Listen to me every first, third, and fifth Saturday of the month at 10:00am ET on radio, on the Internet, or on the free WPKN app at 10:00am ET. The show is WANTED: Mark Rosenblatt, even though I loudly protest my innocence.

Some of you may remember the Village Voice annual Pazz and Jop music poll, begun in 1971 and for much of its run administered by the great music critic Robert Christgau.

With the disappearance of the Village Voice in 2018 (where disappearance means the Voice went out of business), one great place to find out about music that you may have heard or read about, and just as likely had not heard or read about, disappeared too.

That being the case, in 2019 Glenn Boothe and Keith Artin created the Village Voice Pazz & Jop Rip-Off Poll as a Facebook group, and the group now has more than 1000 members reporting on their Top Ten albums of the year. The premise is this: you pick up to – but no more than – ten albums released in the year in question (2025), and you get one hundred points to spread among your choices any way you want. After January 4, 2026, the poll closed and the tallying began to produce not only a Top Ten list of Top Ten lists, but enough ancillary data to keep pazz and jop aficionados, nerds, fans, and common folk like me and you – yes, you – struggling to find meaning in the choices of others.

I’ve participated in this poll the past few years, and I’ve attached my submission for 2025. Frankly, my choices are not that different in type and style than the stuff I run with on WPKN today and fifty years ago.  So take a look at my selections, then ask yourself, “What’s my Top Ten for 2025?”

I have seen the future of rock and roll, and 1. it’s the same old shit, 2. I feel fine, and 3. I blame Wilco and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

Albums like DECK by Hallelujah The Hills (number one on my Top Ten) and GETTING KILLED by Geese (on many Top Ten lists) are so busy with distortion, background sounds, and strange strained voices that an album like IS (by My Morning Jacket, and in my Top Ten), whose sound is crystal clear and where each instrument is perfectly positioned within a stereo field, sounds like it cost millions and millions to produce and record, and was recorded ages ago.

Busy-ness by itself is neither craft nor art, but it does seem to be a fashion right now.

1. Hallelujah The Hills, DECK, 30 points, June 13, 2025, Discrete Pageantry Records.

2. Comet Gain, LETTERS TO ORDINARY OUTSIDERS, 15 points, June 6, 2025, Tapete.

3. The Mountain Goats, THROUGH THIS FIRE ACROSS FROM PETER BALKAN, 10 points, November 6, 2025, Cadmean Dawn.

4. Great Grandpa, PATIENCE, MOONBEAM, 10 points, March 28, 2025, Run For Cover.

5. Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band, NEW THREATS FROM THE SOUL, 10 points, July 25, 2025, Sophomore Lounge.

6. Sparks, MAD!, 5 points, May 23, 2025, Transgressive.

7. James McMurtry, THE BLACK DOG AND THE WANDERING BOY, 5 points, June 20, 2025, New West.

8. My Morning Jacket, IS, 5 points, March 21, 2025, ATO.

9. Papir, PAPIR IX, 5 points, November 21, 2025, Stickman.

10. The Third Mind, RIGHT NOW, 5 points, September 19, 2025, Yep Roc.