Yet another year of raw, poetic folk narratives, as Tidal put it. I’m sharing a couple of marvellous, mostly melancholic music pearls that stayed with me through 2025 — many of them very old ones.

1. Lean Year — The Trouble With Being Warm
Another year with Lean Year’s masterpiece album Sides. Endings remain awful and strange.

2. Kath Bloom — Fall Again
It is hard to write about Kath Bloom’s songwriting without reaching a vocabulary that risks diminishing her. In the nakedness of her songs, it is fair to call her the Mary Oliver of songwriting.

3. Suzanne Vega — The Chambermaid Song
This song found me while working near a great contemporary artist and brought the realization that even dreaming of stealing a kiss from him would cost too much. Platonic love, however, is free for everyone. Suzanne Vega’s great reworking of Bob Dylan’s I Want You.

4. George Cessna — Morning Song
I had never heard such sadness in words meant for a happy occasion like in this song.
Hey, mama, look, I’m a rock star.
Hey, papa, look, I’m number one.

5. Bloom — Moon on the Water
From the album Everyday Must Die (1993). One of many pearls I found on Mehmed Begić’s YouTube channel. Bloom was the band of Micke Herrström, a great Swedish producer who worked with an endless number of artists. Money from his latest LP, Skelett, went uncut to Aid to Gaza.

6. Barzin — The Dream Song
Meša Begić’s poem Lost in Awaking (Izgubljeni u buđenju) pulled Barzin back from memory.

7. Slowdive — Andalusia Plays
Brought back from the past by yet another great piece of writing by Faruk Šehić, one of the greatest contemporary writers from Bosnia and Herzegovina.