Top 10 Reissues of 2025
The second of three “Top 10” posts cataloguing vinyl purchases of 2025.
“Top 10 Vinyl Finds of 2025” is here.
“Top 10 Irish Albums of 2025” will follow.
Photographs by Paul McDermott.
This Top 10 is a countdown of my favourite reissues from 2025 including a best of, two live albums, two expanded reissues and a various artists compilation. Notes on all are below.
10.
Brian
Understood
Needle Mythology
Brian was the one name moniker that Ken Sweeney recorded under, and Understand his debut was released by Setanta in 1992 to huge acclaim. Understood compiles Understand, the Planes EP and more, a deservingly gorgeous reissue by Needle Mythology.
For Further Reading…
by Paul McDermott
The Goo - Issue 37 (July 2025)
For Further Listening…
Ken Sweeney joined me on Episode 51 of To Here Knows When - Great Irish Albums Revisited. It can be heard below and episodes notes are here.
9. Underworld
Dubnobasswithmyheadman
(Smith Hyde Productions)
“An eraser of love”
In 1994 I was living in a flat on York Terrace in Cork. An old friend, James Cremin, called over to collect me. I have absolutely no recollection of where we were going but I have a vivid memory of what was playing on the the car stereo of James’s Honda Civic - Dubnobasswithmyheadman. Somethings just stay with you!
James taped Underworld’s landmark third album onto cassette for me, later I bought it on CD and now I finally have it on this beautiful 2xLP pressing. Did I mention that James was driving a Honda Civic!
8. Galaxie 500
CBGB 12.13.88
(Silver Current Records)
In 2024 Galaxie 500’s Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90 made this list. This year it’s a live album from the trio.
Today, the band’s debut album, came out in September 1988 and they finished the year on a bill at NY’s legendary CBGB’s alongside Sonic Youth, B.A.L.L. and Unsane playing a benefit gig for See Hear Fanzines, a shop in NY’s East Village.
“Graduating to CBGB’s proper was exciting, and we played there four times in a two-year span from 1988 to 1990. There was no proper backstage area, and going to the bathroom in the basement was a challenge, but it was inspiring to perform on that historic stage, the only club I’ve ever seen where the monitors were hung from the ceiling, which freed up stage space and meant you were even closer to the audience.” - Dean Wareham 6.20.25 (taken from Bandcamp)
7. The Colour Field
Virgins and Philistines
(Chrysalis Catalogue)
A RSD 2025 purchase. A 2xLP reissue of The Colour Field’s masterful debut album Virgins and Philistines on lovely yellow vinyl. The second disc collects various singles and B-Sides.
“As one of Britain’s best pop craftsman, Hall has got better and better. Virgin and Philistines is, quite simply, classic British pop brimming with clarity, intelligence and some brilliant touches,” wrote Paolo Hewitt in NME in January 1986.
He continued, “It reveal’s Hall’s unnerving ability to take from the past and twist the influences into a music that is both recognisable and, at the same time, more than able to stand on it’s own two feet. This is how the best British pop has always worked and Hall has it down to a fine and exciting art.”
‘Thinking of You’, the big single from Virgin and Philistines, reached No. 12 in the UK Singles Chart in March 1985 and the album also reached No. 12 in the Albums Chart in May 1985.
6. Life Without Buildings
Live At The Annandale Hotel
(Rough Trade Records)
Another RSD 2025 purchase. The first vinyl release of Life Without Buildings’ live album, Live at the Annadale Hotel. Rough Trade released the record on red vinyl. Originally released on CD back in 2007 and recorded five years earlier in the Annandale Hotel, Sydney, on 14 December 2002 towards the end of the Scottish band’s career.
“We never planned to make a live album,” said Will Bradley, the band’s drummer, in 2010. “We had no idea that the Annandale gig was being recorded. But I’m glad that somebody did it.”
I still maintain that the band’s one and only album, 2001’s Any Other City, is one of the best albums released this century so I was thrilled to pick up their only other LP release. Errol’s Hot Wax, the Glasgow imprint, also reissued LWB’s ‘Love Trinity’ on one-sided 7” vinyl. The track was originally only released as a CD Single on the Australian label Trifekta. ‘Love Trinity’ was the “lost” track in the band’s small discography so it was lovely to see it get released again.
5. Michael Head & The Strands
The Magical World Of The Strands
(Megaphone Music)
Michael Head’s (The Pale Fountains and Shack) one and only album as The Strands, recorded again with brother John (and others) between Shack albums. I first came across this record when Ash’s Tim Wheeler wrote about his love for it. Ash recorded a version of ‘Somebody Like You’ for John Peel’s “Live At Peel Acres” event in April 1999
“These songs are like a pastoral, Merseyside take on the Velvets, the Byrds, Simon & Garfunkel and Love,” wrote Andy Capper in The Guardian back in 2011 as part of the newspaper’s “My Favourite Album” series.
4. The Blue Aeroplanes
Magical Realism: The Best Of The Blue Aeroplanes 1985-2025
(Chrysalis Catalogue)
The Blue Aeroplanes’ Beatsongs made my “Top 10 Reissues of 2024”. The Bristol band make this year’s list too. Magical Realism is their first career-spanning compilation. It came in a 2xLP package with a with bonus 7”. Track-by-track sleevenotes are written by frontman Gerard Langley. The cover of the compilation features another beautiful Ann Sheldon painting. Sheldon designed many of The Blue Aeroplanes’ sleeves.
Magical Realism came out in January and then in October the band released Outsider Art: The Other Best Of The Blue Aeroplanes 1985-2025 a companion to the earlier compilation, this collection takes a dive into four decades of deep-cuts, fan-favourites, live-staples and a few previously unreleased tracks. Another 2xLP package with a bonus 7”. The sleevenotes are by current and former members of the band.
Magical Realism and Outsider Art. Photograph by Paul McDermott.
3. The Zombies
Odessey and Oracle
(Beechwood Park Records)
“Newly remastered in mono” says the hype sticker.
The album was originally mixed in mono, but when the band delivered the master to CBS, the record company requested a stereo mix also. The band duly obliged.
An original UK CBS mono will set you back almost €1,000.
I had the great pleasure of interviewing The Zombies’ Colin Blunstone in 2009 for Songs to Learn and Sing, my 103.2 Dublin City FM radio show, prior to the band’s Whelan’s gig. We chatted at length about the making of Odessey and Orcale and The Zombies recording in Abbey Road:
“The Beatles had just recorded Sgt. Pepper in Abbey Road and they’d pushed back the boundaries of recording techniques to some degree, while they were recording that album. We benefited from all those new approaches that they’d made, and of course we were using the same engineers that they used, in particular Geoff Emerick, who did most of the album with them, and he did two tracks on our album and Peter Vince, who had worked extensively with The Beatles, recorded the rest of it. They were wonderful engineers and at the time, they were leading the world and so was Abbey Road. We were very fortunate.”
The full interview with Blunstone can be heard below:
2. Seefeel
Quique
Too Pure, 2025
A 2xLP reissue of Seefeel’s landmark 1993 debut album. I had this on a C90 copied by a friend back in 1993, so I was thrilled to pick up this record.
“Quique is consummate, a blanched canvas for the imagination, and a cracking album.” Simon Reynolds - 23 October, 1993 (Melody Maker)
“As if starting at the point where pop used to end, they have left the tangible and the earthly behind, and reached the place where dreams come on. An endless sublime fade out…” Roger Morton - 23 October, 1993 (NME)
According to the sleevenotes of the 1994 Too Pure compilation Pop (Do We Not Like That?), the ambient electronic, post-rock band made four appearances in total on the label. Three EPs (More Like Space EP, Plainsong EP and Time to Find Me Remix EP) and Quique. These three EPs were also reissued this year in a beautiful 2xLP pressing. Essential records all. Sublime.
Seefeel caricature taken from Pop (Do We Not Like That?) (LP, Too Pure, 1994).
1. Various Artists
Sensitive (An Indie Pop Anthology)
Needle Mythology, 2025
Did I need another Indie Pop compilation? There’s obviously a lot of overlap of bands and tunes with some of the earlier sets photographed below, but when a compilation as beautiful as the package curated by Needle Mythology is produced then the answer is yes.
Pete Paphides’ song notes and long essay make it a very worthwhile addition. A fantastic set. I stumped for the CD boxset - thanks to post-Brexit VAT costs the vinyl was too cost prohibitive.
Indie Pop compilations. Photograph by Paul McDermott.
Sometimes I Want to Return is the film documenting the launch concert for the album. Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey from Talulah Gosh alongside members of The Sea Urchines, The Soup Dragons, The June Brides, The Loft and Clare Grogan from Altered Images performed songs from the album. A beautifully uplifting film and one of my favourite things I watched in 2025. It can be purchased here.