These birds don’t fly: Why two beloved 2025 records are duds

For many of us, the end of 2025 was something of a sigh of relief. 

It was quite a year, wasn’t it? If complaints about the events of 2025 were bricks, you could build a very large building that no wolf could ever blow down. 

While complaining sucks and gets you nowhere, sadly, it has become a national pastime. People are moaning about something related to every aspect of our world, and everyone with an internet connection has dreams of going pro.

Most of the time, the vast majority, really, I like to celebrate what is going on in the music world. I love to help build things while looking for solutions, not problems. I prefer constructive criticism to dismissive complaints, but regarding 2025, there are a few things I need to get off my chest. 

The great thing about music is that, while it ages, changes, and evolves, it is always new to someone. There was a lot of new music in 2025, and while I like to stay current, I know I miss a lot. Luckily, when I do find my way around to them, they will still be new to me, even if they aren’t to you. 

In 2025, I kept hearing about two bands that people couldn’t stop talking about. For the life of me, after checking them out, I can’t understand why there is so much hype. The first of these is the band Turnstile. 

On one hand, I am super happy for the band members. They seem to be having a great time, and people love them. Their shows are hugely attended, and they’ve been nominated for a handful of Grammy Awards. Any time a band that doesn’t come directly from what I consider the “mainstream” or “pop” music world has success, I see that as a small victory for those of us who like our music a little wilder, louder or weirder.

On the other hand, I spent some time with their 2025 record, “Never Enough,” and I couldn’t stand it. While I’m not opposed to a great-sounding “hardcore” record (and the production on Turnstile’s stuff is always top-notch), this record feels sterile, as if someone created a version of autotune that takes a whole record and neuters it. 

I don’t want to hear a version of Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell fronting a generic ripoff of Bad Religion. I don’t want the kids of the world to think that this is interesting, challenging, or hardcore. People love McDonald’s for a reason, and I get that. It’s fast, easy and always tastes the same. Music should not be fast food, and Turnstile’s 2025 output feels like a drive-thru meal to me. 

My friendly advice to Turnstile, which comes from the heart and with total respect for what they are accomplishing, is to use this success and attention they are getting for the good. While they are not Fugazi, the Baltimore band might want to take a few more pages out of their D.C. neighbor’s playbook than they already do. 

Many of us have been waiting for punk rock to take that big swing at the establishment it built its reputation on in the 1970s and ‘80s, but it has yet to really deliver on that during the Trump regime. Perhaps Turnstile could utilize their position as arbiters of modern “hardcore” to help rectify some wrongs. 

The other band that people have been on my nuts to check out is Geese. 

Everything I heard during the second half of 2025 about Geese (not jam-rockers Goose, by the way) was super positive. What really got me interested in taking the leap was that I kept hearing knowledgeable music fans say that it was tough to describe their music. 

Usually, I hate being told what to do when it comes to listening to music. It instantly gives me a “no, fuck that” kind of attitude about a band, and I go back to listening to the bands I like or find on my own. It’s the independent nature, I suppose, of jaded, self-important music writers who are also musicians themselves. Or, maybe, just what people in my age group are like. We had to go and find cool music ourselves back in the day, while walking uphill to school both ways. 

Back to Geese. Finally, in December, I took the bait and listened to their recent release “Getting Killed,” which has topped many of ’25’s best-of-the-year charts. 

Geese, to me, sounds like the Violent Femmes and Richard Hell (and maybe the rest of his band, the Voidoids) got all fucked up on inhalants, shitty ones at that, and had a tone deaf baby. Then, at no real fault of the baby, because I don’t want to blame any babies for this, the child was force-fed nothing but Talking Heads music while being jogged around Manhattan in one of those bougie baby backpacks. 

I know that sounds mean, and I do apologize, but the only thing worse than being told “you are going to love this band” is finally listening to the band and having a bunch of lazy-sounding New York bullshit come out of the speakers. 

And I typically love New York bullshit. It was bad enough when the Strokes tried to reinvent that sound a couple of decades ago and made one good record before drowning in their own hype. I don’t even think Geese has one good record in them. They’re young, though, so who knows? However, if you grow up living around New York City, possibly the most privileged place in the U.S., and going to private schools,  don’t try to tell me that you are anything but an affluent dilettante. 

Heck, though, I guess even Bob Dylan is kind of a poseur, so I can’t fault a record label for turning some bohemian-looking boys into the next great New York alt-rock heroes. 

In a world where so much of what we consume is soulless, I think the worst part of 2025 for me was the lack of genuine substance.

My dislike for these two records that a lot of people loved in 2025 may be adding more complaints to the pile, but they each represent to me what the worst of 2025 actually was, and that is this:

2025 showed me that music wasn’t up to the task of helping to save the world, and as a music fan and music maker, I need it to be part of the solution, not the problem. I want it to be both dangerous and smart, provocative and inclusive, and to help me express the complicated feelings that come from living in the world today.

In a time ripe for protest songs, where are they on two of the most acclaimed records of the year?

When people wake up and realize that it’s okay to like (or not like) what you want, regardless of what the talking head on TikTok says or what the algorithm on your music streamer keeps jamming into your earholes, music will get better again. AI can’t kill it, and as strong as Donald Trump seems to think he is, good luck stopping anyone with a brain and an instrument from writing a song about how ridiculous bloated shitbags with a spray tan and a flop-a-do look. 

There were many other, and even more terrible, things about music in 2025. Concerts have become more expensive, and it certainly seems that going to see a big band in 2026 won’t be any cheaper. Between parking (or hiring a car), any refreshments and the ticket prices, good luck to the average American concertgoer to be able to afford seeing more than one of their favorite bands. If you want to buy some merch, which ultimately helps the bands the most, get ready to drop another hundred bucks. 

There is an irrational fear that AI will destroy music, but that is ridiculous. Even people who are using AI to make music are still “making” music. Just because they tell a computer what to do rather than playing it themselves, it still takes creativity. AI can’t kill what music means to people, whether as a listener or a performer, unless we allow that to happen. One of the worst aspects of last year, though, was listening to people complain about how terrible AI was for music. 

I look at it like this. AI is another tool, kind of like a trumpet. Just because I don’t want to start a ska band doesn’t mean I hate trumpets, or that no one should play one, and just because I didn’t care for the Turnstile or Geese records last year, it doesn’t mean I want to tell AI to make something better.

Wait a minute … if any AI overlords are listening, maybe combining the two records into an even bigger turd would make a buttload of money.

Just kidding. That would be a misuse of natural and unnatural resources.  

And one last thing, as always and especially with regard to the cantaloupe curmudgeon in the building next to the big, beautiful ballroom, fuck KISS. They are still the worst of the worst.

I can see it now, though, and coming soon: The Donald J. Trump/Gene Simmons/Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs Rec Center.