Round about this time of year, Team Loud Women like to fly our rechargeable jetpacks to an undisclosed exotic location and spend a few days, or weeks if necessary, deliberating democratically on the finest record releases of the last twelve months. The result is the Loud Women Hercury Award Shortlist: a tip-top dozen of female/nonbinary-driven British/Irish albums released between (mid-July) 2024 and 2025. Some artists deserve all the attention they can get, while others mightn't need our help but we love them still. In ten years of Loud Women, we’ve played a modest but recognised part in building up a scene of such strength that it's always an annual struggle even to agree on this selection. Let’s have a look at this year’s nominations!
Alt Blk Era – Rave Immortal (Jan 2025)
Notts sisters Alt Blk Era followed their 2023 EP with this half-hour set of three-minute bangers including singles ‘Straight To Heart’, ‘Come On Outside’, ‘Run Rabbit’ and ‘Hunt You Down’. Unexpectedly evocative for such a highly polished pop record, Rave Immortal celebrates resilience and friendship, and ponders the party as safe space, somehow finding the middle ground between riot grrrl and digital hardcore in the process.
Berries – Berries (Oct 2024)
The second and, sadly we’re told, final album from Berries. A post-debut self-titled record is often a statement of reavowed intent, and for a band to produce such a powerful panoply of postpunk-inflected, alt-rock earworms, with the skillset of a homegrown Sleater-Kinney, sounding as if the world is at their feet, and then drop such a surprise departure, can’t but be felt as a real loss. Features ‘Control’, ‘Watching Wax’, ‘Jagged Routine’ and a majority of tracks that could equally have been singles. We already have everything crossed for a reformation.
Emily Breeze – Rats In Paradise (Jul 2025)
Critics have noted some aesthetic crossover with Pulp, but truth be told we were far more excited at the prospect of a new Emily Breeze album this year, and her third record since a pre-pandemic reboot, Rats in Paradise, bolsters an increasing status as national treasure, at least with the cognoscenti (that’s you and me). “Bathed in wit, sass and hazy optimism” as our review had it, here are nine more hymns to the New York in your head and the Bristol bedsit in your peripheral vision – oh and a cover of Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ which in the event makes much more sense that it seems like it should.
HotWax – Hot Shock (Mar 2025)
Straight outta Hastings, HotWax follow their two EPs from two years ago with a debut album and sound that proves as charming as it is hard to pin down. Just when you think you have them pegged to a blend of Hole/Nirvana chords, served with slices of Pumpkins, ghosts of Jane’s Addiction riffs, and riot grrrl-ish BVs, they drop an irresistible hook-laden alternative pop nugget like ‘Strange To Be Here’, or third single ‘One More Reason’ that slaps like the Minutemen. Not just a collection of 2-3 minute tunes, but an incredibly assured sonic statement from a band barely out of their teens.
Lambrini Girls – Who Let The Dogs Out (Jan 2025)
Former Loud Women Album Of The Month, a Top 20 chart entry and most importantly a debut that grabs you by the body metaphor of your choice and doesn’t let go, from the delightfully furious Lambrini Girls. Phoebe and Lily synthesise the political and personal to take on pretty much everything, including themselves, while having an outraged-cynical-despairing-triumphant laugh in the process: police corruption; workplace harassment; gentrification; they even make time to admonish men who write about women in music (quite right too, hate those guys). As with the equally (unself-) righteous Petrol Girls, the cumulative effect is powerful and hopefully empowering. Current fav? ‘Big Dick Energy’: “It’s not that big!”
Little Simz – Lotus (Jun 2025)
Little Simz‘ sixth LP, and a second Top 10 hit for what initially presents as her most punk/rock record so far; conscious of the pain behind the art, we only hesitantly admit to an ulterior interest in Simbi at her most pissed off. Musically and lyrically ‘Thief’ rips and ‘Flood’ is all fire: “they obsessed with my genius plan, and that’s being as free as I can; they want you to stop, then they leave you to rot, but that’s just not my frequency, man!” But ultimately this is more of a soulful album, and a superlative one, as the ‘Only’/’Free’/’Peace’ and ‘Blood’/Lotus’/Lonely’ sequences demonstrate. The jazzy afrobeat of ‘Lion’ continues the partership with Obongjayar from two albums ago and serves to remind that Simz doesn’t do one-dimensional: forget that lane, she made her own.
Millie Manders & the Shut Up – Wake Up, Shut Up, Work (Aug 2024)
This excellent second album from Millie Manders and the Shut Up features the singles ‘Angry Side’, ‘Me Too’, ‘Can I Get Off?’ and ‘Shut Your Mouth’, and displays thoughtful, politically-engaged songwriting and Millie’s uniquely-powerful vocals throughout. The band don’t fail to deliver the pop-punk goods, but there’s variety here too, and some of the best tracks are the reflective, emotive tunes tucked away in the middle of the record: ‘Windows’, ‘R.I.P.’ and power-ballad ‘Halloween’.
Oh! Gunquit – Flex (Apr 2025)
A typically ebullient fourth LP from Oh! Gunquit, a band named after a town in New England, now over a decade into a career entertaining olde England. Rightly renowned for their live shows, this album does possibly the best job yet of transferring that energy to the studio. The group wear their influences proudly, but the results are never simply a sum of their parts, with so many ideas sashaying in and out of the mix. It’s hard to pick stand-out tracks with a quality this consistent, but we’ll go for the reflective ‘Comfortable Coffin’ and the epic climax of ‘Ride The Trip Out’.
Sassyhiya – Take You Somewhere (Nov 2024)
Indiepop has a solid pedigree, and its inherent niceness can absolutely be a collectivist punk “fuck you” to ever-so-late capitalism, but indiepop has also, on occasion, stood accused of a limited aural and creative palette; no such problems beset national treasures Sassyhiya though, denizens of many a Loud Women event and purveyors of intricate songwriting, inventively-melodic guitar and bass, and expressive reggae-inflected drumming. Includes live favs (easy when your live set is all live favs) like ‘Puppet Museum’ and ‘Boat Called Predator’ alongside unexpected, rarely/never performed jams like ‘On Our Way’ and the exquisite ‘Perennial’, which slinks out of the speakers like some long-lost collab between Pentangle and Arthur Lee circa 1967. A sassy introduction indeed.
Scrounge – Almost Like You Could (Apr 2025)
Unlike so, so many albums, which on listening have me thinking ‘I (don’t) like that, (but) I don’t need to listen to it again’, there’s something about Scrounge‘s take on postpunk-altrock that puts them on repeat. Does something of the texture of The Wipers/Scarfo/Solar Race haunt these riffs, these sound/cityscapes, or do they just share a (interrogation of) mood? The record launches with the urgent ‘Higher’ and crashes fiercely with ‘Rat’; in between ‘UTG’, ‘Waste’, ‘Dreaming’ and ‘Melt’ might just break your heart, the latter referencing a certain Manifesto in the process. ‘Rat’ itself links the “surplus for them” to consciousness: who has and who has not. A vital, intriguing, promising, political, necessary band.
The Slugs – A Song For Every Feeling (May 2025)
After releasing three charming name-your-price digital EPs of ‘tender chaotic fun’ in 2018-19, The Slugs disappeared without a trail. Why they chose 2025 to come out of their vestigial shells to release this long-delayed album is anyone’s guess, but we’re grateful they did. The DIY underground nurtures many species of fauna, including one adapted to a joyfully-primitive eccentricity (think Bellies, Kleenex, the Shaggs), that endures as an oasis of purity in this corrupt world, and manifests once again in this elusive London duo. Expect songs about sadness, shoes and gardening disappointments.
Split Dogs – Here To Destroy (Feb 2025)
Retrieving my torn, charred notes from the floor of the pit after Split Dogs’ show at Rebellion Festival, I could make out only five words between the blood, sweat and footprints: “Barbara Windsor fronts Cockney Rejects”. What else do you really need to know? (except maybe that they’re actually from Bristol). Today’s punk church is increasingly ecumenical and Split Dogs in turn are a little bit pub rock, a little bit streetpunk, a dollop of hardcore, and with star-in-waiting Harry Atkins on vocals and Suez Boyle on bass, surely a healthy wallop of grrrl-grunge. This 9-song, 20-minute second album inevitably leaves us wanting more with its combination of tight tunes, smart lyrics and vocal bite, but alongside their rock ‘n’ roll appeal there’s a soulfulness and multidimensionality in operation too. Up with this sort of thing.
The 2025 Loud Women Hercury Award winner will be announced *soon*. In the meantime, have a playlist of all the nominations...
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