Fear Bangs the Drum: Looking Forward

The end of the year is near. At some points, it’s seemed, the past 11 months have found the fabric of spacetime stretching tight and turning trampoline-like, with our stride exaggerated by the springboard-like sensation beneath our feet. At others, it’s as if we spooled up our internal FTL drives and made blind-jumps across the great expanse, subverting physics and landing in a parallel universe of some sort.

A semblance of old-world order remains, however. Which is to say, The Old Grey Cat’s traditional “Remember December” revelry—including its much-ballyhooed Album of the Year shindig—will soon echo through the blogosphere, no doubt sucking all the oxygen from other social media conversations. (For those new to this blog: My tongue is often in cheek.) A week from today, for instance, I’ll share—in alphabetical order—my top 25 albums and EPs of 2025, setting the stage for the year-end all-star party when the year’s best long player and five-or-so runners-up will be unveiled. The tension is already ratcheting up here at HQ, where PR flacks are inundating me with promises and threats to get their clients on the list. (Note to those who think they can influence me: bribes may well pay off!) Seriously, as with my Best of the Best, Mid-Year Edition post from July, the picks will make a mockery of those trolls who claim that today’s music scene pales in comparison to yesterday’s.

Between now and then, I’ll be spotlighting a few new releases and, too, playing catchup with a handful of albums that somehow slipped through the cracks. A music-related book review is on tap, as well, as is a walk down memory lane via an Essentials pick (maybe two). I may also, as I’ve done here and there, spotlight a movie or TV show.

For now, though, here’s “Fear Bangs the Drum,” a propulsive single released last month by Dutch-British singer-songwriter Tessa Rose Jackson that captures the zeitgeist of 2025 to a T: “What a waste, what a shame,/Could we start this over?/Or better still, let the hill worth dying on crumble/This black hole will swallow us whole if you let it./It’ll break unless it bends, so let it bend.”