For a long time I’ve prided myself on being a dedicated show-goer; for as long as I can remember, I’ve felt that it takes a level of commitment and passion and energy that is hard to reach, hard to sustain. I think it also takes a certain ambivalence that often comes with risk: you’re putting a lot of stock in hoping to encounter moments that’ll feel life-affirming and life-altering and staggeringly powerful, knowing that these moments disappear, that they can’t be bottled. You can try to sidestep this by recording the shows on your phone – almost everyone does – but it doesn’t change the fact that once it’s over, that’s it. And so much of it comes down to not knowing what’s going to happen next, especially with artists who are heavily into improvisation and experimentation. It’s different from pressing play on a record, no matter what, and that’s so much of what I love about it.
(As a quick aside, also: back in January, Liz Pelly’s excellent book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and The Costs of The Perfect Placelist was released, which I quickly devoured, and which Midbrow's Izzy True artfully reviewed in comics here. I highly recommend it; it’s an essential text when it comes to understanding the issues facing recorded music, though since then things have gotten far weirder and even more troubling with the direction AI is taking things. As the year trudged on and I shifted into being an even deeper live-music-obsessive, I think where I’ve landed these days is that we need to stop conflating music with recorded music. Talk to any musician and they’ll tell you that the record and the performance are separate art forms, and I think there’s something to be said for the isolating effects of putting too high a premium on the former, especially with the kind of passive background listening that our current streaming culture encourages. That’s a subject for a piece of its own, though.)
True to the ephemeral nature of live music, I’ve never really kept a log until this year. I don’t write reviews of every show I go to, but I’ve never written so much about the show-going experience as I did in 2025. I've never had the impetus to translate my loose and scattered thoughts into so many written words. I’ve known musicians who’ve kept a meticulous running inventory of the shows they’ve played or attended, and I’ve never been like that. For me the experience tends to be paramount and I’ve learned you have to be careful when trying to balance that with the demands of documentation and preservation. But in some ways it focuses your senses and if nothing else, I’d challenge anyone reading this to give that a go in 2026: try going to a show and writing a few pages about it when you get home. It might change the way you listen.
So, without further delay, here’s my top 10 live-music-in-Philadelphia memories of 2025, in no particular order. At the end of this article are also five shows upcoming this January that I think are worth checking out.
LAKE (4/27/2025, Johnny Brenda’s)
Near the front of the left side of the stage, two people spent nearly the entire show dancing in tandem, which bassist-singer Ashley Eriksson made a point to express joy over between songs. But the band fed that directly, with a kaleidoscopic performance that featured three-part harmonies, hard-grooving drum and bass, guitar that went from smooth and dreamy to growling and fierce – all with a playful, irreverent, and sometimes downright funny spirit.
Cuddle Magic (7/29/2025, MAAS Building)
They’d change gears from free-improvisational flourishes and immersive, melodic and rhythmic counterpoint to simpler, yet elegantly expressed folk or pop songs (like the divine “Halloween”: “I had dreams about you calling me up / saying that you’re falling in love / heard you met on Halloween / happy for you, can’t you see?”), all with an ease that belied the difficulty of what they were doing, and the collective mastery required.
Black Box Ensemble (12/6/2025, University Lutheran Church)
Opening with spectral bells, high, sustained piano and a three-note flute ostinato gliding trippingly over it all, like a dragonfly parsing flight paths, the music was vibrant and robust, a dynamic, tonal wonder of shifting landscape, with percussionist J Clancy summoning quaking rhythmic terrain at its peaks. Those three notes – short and stressed, a musical mirror image of the piece’s title – came and went, passing hands among the players – sometimes dramatic octaves on the piano, sometimes bold bowing, sometimes a quick, unexpected return, flickering like a sudsy hiccup interrupting a long-held breath. It was the through line and the emotional heart of the piece, a reassuring I’m-right-here, not-going-anywhere comfort, refusing to slip into memory.
Little Wings (7/23/2025, Johnny Brenda’s)
Live, [Little Wings’] Kyle Field strikes me as something like a tequila-soda-with-lime’d-out jazz singer, singing with chalant gallantry and fun freedom: interjecting pops, hoots, yelps, ow!’s, and clicks that sound like a woodblock if a woodblock was actually bubblegum popping right between your iris and your eardrum. His cartwheeling melodies and rubbery glides, elastic with pitch, match his physicality: grinning ear to ear, kicking his legs out with youthful charm.
Mike Haldeman (5/3/2025, Black Birch Recording Studio)
The performance reminded me, in its more settled passages, of contemporary visionaries like ML Buch and Astrid Sonne. But above all, Joni Mitchell’s phrase regarding “chords of inquiry” resounded. It was all deeply felt, and while technically impressive, curiously unshowy; sounds and rhythms were explored in an unforced way, consistently surprising and engaging. Through three windows on the wall behind Haldeman, we watched the sun set and a storm begin, lightning flashing. I couldn’t imagine a more fitting accompaniment.
They were a match made in heaven of dissonance and noise: rhythmic blasts of sound that carved up the air and the space into delicious new shapes, then filled it with flames. I hope they play more than 16 minutes next time.
Bitchin’ Bajas (12/12/2025, Solar Myth)
We were treated to too many great timbres to summarize, grooves of prismatic sweeping filters on the synths, pentatonic glides across the white keys, flute trills and krautrock beats, live remixing and knob-fiddling, layers surfacing and receding, like a tour through a vibrant ecosystem of sound.
Beehive Cathedral (11/8/2025, University Lutheran Church)
During one particularly memorable song, [Joseph] Decosimo asked us to sing or hum the pitch D while he sang a ballad about a dog; the whole space swelled with the given note, like a lung, Decosimo’s friendly tenor gently sliding through it all. It was impossible to totally differentiate between the various voices in our group: the sound became a gorgeous sum, a pump organ made of life.
Sam Wenc (9/29/2025, Common Beat)
Totally atonal, fingerpicked passages — like neurons misfiring while dreaming about flamenco — gave way to full-bodied chords; a menacing 6/8 jig abruptly leapt to twitchy, ankle-breaking, manual tremoloing with his volume pedal. This unbroken improvised string of ideas risked actual broken strings when Wenc drastically de-tuned the instrument, hilariously evoking Les Claypool with a fearlessly floppy-stringed bassline, as if in call-and-response with the deep frequencies of the occasional aircraft noise passing above us.
Foxwarren (9/25/2025, Underground Arts)
On mic, [Shauf] invited the crowd’s dancers to step up before the band dove into the deep groove and perfect, “Day Tripper”-on-speed guitar riff at the heart of “Deadhead”; Lila and I swung each other around to the tune of the band singing “Don’t stop dancing / Don’t stop dancing with me,” until the song stopped its own momentum, devolving into its coda of hazy psych, sawtooth synths and noisy samples. Live, Foxwarren provide the most wonderful answer to the heady, literary artistry of Shauf’s solo work. Too often indie rock is overly serious – I’m guilty of this too – and it’s so great to see a band play music that’s as fun to move to as it is to think about.
And finally, to close: here’s five shows coming up soon that you’d be silly to miss. It’s gonna be a good year.
FIVE SHOWS COMING UP THAT YOU SHOULD GO TO INSTEAD OF WATCHING SLOP AT HOME:
Shahzad Ismaily x Greg Saunier x Maria Chavez (1/8/2026, Solar Myth)
The combined powers of Shahzad Ismaily (multi-instrumentalist and producer sometimes described as your favorite musician’s favorite musician), Greg Saunier (Deerhoof’s drummer, enough said) and Maria Chavez (I confess I’m not familiar at all, but she’s a renowned turntablist) – I’m intrigued. What will it sound like? You’ll have to go to know.
Hardcore Friends Show (1/9/2026, Johnny Brenda’s)
This gig features a reunion of old friends and shredders extraordinaire Dominic Angelella and Eric Slick; the two homies met as undergrads at the dearly-departed University of the Arts and convened together in the ripping power-trio Lithuania when not terribly busy with their other numerous gigs (namely, Angelella plays bass with Lucy Dacus these days, and Slick is well known for being the longtime drummer of Dr. Dog and sitting in with folks like Cass McCombs, Wilco and Plains).
Luca Diadul and Linnea Sablosky (1/14/2026, A Man Full of Trouble)
Zubin Hensler is a Philadelphia-based producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with a dauntingly-impressive CV. Hensler himself described this show as “[the] first of hopefully a series of shows I’m booking at my local very old / very small / very friendly bar. Quiet music in a 25-seat room with excellent things to sip.” Music will kick off at 7:30. Get in on the ground floor!
Claire Ozmun, poolblood, Amelia Cry Til I Die (1/19/2026, House Show)
Full disclosure: sometimes I recommend friends' shows. Sometimes those friends are also collaborators. Claire is one of my favorite singers and songwriters in the world (I played a little banjo on her forthcoming album, which I don’t think is done yet) and to hear her sing and play is always an immense pleasure. Same goes for poolbood (all the way from Toronto!) and local feel-good progenitors of twangy, punchy folk-rock Amelia Cry Til I Die.
Greg Freeman, Golomb (1/27/2026, Ukie Club)
Greg Freeman and his band are straight-up one of the most ferocious live acts in rock going these days; it’s Freeman’s expressive, snarling voice, his deceptively-angular-for-roots-rock guitar playing, and his powerhouse band, like a demented E Street Band soundtracking Lynch. Must be seen live to be truly appreciated.
