Best of 2025 – Top Albums – Part 2

Last one, this is for all the marbles. I’ll start off with a couple albums that hit just outside my top 10, and then get into albums #4-1.

To recap, you can use the menu above to check out some of my fun categories from the previous days, as well as albums #10-6 on this countdown. My annual playlist, which include songs from some of my favorite albums of the year as well as other songs I enjoyed can be found to the right of this block of text. Any other 2025 recap posts I do might show up in the new year, but no promises there. Like I said before, I’ve got some ideas but it’s just a matter of time now.

Honorable Mentions

I won’t write a diatribe about these releases, just know that at one point, each one of these was considered for the top 10. All I want to say is that “Hallways” is probably my favorite PUP song ever.

With that, we’re moving on to the top four!

#4 – The Starting Line – Eternal Youth

If you’ve been following these posts over the past week, this pick shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. After naming the band the year’s best comeback, it was never a question of if The Starting Line would appear on this list – only where. I already talked about the success of their return, so here I want to focus on why Eternal Youth resonated with me as much as it did.

A lot of casual fans still associate The Starting Line with Say It Like You Mean It and expect something close to the bubblegum pop-punk of “Best of Me.” But the band addressed that expectation themselves years ago on Direction: “If SILYMI still is all you want, then I’m not sure how much in common we’ve got.” With Eternal Youth, that sentiment feels truer than ever.

Pop-punk bands rarely age gracefully. Some evolve in tiny, incremental steps, with New Found Glory being a prime example, where the songs improve technically but the overall sound stays largely unchanged. Others take a much bigger leap, like Paramore, whose journey from pop-punk staples to boundary-pushing new-wave power pop spans a wide creative gap. Eternal Youth lands closer to that latter approach, though it smartly stays grounded in the band’s core identity.

Opener “I See How It Is” sets the tone immediately. The crunchy guitars, jazzy basslines, and spacey keyboard flourishes that defined The Starting Line’s later work are all present, but here they’re given more room to breathe. The result feels looser, more progressive, and more confident. It’s unmistakably The Starting Line, but clearly evolved. Throughout the album, the band moves fluidly between these jazz-leaning arrangements and the classic, high-energy pogo-ready rippers of their early days. That balance allows the album to feel like genuine growth without alienating longtime fans.

Appropriately, the title track “Eternal Youth” serves as the album’s mission statement. It opens with a jazzy, walking bassline that feels almost unfamiliar until Kenny Ken Vasoli’s voice enters, grounding it emotionally. As the song builds, palm-muted guitars and power chords gradually stack up, culminating in a bridge that wouldn’t feel out of place on one of the band’s earlier records. Lyrically, it wrestles with the desire to hold onto youth while acknowledging the realities of getting older, which is a theme that perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the band’s return.

After a 17-year gap between albums, expectations for a new Starting Line record were understandably complicated. But Eternal Youth doesn’t just clear the bar – it resets it. This doesn’t feel like a band revisiting old glories; it feels like one that’s grown into a sharper, more self-aware version of itself. With busy lives and day jobs pulling them in different directions, it’s hard to know what the future holds, but whatever form it takes, I’m just grateful The Starting Line is back and making music this strong.

Standout Tracks: “Circulate,” “Eternal Youth,” “Sense of Humor,” “I See How It Is,” “Blame,” “Defeating The Purpose + Pivot”

#3 – The Wonder Years – Burst & Decay (Volume III)

I don’t usually include EPs on my top album lists. They’re not full albums, and I’m annoyingly pedantic about that kind of thing. So I’m adding an asterisk here: consider this EP a stand-in for the entire Burst & Decay series from The Wonder Years.

The Burst & Decay project began in 2017 as a simple acoustic EP with stripped-down versions of fan favorites, nothing flashy. Over time, though, the series evolved. Strings and subtle electronic elements were layered in, giving the songs richer, fuller arrangements. By Volume III (technically the fourth release, if you count the live album), the band introduced guest features, and in several cases, managed to create versions of songs that rival, or outright surpass, the originals.

This volume also marks the first time the band wrote a new song specifically for the Burst & Decay series, a sign that the project has taken on a life of its own. Opener “Junebug” fits perfectly into this world, even if it isn’t fully acoustic. Dan “Soupy” Campbell sings to his younger son with a tenderness that feels tailor-made for the series. (And don’t worry – his older son still gets his moment, too, with a new acoustic version of “Wyatt’s Song” from The Hum Goes On Forever.)

The tracklist spans nearly the band’s entire career. From Suburbia…, we get a reimagined version of “Came Out Swinging,” the band’s biggest hit and perennial set closer. While the song is usually at its best drenched in distortion, it works surprisingly well here, bolstered by guest vocals from Knuckle Puck’s Joe Taylor and, naturally, gang vocals in the outro. A major reason these songs feel so alive is the continued presence of the Little Kruta string ensemble, whose arrangements add emotional weight throughout the EP.

The guest features deserve just as much credit. Joe Taylor, Zayna Youssef, and Origami Angel’s Ryland Heagy all feel perfectly matched to their respective tracks. Beyond sounding great, these choices feel intentional, like quiet nods to bands The Wonder Years respect and have shared stages with over the years.

The final three tracks are the clear highlights, and I’d argue all of them surpass their original versions. “I Don’t Like Who I Was Then” and “The Ocean Grew Hands to Hold Me” gain tremendous emotional depth from the expanded instrumentation. But the closer, “Doors I Painted Shut,” is something else entirely. Built from nothing but vocals – Dan’s lead surrounded by layers of haunting, vocoder-processed harmonies – it slowly swells until everything breaks open after the bridge. If this were the only track on the EP, it would still land high on my list. It’s one of the most powerful things the band has ever released.

Beyond the music itself, this release meant a lot to me personally. It’s the album that finally made my wife love The Wonder Years. She’d listened to them alongside me for years, but something clicked here and as a result, we played the entire Burst & Decay catalog constantly this year. According to Spotify, she actually listened to them more than I did, which is saying something, considering they were my #2 artist on Wrapped. We also caught the Burst & Decay tour, which remains one of my favorite concerts of all time: a small, intimate venue, the full string ensemble onstage, and added arrangements even for older songs. It was deeply emotional and genuinely unforgettable.

I’m not sure many other bands could pull this off. Plenty have released acoustic versions of songs, but few have approached them with this level of care, intention, and artistry. Burst & Decay doesn’t feel like a side project, it feels like some of The Wonder Years’ best work. Considering how high I already hold their catalog, that’s saying a lot.

Standout tracks: “I Don’t Like Who I Was Then,” “Doors I Painted Shut,” “The Ocean Grew Hands to Hold Me,” “Teenage Parents,” “Junebug” (that’s over half of the EP’s nine songs)

#2 – Winona Fighter – My Apologies to the Chef

This might be the purest pop-punk album on my list, and goddamn, do I love it. There’s a raw, youthful energy to this record that feels like it could fly off the hinges at any moment.

I first heard about Winona Fighter through a friend who was already a fan, and they kept popping up in my Spotify radio here and there. I finally saw them live last year opening for Bayside, and the quality of their set immediately pushed them to the top of my radar.

One of my favorite punk rock tropes is opening an album (or even just a song) with the sound of a guitar getting plugged in, and that’s exactly how “JUMPERCABLES” begins. Within seconds, the opening riff detonates into the full song, introducing frontwoman Coco Kinnon in the process. She brings a salt-of-the-earth punk energy to both her vocals and lyrics that makes everything feel sincere and unfiltered. Right out of the gate, you get gang vocals you want to shout along with and a chorus that practically demands you bounce out of your seat.

The songs here are riff-heavy and endlessly fun. The band peppers in small ear-candy flourishes throughout, which is even more impressive when you realize this three-piece recorded and produced the album entirely on their own. Coco not only writes the songs and plays guitar, she also recorded all the drum parts. Lead guitarist Dan Fuson and bassist Austin Luther shine as well. The guitar work is punchy and immediate, ranging from classic punk influences on tracks like “Subaru” to grungy, ’90s-leaning leads on “I Think You Should Leave.” The bass tone constantly calls back to bands like MxPx or early blink-182, that late-’90s / early-2000s pop-punk twang runs through the album in the best way.

Despite wearing those influences proudly, Winona Fighter never feels like a nostalgia act. They’re using familiar building blocks to create something that feels bigger than the sum of its parts. If there’s one minor criticism, it’s that some of these songs existed previously, sometimes for years, but when packaged together with the newer material, the album still feels cohesive. If anything, that consistency speaks to how locked-in their songwriting has been from the start.

In a year where a lot of pop-punk leaned either overly polished or overtly nostalgic, this album feels urgent, like a band with something to prove and no interest in sanding down the edges. My favorite example is “Swear To God That I’m (FINE),” which rides a classic pop-punk bassline through the verses before dropping lines like:

So please excuse me, or not
I’m in the same spot
I’m spinnin’ ’round in circles ’til my brain begins to rot
And I’m thankful, I swear
I’m lucky to be here
But hope I slip into the sofa
Make my body disappear

The lyrics are honest and relatable, delivered with an earnestness that really lands. The bridge feels like it could’ve fallen out of a track by The Ataris or New Found Glory, before building back into the final chorus with just a hint of gang vocals. It taps directly into the feeling of discovering punk and pop-punk for the first time – music that made everything feel louder, faster, and more important.

There’s something special about watching a band absolutely nail their debut album, and Winona Fighter did exactly that here. I also caught them on tour supporting this record, and I’m happy to report that everything translates live. The band is tight, the energy is relentless, and the crowd is all in. This is my #1 band to watch in the scene right now. They’re only going to get better from here, and it’s going to be a hell of a ride watching it happen.

PS – To take everything up another notch, the band released a deluxe edition six months later that includes an acoustic version of every single song on the album. That’s almost unheard of!Most bands might strip down a track or two, not the entire record. On top of that, the deluxe release also features covers of Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” and Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun,” further showing off the band’s range. The result is a release that breathes even more life into an album that already felt electric.

#1 – Hot Mulligan – The Sound a Body Makes When It’s Still

When rumors hit the internet in the spring that Hot Mulligan was about to announce a new album, I was genuinely floored. I was still regularly spinning 2023’s Why Would I Watch, and I wasn’t exactly starving for new material. Just last year, we also got the Warmer Weather EP with three new songs. It felt like the band never stopped touring on WWIW. When did they even have time to record a full album?

The rumors turned out to be true, and the band announced a short run of small-venue shows ahead of the release. The first single, “And a Big Load,” quickly proved me wrong. The song opens with jaw-dropping drum work and dives straight into the self-deprecating, isolation-soaked lyrical territory Hot Mulligan has made their own. Maybe I did need new Hot Mulligan music after all. The hype cycle was officially underway.

We were lucky enough to catch one of those small-venue shows at The Sanctuary, packed wall-to-wall in the 400-capacity room on a blistering 90-degree summer day. It was unforgettable. You rarely get to see a band at this level in a room that small, and experiencing both longtime favorites and brand-new songs in such an intimate space felt genuinely special.

When the tracklist dropped, it was hard to know what to expect. Sixteen tracks – more than any previous Hot Mulligan album – but paired with some of the most absurd song titles of their career. Titles like “It Smells Like Fudge Axe In Here,” “This Makes Me Yummy,” “Cream of Wheat of Feet Naw Cream of (feat.),” “Let Me See Your Mounts,” and of course “Monica Lewinskibidi” made it nearly impossible to predict what kind of emotional territory the album would cover. The real test would come once the album was finally in hand.

What we got was the most personal and emotionally heavy record the band has ever released. Those absurd titles act as a smokescreen for an album deeply rooted in loss, grief, existential dread, and the struggle to find your place in the world. Much of the lyrical core revolves around losing a family member to cancer and grappling with the pain of distance, helplessness, and everything that comes with that experience. Nobody expects to be reduced to tears by a song called “Monica Lewinskibidi,” but that’s the duality Hot Mulligan thrives in.

Despite the weight of its themes, this album also features some of the strongest hooks the band has ever written. Every member sounds locked in and operating at their highest level. Vocalists and songwriters Tades Sanville and Chris Freeman deliver performances filled with raw emotion and range. Yes, there’s plenty of yelling, but this record arguably showcases the widest vocal palette the band has ever used.

The standout performance belongs to drummer Brandon Blakeley, whose work here is among the best in the scene right now. The drums aren’t content to sit in the background; they can take center stage, like the explosive intro to “And a Big Load,” or act as a melodic support instrument alongside the guitars, as heard in “Monster Burger and a $5 Beer.” That’s not to downplay the rest of the band, as Ryan Malicsi and Chris Freeman deliver some of their strongest guitar work to date, and bassist Jonah Kramer, recently promoted from touring member to full-timer, makes sure the bass is never just filler.

While Hot Mulligan has always flirted with electronic textures, this album leans into synths and samples more than ever before. The result is the fullest, most layered record they’ve made yet. The interstitial tracks “This Makes Me Yummy” and “This Makes Me Yucky” feel like a classic emo album move. “Yucky” in particular calls to mind Brand New’s “Welcome to Bangkok,” serving as a moody, tone-setting piece that helps guide the emotional arc of the album. Songs like “Slumdog Scungillionaire” further highlight just how wide the band’s range has become at this stage in their career.

I’ve never been able to pick a favorite song here, it’s entirely mood-dependent. “And a Big Load” is a summer-drive staple, windows down, screaming along to lyrics about feeling like a burden. “It Smells Like Fudge Axe In Here” is a jazzy emo toe-tapper about the paranoia of being constantly watched. “Island in the Sun” (not a Weezer cover) is about drinking with your friends to forget what’s weighing on you. I could walk through every track and still not land on a definitive favorite.

Not only is this Hot Mulligan’s best work to date, it also hit me at exactly the right time. It’s easy to connect with an album about losing someone to cancer when you’re actively supporting someone through that fight yourself. It’s hard not to sing along to songs about helplessness when all you can do is sit back and trust the doctors. Hearing Tades scream about it reminds you that you’re not the only one who has been in this position.

Ultimately, this album feels like the culmination of everything Hot Mulligan has been building toward: bigger hooks, sharper musicianship, and a willingness to be brutally honest even when it hurts. It rewards repeat listens not just because it’s catchy, but because it meets you wherever you are, whether you need something loud to scream along to or something quiet and devastating to sit with. Hot Mulligan has always been great at turning anxiety into catharsis, but here they’ve created something deeper and more lasting. This isn’t just the best album of their career, it’s the kind of record that reminds you why this band matters so much in the first place.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Let’s do this again next year.

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