The hard truth is, no matter how many albums we review each year, there are always countless releases that end up overlooked. That’s why, from now until the end of December, we’re bringing back our No Album Left Behind series and singing the praises of our favorite underrated records of 2025.
These Days, the debut album by Nashville singer-songwriter Emily Hines, feels like one of those records you’ve known forever. The lo-fi guitar tone, the sparse percussion that sounds like the pitter-patter of light rain, and her distant coo that barely raises above a whisper—it all sounds like listening to an old vinyl record, worn and ever-so-slightly warped after hundreds of plays across decades. It’s timeless and instantly familiar, the sort of album you can’t believe you ever lived without.
Ever since stumbling upon These Days around when it was released in August, I haven’t been able to put it down. Its beautiful and simple production begs you to follow Hines into a world galaxies away from the chaos that was 2025, a peaceful escape from the horrors that each new phone notification brings. Instead, it’s a soundtrack for the walk to your favorite spot, that place where the earth stands still, if only for a moment (or in this case, 29 minutes and 51 seconds). It’s a warm blanket of an album, perfect for throwing on to watch the haze of summer fade into the crispness of autumn, or for wistfully looking out the window on an airplane, wondering what’s going on beneath the clouds.
Nothing on These Days reinvents the wheel, but it doesn’t have to. The comparisons are easy, so take your pick: It sounds like Adrianne Lenker singing the quieter parts of Julien Baker’s Sprained Ankle—perhaps the last album I randomly discovered that I felt this awestruck by. There are echoes of Florist—particularly that band’s masterpiece, Emily Alone—or Laura Marling’s more pastoral folk songs, or the relaxing vibe of Vetiver’s entire discography, complete with distant vocals a la Grouper. It’s also easy to hear elements of Nick Drake or Jackson C. Frank’s most wistful tracks. There’s a long tradition of this sort of music, but These Days—which doesn’t feature a cover of the Jackson Browne’s Nico-led classic (though Hines did release a cover of the song in September, which also acts as yet another easy point of comparison)—doesn’t just live up to all those giants of the genre over the decades, it makes the case that Emily Hines deserves to be their peer.
It’s ironic that such a strong album features lyrics filled to the brim with self-doubt and insecurity. “I’m in my own way again,” Hines hypnotically repeats over the gentle rolling waves of album opener “My Own Way,” before admitting she’s “rewriting texts to my friends” and “harboring old shame.” On “All of Our Friends,” she fast-forwards too quickly after a hookup, going from “All of our friends can see us together” to “Are you gonna hate me?” And on “Cowgirl Suit,” perhaps the album’s centerpiece (an impossible choice, in fairness), after admitting that “I saw you walk in and it changed my whole day / Is it by design when you’ve got nothing to say?” Hines quickly backtracks with a god-level lyric I haven’t been able to shake in months: “I’m sorry if I’ve crossed a line / I’m still learning how to draw mine.”
I could go on and on singing Emily Hines’ praises as a lyricist—“I fill my songs with the shit that I was too scared to say to their face / Sometimes it takes a while to collect your thoughts / This whole time I thought I was running in place” from album closer “Cedar on the River” is every bit as good as anything the late, great Scott Hutchison ever wrote—but These Days, when taken altogether, is a feeling in and of itself. For its half-hour runtime, the music exists in its own world—one you don’t want to leave, even if it’s a melancholic one. It’s easy to close your eyes and see the sprawling fields of the farms in rural Ohio and Kentucky where Hines wrote the album, but it’s a record that begs for you to revisit the more relaxing moments in your own life: that bucolic cabin in the mountains; the walk through a park as the leaves change color; the foggy mornings in the house you grew up in; the glowing sunset you wish never went away.
Six years after she laid the groundwork with an EP under the name Crea, it’s clear that there’s something special brewing here. Every guitar strum, every string flourish, and every note sung is carefully selected and purposely put in precisely the right place, arising from a negative space that creates a disparate yet lush sonic landscape that you’ll want to wrap yourself up in forever. And if that half-hour runtime isn’t enough and you’re not ready to leave the beautiful world Emily Hines created for us, you can always hit repeat and start over again from the top, just like I’ve done countless times this year. [Keeled Scales]
