Not a Typo: My Favorite Albums of 2015
Or, the new and laughable frontiers of deadline-free self-publishing
Twenty favorite albums, presented in alphabetical, unranked order. To my credit, I did write 90% of this last year.
Beach House – Depression Cherry
Beach House lyrics are painted with blurry watercolors; you perceive a few recognizable themes and outlines, but mostly just see mesmerizing colors and shapes. The gorgeous Depression Cherry seems to capture passage of time, its inevitability and the multitude of tiny losses it constantly creates. Less overtly “sad” than its title might connote, the album lulls with its gently looping drums and satisfying keyboard arpeggio resolutions, while minor keys and occasional discordant notes suggest a (possibly to-be-transcended) psychological heaviness and unease. Down to the deep red velvet-textured album sleeves, it’s an enveloping, transportive sensory experience.
Choice track: “PPP”
Beach House – Thank Your Lucky Stars
Somewhere, someone has created a personality test for Beach House fans based on their dual 2015 releases: Are You More Thank Your Lucky Stars or Depression Cherry? The latter scoops listeners up and swirls them around a twinkling, iridescent sky, while TLYS skulks around a dusty attic for a while. It’s not a bad thing: That dusty attic is filled with vintage organs, drum machines, and ambiguous scraps of stories. The scene cranks to life most beautifully on the closing track, “Somewhere Tonight,” which conjures elegantly painted carousel horses and tiny mechanical dancing figurines in velvet jewelry boxes.
Choice song: “Somewhere Tonight”
Leon Bridges – Coming Home
There are records influenced by past eras, and then there are straight-up flawlessly faithful re-creations of classic genres that transport you to another time. Coming Home, of course, is the latter, down to backup singers’ vocal style, the album art and audio production. Sung by someone born in 1989, this is classic 1960s soul music to sway and sing along to — it’s effortlessly smooth without ever being bland, sweet without ever being saccharine. It’s unlike anything else I heard this year, but probably an entry point into the history of a rich and previously under-explored genre.
Choice song: “Better Man”
Calexico – Edge of the Sun
Appearing surprisingly infrequently on the major year-end lists, Calexico’s eighth studio album once again transports us to the intriguing American Southwest. These days, the landscape feels more weathered and the mood feels wearier than before. Even on tracks with brightly harmonized pop structures or foot-tapping beats, gnawing anxiety pervades. On the opening track, “Falling From the Sky” an exuberant chorus melody and chiming keyboards belie its alarming central questions: “Where do you go when you have nowhere to fall? Where do you when you have no one to see?”
Choice track: “Tapping on the Line”
Dawes – All Your Favorite Bands
Even as they’ve grown more popular over the past few years, Dawes still seems to suffer from an unfortunate public misperception that music firmly anchored in styles of the past is derivative and boring — or that a laid-back, breezy Southern California mood denotes a lack of gritty spirit and “art” (see: The Eagles, even as Glenn Frey enjoyed some posthumous retroactive appreciation earlier this year). Truth: This is Dawes’ best album yet. The songs feel like instant classics — comfortingly warm and familiar, but wholly original in their detailed stories — and the musicianship has reached new, impressive heights.
Choice track: “Somewhere Along the Way”
Father John Misty – I Love You, Honeybear
Sure, this album might all be a cleverly executed joke. After repeated listens, I still can’t tell you for sure what percentage is earnest and what percentage is ironic. But the smart, hilarious lyrics won me over, whether lead character Mr. Misty is delivering hyper-realistic, pretentious social commentary (or, perhaps, satire of pretentious social commentary?), harping on the misuse of the word “literally” or just expressing genuine love. Musically, it’s a delightful, enthusiastic romp through the 1970s, from sweeping orchestral pop (Electric Light Orchestra!) to gentler, folksier singer-songwriter fare.
Choice song: “The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apt.”
Girlpool – Before the World Was Big
In 2014, I saw Girlpool three times as an opening band and Just Didn’t Get It. Then the video for “Chinatown” appeared. The album version — with its gently dialed-back tempo, muted acoustic guitars, and ever-so-slightly more restrained, hushed vocals — sounded like an older, wearier, wiser incarnation of what I’d heard on stage. Sonically, it really wasn’t that different at all, but it suddenly felt heartbreakingly beautiful and universal. Alas, those raw doubts, anxieties and longings that Girlpool expresses so powerfully throughout this album — whether through blunt statements or well-crafted metaphor — aren’t just for the young.
Choice song: “Chinatown”
Grimes – Art Angels
What is all the fuss about Grimes? My belated investigation came too late for the “indie purist” era of her earlier albums and the fan backlash that apparently accompanied the more mainstream/dance-pop-minded Art Angels, so I can only appreciate this album for what it is: an unique, captivating, and sometimes dizzying collage. There’s a satisfying nearly physical sense of physical collage layers, dominated by rough-edged, ripped-up rainbow construction paper, generous splashes of glitter paint, and enormous canvases scrawled with feathery jet-black ink of a fountain pen.
Choice song: “Flesh Without Blood”
Janet Jackson – Unbreakable
I owe my 2015 rediscovery of Janet Jackson to Mariah Carey. Twenty years before, “Runaway” and “Fantasy” simultaneously dominated top 40 radio for an entire summer, providing my introduction to both artists. Upon finally seeing Queen Mariah in concert, I started wondering what her fellow 1995 ruler was up to. Turns out she had released an excellent album. Unbreakable is heartfelt and irresistibly catchy, energetic yet restrained. It’s the music of a longtime master who’s in command. She doesn’t need to jump on trends; she knows what she (and her legendary songwriting team) can do is more than enough.
Choice song: “The Great Forever”
Lord Huron – Strange Trails
This year, I tried to branch out beyond my usual roots rock/Americana/indie-folk/whatever diet… until discovering another band that fits squarely in those boxes and created a fine 2015 album. Strange Trails is a seamless story. Not only does the atmosphere never allow us to escape the cold, desolate woods, but the music flows continuously from track to track, looping back to familiar melodies. Yes, every song kind of sounds the same. But as as the gripping tale of death, love, ghosts and regret unfolds, the uniformity somehow transforms from a curiosity to a deficiency to a cohesive strength.
Choice song: “Meet Me in the Woods”
The Mynabirds – Lovers Know
Alliteratively, it’s pretty, peppy pop that ponders pressing personal/philosophical perceptions. This surprise gem, discovered late in the year thanks to a year-end roundup on Saddle Creek Records’ email newsletter, got better with every listen. The propulsive, just-layered-enough synths and drumbeats recall 1980s dance music and 1990s top 40 radio in the best possible way, while the lyrical depth and rich vocal tone firmly ground the album. It’s like life truths delivered by a wise and very cool older sister. The perfect soundtrack for hiking a mountain while thinking about love, life and the universe.
Choice song: “Semantics”
Palehound – Dry Food
This album doesn’t sit still. Buzzing with emotion and big guitar chords, it slides through changes in key and tempo, and hits diverse corners of the vast “indie rock” space. There’s some jittery 90s rock, some scratchy and intimate “recorded in my basement” folk, some flourishes of psychedelic pop. But it’s the slightly abstract, off-kilter lyrics that truly encourage repeat listens. Like the words in a stream-of-consciousness novel, they don’t always make sense within each small phrase, but they collectively conjure up fascinating imagery and say something quite memorable.
Choice song: “Easy”
Natalie Prass – Natalie Prass
Any well-crafted, satisfying composition — from a gourmet dish to a perfume – needs balance. Push and pull. What makes this album so pleasing and so unexpected is the contrast between vocals and music. Led by strings and horns, the instrumental arrangements are generously layered and full of dynamic emotion. But her voice remains feather-thin and icily detached, gliding along the surface even as the songs descend into the deepest emotional valleys and soar into the most exuberant, nearly Disney Princess-esque melodies (“It Is You”). “Now she’s really going to belt it,” you keep thinking. And it never happens.
Choice Song: “Bird of Prey”
Josh Ritter – Sermon on the Rocks
What a year for longtime favorite artists to release their best works to date. In contrast to its predecessor — 2013’s inward-facing “divorce record” The Beast In Its Tracks — Sermon on the Rocks is gigantic and expansive (without being grandiose) in music and lyrics. I once read that the most resonant songs deal with The Big Three: love, religion, and time. SOTR doesn’t just grapple with these hemes; it flings them around, then contorts, reveres, flippantly challenges and ultimately celebrates them with driving beats, pure lyrical poetry — alternately dark and wry, literary and gripping — and boundless instrumentation.
Choice track: “Homecoming”
Nate Ruess – Grand Romantic
Not the album if you’re looking for subtlety and/or emotional detachment. Nate Ruess is, as the title helpfully informs us, a Grand Romantic who spends the album wrestling with that identity and the intense feelings that come with it. Exuberant, frenetic, dramatic and conflicted, he swings from proclamations of pure love and lust to confessions of regret to grave concerns about his family and mortality. Musically, the fully built out pop arrangements, complete with enormous, hook-laden choruses and swooping falsetto, harken back to fun.’s showtunes-eque, Queen-influenced and blissfully pre-Autotune era.
Choice song: “Great Big Storm”
San Fermin – Jackrabbit
Classical-influenced, string-heavy, multi-layered pop, with alternating male/female vocals and frequent noisy jolts and minor-key swoops to swerve into a new mood just when things might start feeling too calm or pretty. The evolution of the listening experience reminded me of understanding and appreciating the Dirty Projectors years ago. Are these dissonant bursts just inserted tor the sake of being edgy and avant-garde? Actually, no — they serve a purpose and work as part of the whole artistic composition. Odd, imaginative stories told through unique sounds.
Choice song: “Jackrabbit”
Shamir – Ratchet
The most immediately distinctive feature of this album is Shamir’s voice — a striking countertenor (thank you, NPR, for that educational tidbit). But what drove repeat listens was the winning formula of deceptively dark — if often flippant — lyrics wrapped in bouncy music. Disco and 90s dance-r&b influences lend a party-ready atmosphere until you notice that much like in his native Las Vegas, which appears as a lyrical theme in several tracks, there’s a gritty sadness often buried in this weird and ultimately fake cartoon-happy world.
Choice song: “Call It Off”
Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell
Brutal/beautiful. Sometimes music doesn’t need jagged edges and aggressive claws to slice at your heart. Measured, close-to-the-mic vocals with tightly whispered harmonies float on understated yet complex arrangements led by fingerpicked guitar (cue Elliott Smith echoes) and piano. It’s all as smooth and lovely as a glassy lake in the evening. Serene, even. Until you realize the intensely personal — yet chillingly inclusive — lyrics have left you in tears. Confession: I was scared to even listen to this album until three weeks ago. If I’d started back in March, it’d undoubtedly be #1.
Choice song: “Fourth of July”
Tame Impala – Currents
Rarely can a successful band transition its sound so thoroughly without backlash, but Tame Impala appears to have only increased its stock by making the jump from guitar-driven psychedelic rock to something synth-y, plush and… dance club-ready? Even the trippiest, most satisfyingly squishy tracks, though, can’t cushion the bitingly dark lyrics, which appear to center on the end of a relationship. Turns out that this popular №1 selection on many critics’ lists is actually a really good album and even more impressively when you remember that it was essentially created by one person.
Choice song: “Let It Happen”
Waxahatchee – Ivy Tripp
Call it the Alanis influence. Revisiting Jagged Little Pill this year courtesy of the 20th anniversary reissue sparked a need to listen to the next generation of skilled, fearless ladies with electric guitars, killer songwriting skills, and brutally honest voices. The full spectrum and complexity of universal human emotion, from vulnerability and nostalgia to defiant anger, plays out over the 13 songs. The metaphors and melodies are memorable and novel, yet the experiences feel alternately raw and comforting — and, most of all, familiar. Highlights include the slow, deliberate simmer of powerful closing track “Bonfire” and the bite of “Poison.”
Choice song: “Poison”
