These reviews are from the fall 2025 issue of VICE magazine, THE BE QUIET AND DRIVE ISSUE. Get four issues each year, sent straight to your door, by subscribing here.Best Album of the Issue: Ethel CainWorst Album of the Issue: Maroon 5Best Sleeve of the Issue: Hot ChipWorst Sleeve of the Issue: MGK Hot ChipJoy in Repetition (Domino)With all the love in the world, Hot Chip aren’t a band who need a singles collection, much less a singles collection with artwork by Peter Blake. But that’s what we’ve got with Joy in Repetition and it does a decent job of reminding us that when Hot Chip are good—as demonstrated most capably on “Boy From School,” “I Feel Better,” and “Look at Where We Are”—they’re pretty good. If you watch as much Dinner Date as I do, you’ll rue the band for never releasing the winsome “Alley Cats” as a single. 7/10 LEE RONALDO LUÍS NAZÁRIO DE LIMATOPSBury the Key(Ghostly International)Wait a minute, who is this record actually for? There’s nothing particularly bad about the Canadian trio’s bloodlessly tasteful take on sophistipop but it’s hard to imagine the person who’s actively engaged with music like this. Who are they, what films do they like, what art leaves them crosseyed, where do they go when they seek salvation from the world’s unbearable sadness and suffering? If it’s you, message me. I just want to talk. 5/10 JAY BEEMGKLost Americana(Interscope)Assisted dying is the humane option for those exhibiting clear cognitive decline. It’s hard to say goodbye to a beloved octogenarian responsible for so many beautiful memories, but it’s better than the alternative: watching Bob Dylan publicly endorse Machine Gun Kelly. In the trailer for Lost Americana, Bob declared the album a “personal excavation of the American dream, a journey to find what’s been lost.” What’s been lost are his senses as this is as listenable as the chants at a pro-life rally. Time to fire-up the Swiss-engineered suicide pod unless a doctor provides a certificate showing that Bob’s been confusing MGK with Mk.gee.3/10 JUDAS G.O.A.T.Good CharlotteMotel Du Cap(Atlantic)Good Charlotte don’t need to work—this is their idea of fun. Meanwhile, I’ve found a job which can’t be done by a machine. My new career was voted least likely to be stolen by AI; I’m a dredge operator (#learntodredge). I clear fecal waterways of sediment, pump silt from rivers thick with microplastics and cocaine residue, suction-cup the bottom of an irradiated lake bringing up disappeared pets, abandoned Jackass re-enactment shopping trolleys and a thousand bottles of super-strength cider. Take this desolate sludge and press it onto vinyl and it’d still sound better than Motel Du Cap. How’s that for future-proofing?2/10JUDD DREDGEGhostface KillahSupreme Clientele 2(Mass Appeal)You don’t need to be Muslim to know we’re living through end times. Ghostface converted to Islam 21 years ago, so must know all about eschatology by now. Supreme Clientele 2 drops at a time of tyrants and false messiahs, the rivers are drying up and we’re fighting over mountains of gold. Following Tha Carter V, Compton and the new Clipse, this is the latest long-awaited rap record that seemed destined to never arrive. Scholars monitor the cosmos (formerly known as Twitter) for signs Jay-Z and Ye have made peace: If Watch the Throne II happens, the final hour will be upon us.6/10 OL’ DEVOUT BASTARDMaroon 5Love Is Like(Interscope)Adam Levine is the rockstar we deserve, a fleshy symbol of status obsession, optimized to the point of naked interchangeability. A man whose Instagram sexts were so anodyne he couldn’t even get cancelled. In the video to “Love Is Like,” Levine treats stylized city streets like his own private playground, hitting kegstands and riding topless in a Jeep with his meaningless tattoos on show—and not a single fentanyl zombie in sight. He’s even unironically appreciating late-stage Lil Wayne. If he was replaced with a hologram, how would you know?1/10 DEAF NIPPARDChance the RapperSTAR LINE(Self-released)There’s a rapper inside every wife guy. Hip-hop provides the assclap affirmations necessary to pussypop your way through a lifetime of monogamy; you chant the mantras of Percocet and group sex while rearranging presentation pillows on the IKEA marital bed. These voyeuristic projections were affronted by The Big Day—22 (!) songs celebrating holy matrimony. These days, Chance sleeps in a racing car beneath a single blanket, his relationship the cosmic debt paid to restore order to the para-social realm. But though no longer married, he’s not divorced from what us husbands knowingly refer to as The Game.6/10 DADDISH GAMBINOSabrina CarpenterMan’s Best Friend(Island)Sabrina Carpenter came up through the Disney Channel—the Navy SEALs for modern celebrity. A whole childhood of drownproofing tests; dropped into water, legs bound and hands tied, sinking to the bottom, bouncing off the floor, wriggling up to the surface, floating for just long enough to catch breath… then starting it all again. While not directly transferable to a real-world scenario (for example, producing music any self-respecting adult would want to listen to), it builds stamina and a healthy disregard for personal well-being—all that’s needed to serve your country as a popstar or a special forces operative.4/10 HOOYAH HENRYEarl SweatshirtLive Laugh Love(Tan Cressida)In becoming the dominant musical form of the 21st century, rap incorporated a global fan base including the kind of people who decorate their homes with “Live Laugh Love” wall art—for whom the four elements of hip-hop are scented candles, throw pillows, Friends reruns, and Prosecco o’clock. When they talk about The Culture, they mean the latest bacterial infection little Aubrey picked up at nursery. They think Earl Sweatshirt’s baby momma is Lady Grey. More gin?7/10 MC HORRIFIC IMPENDING DIVORCEEthel CainWilloughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You(Daughters of Cain)Ethel Cain and Lana Del Rey’s sadcore beef felt like a premonition of a future race for the Republican presidential nomination. Lana has the Floridian cannibal hordes and the VR evangelist headset congregations. Ethel’s Duster samples and resurfaced teen slurs are red meat for the hipster death cults marauding across the ever-expanding rust belt. It’ll come down to who guarantees tax breaks for crypto-landlords subletting sewer-wall sleeping nooks beneath scorched cities on the flaming remains of the West Coast. Can either unseat the longest serving president in U.S. history, Democrat leader Kendrick Lamar Duckworth?9/10 THE MOST ELECTABLE GIRL AT THE WAFFLE HOUSEFor Those I LoveCarving the Stone(September Recordings)This sounds like the guy from a military recruitment ad, only he wasn’t “Made in the Navy” but in the RAF—the Red Army Faction. Once, the best way to sell a burger or credit card or the idea of dying for your country was through the medium of spoken word. Here it’s as if the speaker of these poems is out of work, deep in debt, and radicalized by the dirtbag left. He’s balaclava’d up and heading to the nearest slam poetry night; ripples of appreciative finger snapping are almost impossible to differentiate from silenced machine-gun fire.7/10 W. B. VAPESSteve GunnMusic For Writers(Three Lobed Recordings)Writers and ambient music go together like Ernest Hemingway and firearms. Blasting yourself with white noise isn’t so much about blocking off the outside world as trying to shut up the violence inside your own head. Steve Gunn’s first instrumental album subsists on the small-scale drama which defines a life of letters. Synthesizers echo with the disavowal of a friend who’s become too popular. Guitars reverberate like rabidly posting about political causes in pursuit of approval. And sometimes the music lapses into near silence and it’s like the beautiful moment that everything goes quiet and you’re alone with the page.6/10 XTAL METHReneé Rapp Bite Me(Interscope)Respecting rules ‘round reputation regarding Reneé Rapp’s recent record release, really reasoned review: Rhythms remains raunchy, risqué. Relatively redundant riffs. Rhymes, [REDACTED]. Rihanna redux? Ridiculous. Rap royalty release Rick Rubin, repairs required. Redolent, reheated restaurant remnants. Roadkill rearranged. Reclining redundantly, rotten rich rodeo recitation. Restaurant rat, rotisserie rodent rotates repetitively. Remembering Ra Ra Riot, regression. Rather repentantly read (“Right reverend rising rockies”). Recommendation? Reject.4/10 RAGER ROBBITJonas BrothersGreetings from Your Hometown(Republic)In a world full of yes men, grifters, and frauds, only the Jonas Brothers are brave enough to whip off art’s mask and reveal what it has really been all along—mere PR for the social mobility pyramid scheme. In this sense, Nick, Kevin, and Joe are our last hope against the narcotic influence of the rockstar, a malevolent spirit luring suburban teens away from a sweet life of all-you-can-eat pizza buffets, LAN parties, friendzoning, and double-denim gender reveals to some dark and dangerous city that will chew up and spit out their dreams like surge-priced toilet paper.1/10STARVIN’ YARVINHLLLYHURUBURU(Team Shi)Music is quantum physics you can sing along to. Case in point: A band can change its name, its lineup, and its songs, but somehow some essence of whatever it used to be lingers on. I hung out with HLLLYH a few times when they were The Mae Shi. A friend once mentioned my name and they told him a story about how they crashed at my house and were woken up in the morning by me blowing a cloud of ketamine all over them. Did I do this? I have no recollection. It both did and didn’t happen. The name of this thought experiment: Schrödinger’s ket. 6/10SHIP OF FECESEiko Ishibashi & Jim O’RourkePareidolia(Drag City)Look, I know this sounds like the dullest album conceivable. I know it sounds like music the exact color and feel of an MRI scanning machine. I know it’s got a stupid pretentious polysyllabic name designed purely to make you feel smug after you google it and use it once in conversation before forgetting it forever. I know it’s a “deep listening” album made by a laptop musician and the guy who made Sonic Youth boring. I know it’s built from remixed recordings of a live tour they did on the European mainland that was almost certainly attended by more tote bags than people. But—and hear me out—it’s genuinely astonishing for doing the crossword to. 9/10THURSTON LESSDag och NattYears and Years(Labrador Records)Because Felt are the best band ever, I can’t help but like other bands that clearly think Felt were amazing too. Like many of their labelmates, Stockholm-based four-piece Dag och Natt (which translates into English as “Dog or Not?”, the name of a Swedish parlor game where dinner guests have to work out who pissed all over the bathroom floor then ruined the bean bag by fucking a hole in it) clearly have a thing for Felt. Like Deebank-era Felt? You’ll like this. 7/10KIM BOREDOMThese reviews are from the fall 2025 issue of VICE magazine, THE BE QUIET AND DRIVE ISSUE. Get four issues each year, sent straight to your door, by subscribing here.The post Album Reviews, Fall 2025 appeared first on VICE.