Mason’s Favorite Albums of 2015
Caveats:
1) I’m too old and poor to try and hear everything anymore. I missed a lot of good records I know I’d love, but my attention has been focused elsewhere. I buy what I like, and sometimes fate brings me new music that I find I like too.
2) I didn’t even get to hear everything that I do like. High on Fire and Paradise Lost are two of my all-time favorites, but I didn’t get around to either of their albums this year. No doubt they’d be on this list if I had a chance to dig in further but somehow I haven’t.
3) This is a snapshot of December 2015. Catch me on a different day and I’ll be talking about different records.
4) I consume most of my music in the car or, more often, while running. That means I favor up-tempo records with strong melodies and rhythms. I appreciate other music, too, but my running means I’ve got a bias that’s reflected here.
With that:
15) Nadastrom “The Life And Times Of Raphael De La Ghettó”
This free mixtape may come off as trite — the entire thing uses samples from an early episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air in which Will Smith invents street poet Raphael De La Ghettó to impress women. It makes a fun foundation for a mostly instrumental mixtape that blends funk breaks with hip-hop. It’s light, breezy and terrific when one of its tracks pops up during a run.
14) Lil’ B x Chance the Rapper “Free (The Based Freestyle Mixtape)”
Much like the Nadastrom effort, this mixtape came as a free download and is based around a simple concept — in this case Lil’ B and Chance the Rapper freestyling an album’s worth of tunes. To me it sounded fun on paper but I expected it to lag in execution. Instead, it works because of its low-stakes conceit. The mistakes and flubs are in some ways the best parts of the mixtape, and they’re often followed by some of its tightest, crispest lines. Too, the spontaneity leaves room for genuinely moving moments. Inspirational.
13) V/A “The Red Line Comp
The latest harDCore revival crystallizes on this 12-track compilation featuring a variety of DC punk bands, including a few which share members. I found each track’s quality surprisingly consistent, with Red Death, Genocide Pact, Semper Eadem and Pure Disgust standing out.
12) Dave Rawlings Machine “Nashville Obsolete”
Disclosure: The pairing of Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch have proved especially important to my wife and I. We saw the pair play the day we found out she was pregnant with our first child, and we caught the Dave Rawlings Machine when it toured with founding Zep member John Paul Jones on mandolin. I was initially a little underwhelmed with these songs as a whole, but they’ve got growing power, so we’ll see how I feel in a few years.
11) Myrkur “M”
Pretty straight-forward black metal, with few frills except for atmospheric female vocals, which actually do quite a bit to make this extremely listenable.
10) Paradise Lost, “The Plague Within”
Paradise Lost has excelled in this late-career stage. “The Plague Within” continues a stretch of excellent doom/death records the last several years.
9) Tribulation “The Children of the Night”
What if Dissection was a jam band? I feel like “The Children of the Night” sort of answers that question. It’s throwback black/death metal that’s not afraid to stretch out a bit.
8) Dead to a Dying World “Litany”
Dead to a Dying World mashes up a bunch of stuff I love — crust, black metal, doom — into a ghoulish goulash that somehow exceeds the sum of its parts.
7) Baroness “Purple”
Baroness’s post-van crash comeback album came out really late in the year, so I’m still deciding how much I really like it. I don’t know it quite tops “Blue” as a cohesive whole, but some of the songs here are really strong, especially “Chlorine & Wine.” If you like southern sludge a la Mastodon and Kylesa, this is a must-hear album.
6) Vivisick “Nuked Identity”
This appeared on my radar solely due to Tankcrimes promo emails, but I’m so glad it did. Japanese hardcore with tons of oi gang vocals, it comes off like a modern-day Youth Brigade (SoCal version) but with plenty of digressions.
5) Bjork “Vulnicura”
My favorite Bjork albums tend to be slow builders. I’ve *still* not yet fully processed “Vulnicura,” but I can definitely say that it contains longtime elements of Bjork’s best records, processed & composed in a way that feels new and fresh. No doubt in coming years I’ll continue to rediscover this album and love it even more than I do now.
4) Death Karma “The History Of Death & Burial Rituals part I”
My favorite metal album of the year. Brutal black metal with lots of melody and world music flourishes. I loved Cult of Fire’s last couple of records; this album shares members and influences, but comes off completely different and maybe even more epic.
3) Appalachian Terror Unit “We Don’t Need Them”
“We Don’t Need Them” is really my platonic ideal so far as albums go. Beautiful design, lyrics about real-world issues and crusty punk w/ male & female vox that never lets up. Sure, ATU paints a world of black & white — instead of the multi-colored hues in which we really live — but sometimes that’s a perfect fit for how I’m feeling.
2) Anna & Elizabeth “Anna & Elizabeth”
The most listened to album of the year, due in part to our preschooler’s A&E fandom. Beyond that status, however, Anna & Elizabeth have pushed what’s known as “traditional” music ever forward, weaving hypnotic versions of centuries-old songs. I’ve listened to this album at least one hundred times by now, I’d say, and it still hasn’t gotten old.
1) Kendrick Lamar “To Pimp a Butterfly”; Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment “Surf”
Yes, this is a total cheat. There’s a good reason why I paired these two records together, however, and it’s not just because they’re both state-of-the-art hip hop. In many respects, I hear these two albums as twins that share many, many similarities and yet some crucial differences.
Both are uncompromising artistic statements that infuse jazz with hip hop for a timeless yet forward-looking sound. But they operate in very different ways.
“To Pimp A Butterfly” represents the vision of one man using many voices and viewpoints to create a multi-faceted vision of America, circa 2015. It’s incredibly dense and deliberately fucks with the listener, breaking up otherwise catchy songs with free jazz and poetry slam riffs. It’s impossible to listen to casually, with repeated, building 2Pac poem fragments and enough use of the n-bomb to make white listeners feel guilty for listening. And yet, it kept pulling me back, again and again throughout the year. I felt simultaneously attracted and repulsed by “To Pimp A Butterfly,” and I have a feeling that’s the effect Kendrick Lamar was going for.
“Surf,” meanwhile, uses a cornucopia of contributors for a group jam that still feels cohesive and singular. Chance the Rapper’s easygoing charisma shines through every track on which he appears, and guests such as Busta Rhymes sound invigorated and inspired. “Surf” was the soundtrack to summer barbecues and hang sessions, even while featuring spacey free jazz tracks itself. To me, “Surf” is the sound of hanging out. It’s inviting where “To Pimp A Butterfly” is intimidating.
The two perfectly complement one another, yet sound completely different. Taken together, they’re my two favorite albums of the year.
