It’s time to reflect on the year in music! This month, we’ll be highlighting Jam of Today’s favourite albums of 2025. Working our way up to the #1 album, which will be revealed on the 31st of December, we’ll go one by one past this year’s favourites. Today, our #23: ‘All In The Game‘ by Moreish Idols.

Me and Moreish Idols go back, way back in time! Or, well… we actually only go back to May 2024, when I met a few of the guys at a record fair in London. I chatted with the lads for a bit followed by me picking up their 12” for EPs ‘Float’ and ‘Lock Eyes and Collide’. Fast forward a year later and we did that exact same thing all over again, except me now picking up their 2025 debut album ‘All In The Game’ instead, a record I have been playing semi-regularly ever since. Here’s my thoughts on that specific record which ended up being my 23rd favourite album of 2025.

Just as their previous works, the London band’s first full-length has been released on the renowned Speedy Wunderground, an infamous label upholding some interesting standards. Some of their so called core values include songs being recorded in 1 day to grab a – as they state it themselves – “snapshot of the day”. Mixing will be done the following day to prevent “over-cooking” and “faff”. Now, I don’t reckon this entire album would’ve been recorded and mixed in a total of two days but most likely the singles off of this album – ‘Pale Blue Dot’, ‘Slouch’ and ‘Dream Pixel’ – will have been, and I like to believe the same goes for most other songs, too. This way of recording certainly highlights the talent of musicians being able to work fast and concise while also being professional without wasting time messing about to overly perfect their output.

The result of this process for Moreish Idols turned out to be a very steady debut album. ‘All In The Game’ isn’t necessarily as rough around the edges as it may sound by ways of my assumptions in the previous paragraph. In fact, most songs sound very slick and tight which leads me to believe this band will have a lot more in store for us in the years to come. Take all rocksteady aforementioned singles as examples. Hell, ‘Dream Pixel’ even has some Radiohead to it, at times. Or what about some other outliers on this album. The slow and gloomy opener ‘Ambergrin’ transitioning into ‘Railway’, before heading to this album’s hit single in its title track. And then there’s ‘ACID’ which sounds like some kind of neo-psychedelic inspired Talking Heads-song. Moreish Idols consistently plays around with being a slightly less exciting Folly Group while also turning into a Windmill-esque melting pot of Squid and (mellow) KEG.

‘All In The Game’ doesn’t bore for a second but it might be an album you need to listen to a few times before being able to make your mind up about what you think of it. Expect a full-length with 11 original pieces of art-like indie rock, each one being able to take you by surprise whenever it feels like it.