Steven Hyden’s Favorite Music Of April 2025

Every month, Uproxx cultural critic Steven Hyden makes an unranked list of his favorite music-related items released during this period — songs, albums, books, films, you name it.

1. Bon Iver — SABLE, fABLE

The song titles are a tip-off. With a Bon Iver album, they can be a difficult proposition. Ever since 2016’s 22, A Million, the tracklist for a Justin Vernon LP reads more like a menacing letter from a Zodiac-inspired serial killer than a rundown of songs. Random numbers and strange symbols are plentiful. Easily pronounceable words are not. But there is a method to the madness. When it’s a challenge to put a name to a song, that song becomes hard to pin down and decipher. Even when contained on a record by one of the biggest indie-rock stars of the last 20 years, the song remains elusive and enigmatic. And, by association, so does the artist. But on SABLE, fABLE (the first Bon Iver album in six years, and the fifth overall), the song titles are shockingly comprehensible. Yes, there’s a song called “Speyside” — one of three tracks carried over from last year’s SABLE, EP — which is stylized in all caps with a space between each letter, a move designed to taunt typesetters everywhere while also possibly confusing Scotch liquor enthusiasts. And don’t overlook “There’s A Rhythmn,” with the intentional misspelling that may or may not reference the state of Minnesota, just because that seems like an extremely Bon Iver thing to do.

2. Bill Fox — Resonance

Resonance by Bill Fox

Resonance is the first Bill Fox record in 13 years, and only his fifth solo LP in the past 29 years. (He also fronted a power-pop band in the ’80s called The Mice that is worshipped by power-pop freaks like the aforementioned Robert Pollard, who has raved about them being an influence on GBV. Fox, in turn, sounds a bit like an amalgam of Pollard and his former GBV bandmate, the elfin-voiced Tobin Sprout.) The bulk of Fox’s reputation rests on two albums he put out in the late ’90s, Shelter From The Smoke (1996) and Transit Byzantium (1998). They were mostly recorded at home by Fox himself on a four-track. Unlike the unruly blasts of psychedelic pseudo-arena rock turned out by his peers in GBV, Fox plays songs with Dylanesque instrumentation (voice, guitar, harmonica) and a Beatlesque melodic sense. And his lyrics — often lovelorn, occasionally political, usually introspective, and always poetic in a plainspoken way — are far better-written and heartbreaking than they need to be.

3. Fust at 7th Street Entry, April 10

I caught the six-piece ensemble last week at Minneapolis’ historic rock club 7th Street Entry — a gig Dowdy says he was extra-excited about, and I don’t think that was just stage banter — and they put on a musically rambunctious and spiritually big-hearted show. On record, the focal point is squarely on Dowdy’s songs, which marry hearty alt-country music with impressionistic lyrics infused with authentic small-town southern lore. He is especially fond of deploying regional slang that might be confounding to outsiders, starting with the album title (named after one of the record’s best songs), which refers to an unruly, unsightly creek. On stage, however, Fust has a communal band vibe that’s immediately inviting, starting with the interplay between Dowdy and singer/fiddle player Libby Rodenbough, and extending to the lively interjections of pianist (and long-time Dowdy collaborator) Frank Meadows. Seeing Fust live only made me love their latest album Big Ugly more, and it was already one of my favorite albums of early 2025.

4. Jerry David DeCicca — Cardiac Country

Cardiac Country by Jerry David DeCicca

I’ve been a fan of this Texas-based singer-songwriter since his time with The Black Swans back in the aughts. But DeCicca is on an extra-special roll lately, after 2023’s New Shadows — a pitch-perfect homage to boomer rock singer-songwriter records from the 1980s, a la Bob Dylan’s Infidels and Don Henley’s Building The Perfect Beast — and the new album out this month. Unlike a lot of artists working in a similar “literate Americana” lane, DeCicca understands that the right vibe can take a good song and make it something greater. On Cardiac Country, he locks into a hyper-specific frequency I would liken to watching an old episode of Austin City Limits from the ’90s on YouTube starring Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Joe Ely. If that description communicates something visceral to you, grip this album now.

5. Craig Finn — Always Been

Craig Finn’s voice and songs plus music that sounds like The War On Drugs — the elevator pitch for Always Been is so simple that it almost seems too simplistic as a description. But that’s basically what this album is. Lyrically, Finn was so inspired by the character he invented for “Bethany” — a preacher with serious spiritual doubts and a mysterious past — that he created a song cycle fleshing out a story that also addresses matters of sin, redemption, reinvention, and murder. And then, with Adam Granduciel’s assistance, he placed those songs in rousing heartland rock soundscapes rife with atmospheric guitar and synth sounds. For an artist who has been compared to Bruce Springsteen semi-constantly for the past two decades, Always Been is the closest Finn has come to making an actual Springsteen record. Born In The U.S.A. and Tunnel Of Love, in particular, feel like obvious signposts.

6. Adrianne Lenker — Live At Revolution Hall

I’m still working my way through this massive 43-song set. I’m also one of the freaks that ordered the album on cassette, so I’m waiting for that to arrive before I fully absorb this thing. But I’m already prepared to call Live At Revolution Hall the most conceptually interesting live record to come out in a long while. The mix of fidelities — lo-fi, hi-fi, no-fi — as well as the blend of music and found sounds makes it feel like something Neil Young would have attempted in the mid-1970s but not actually put out until the mid-2020s. It’s as much a documentary about Lenker’s recent tour as it is an album.

7. Momma — Welcome To My Blue Sky

This Brooklyn-by-way-of-LA band suffers somewhat by virtue of doing something musically that a million other bands have attempted in the past several years. The reference points couldn’t be more obvious: Siamese Dream, Veruca Salt, Hole’s Celebrity Skin era, general shoegaziness. On paper, it doesn’t get more shopworn. But Momma deserves extra credit for attempting all that and actually pulling it off. If you can allow yourself to be drawn in one more time by a music critic promising “MTV Buzz Bin rock but new,” I promise that you will find Welcome To My Blue Sky as fun as I do.

8. Waterboys — Life, Death, And Dennis Hopper

The year’s weirdest rock album so far, and one of the more fascinating. I am a huge fan of the music that Mike Scott made in the ’80s — most of all 1988’s Fisherman’s Blues, his masterpiece — but I haven’t kept up with the bounty of records he’s put out since. But Life, Death, And Dennis Hopper — a concept record about the famous actor, and the times he shaped — makes a case for me playing catch up. Scott’s knack of tuneful folk-rock grandiosity remains intact, and he’s helped by a galaxy of guest stars that includes Bruce Springsteen, Fiona Apple, and Steve Earle.