of experience, as an attempt to distinguish the essential from the ephemeral. There is, of course, a perennial temptation to value according to familiar hierarchies, to relegate what cannot be comprehended easily to already known categories. Yet, the real task of art critique is the confrontation of the uncomfortable, in resistance of the easy consolations of convention. While doing so, resulting verdicts are rarely uniformly agreeable, but always uncompromisingly authentic. Inside everyone's little mental pond of twilight, suddenly a music list makes sense.