Album of the Year You Didn't Hear

on Broncho's Natural Pleasure

hit the audio ⬆️ for tunes along with the review

Around Thanksgiving, the music journalists marooned on Substack began to tease their Best of 2025 lists. It was a struggle, they claimed, to trim their indexes down due to the irrepressible number of killer releases this year.

Wow! Which almost-best albums will be cut and left on the version history floor? When the blogs were finally published, these listers, these individuals, included ONE HUNDRED records. To quote Bob Dylan:

Years ago, while working at WME, an executive recommended a book. It was about—indeed it was called—Essentialism, but not for the high-minded philosophical concept. No, this was a pop-biz take on how to accomplish more by doing less. I never read that kind of shit, but this was during my short-lived effort to be a team player, so I gave it a try and found some useful tidbits inside. The one still with me is the author’s bone to pick with a priorities list, noting that priority cannot be plural. It offends the word’s very definition; there can only be one.

I loved, loved, loved three records you can find on every list this year—zeitgeist guys to be sure, you don’t need another post on those—but the album I listened to the most, the single best LP of 2025, is Natural Pleasure by Broncho. I’m certain you haven’t heard this one. It appears on just two year-end lists, and I know those folks pressed play only when I pushed it on them.

I’m surprised I listened to Natural Pleasure myself. Broncho’s been around for fifteen years, and I’ve not been a fan. I tried the first album after a friend joined the band for a minute, but couldn’t find my way in and ignored subsequent releases. Now they’re on their fifth LP, and I don’t know what made me listen, but my conservative estimate is that I’ve played it top to bottom no less than 500 times. I’ve spun it most days since it came out in April, often on repeat, and its pull hasn’t waned. I must have hit it twenty times this week alone. How many times did you play your #73?

If you asked me what Broncho sounded like a year ago, I would have mostly guessed and said, Garage-y? Skuzzy? Dirtbag sexy? But not what I hear on Natural Pleasure. I texted my friend Jared, who manages the band, and asked if this album sounds markedly different from their previous LPs. “Yes,” he said, “but still Broncho 100%.” He highlighted one important change: Ryan Lindsey, singer and principal songwriter, has found his falsetto. When I force fed this record to family and friends, often they said, “She’s got a beautiful voice.”

I’ve posted about Natural Pleasure throughout the year, thirst trapping for fellow fans, but no likes or replies. I got curious about Broncho lore and asked Jared if he could point me to some features or interviews with the band. “No. Are none,” he exaggerated, but only a bit. You can find scattered reviews, show previews, and one paywalled Q&A in that dinosaur Billboard, but little more. I thought: Fuck, do I need to write a piece of Music Journalism?

Natural Pleasure is preoccupied with time. The first lyric on “Imagination,” the loitering opener of the album, is an invitation to try and slow it down. Each tune that follows save one is mid-tempo or below, and Lindsey continues to return to the theme.

Imagine time when it don’t fly by.
“Imagination”

You take a pause, take a beat,
for a moment, and I liked it.
“Funny”

If you really wanna increase speed,
stack it up, keep it in mind, save time.
“Save Time”

Limited patience, limited lines,
limited space and limited time,
I’m surely a good time,
I’m surely not online,
I’m surely right on time.
“Surely”

Lately it’s alright, it’s alright with me,
takin’ any old time, any old time for me.
“Dreamin”

You might not notice the words at first. It took me (ahem) time to catch on. Often, Lindsey’s lyrics are murmured, mumbled, or half-sung, and I had to check the lyric sheet many times. On “Funny,” the shadowy second song, words unwind to stand-in for sounds: Hey momma, hey bubby, they don’t know that it ain’t easy when your aaa and ddd, shhuh shhuh shhhuh, just like me.

And it’s not just gauzy singing; the songs are sturdy and packed with melody, but the instruments warble, drift, and fray, the hazy mix a hero of the LP. The effect is warm, cozy comfort, like the best drugs, which for me would be weed from ages 22-45 and Oxycodone for about six months in 2009. Indeed, I listened high many times. I’m off the stuff now but remain in the record’s grip, so oblivion is not required.

As December 31 comes near, I wonder if I forgot 2025’s ticking clock only while this record played. I’m unemployed and have limited responsibility, but rarely slowed down this year. I raced myself on novel deadlines, raced traffic in every direction around the country en route to literary festivals and readings, raced to read books and start the next, raced on the treadmill to lose ten pounds. And high five to me! I got the novel done, made it to many cities, and read a shitload of stuff (no luck on lbs), but Broncho’s 40-minute meditation was a steady respite.

I saw Lindsey call this album a collection of whisper ballads, which is apt, but if I wrote the one-sheet I’d call them underground lullabies. A secondary theme of Natural Pleasure is having kids.

A stunner on the side-b called “You Got Me” is an address from a father to a mother and child. Lindsey claims he wrote the song before learning he and his partner were expecting. The parental lyrics are so lived-in that it’s a nearly unbelievable claim, but I take him at his word (a few songs later, we get one called “Way Into Magic,” so who knows). Anyway, my favorite moment on the whole record is the tune’s bridge.

Safe drivin’
Don’t die
Send me over
Send me into those eyes
Save drivin’
All night
Send me over
Send me into those eyes
Those eyes, those eyes
They get so tired
Send me over
Send me into those eyes

from “You Got Me”

In one review, someone said the “don’t die” line was funny, but I hear it as purely sincere. Afterall, if we can slow down, stop the clock and get off the grid, what’s left when standing still, staying home? For Christmas, my daughter got a tiny toy drum kit. She tilts back her head, smiles, and sways while she plays with her eyes half closed but half on me.

I hesitate to compare the record to other artists because I know this shit so well by now that it only sounds like itself, but if you like Elliott Smith’s hush, Beach House dreams, Modest Mouse in their drowsy gear, Damien Jurado when he’s spacey, or The Velvet Underground at their most “Stephanie Says,” you might give this a spin.

I told Jared the Manager it’s an injustice that no one gives a fuck about Natural Pleasure. Music accolades hunt the new and the young, and I hypothesized that if Lindsey was 23 and the album a debut, it would be a different story. Jared was surprised by the suggestion, and maybe I’m wrong; maybe Broncho would go unnoticed regardless of age. Either way, I hope they’re happy at home in the Oklahoma underground, unconcerned with year-end anything.

An earlier draft of this review had some extra stuff in the bitchy intro about how these long lists might do damage. When you work behind the scenes with musicians, you see how one show preview, one spin on a third-market station, one unread publication’s inclusion can fuel an artist to carry on for another heartbreaking record cycle, another unsold-out national tour. My original point was that this is pathetic and sad, but that’s a shitty way to see things. Let the bands go on. Jared just sent a demo from a Broncho LP to come.

hit the audio at the top for tunes along with the review