Would-Be-Goods – Tears Before Bedtime (track by track)

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Francesco Amoroso per TRISTE©

Over the course of nearly forty years, Would-Be-Goods have occupied a space all their own in the history of British independent pop: lateral, coherent, and resistant to easy categorisation within any specific scene. Born in the late 1980s as a Jessica Griffin project, they emerged in the orbit of Mike Alway’s El Records with The Camera Loves Me (1988), an album that showcased an extraordinary songwriting voice, capable of portraying eccentric characters and oblique situations with a seemingly impassive tone and melodies of surprising elegance. Flanked by The Monochrome Set, Griffin immediately defined a distinctive aesthetic, destined to stand the test of time. Soon afterwards, however, she withdrew from the public scene to return to her work in the City, resurfacing only a few years later with Mondo (1993), which confirmed and expanded that universe, before Would-Be-Goods evolved, from 2000 onwards, into a fully-fledged band. With the addition of Peter Momtchilloff, Deborah Green, and Lupe Nuñez-Fernandez (later replaced by Andy Warren) the project assumed a new shape, giving rise to a series of EPs and the albums Brief Lives and The Morning After, culminating in 2008’s Eventyr. After a long silence and the unexpected release of The Night Life (2023), conceived in the midst of Covid and built around songs written and recorded in a single day, with Tears Before Bedtime, the band reaffirm their poetics of restraint, imagination, and attention to detail, far removed from the pressures of passing trends. A discreet yet tenacious journey, spanning decades without ever losing its identity. With Jessica Griffin, affable and elegant as ever, we went for a deeper journey -track by track- into the heart of Would-Be-Goods amazing new album.

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Clémentine March – Powder Keg

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Matteo Maioli per TRISTE©

Dio benedica i listening party di Bandcamp. Perché è grazie a quest’iniziativa che ho perso la testa per il nuovo disco di Clémentine March, Powder Keg, uscito per Prah Recordings e già recensito con cinque stelle da Shindig!, a oggi la mia pubblicazione musicale di riferimento. Quando un’artista ti racconta il suo lavoro durante il primo ascolto del risultato finale non puoi che meravigliarti e sentirti parte di qualcosa di nascosto ai più, alle volte intimo, sicuramente concreto, come tenere un vinile in mano.

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Le firme di TRISTE©: Francesco Amoroso racconta il (suo) 2025

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There’s something fundamentally wrong about year-end lists. Not because music isn’t worth celebrating, but because trying to pin down twelve months of listening into a tidy hierarchy of numbers is, at best, an exercise in personal mythology and, at worst, a meaningless ritual we repeat out of habit. Albums don’t exist to be ranked, art doesn’t ask to be quantified, and the emotional weight of a record rarely has anything to do with its position on a list.
And yet, despite all of this (or maybe because of it) I keep coming back to them.
If I’ve been deeply skeptical for years about the usefulness and meaning of compiling those infamous year-end rankings, I’m even more so this time around about the point of publishing them in the second half of February. We’re all already focused on the future (and thankfully so, since we usually spend far too much time staring back with our wide, nostalgic eyes), and in the first month and a half of 2026, a dozen or so albums have already been released that, I’m willing to bet, will end up in my year-end top 100 (which, perhaps, will be published in March 2027, assuming I ever find the courage to embark on a Herculean and ultimately futile undertaking like this one).
So, what’s the point? Well, I’ve done it now, and as usual I’m happy to share this list of my favorite albums of the past year with anyone willing to read it. This is, of course (though it’s always best to specify it every time), a list based purely on my own tastes and sensibilities, and it makes no claim to represent the best of what was released in the past year.
It also doesn’t include many albums that, while I truly appreciate them, I simply haven’t gotten around to exploring in depth, or that, while magnificent, arrived at the wrong time for me. I could easily make a separate list of at least fifty albums that fall into this category.
So take it for what it is: a list written with heart and passion, gathering some of the 2025 releases that sparked my passion and found their way into my heart. And, as always, if you end up discovering even a single album you missed (and, please, let me know), then all the time I’ve spent putting this together won’t have been wasted.

Happy listening, wherever you are.

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(Make Me A) TRISTE© Mixtape Episode 242: Sunny Intervals

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Sunny Intervals

Sunny Intervals combines indiepop, folk and light electronica, as put together in London by Andy, formerly of the band Pocketbooks. Active from 2012 to 2016, when he released three delicious albums, Rooftops (2012), Step Into Spring (2014) and Sunrise (2016), Sunny Intervals returned, after almost ten years, with Swept Away. It is “a late night whisper,” written over the course of a decade, and recorded as lightly and naturally as possible at home, mostly in Andy’s kitchen at night while the neighbourhood was sleeping, with acoustic guitars, light percussion, keyboards and soft synthesisers. A soft mix of indiepop, folk and light electronica, Swept Away was released in April 2025, and re-released as a deluxe Bandcamp version including the original 10-track album and the five-track Almost Imperceptibly EP (and a sort of disco remix of Electromagnetic) in November 2025.

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(Make Me A) TRISTE© Mixtape Episode 241: Theory Of Ghosts

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Theory Of Ghosts

Theory Of Ghosts take their name from a song by the self-proclaimed Anglo-French “ghost-rock” group, Piano Magic who, between 1996 and 2016, crafted a cinematic, melancholic and richly emotional sound, at once fragile and immersive. Led by ex-Piano Magic founder, Glen Johnson and long-time guitarist, Franck Alba, Theory Of Ghosts make no less evocative music, weaving a very romantic, European sophisti-pop that echoes the dreamier moments of The Blue Nile and The Durutti Column. Originally a three-piece on their debut extended players, succinctly labelled EP1 and EP2, Johnson and Alba retreated to their rehearsal space as a duo and began utilising a complaisant drum-machine for their minimal backbeats. The songs, driven by Alba’s fluid Fender VI six-string bass and Johnson’s sparse, unfussy guitar, were spacious, lyrical, vivid. In Summer 2024, Johnson suffered a life-threatening brain haemorrhage but miraculously, by early 2025, felt healthy enough to continue with the production of an album. The foundation of new songs was laid by Johnson at his home studio in Crystal Palace and in July 2025, the duo filled their car with guitars and set off to record with Julian Tardo at his Church Road Studio in Hove on the East Sussex coast. Johnson had been a huge fan of Tardo’s own duo, Insides, since their debut album, ‘Euphoria’ came out on 4AD subsidiary, Guernica, in 1993 and to work with not only Julian but his partner, Kirsty Yates, was something of a granted wish. Yates guests on ‘No Contact,’ a bittersweet song about that very modern strategy of disassociation in a bid to protect the self. The Sulphur And The Grey, Theory Of Ghost’s debut album, with a cover designed by Maria Makripoulias, recorded and mastered by Julian Tardo at Church Road Studio, is out today on Second Language Music.

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