NPR Music - Viking's Choice 2025: The Guitar

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

On the last episode of All Songs Considered for 2025, NPR Music producer Lars Gotrich takes host Robin Hilton through an exceptional year in guitar music. From Gwenifer Raymond's beautiful and brash fingerstyle to Rafael Toral's stretched-out jazz standards, not to mention William Tyler's glitched hymns and Vernon Reid's ecstatic shred, there's so much diversity to be found in six strings.Featured songs and artists: • Gwenifer Raymond: "Bleak Night in Rabbit's Wood," from 'Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark'• Hayden Pedigo: "Houndstooth," from 'I'll Be Waving As You Drive Away'• TAKAAT: "Isghmar," from 'Is Noise, Vol. 1'• Rafael Toral: "You Don't Know What Love Is," from 'Traveling Light'• Laura Snowden: "This Changing Sky," from 'This Changing Sky'• Madala Kunene & Sibusile Xaba: "Wemfana," from 'kwaNTU'• William Tyler: "Star of Hope," from 'Time Indefinite'• Jorge Espinal: "ají de pollería," from 'Bombos y Cencerros'• Vernon Reid: "Meditation on the Last Time I Saw Arthur Rhames," from 'Hoodoo Telemetry'Want more? See the full Viking's Choice list for the best guitar music of 2025.Enjoy the show? Share it with a friend and leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

What is this? Oh, this is the holiday script. I mean, yeah, hey, let's do it. All right. Phone rings. It's me. Go. Robin Hilton.

Hey, are you almost ready? I'm pulling up soon. I'm based on my turkeys. Okay, that's... That's not the line. You can't do this show. You're fired. I'm sorry, Lars.

Merry Christmas. You're not fired. Let's do a show. It's all songs considered. I'm Robin Hilton. Lars Gottridge here. Oh, it's me. Editor of the Tiny Desk series.

That's right, yeah. You pop up from time to time on the show here throughout the year. I mean, do a little thing called a Vikings Choice as well. Yeah, a recurring series. You are the creator and curator of the Vikings Choice series where you highlight all of the, well, I'm just going to call it the wild and weird and wonderful music that you discover throughout in a given year. The misshapen misfits of music.

You are the king on the island of misfit toys. Yes. And it's something I've always loved about you, Lars. I mean, I think you've got maybe the wildest range of musical tastes. If anybody I've ever known, you're the only one I've ever known who could listen to just the screamiest, loudest, just thrashiest metal, and then go right from that to some really sweet Christian contemporary pop song. I did bring six pence none the richer to the tiny desk. You did.

And it was beautiful. It was our great holiday show. That's up now. People haven't checked that out. Well, we close every year with a special Vikings' choice retrospective. And that's what we're doing on this episode of All Songs Consider. You usually pick a theme. I think last year's was music for catharsis and calm.

Yeah. What is it this year? The guitar. The guitar. Or it really is how you say it. Or the guitar. Or the guitar. Yeah.

With the guitar. And it really is a range of stuff that you brought here. From the suite to, well, it's actually all pretty beautiful stuff, I think. I think so. I just noticed I was, you know, I like to put it together like a theme that kind of ties everything together. And I couldn't help but notice that it was, 2025 was just a great year for the guitar. And not just rock music, not just the finger style, American primitive kind of stuff. But all the stuff that was kind of in between, classic guitar, jazz, ambient, but all using my personal favorite instrument,

the instrument that I've been playing since I was 12 years old. What do you want to start with? I think we got to start with my album of the year. Gwinterfer Raymond, the album's called Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark. This is the song Bleak Night and Rabbits Wood. Bleak Night. Bleak Night. In Rabbit's Wood.

Yeah, this is really nice. I read your write-up that you had in your top ten list of this. And you compared her to, I think, speed metal, like her play stuff. One woman's beat metal band. Yeah, which I actually think, you know, that's a way that I've always described, like, flat picking, you know, which is kind of more in the Appalachian Bluegrass World than this is that style of play. But it has that, it has kind of an intensity to it that's easy to miss because it's otherwise so beautiful. She is a Welsh guitarist. She's also an astrophysicist.

Oh, wow. Yeah. How many other musicians can you name who are astrophysicists? Isn't Brian May? Yes. I was going to say one. There's one other one that I know. May, guitarist for Queen.

But yeah, she also apparently makes video games. Oh, wow. Yeah, she's a triple threat. She can do video games. She's an astrophysicist. She can play the guitar like this. She can play the guitar. I mean, I recently saw her perform at Rhizome, which is a small venue here in D.C.,

and my bones were just buzzing. Oh, wow. Like throughout. It's just like you feel like you're inside. the belly of the guitar when she is playing. It's just so raw and rambling, but so tuneful. She always knows how to return to the theme,

which is, you know, sometimes a lot of finger-style guitarists that just like to jam, but she always has the theme in mind, and she always brings it back. But you feel the physicality of her hands and her body on the body of this guitar and on these strings. And so I just found this record so alive and haunting.

Oh, that's a good word for it. Let me ask you this, because you mentioned that the guitar has certainly had a strong gear, but finger-style guitar in particular, you noted in your write-up for this, has had a really strong gear. I'm wondering if you have an idea for why it's had such a strong gear, why it's kind of having this renaissance. You know? Because I have a couple theories.

You have some theories. I mean, the thing. The thing I think about is it's been over a decade since Jack Rose died. And he was kind of the person who, in my mind at least, kind of revitalized interest in the finger style guitar tradition. And there are already a lot of musicians who are working in that mold during his time. But I think in the wake of his death, and there's just so much outpouring of love, that His spirit has just continued ever since.

And Guineifer Raymond, in fact, she appeared on a tribute album to Jack Rose, and she repurposed her tribute for this record. So that was really nice to see. Yeah. But I'm curious, why do you think Fingerstyle is having such a moment? Well, I don't know. Maybe my theories might seem kind of dumb now after that beautiful answer. He just gave me.

But, I mean, one, I think I'm going to go with AI backlash. I mean, that's real. I mean, people, even if they're. not aware of it. I think people want something real, organic, and entirely human, and it's hard to get any more real, organic, or human than finger-style guitar. I think the second reason is what I would call the sinner's effect. Oh, yeah, maybe. I mean, sort of like what happened after the movie, Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou came out, which has been astoundingly like 25 years ago now, but, you know, that movie came out, had all this amazing folk and Americana

and Roots music in it and there was this real revival of that kind of music. They were selling out, the artists who were featured in that film were selling out huge auditoriums afterwards. And I don't know, I think that movie was really full of and celebrated folk in Americana, and certainly the blues. And people were just reminded of how amazing it is and are starting to engage with it. And actually, I think going back to the Guinephraimond, as beautiful as it is, as you say, there's something kind of haunting in it.

And there's this sort of darker undercurrent to it, which also really fits in with that whole sinner's universe, I think. What you haven't even seen, because you don't watch scary movies, right? I'll watch it eventually. I just got to work up the nerve. Well, you should see it for the music, if nothing else. I mean, honestly. I hear it's basically like a horror musical, right? Yeah, I guess you could call it that.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So the Gwinterfer Raymond Bleak Night in Rabbits Wood. What a great title. From last night I heard the Dog Star Bark. Where do you want to go next? I think we stick with fingerstyle just to show the kind of like the flip side of what happened with that this year.

Hayden Pedigo from Texas. So I put out this record called I'll Be Waving as You Drive Away this year. And he just kind of keeps getting better what he does. And this is a record where he kind of leaned a little bit more into arrangements with strings and kind of like a a little bit of a band. This is a song called Houndstooth. This is the perfect exhalation. And I think it's sometimes hard to make music this calming

when it has so much movement in it because there's quite a lot of movement in this. But he does it so beautifully. He's such a lyrical guitar player. I think I've said this several times on this podcast, but he really is a storyteller without words. But he's really become a master of it in a way where if you were to just play me a song,

not knowing who it was, I would know it was Hayden. Because he has such a delicate touch. Yeah. But one that is delicate and demonstrative at the same time, if that's possible. Yeah. And the idea of storytelling, this song itself feels like it has chapters, you know,

and breaks in it where it's really taking you on this journey. It's definitely telling the story. Well, Hayden Pedigo, that's really beautiful. The song Hound's Tooth from I'll Be Waving as You Drive Away. Let's keep it going. So 2025, I think, was also the year of the Power Trio. You're familiar with this term, Robin? Well, yes, I've heard the term Power Trio, yes.

Yeah, so, like, the kind of like the prototypical Power Trio is, like, Rush. Yeah. Or, like, the King Crimson album, Red. Right. Where it's, like, three people who are virtuosos at their instruments, at their absolute peak, just ripping and shredding, but making songs, not just jamming, but they're making songs. Right.

And typically, it's a guitar, bass, and drums. Not always, but usually. And so I could easily make you a top 10 list of the year in power trios. It was like shockingly great year for like that format of band. So I had a hard time picking one, but I did pick one. and it's this group called Takat, and they are essentially Em do Mokhtar's backing band.

So if you know Mdu Moktar, the incredible Tuareg guitarist, that's kind of the vibe here, but there's a little bit more. So we're going to play a track, and I hope I don't mess up the pronunciation I probably will. Ismar, and this is from the mini album

called Is Noise, Volume 1. Love the Desert Blues. Yeah. Music of the Sahara. You mentioned Indumoktar. I certainly thought of him, thought of Tanaruan. Yeah. Incredible.

It is like the music of life. Here's where it's like there's a little bit of a tweak on the formula. They kind of add a little bit more dub and a bit more like punk attitude to everything. Like they specifically cited like Fugazi. Oh, wow. I mean, I certainly, I mean, punk has always been sort of, I mean, certainly in the spirit. of this kind of music. And I saw them live also at Rizum.

I mean, it's just one of my favorite places to see music. And it was so loud. And the energy was so high. Like I was vibrating. Like the whole room was just like everybody's not in their heads. Everybody's like kind of like doing thrashing in place basically because we're all packed into this like small space. and it's just, it's a lot more loose and a lot more expansive than Mdu Moktar,

who has kind of like gone into more kind of like Jimmy Hendricks mode in a recent, which I don't mind at all. It's just kind of like, I love the different avenues that Takat has taken with their music. They came out with two volumes of this is noise series, and the second one is even stranger, and I love it. Well, you talk about how expansive it is. I mean, one of the things that's always amazed me about the desert blues is that very often this music is made under extreme or limiting conditions, not a lot of resources. It's incredibly DIY. And yet it just is so, it's larger than life. It's just, it sounds incredible. So Takat. And we're going to say that the name of the song is Ish-M-A-R from Is Noise Volume 1. When I was putting together this show, I kind of made categories. So we heard the power trio.

We heard kind of like the finger style tradition. This new one I'm calling re-strung repertoire. Restrung repertoire? Yeah. So when you think of repertoire, you think of like classical music or like maybe the Great American Songbook or jazz or things like that. So here's reimagininges of those things. So the first thing that I kind of thought of, there's this Portuguese artist who's been around for decades named Rafael Toral.

He has this new record called Traveling Light, where he has taken jazz standards and completely stretched them out into almost unrecognizable pieces from which they originally came. And so we're going to listen to You Don't Know What Love is, which is a song that Miles Davis made popular. So this is a pretty long piece. I just want to jump ahead. Let's go maybe about a little more in a minute and a half or so in and hear how it evolves. So getting some very clearly actual guitar there. Let's jump even further ahead. Just about the only moment where you can kind of hear where the song is coming from.

Right. Like the melody that it's sort of rooted in, but it's a little creepy. real twin peaks vibe Very twin peaks Kind of reminded me a little bit Of the film Angel Heart Which you probably also haven't seen Since that's also a very great movie

I had a very similar sound to this But it's like I think you Intured this by saying he stretches these out It really is like he took a little piece of audio And use this tool that you can use To stretch audio You can turn like a five second audio clip Into an hour long ambient piece

Just by stretching it out I mean every chord change feels like a triumph. That's kind of like the magic of this record is that it's so slow and yet you are so engaged with its slowness, I think, because the way that it moves, it really does feel like you are traveling through space and when something changes, it's noticeable and it's like, and it feels like significant. And those little drony things, that could be a guitar or it could be like those electronics that he developed over the years, but I like that I don't know which it is. Yeah, do you

remember the first time you heard a guitar sound like anything other than a guitar and you, and you realize that there's this whole universe of sound that you can get out of a guitar that was nothing like you've ever heard before? Oh, 100%. There's this British, you know, musician named Keith Rao, and he makes the guitar sound like nothing like the guitar. So were you like high school or something maybe? I think it was like sometime in college, maybe. For me, it was Adrian Ballou. And I was in high school and I had listened to Lori Anderson's Mr. Heartbreak, and I thought, what are these wild sounds? And back then you could pick up the album and read the liner notes. And I read the credit as like, who's Adrian Ballou? And I ended up

getting into all of his solo stuff. And I actually even remember listening to one of his songs, that was kind of more of an ambient piece, a little bit kind of like this. And a friend of mine said, you know, that's guitar, right? And my mind was blown. I thought, what? I just assumed it was since or something, you know. And this was 45 years ago.

So we just listened to Rafael Toral. The records called Traveling Light. I kind of want to stick with this theme of the very strong repertoire. This is a new artist to me, but someone who's been making music for a long time. Her name's Laura Snowden. She is a British, French classical guitarist. Her work came to my attention through John Darnell of The Mountain Goats.

He shouted her out, and I was like, oh, I should check out her music. She's considered one of the finest classical guitarists in the world, apparently, but she mostly does live performance. And this is technically her debut album. It's called This Changing Sky, and this is the title track. So I'm pretty sure she's playing a nylon string guitar here, classical string guitar, but it almost sounds like a lute or something. Yeah, it does have that kind of tonality, too. Yeah, really, really beautiful, though. I love how she uses space and really lets this piece breathe.

I mean, that's my favorite kind of guitar playing, honestly. I mean, I am not in any way comparing myself to Loris Nudin, but when I'm in my home, I have a nylon string guitar just sitting in my living room. room. And this is, you know, what I'm just kind of like noodling. That's the kind of like the kind of music I like to make. But these are pieces that she wrote. She normally performs others' repertoire. But apparently, I read some interviews and reviews of her music. And apparently the pieces that she writes are used for, like, guitar schools. Oh, wow. They're used to, like, grade students on their progress. Is it because of the technicality in them?

The technicality or like the technique that you have to use or kind of like the way that you have to, you know, voice different phrasing? Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. Slower sometimes is harder because then you really have to start focusing in on the tone that you're producing and exactly how your fingers are hitting the strings. Does she singing on this kind of? So she doesn't sing. She has guests on this record who kind of, this is her also, her first foreway.

to voice. So she wrote text for a lot of people. This one is, these are worthless voicings right here, but her communication with the voice is very interesting to me because they're very much in conversation, the voice and the guitar on this record in a way

that's eerie and unexpected, but very beautiful. Well, again, I like it when the creepy and beautiful come together. Two great things that are great together, and she does that really beautifully on this. That was not expecting that voice to come in. It's unnerving. So Laura Snowden, and that was the title cut to

her album, This Changing Sky. Where do you want to go next, Lars? I think we go to South Africa. There's this duo I came across Madala, Kunenei, and Sibu Sible-Lay Shaba. One is a master, is a teacher, and the other is the student, basically. And they decided to make a record together, basically in a week with the group of their friends. And it's just like perfect Sunday afternoon music for me. So this is a track called Wemfana from the album Qantu. Yeah, this is glorious. Perfect Sunday morning record.

You're right. We did that whole show on Sunday morning records back this past spring. you and Hazel Seals and I did. This would have worked very well on that episode. I love the sense of community and the comfort that you find in that sort of call and response. And you hear, and even without there are a lot of songs on this record that are just instrumental. And it just sounds like a conversation between two guitars. It's very easy.

Sometimes I can tell which guitarist it is because the younger one, he's. He tends to favor electric guitar. And so he has maybe a little bit more of like a jazz fusion vibe. But there are lots of points where you can't tell who's playing what. And so it's not necessarily like the student becoming the master. It's just kind of like they've just become one. Yeah. It's very earthy and meditative.

And this comes out of the Zulu tradition, which if you've never done a dive into Zulu guitar music, it is just a joy. There are so many compilations of Zulu guitar music that are, you know, just go search one on the internet, and especially ones that are like from the 50s and 60s. It's just people making music in community with each other, and you feel the warmth and happiness of that community. Well, Madalakunenei totally new to me. He's kind of a legend, though, in South Africa, isn't he?

Yeah. Well, these were new names to me, but it was such a, like, like a happy discovery. But yeah, he's been making music for decades, like forever. I love how you switched into your FM radio. For decades, he's been making music. And he and Sibu Sili Shaba, he has said in interviews where he was like, this guy is an absolute legend, but nobody knows who he is outside South Africa.

and it's time even in this late age for that to change. Good stuff. So this record we just talked about in the next one, I'm grouping slightly under the category, clear some space out so we can space out. Clear some space out. So we can space out. So this is actually a reference to a song by Shabazz Palaces,

the great hip-hop duo. I think about this lyric a lot in my life. And so clear some space out so we can space out. And, you know, we just heard from Madala Kunene, and that allows you to kind of like ease into your day and have a beautiful awakening, so to speak. This next record is more, I'm in the fog. I don't know what I'm doing here,

but I hope that I can find my way out of it. And that's this gorgeous record. by William Tyler, who has been making music for a long time now, but has kind of found his way into some stranger avenues. He put out a record earlier this year with Fortet. That was completely surprising, but it rules. It's really cool. That one's worth checking out as well.

But he also made this record called Time Indefinite. And it feels like he's contending with a broken world, and he's using music to find his way out. This song is called Star of Hope. You've programmed this really well, Lars. Chef's Kiss to the sequencing here. Thank you. This is really, really beautiful.

It's not at all what I was expecting from him. I tend to think of him as having maybe a little more, I don't know, traditional Americanae kind of sound. But this whole record is kind of a little more experimental, I guess you would say. It's a bit more woozy. Yeah. I feel like that's been happening a lot this year. actually. Daniel Bachman also put out a record that sounds nothing like guitar, but is doing the same thing.

Steve Gunn put out a record called Music for Writers. That is very spacious and ambient. But in time indefinite, I kind of kept coming back to it because there's a seed of, to use the song title, there's a seed of hope in this record. It feels like a hymnal. Is it like a cover or a? So he apparently found this song on an AM radio station, like a hymn, an AM radio station, and he decided to incorporate the melody into the song. But as it can hear, it's gritty and static. There's like some weird choir sample or something in the background. Yeah, I think it's from that AM broadcast.

Oh, okay. So maybe he just got his phone out or something. Yeah, and it was like, this is beautiful. I need to keep this. Well, it's really gorgeous. It almost sounds like Oling Zine or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, it kind of has like a, hey, this year was hard. Here's to trying to make a better one. Well, and he's very clearly not covering it, but interacting with it.

Yes. That makes sense. Absolutely. Yeah, kind of playing with it. So Star of Hope from Time Indefinite from William Tyler. Really beautiful. I want to get wacky. I've been waiting for you to throw it into another gear here. I'm like, when's the speed metal coming?

No. That's technically guitar. Yeah. You know, like, are you going to yank the rug out from under me at some moment here? I'm classifying this as keep guitar weird. I'm all for it. There's this Peruvian guitarist based out of Buenos Aires named Jorge Espinal. And he put out this record called Bambos and Censeros.

Drums and cowbells. Yeah, that's basically what that means. Yeah, yeah. All right. And he is, his whole thing, he, he works primarily in experimental rock bands and in, like, improv groups. And he put out this record that really thinks about the physicality of the guitar itself and the rhythms that it can create. So that can include the strings, but it can include the body. and then what he does is he throws that all into looper pedals

and maybe has some like other percussion on hand. Apparently he will perform all these instruments at once with his hands and feet. Oh, wow. And so the whole thing is kind of like a joyous racket. So here's the track, and I'm going to do my darnness to pronounce this correctly. Ah, hi de Poruillera. You really hit that out of. It means chicken restaurant chili sauce.

Yeah, the guitar itself is kind of buried in a way. It's easy to miss if you're not paying attention, but once you lock into that groove, it works so well. And it hadn't occurred to me until you mentioned it leading into playing this song that all the other percussive sounds are from him hitting the guitar, I guess. Either hearing the guitar or he has little bells or things to the side that he's maybe the bells are like actually attached to the guitar itself. Yeah. You know? So he's just kind of like a one-man band situation. Yeah. Yeah.

It's very cool. I don't think you need to know that the name of the song is chicken restaurant chili sauce. I mean, it's spicy. I mean, but it helps. I mean, just in kind of clocking the sense of play in this, even as it's cool. I mean, this is a very cool song. But it's kind of playful, too. Well, I've read a great interview with him on.

There's a site called A Closer Listen. and he says, I think that any object can become an instrument. What makes it one is intention. Oh, yeah. 1,000%. Yeah. Brilliant.

So I love this record. Jorge Espinal, the record, Bomboe. Sincenceros. It can be a challenging listen, sure, but it's a lot of fun. Have we arrived at the end of the show here? We're at the end of the show.

Oh, you have one more thing that you want to play. Yeah, I do. All right. Let's do it. So one of my greatest choice this year was to see. Levin Color perform at the tiny desk. Oh, man. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. Like, talk about one of the, probably one of the greatest American rock bands of all time. Yeah. Each one of those players is like a virtuoso of their instrument. Yeah. But I planted myself right in front of Vernon Reed. Yeah. Specifically to watch him do his mastery, his wizardry of the guitar.

I mean, I've never seen anything like it, especially so up close. And so he put out a solo record called Hoodoo Telemetry. That's just, it's just so fun. It's got living color vibes to it because it has to, because it's Vernon Reed. But it's essentially his version of a fusion record. It's got some hip-hop on it. It's got some jazz on it. But it's also just got some good, dang old guitar shred.

and sometimes that's exactly what I want. The song that we're about to play, Meditation on the last time I saw Arthur Rames, which is a great song title, I was playing it, and my kid was hanging around, and because she knows that I like to air guitar when I'm listening to music, she starts air guitaring,

and so I pick her up, and I use her body as an air guitar, and yes, there is video of this. I will send it to Robin, but nobody else, but it is the sweetest thing in the world. My kids are too big for me to do that. They're all, they've already, both of them are already bigger than I am. I, I can't, I can't pick them up anymore, but that's awesome.

All right, well, we'll go out on this Lars from Vernon Reed Meditation on the last time I saw Arthur Rames from Houdoo Telemetry. Thanks for another weird and wonderful and wondrous year, Lars. Absolutely. I'm, I think I'm planning to write a longer version of this list. Awesome, do it. So listen to this podcast and if you want more, check out MPL dot org slash all songs and you'll get like a much longer list of guitar stuff if that's what you're

into. Now you got to do it. Now I got to do it. All right and for NPR music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's all songs considered.