The 11th Best Album of 2025
Almost to the top 10 and we have another new band (for me) in Racing Mount Pleasant and their self-titled album.
I mentioned on the Ichiko Aoba post that I'm not really a chamber folk guy. This album could reasonably be called chamber folk, or at least chamber folk adjacent and wew it blew me away. I do think it errs more on indie rock/indie pop stylings than folk, but I think it's close enough to count. And it's just beautiful. The atmosphere here is gloomy overall, it reminds me of a rainy fall afternoon, kinda grey but enough pops of color to make the overall picture still quite lovely. The instrumentation is great, excellent strings, piano, and horns also Woo saxophone usage in rock music, we need more tbh.
The lyrics are beautiful and delivered well, there are emo-ish leanings in there but it's not like fkn american football or anything. In reading reviews there's a lot of comparison with Black Country, New Road which I both understand and think this album is more enjoyable than the BC,NR release this year, and would probably pick it over Ants From Up There too. It's a truly lovely album and I hope to hear more from these guys soon.