Culture
Suggested Listening 2025: Emily Votaw
By: Emily Votaw
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WOUB Culture’s Suggested Listening series highlights the music that resonated with WOUB Culture contributors and regional artists in 2025. Today we spotlight WOUB Culture writer and producer Emily Votaw.
Emily Votaw enjoys reading about music history, watching movies about Godzilla, and painting portraits of her dogs. Sometimes, she plays music on the radio. You can find out when by following her on Instagram: @dumb_girl_lesterbangs.
Death By Unga Bunga – Raw Muscular Power (Jansen Records)
Raw Muscular Power finds Death By Unga Bunga delivering a masterclass in rock ’n’ roll clownery of the topmost pedigree — a combustible arsenal of defiantly unpretentious, high-proof, endlessly replayable songs. It’s tastefully neurosis-laden power rock, executed with first-rate musical craftsmanship and, importantly, an indefatigable sense of humor.
The Norwegian five-piece’s latest full-length LP is full throttle from the jump, opening with the title track’s meditation on exhaustion, endurance, and alienation.
On I’m Really Old, strapping guitar and handclapping amplify a sense of seething internal combustibility, balanced by a furiously infectious melody that reminds us that these boys have rhythm, not just the blues.
Raw Muscular Power wears its influences on its taut sleeve, right beside its aching, sincere heart. We hear this most unapologetically on the irresistible Starchild, specifically about an unremitting love for Paul Stanley of KISS, but more universally articulating an emotional pang specific to the rock stars you’ve idolized longer than you’ve done nearly anything else. It’s the first of two collaborations on the record, featuring Haley Shea of Sløtface.
Therapy is the second, featuring American lo-fi rocker Mike Krol. This ingenious pairing delivers a righteous double bludgeon—hitting the head and the heart. It’s my most listened to song of the year, a distillation of what I love about this record and the band who made it: an ability to juggle thunderous rawness, addictive riffs, and a maladjusted emotional clarity you can’t help but identify with.
On Raw Muscular Power, Death by Unga Bunga confronts and pulverizes existential crises at a frenetic pace, bringing them (if only temporarily) to the point of detonation. The result is a shattering burst that leaves a pulsating, vulnerable tenderness, making listeners want to do it all over again. It’s the kind of record that sounds great coming out of good speakers—but no less powerful bleeding out of bad ones.
*the above paraphrases portions of my review of “Raw Muscular Power” for Popmatters – check that out at this link*
Dougie Poole – At Tubby’s (Wharf Cat Records)
Country music endures because it treats lives as ordinary as yours or mine as stages for dramas of Shakespearean scale. Dougie Poole works squarely in that tradition, emerging where country intersects with experimental and DIY music—notably territory from which the genre itself historically emerged.
At Tubby’s highlights the most potent cuts from Poole’s catalog so far, along with the excellent new song Heaven Sent an Angel & We Got Stoned. Though the title may initially conjure One Toke Over the Line by Brewer & Shipley type vibes, Heaven Sent an Angel & We Got Stoned is markedly different. Consider these lyrics, which I woke up with stuck in my head more than once this summer:
“I never bothered to hope
I never thought to believe
The hammer of the Divine
Would hit a screw like me”
Across 14 tracks, Poole summons unexpected pangs of recognition, empathy, and wonder, making our hearts wince sweetly as he wraps potent turns of phrase around rhythmic surges of melody.
On February 19, 2026, Poole plays Stuart’s Opera House (52 Public Square) in Nelsonville opening for Jake Xerxes Fussell – don’t miss out, you can find details on tickets right here.
Viagra Boys – Viagr Aboys (Shrimptech Enterprises)
OK, alright! Let’s address the obvious: yes, this band name is (in a word) daunting. I made the same mistake—ignoring Viagra Boys for years despite glowing recommendations. That ends here. Viagra Boys are absolutely worth your time, and once you dive in, you may find yourself a full-fledged Shrimptech shareholder before you know it.
In 2025, the band released a new (sort of) self-titled album, the latest chapter in just over a decade of cartoonish, hard-hitting rock. Think the raw, cranked-up side of Devo, powered by razor-sharp musicianship and featuring a true frontman for the ages: Sebastian Murphy, whose shapeshifting delivery moves effortlessly between caricature, confrontation, and disarming sincerity.
Alex Cameron – Short King
Alex Cameron. Where do I begin?
An equation might help.
Take the refined, flamboyant charisma of Bryan Ferry, combine it with the sharp lyrical intelligence and comic wit of Randy Newman, and round it out with the absurdist musical sophistication and genre-blurring instincts of Was (Not Was).
The result is, roughly speaking, Australian singer-songwriter Alex Cameron.
Cameron released Oxy Music in 2022, a record that remains one of my most-listened-to albums of all time.
While he didn’t release a full-length album in 2025, he did give us plenty of reason for excitement with the release of a brand new boot-stomping humdinger entitled Short King.
In September, I drove three and a half hours to Pittsburgh to catch Cameron opening for Petey U.S.A., then three and a half hours back to Athens (on a work night!). Cameron packed the set with unreleased material and delivered it with commanding presence—amplified by his duck-walking guitarist’s measured prowl—making the trip worth it.
Superchunk – Songs in the Key of Yikes (Merge)
I coped with my summertime blues by listening obsessively to one of my favorite records from “my youth”: Superchunk’s Majesty Shredding. Much to my surprise and delight, just a few weeks into that Superchunk binge, the universe delivered a brand-new Superchunk album, Songs in the Key of Yikes.
Tracks like Everybody Dies, Care Less, and Is It Making You Feel Something provided all the emotional validation, immersive mood regulation, and aesthetic sadness a girl could hope for.
The Bug Club – Very Human Features (Sub Pop Records)
As a music journalist, I consider it my duty to scour regional festival lineups and report back to you, dear reader, on the bands with the best names. At the 2025 Nelsonville Music Festival, The Bug Club claimed that title outright, with honorable mentions going to Styrofoam Winos and The Dracul_as.
Digging into these Welsh jokesters paid off. I found a discography full of sharp, catchy songs, and I’ve been pitching The Bug Club like this: start with the simple, raw immediacy pioneered by The Velvet Underground, distill it to the strand of that sound you can hear in Belle & Sebastian, then imagine a version of Belle & Sebastian that never takes itself too seriously. That gets you close to The Bug Club.
Bad weather kept me from seeing them perform in Columbus earlier this month, which was a real bummer.