The Album a Day Journal | March 2025 Playlist
Liner notes and vinyl variants on the final (???) Album a Day Journal
We did it! 365 albums in 365 days!
What started on April 1, 2024 with the soulful sounds of Curtis Mayfield’s Curtis! ends in tears on March 31, 2025 with Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell.
So consider this the final Album a Day monthly roundup. I’m hoisting this playlist in the rafters, where you can stream on Spotify. May you find plenty of new records and reconnect with some old loves.
Without further ado: enjoy the last installment filled with new releases, reissues, vinyl drops, music videos, rabbit holes, and em dashes galore!
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The Album a Day Journal | March 2025 Playlist
Stream: Spotify | Apple Music
March 1: Cloakroom - Story of the Egg (2025)
Get Vinyl: Black & White Mix with Splatter | Green, Orange & White Mix with Splatter
We start the month with Story of the Egg, Cloakroom’s fourth LP and a dreamy, shape-shifting triumph. Ethereal yet grounded, it glides between alt-rock grit, twangy Americana, and hazy dream-pop — all while keeping that signature melancholy grandeur. It sounds like it was a joy to make, it was definitely a joy to spin, and currently sits top five on my AOTY Leaderboard.
March 2: Eiko Ishibashi - Evil Does Not Exist (2024)
Get Vinyl: Black
With the Oscars tonight, let’s spotlight a snub: Evil Does Not Exist, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s entrancing film, paired with Eiko Ishibashi’s ghostly, string-driven score. Hypnotic and tense, it builds toward a climax that will shock you — proof that the best soundtracks linger long after the credits roll.
March 3: Yuck - Yuck (2011)
Get Vinyl: Black
I was today years old when I found out that the newly crowned Oscar winner for Best Original Score for The Brutalist is none other than Daniel Blumberg, frontman and guitarist for the early 2010s rock band Yuck. I fucking loved Yuck — especially their self-titled debut, which remains one of the tastiest gems from the second wave of shoegaze. Revisiting it today was a blast. Standout tracks are the bookends, with the one-two punch of "Get Away" and "The Wall," and closing with an explosive wall of sound in "Rubber."
March 4: Roy Ayers Ubiquity - Everybody Loves The Sunshine (1976)
Get Vinyl: Lemonade
This one hurts. We lost The Godfather of Neo Soul today in Roy Ayers, a legend in the acid jazz movement. He’s best known for the song "Everybody Loves the Sunshine," which has been covered and sampled over 200 times by the likes of Dr. Dre, Tupac, D’Angelo, and Mary J. Blige.
March 5: Saya Gray - SAYA (2025)
Get Vinyl: Clear | Black
Saya Gray’s SAYA — a dazzling sophomore album that defies genre, weaving psych-folk, prog-rock, and glitchy electronica into ten tracks so distinct, everyone’s favorite will be different. At times, it channels Nilüfer Yanya’s effortless cool (high praise here at The Wax Museum). Play it loud, then go watch her beautiful NPR Tiny Desk Concert — you’ll be hooked.
March 6: Turnover - Peripheral Vision (2015)
Get Vinyl: Deluxe Colored | Laguna Blue | Candied Avocado
Turnover’s Peripheral Vision — the record that defined a generation of emo-meets-dreampop — returns as a lavish 3-LP set, complete with instrumentals, alternate versions, and bonus cuts.
Mark your calendars: standard reissue drops May 2nd, but the deluxe vinyl on August 15 is the one true fans will crave.
March 7: JB Dunckel and Jonathan Fitoussi - Mirages 2 (2025)
Get Vinyl: Black
JB Dunckel (AIR) and Jonathan Fitoussi drop Mirages 2 today — a cosmic, ambient journey ideal for drifting, working, or zoning out. While the opening one-two punch of "Iris" and "Ghost Town" shine, the rest of the album doesn’t quite match that magic. Still, a solid pick for AIR fans craving atmospheric soundscapes.
March 8: Milton Nascimento & Lô Borges - Clube Da Esquina (1972)
Get Vinyl: Discogs
Panda Bear's Sinister Grift is my current AOTY, so I've been deep-diving into Noah Lennox's inspirations. I have two pieces to recommend: his curated playlist at Sam Valenti IV’s Herb Sundays, and his "perfect productions" list for Hearing Things, where he crowns Clube Da Esquina as his favorite album production:
This is my favorite production ever. It’s an impossibly large sound. There’s a lot of super hard-panned stuff, which helps, but it’s more than that. It’s something about the arrangement, the performances, the use of reverb very selectively. There’s sudden and severe shifts on it that feel kind of psychedelic to me. These surprising turns it takes, in really satisfying ways. It’s a target for me: I don’t always want stuff to sound exactly like this, but sometimes, for sure, I’m trying to match the width and the depth of this album.
This is a vinyl holy grail (used copies run $300+) that’s begging for a reissue.
March 9: Home Is Where - I Became Birds (2021)
Get Vinyl: Guava
Father/Daughter Records just announced a fresh repress of Home Is Where’s debut I Became Birds on guava wax. This is the Palm Coast, Florida band’s second time in the Album a Day Journal, which got me thinking of who ended up in the Two-Timers Club over the past 365 days.
Two-Timers Club: Alvvays, The Band, Bloc Party, Broadcast, CASIOPEA, Clairo, The Cure, Ethel Cain, Father John Misty, Goat, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Good Morning, Home Is Where, Interpol, Local Natives, Los Campesinos!, Manchester Orchestra, Panchiko, Portishead, Rosie Tucker, Spoon, Sufjan Stevens, Tegan and Sara, Tom Petty, The War on Drugs.
We even have an exclusive Three-Timers Club that rolls four deep: Childish Gambino, Kendrick Lamar, MJ Lenderman, and Steely Dan.
March 10: Prostitute - Attempted Martyr (2024)
Get Vinyl: Green Splatter | Forest Green
Boy I needed this today. Prostitute's Attempted Martyr is pure sonic napalm — a blistering noise-rock assault from Dearborn, Michigan that had me ready to riot. Raw, disturbing, and electrifyingly angry, it would've made my Best of 2024 list if I'd heard it sooner. It finally gets its first vinyl pressing in May, when its guaranteed to shake your shelves.
March 11: terraplana - natural (2025)
Get Vinyl: Red | Black
Brazil’s Terraplana delivers shoegaze with teeth — swirling noise, dreamy Portuguese vocals, and a hypnotic mix of Sonic Youth grit and Slowdive haze. Proof the genre still has fresh magic.
March 12: Tom Petty - Heartbreakers Beach Party (2025)
Get Vinyl: N/A, Stream on Paramount+
In 2024, the long-lost 16mm reels of Cameron Crowe’s Tom Petty documentary finally resurfaced. Tom Petty: Heartbreakers Beach Party, which MTV aired once in 1983 before deciding it was too experimental and pulling it forever, was Crowe’s first shot at directing, and he’s interviewing the Gainesville great with the kind of starstruck energy reserved for people meeting their childhood heroes.
The doc captures Petty and his band in 1982-1983, touring their Long After Dark album (the last one with producer Jimmy Iovine). It’s a raw, unfiltered look at a band at the top of their game.
March 13: Wilco - A Ghost is Born (Expanded Edition) (2025)
Get Vinyl: Deluxe | Black
I have to shout out another great Hearing Things piece — Ryan Dombal’s “How Wilco’s Massive A Ghost Is Born Box Set Complicates the Album’s Harrowing Myth.” The 9 LP / 4 CD deluxe edition packs 80 tracks (65 unreleased), including outtakes, demos, and alternate versions that rewrite the album’s legacy.
Dombal zeroes in on “Spiders” — its eight (!) iterations laying bare Jeff Tweedy’s fractured headspace during recording.
March 14: Courting - Lust for Life, Or: How To Thread The Needle And Come Out The Other Side To Tell The Story (2025)
Get Vinyl: Black
Title: absurd. Runtime: brief. Ambition: massive.
Courting’s third album Lust for Life... crams more ideas into 25 minutes than most bands manage in a full LP. The Liverpool quartet combines razor-sharp indie-pop with art-rock detours — eight tracks (really six songs plus an intro/instrumental) that never waste a second.
March 15: Mad Season - Above (1995)
Get Vinyl: Sold Out
Mad Season’s Above — the ’90s grunge supergroup album blending Layne Staley’s haunting vocals with Mike McCready’s fiery guitar work — celebrates its 30th anniversary with its first non-black vinyl pressing, featuring remastered audio and bonus tracks with Mark Lanegan. All five variants sold out fast; expect these to become collector gold.
Hey friends, just a quick intermission to promote my other project, the Internet’s #1 vinyl resource, Vinyl on Sale! Join 18,000 fellow record collectors and turn on notifications for daily drops, like the recent ODESZA Severance remix album on water droplet wax!
March 16: Fust - Big Ugly (2025)
Get Vinyl: Bandcamp
Fust’s Big Ugly, produced at Asheville’s Drop of Sun Studios by Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Waxahatchee), blends country-folk and cosmic Americana with the heartfelt storytelling of Wild Pink and Trace Mountains. With a seven-member band and guests like Merce Lemon, its steel-pedal swells and vivid soundscapes conjure misty Blue Ridge mornings.
March 17: Sea Power - Disco Elysium (2020)
Get Vinyl: Discogs
Great article from The Guardian on Sea Power (formerly British Sea Power) and their upcoming tour named Soundtracks Live, where they’ll perform mostly songs from their dynamic Disco Elysium video game score. Frontman Jan Scott Wilkinson explains:
“We have had a noticeable growth in listeners since [the game was released],” he says. “They seem like a cool and thoughtful bunch, these Disco Elysium players. They are appreciated. The odd drunken detective has been sighted along the crash barrier at gigs.”
This vinyl will set you back $700 for colored wax, $300 for standard black sheeesh!
March 18: caroline - caroline (2022)
Get Vinyl: Black
Speaking of Sea Power, you hear a lot of them in their country counterparts caroline. The 8-piece experimental post-rock band has a new song out today, “Total euphoria” that’s getting a ton of love, so I went back and revisited their 2022 debut, and it’s aged like a rare single malt.
March 19: Hiroshi Yoshimura - Flora (1987)
Get Vinyl: Black
Spring’s perfect soundtrack arrives with the first-ever vinyl reissue of Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Flora — the ambient pioneer’s 1987 ode to nature’s quiet magic. Remastered from original tapes and cut at 45 rpm, these crystalline synths bloom like cherry blossoms, mirroring Yoshimura’s walks through Tokyo’s parks. A healing, headphone-essential revival.
March 20: Saint Etienne - Foxbase Alpha (1992)
Get Vinyl: Green | Black
Spring has sprung and we’re shaking off the winter blues with a fresh spin on our Patio Grooves playlist.
This 2.5-hour mix—streaming on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube—is built for outdoor hangs, backyard lounging, or just kicking back solo dolo.
March 21: Japanese Breakfast - For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) (2025)
Get Vinyl: Frosted Shadow
Japanese Breakfast’s Jubilee is one of my favorite albums of the decade, so it gives me no pleasure to admit I didn’t vibe with Michelle Zauner’s latest record, the regrettably titled For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women).
While Jubilee was wall to wall bangers, this one arguably has just two, “Honey Water” and “Picture Window.” The rest is soft and delicate, and often forgettable.
March 22: Dutch Interior - Moneyball (2025)
Get Vinyl: Evergreen | Black
Dutch Interior is a six-piece rock band from Long Beach serving up a blend of Americana, alt-country, and indie rock on their third album (and Fat Possum debut) Moneyball. While there's plenty to love across the record, what really lit me up is the track “Sweet Time” — a finger-plucking jam that evolves into an Allman Brothers’ “Jessica” riff that completely electrifies the track.
March 23: Galaxie 500 - Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90 (2024)
Get Vinyl: Galaxy Blue
Galaxie 500 burned bright and fast — three iconic albums in three years before their split. Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90 compiles 24 rare and unreleased tracks, their first archival release in 30 years. Eight never-before-heard cuts trace their rapid evolution, offering a raw glimpse into their fleeting but influential dream-pop magic.
March 24: Otis Redding - Otis Blue (1965)
Get Vinyl: Black | Clear
Today began a huge week of deals as Amazon and Target had dueling B2G1 free sales on vinyl. I treated myself to the classic Otis Blue, the third album from Otis Redding, which features not one, but two rollicking Rolling Stones covers.
March 25: sunlid - no mires atrás (2024)
Get Vinyl: N/A
Attention Alvvays-heads, I found a band that sounds just like Molly and crew, and it comes from Argentina: sunlid and their debut no mires atrás is a pitch-perfect blend of whirring riffs, cherry-red synths, floaty vocals, and layered production that nails that bittersweet dream-pop alchemy. sunlid's self-described "noisy pop" should scratch that Alvvays itch better than anything since Blue Rev.
March 26: Coke - Coke (1972)
Get Vinyl: Black
Call me Lionel Messi as I go from Argentina to Miami for Coke’s 1972 self titled album. A general rule of thumb is when Mr. Bongo drops some classic latin funk rock, you buy with confidence.
March 27: Panchiko - Ginkgo (2025)
Get Vinyl: Sweet Tart | Clear with Blue and Pink Splatter
Ginkgo arrived on my doorstep over a week early — like some blessed Urban Outfitters glitch — and I ripped that package open like a kid on Christmas and threw it right on my system. Panchiko's new stunner floats between In Rainbows-era Radiohead and their own glitchy dreamworld, easily one of 2024's most gorgeous listens so far. Mark your calendars: this hits streaming and physical release April 4th and well worth your time.
March 28: Destroyer - Dan’s Boogie (2025)
Get Vinyl: Coke Bottle Clear with Black Swirl
This weekend will be all about new music, as today brought fresh drops from Lucy Dacus, Perfume Genius, Deafheaven, and the aforementioned Eiko Ishibashi, but my most-anticipated was Destroyer's Dan's Boogie, Dan Bejar's 14th (!!!) album that somehow still crackles with new energy. Lead single “Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World” is already a lock for my Best Songs of 2025 list — this is Destroyer at his effortlessly cool best.
March 29: Lucy Dacus - Forever Is A Feeling (2025)
Get Vinyl: Deluxe Frame | Greek Marble | Gold | Clear | Red | Zoetrope Picture Disc
Lucy Dacus’ Forever is a Feeling arrives as her Geffen debut and it comes with lofty expectations after the boygenius success. Unfortunately, Dacus plays it safe here, with ballads lacking the visceral punch that made her break through. Much like Japanese Breakfast’s latest, you keep wishing she’d crank up the volume.
March 30: Perfume Genius - Glory (2025)
Get Vinyl: Cobalt | Black
Blake Mills’ third production this month finally sticks the landing after underwhelming with Zauner and Dacus. Here, Mills frames Mike Hadreas’ voice in raw, cinematic beauty — Glory’s experimental folk and Americana carve anxiety and pain into something transcendent.
March 31: Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell (2015)
Get Vinyl: Blue and White | Violet
If Perfume Genius’ Glory carves anguish into art, Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell remains the blueprint. Today Sufjan’s label announced a 10th anniversary reissue - a colored double LP with seven unreleased tracks and a 40 page art book designed and written by Stevens himself. For fans who wore out their first pressing, these additions feel like reading the diary behind the eulogy.
Speaking of eulogies, that’s a wrap on the Album a Day exhibit — though rumors persist of a comeback tour (possibly in Vegas, possibly as a desk calendar).
The Wax Museum reopens next week — until then, reply to this email or in the comments on what you’re spinning or whatever’s on your mind. I’m all ears.
Lastly, if you enjoyed your stay, consider supporting for just $1.25 a week. In exchange, you will unlock access to our full archive, which is paywalled to the public. Additionally, receive $10 off anything in the Gift Shop— perhaps treat yourself to a vinyl carrying tote!
Congratulations on completing a herculean task!
I'm checking out new albums from Momma, Craig Finn, and The Waterboys today.
thanks for the shout!