The Plan

 

I've been struck down with the Flu since early this week (PM Me Babe), so the Best 100 Albums of 2025 is delayed. The 100 have been chosen, but not the order yet. So the plan is to review 4 or 5 more albums over the weekend, posted in the evenings (UK Time). 

Then there will be Monday's Listening To This Week, which will be back to normal size as submissions have flooded in this week. From Tuesday, the Best 100 Countdown begins. It will be posted slightly differently this year. 

In the past, we've posted 20 daily in two lots of 10. This time we are posting just 10 daily. We feel this will help all 10 to get more attention than in the past. As always, a link to our review will be posted and a song from the album. As mentioned earlier, we will also post the Top 20 EPs of the year.

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Camp Trash - Two Hundred Thousand Dollars

 

I am a big advocate of waiting until the end of the year for Best Of Lists, many go way to early, magazines have deadlines that force this, but so many albums are missed that won't get on 2026 lists, no matter how great they are. Camp Trash are maybe the best example this year.

Released on Halloween, I started listening in December and I haven't stopped listening since. It may be one of the last 2025 albums that I've reviewed, but I can intimate that it will be high up on our Best 100 albums.

I think I know what our followers like, but at times we do get accused of being a little mellow,  rubbish I know, but this second album from Camp Trash is exactly what we are about. It is noisy and brash, but incredibly melodic. Fist shaking at times, but incredibly singalong stuff.

It does feel very 90s, but the good 90s. I think of Indie Rock, Power Pop and the non robotic Pop Punk. Indeed it reminds me a lot of one of my favourite albums of all time, Tsar's debut album. Certainly instrumentally and vocally.

Two Hundred Thousand Dollars is a concept of sorts, about losing and gaining the money. But the whole thing is so engaging, the studio chatter makes you feel like you are there. But the thing that grabs you most are the awesome chunky riffs, they crash in at will, wonderfully so.

The band are not stuck to a template though. No Vision is so damn heavy, superbly so, Guitar heaven. Alibi is anthemic, Biker Bar is stripped down Acoustic and the closer, Heaven Or Wisconsin is splendidly melodic, yet still manages to add some Noise Rock.

But it is the short win all songs that will grab you most. Signal Them In, Between The X's and Bigger Better Drug are absolute winners. The latter could easily have been on that Tsar album. Camp Trash have made us save the best till last. I couldn't find the words to praise this enough.

You can listen to and buy the album here. It is available on Vinyl and as a Name Your Price download.

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Listening To This Week Playlist 5 January

 

Slowly coming out of the Christmas and New Year period with 20 songs this week. With the odd exception, the playlist feels more about what we are known for. Pop Rock and Guitar Pop. A few more album reviews over the next couple of days, then we take a couple of days off to sort the Best 100 Albums Of 2025, We have whittled the selections down to a hundred, but there is plenty of listening needed before we are ready to go.

The weekly playlist is largely for submissions, not just the usual stuff that we dig out ourselves. The song order is not about song preference, but how the playlist flows.  All embeds open in new windows to aid scrolling. Links to the artists will also appear on I Don't Hear A Single Social Media sites over the next 24 hours. This will help you to discover more about the artists who appear here. 

Boy Wonders - Dreaming In B/W

After Geography - Hear Me Out

Fruition - The Deceiver

Superstar Crush - Venus In The Drywall

Small Yards - Strawberry Summer

The While - Crispy Blue

The Happy Somethings - Meanwhile

Beddy Rays - Red Lights

The Invisible Man - She's Gone

The Toxhards - Beatrice

Snakeheads - Entropy

SNAKEHEADS · Entropy

Rhynos - Daze Pass

The Pomps - Rubber Room

Hey Colossus - Cannibal Forecast

Atticus Roness - Ludwig Van

The Belair Lip Bombs - Again And Again

Weakened Friends - Lightspeed

Cheap Tobacco - Lonely

The Rise And Fall - Starts And Ends With You

Kellan - Roulette

Kellan · Roulette

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Happy New Year

 

It has been a great musical year in 2025. Celebrations of the new and returning heroes. Less joyful for the world. As a student of history, hard to believe what is going on in the States. I thought that we had seen the end of the divide and conquer nonsense. But the cult continues unabated and threatens to happen here too.

2026 will be a quiet celebratory year for I Don't Hear A Single. It is our 10th Anniversary year, I never felt this would go on so long and get so big. Amazingly, we will hit 3 million hits in the early part of the year. The gobsmacking thing is that the third million will have been attained in around 8 months. A real reaction to those who were saying all new music is crap in 2016.

There'll be a few more 2025 Reviews, not too many, whilst we knuckle down to the Best 100 Albums Of 2025 which will begin around 8 January. Due to the volume reviewed, there will also be a Best EP version this year. Listening To This Week continues onward, it hasn't missed the removal of Spotify after its trial. Quite the reverse.

It only leaves me to wish you all a prosperous 2026 and thank you for your continued support. The loyalty to this place is purely heart warming.

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Boy Wonders - Character Study

 

Fancy some great Power Pop? Well let me tell you about it. Pittsburgh Trio offer up a great melodic collection of songs for their second album. There's a fair amount of Jangle to enjoy, but also a good deal of variety.

All the prerequisites are present, big choruses, killer riffs and small, but beautifully formed, solos. We Could Be Yours opens up with a Jangle Pop entry and a top notch middle eight, but elsewhere there are wider departures.

The Trio are locked together tight, never so more than on Polygraph which has more of a Post Punk, slightly Noise Rock departure and is built on a Billy Duffy like Riff. Enfant Terrible is much more Merseybeat and Sister Suzie goes all UK Beat.

Little Black Shadow is more of a reminder of the Scouse Pop headed by The La's and Loss Adjustment may be the best thing on show. It mixes UK New Wave with a Psych Pop Riff and achieves its aims wonderfully well.

Dreaming In B/W slows things down beautifully as the closer. Slightly 70s Pop Rock, well arranged and performed with big hints to 60s Guitar Pop and another ace outro that takes the song past the 7 minute mark.  

The Song is such a mesmerising listen that you wonder excitedly about future direction.of the band. The     album flirts around the history of Power Pop and is produced in a Guided By Voices manner.. What's not to like? A cracking listen!

You can listen to and buy the album here. It is available on CD and as a download.

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Hidden Pictures - Well Hell

I first discovered Hidden Pictures in 2020 with the release of a 30 song anthology that covered their previous three albums and it was a revelation.  There have been singles since, but I never expected a fourth album and yet here it is. 

Released strangely on Boxing Day, so I hope this gets remembered when 2026 lists are being compiled. Richard Gintowt has again crossed from Oakland to Kansas City and it is like they have never been away. Well Hell is a stunning Pop Rock album.

Gintowt is as lyrically adept as ever, the songs are stories with killer lines. His vocal remains something at ease with the mellow, Petty like at times, but also able to adapt to street drawl and the material is wonderfully melodic and variety laden.

The title track is fine Americana and Hayward Hall Of Justice and Poweder Blue head into Country Rock, but the majority of songs on show are Guitar Pop heaven. For instance, Stealing The Tapes still sounds as ace Power Pop as it always has. A great duet with Heidi-Lynn Gluck.

Wedding Singer (Going Through A Divorce) is an absolutely hypnotic listen, mellow but incredibly affecting). Only Memories is Power Pop themed lyrically, but actually Jangle Pop. Screen Time is more New Wave and bitter, yet incredibly melodic.

Steamroller is rockier, built around some great guitar and a killer riff.  Mommy's On Molly mixes 90s Rock with Power Pop and may be the best thing here. A splendid return from one of the most underrated bands. Let's not make it a decade to the fifth album.

You can listen to and buy the album here. It is available on Vinyl and as a download.

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After The Fire - Bright Lights 1974-1983 (6CD)

 

With being all about the new, I don't often go back to the past, but After The Fire have a special place in my heart.US listeners won't have heard a lot of this stuff, but will have heard the band's cover of Der Kommissar. I was introduced to them by one of my favourite school teachers, unusual as that may sound.

Steve Brown was our History teacher, he awakened my interest in History through O and A Levels. The school had a cottage in Capel Garmon and a group of us were taken there for a welcome few days. It was 1979 and listening to music was a big part of the few days. 

I remember the girls playing Rumours a lot, but "Mr" Brown played a couple of albums that we had never heard. One was from Writz, the other was the Laser Love album by After The Fire. I had no idea that either were Christian Rock acts, I'm not sure that I would have gone looking for them, knowing that.

It didn't matter because the pop was so great. I was smitten with what I heard of the Laser Love album and soon after bought it. Songs like the title track and One Rule For You were great New Wave Pop, a little synth heavy, but this added to the joy as this was before the Synth bands and it was slightly unusual to hear them away from Prog.

Indeed, although unknown to me at the time, their debut album, Signs Of Change, was essentially a Prog album and this 6 Disc set reveals beautifully the journey from Prog to the great Pop of the follow up, second album, Laser Love. Disc 2 in this set is a wonderful adventure. I only got a hold of Signs Of Change after the release of the next album, 80-F.

........and what a wonderful album 80-F is. One of the great lost Pop Rock albums. Every song a winner, bravely opening up with an instrumental and then followed by pure joy. Killer choruses on the wonderful Only Love Will Make You Cry, Wild West Show and Billy Billy. 

Then there is the magnificent keyboard runs on Starflight, Peter Banks finest moment. It really is an album that should be reassessed and many will hear this for the first time. I never knew that the album was initially refused by CBS and was largely re-recorded using some of the songs from the Laser Love sessions. 

Some of those initial recordings are featured here. The big time seemed to be calling, the BBC featured them as part of the Rock Goes To College TV series and a support slot to Queen in Europe should have helped. But the follow up album, Batteries Not Included had a strangely low key release. A shame because it is a really good album, perhaps not as strong as the previous two, but still a fine listen.

Then the Der Kommissar cover version took off in Canada and the States. It was a song on the ATF album, the first released in the States and featured tracks from the previous three albums. The label tried to get the band to reform without success.

The story didn't end there, Studio Sessions, essentially demos from 1982 were released in 2006 under the album title AT2F and that is included here on Disc 6. This is a really splendid collection that will interest both fans and newcomers,

My story doesn't quite end there. In the My Space days, maybe 2006 ish, I conversed regularly with Peter Banks who was happy to talk about the band and what he was doing then. He remained so likeable and keen to share his love of music and experience as the founder member of After The Fire. Both he and Andy Piercy are interviewed in the booklet.

You can buy the set here. Cherry Red have, as usual, dome a fine job. If that is beyond your budget, please do try and grab 80-F. As I say, it is one of the great lost albums.

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