“Listen Out” November 2025 Music Reviews
- by Jason Drewry
Music Critic
The Lemonheads – Love Chant
Evergreen indie darling Evan Dando returns with the first Lemonheads album of original material in nearly two decades.
Recorded primarily in São Paulo, Brazil, where Dando relocated in 2024, Love Chant features collaborations with J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr.), producer Bryce Goggin, and Dando’s contemporary and old collab-partner Juliana Hatfield, among others.
The album will please listeners familiar with the distinctive songwriting for which Dando has long been known. Longtime fans longing for the resplendent sounds of peak-era It’s a Shame About Ray and Come On Feel the Lemonheads will find ample solace in the 11 tracks featured across Love Chant.
Standouts include the 90s-punk Deep End, the fast-driving single In the Margin, the ruminating meditation on life Togetherness Is All I’m After, and The Key of Victory – Dando’s voice sounds especially reflective and timeworn, the weathered voice of a man who has lived many lives and stuck around to consider their meaning.
Pet Shop Boys – Disco 5
Dance music legends issue the latest collection in their long-running remix series.
While the first 3 Disco releases focused on remixes of the Boys’ own music, Disco 4 featured PSB songs alongside remixes of Madonna, Yoko Ono, Rammstein, and others. Disco 5 follows in this tradition, featuring 12 tracks reimagined by PSB for artists like Noel Gallagher, Primal Scream, and Paul Weller.
Also featured here are remixes of Tina Turner’s Hot For You Baby; Sleaford Mods’ West End Girls cover; the Soft Cell collab Purple Zone; a new version of the Olly Alexander team-up Dreamland; Sam Taylor-Johnson’s I’m In Love With a German Film Star; Carroll Thompson’s Let the Music Play from The Crying Game soundtrack; and tracks from Claptone, The Hidden Cameras, and more.
Disco 5 follows their latest proper studio album, 2024’s sublime Nonetheless and a summer Greatest Hits festival tour.
Blondie – No Exit (Remastered & Expanded)
Perennial punk survivors’ first major comeback gets an expanded revisit after a quarter century.
After 1982’s disastrous The Hunter, Blondie called it quits, and Debbie Harry embarked on a solo career. However, with the 90s ascension of Garbage, No Doubt, and others, the band’s impact was resurgent, and they decided to reform, releasing the surprise #1 hit Maria and No Exit in 1999.
The album marked their first studio release in 17 years. Sonically, it dabbles in classic pop (The Shangri-Las cover Out in the Streets), ska (stellar opener Screaming Skin), shimmering 80s New Wave (Forgive and Forget (Pull Down the Night), loungey jazz (Boom Boom in the Zoom Zoom Room), countrified jangle pop (The Dream’s Lost On Me), Latin-infused noise rock (Dig Up the Conjo) - and more – for one of the band’s most eclectic outings.
Included in the expansion are the rare Japanese bonus track “Hot Shot” and seven remixes.
Kate Bush - Best of The Other Sides
The prog-pop shapeshifter bestows fans with a truncated version of her 2019 rarities collection, The Other Sides.
The original collection consisted of 12-inch mixes, B-sides, and cover versions across a sprawling 37-track box set. This iteration is essentially a ‘highlights’ version and, while it doesn’t feature anything new, there are a few minor changes. Opener Experiment IV from 1986’s The Whole Story got a longer guitar intro and remastering. Also remastered especially for this set is You Want Alchemy? from 1993’s The Red Shoes.
This version carries the weight of a proper album in its own right. The songs have been carefully curated – including the order – to provide a throughline to otherwise rather disparate tracks.
Other highlights include the Stevie Nicks-esque Walk Straight Down the Middle, B-side to 1989’s The Sensual World; remixes of The Big Sky and signature tune Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) from 1985’s massive Hounds of Love; and a reggae-inflected cover of Rocket Man.
The Gayly online. 11/08/2025 @ 11:29 a.m. CST.