Ranking the year’s best albums is always a stressful process argued over many beers, and if we’re at it long enough, many whiskeys. This year, there were many whiskeys, and we ended up with a… different list than a lot of the ones you’ve been reading over the past month or so. We’re proud of that. These are the albums we truly enjoyed most in 2015. The entire internet will tell you to check out the new Kendrick, Grimes, Tame Impala and Sufjan records. We’ve got some of those, but not all of those. Some of our omissions may draw the ire our readers. To paraphrase FDR, “We welcome their ire.”
Just kidding. We’re not VICE.
25) Prurient – Frozen Niagara Falls
LISTEN: “Every Relationship Earthrise”
If I were to tell you that some of the most gorgeous moments in music in 2015 were found on a 91+ minute double noise record, I’d forgive you for calling me a music snob. But they are, and here I am, telling you
about the moment four-and-a-half minutes into Prurient’s “Jester In Agony” when the drum machine comes in unexpectedly and sends chills up my spine. Frozen Niagara Falls is beautiful, and not just in the sick and depraved way harsh noise records tend to be. Case in point: the record is built around “Greenpoint,” a spoken-word song driven by acoustic guitar. There are lush, and even tranquil passages peppered throughout (“Shoulders of Summerstones,” “Cocaine Daughter.”) Most everyone who writes about this record will talk at length about “Greenpoint” and its coda, “Christ Among The Broken Glass,” but for me, the real strength is in demonic new-wave tracks “Dragonflies To Sew You Up” and “Every Relationship Earthrise,” which double as easy entry points into Dominick Fernow’s catalogue.
– Peter Rittweger
24) Vince Staples – Summertime 06′
LISTEN: “Norf Norf”
Summertime ‘06 is the sun-drenched, summertime party record of the year! Um, well maybe not. Staples’ 20-track slow-burner is an indisputably bleak listen, better suited for headphones during a nighttime downpour than a beach party. As with Earl Sweatshirt’s latest, Summertime ‘06 is a claustrophobic listen, but its moodiness never overwhelms its pleasures and for a double album, it’s impressively consistent with no filler or skits. Staples’ style may be understated and low-key, but Summertime ’06 establishes him nonetheless as one of Hip Hop’s most important and original voices.
– Robert Lanham
23) Tame Impala – Currents
LISTEN: “Let It Happen”
Currents was polarizing. Many fans were hoping Tame Impala’s latest would be a 70s-inspired, psych-rock record. A Lonerism Part 2. But this time around one-man-band Kevin Parker ditched the production assistance of Dave Fridmann and swapped out his guitars for synthesizers. The result is a record that’s just as much Prince as it is Floyd. (Incidentally, Parker says he’s more influenced by, um, Supertramp than either, but that’s neither here nor there.) As is to be expected on a Tame Impala record, the songs are filled with reverb and psychedelia, but on Currents we find Parker writing stronger hooks and experimenting with classic 70s and 80s pop. Forget the derivative nostalgia of Leon Bridges, soulful tracks like “The Less I Know the Better” and “Eventually” deliver an R&B sound that’s original and contemporary making Currents Tame Impala’s best record to date.
– Robert Lanham
22) Beach House – Depression Cherry & Thank Your Lucky Stars
LISTEN: “Elegy To The Void”
We didn’t need two records from Beach House this year, but when they are this good, who are we to complain? The first to drop, Depression Cherry, moved the band forward, building on the lush production of Bloom and Teen Dream. Tracks like “Sparks” and “Beyond Love” find the band in shoe-gaze territory reminiscent of Loveless, while “Space Song” is one of the prettiest songs they’ve ever produced. On the other hand, Thank Your Lucky Stars hearkens back to the band’s first two records. It’s a darker, less fussy record – “smaller” and rawer, but no less grand. Definitely a late night listen, Thank Your Lucky Stars won us over with its moody atmospherics and cohesiveness. If we had to choose, we’d say it’s the better of the two, but since this is OUR list, fuck it, we’re not taking sides. We loved them both.
– Robert Lanham
21) Holydrug Couple – Moonlust
LISTEN: “Dreamy”
Chile’s grip as psych-rock leaders strengthened this year with a slew of releases, mostly from Blow Your Mind records and their two flagship bands, The Holydrug Couple and Follakzoid (more on them later), both put out stellar records. Moonlust is the duo’s third album, and their second via New York label, Sacred Bones. There is more focus on texture and keyboards than Pink-Floyd-esque guitars of earlier material, but it’s a move they take in their stride. If you want to relax and bliss out for 40-minutes I can’t recommend a better option than Moonlust.
– Chris Quartly
20) Screaming Females – Rose Mountain
LISTEN: “Triumph”
After 2014’s Live at the Hideout, the New Brunswick trio returned with their 6th studio album; their first in three years with Rose Mountain. Upon release, remarks were made about how this was a more “commercial” Screaming Females record, with Wishing Well leading the album’s promotion, and while that one track (and perhaps the second single, “Hopeless”) might possibly have some mainstream appeal, it doesn’t smack of a band trying to sound popular, they are just good songs. Regardless, the album itself is choc-full of the band’s signature riffs and guitar solos. As an aside, they remain the best live band you can see at the moment, in my opinion.
– Chris Quartly
19) Tenement – Predatory Headlights
LISTEN: “I’m Your Super Glue”
If “punk” means doing whatever you want, then Tenement are the punks of 2015. Releasing an epic 23-song, 74-minute double LP; the band deserves a medal for the sheer number of hooks on this album alone. It’s not all about fist-pumping anthems, however, the Wisconsin trio have crafted a flowing album that also includes piano ballads, a little folk interlude and the downright bizarre 9-minute instrumental “A Frightening Place For Normal People.” Ultimately, Predatory Headlights is an album to just hit play, sit back, and be taken on a ride. If there is a better example of a record showing off pop-songwriting with a fuck-you attitude I have yet to hear it this year.
– Chris Quartly
18) Lightning Bolt – Fantasy Empire
LISTEN: “Mythmaster”
Part of what has made Lightning Bolt one of the most captivating bands over the past couple of decades is the improvisational nature of their music, but Fantasy Empire, the band’s first record actually recorded in a studio, proves that a more focused Lighting Bolt may be the best Lightning Bolt. The meat of the record is the same thing we’ve been consuming since 1994: Black Sabbath on bath salts. The skeleton, however, is radically different; i.e. there is one. Fantasy Empire is far and away the most structured and cohesive record they’ve put out. It feels like there are actual, discernible songs here, instead of a bunch of colorful, interesting ideas thrown at a spirograph. That sounds bad, but it shouldn’t. Lighting Bolt is one of my favorite bands, and its thrilling to hear them channel their awesome mayhem into scorched earth epics like “Snow White (& The 7 Dwarves Fans).” “Mythmaster” sounds like it could be part of the score to an infinitely darker version of It Follows. Sometimes the most radical thing radical bands can do is be more conventional.
– Peter Rittweger
17) Elder – Lore
LISTEN: “Compendium”
While it’s tempting to say that Elder is “vest metal” done right, that would be doing their latest LP, Lore, an incredible disservice. Sure, this is stuff you could thrown on at a dive bar and watch the locals nod along, but it’s also so much more—the entire 45-plus year history of psych, stoner, doom crammed onto a single LP. The sound of a little power trio from Providence reaching the peak of their powers right before your eyes. So come for the songs, as they are spectacular technicolor labyrinths, but whatever you do, stay for frontman Nick DiSalvo’s jaw-slackening six-string performance, easily one of finest put to record this year.
– Coleman Bentley
16) Royal Headache – High
LISTEN: “Carolina”
Melbourne’s Royal Headache have not hidden from the fact that following up 2012’s self-titled album was hard. The number of times the band have broken up, or claimed to have broken up, is numerous. Indeed, they have even said this will probably be their last (although they sounded much more positive in a recent interview in The Big Takeover), all that can be done is see every album or show as a gift. What elevates Royal Headache from just being another good garage-punk band is Shogun’s soulful vocal masterclass, which at times croons, and often punches with a hurt that can’t be faked. While the band are known for their high-energy songs and particularly their hurricane-like live shows, it’s the mournful, “Wouldn’t You Know” and downright infectious, anthemic “Carolina,” that captures the heart of the album.
– Chris Quartly
15) Bell Witch – Four Phantoms
LISTEN: “Suffocation, A Burial: I – Awoken (Breathing Teeth)
I didn’t expect a four track funeral doom record about death by fire, earth, water and wind to be arguably my favorite record of 2015, but then Four Phantoms washed over me in all its calming, introspective glory. It’s definitely best heard as one cohesive piece, but it has done wonders for my nerves commuting on the L train every morning, which usually nets me one of the four tracks. They stand well on their own, and the entire package is surprisingly accessible, even if it’s structured like a Godspeed record with tracks that build slowly and run the length of an entire episode of Seinfeld. The record is never boring, despite its length and the slow, sludgy crawl you get on doom records. It’s an unquestionable technical masterpiece and quite frankly, unbelievable, that such complex sounds are created by a drum and bass duo. Anyone who likes guitar-based music could get down with this, which is more than I can say for most doom records.
– Peter Rittweger
14) Young Guv – Ripe 4 Luv
LISTEN: “Crawling Back To You”
Imagine the power pop side project of a Fucked Up guitarist. Think about everything it would entail—the stadium-enveloping fuzz, the manic solos, a belly-full of Cheap Trick shout-alongs to sweat and drink beer to. Now wipe those preconceptions entirely from your brain. Fragile, glammy, and grounded by the shy tick of a drum machine, the latest output from the Toronto hardcore unit’s Ben Cook is not the album you’d expect in either name (a winking block rap troll) or sound (the sonic equivalent of spilled glitter), but it excels nonetheless, simultaneously subverting expectation and burrowing its way into your heart at each and every turn. Obviously in this line of work, part of the deal is letting people know what to expect, but when it comes to Ripe 4 Luv, we are almost sorry for spoiling the surprise.
– Coleman Bentley
13) Horrendous – Anareta
LISTEN: “Acolytes”
Last year, a few days after Horrendous’s stunning sophomore LP, Ecdysis, landed on the 2014 edition of this list, I came home to an email from the band waiting in my inbox. “Yeah,” they said, “we’d be down to headline a show at The Acheron,” and sure enough, on a bitter January night a few weeks later, they drove out from Philly, blew a smoldering hole in the East Williamsburg Industrial Park, got in their van, and promptly drove back. I mention all of this not to plug our #TOGTE brand, but instead to make one thing very clear: Horrendous are a band who know hard work is part of the deal—the cost of getting to play in a band that regularly draws comparisons to first-three Metallica—and Anareta—their Master of Puppets, for those of you keeping score at home—is that ethos made whole. More technical, more ambitious, and, somehow, still as fist-pumpingly epic as Ecdysis, Anareta has certainly earned such comparisons, but perhaps the more important parallel is that of Nile: A disruptive force that altered the parameters of death metal in the early oughts, transforming it from obsolete relic to industry touchstone in the span of a few short years. That is Horrendous’s true potential, and if they continue pumping out albums this great every year, we won’t have to wait long to watch them eclipse it.
– Coleman Bentley
12) Jim O’Rourke – Simple Songs
LISTEN: “Friends With Benefits”
It’s no surprise that Jim O’Rourke has production chops – he’s produced and played on records by Joanna Newsom, Low, Stereolab, Smog and Low, to name a few. Still, not everyone is aware that O’Rourke is also a great songwriter. That’s why we were delighted to see the release of Simple Songs in 2015, his first collection as a singer-songwriter in more than a decade. O’Rourke’s vocals bring Cat Stevens to mind, but despite the record’s title, the compositions are anything but simple. Standouts like “That Weekend” and “Half Life Crisis” are as rich and textured as you would expect from the man who mixed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and was a member of Gastr Del Sol and Sonic Youth.
– Robert Lanham
11) Slonk Donkerson – The Lunar Martini Motorbike Club And Their Respective Destinies
LISTEN: “Sonata”
What’s in a name? Slonk Donkerson go against the grain where most guitar bands around New York in recent years have concentrated on punk/hardcore/garage rock, the now four-piece align to a more classic rock sound, with hints of Moving Pictures-era Rush sprinkled on top of their initial early-REM/Husker Du/Meat Puppets influence. The band’s keen sense of melody and thoughtful compositions really stand out in today’s climate. These songs would sound equally at home played to a crowd of 50 or 50,000 people. We’re clearly fans of the band, having featured them frequently throughout the year.
– Chris Quartly
10) John Carpenter – John Carpenter’s Lost Themes
LISTEN: “Vortex”
John Carpenter has enjoyed a storied career as one of America’s great cult directors, but his legacy has finally expanded beyond that of a mere schlock God in the eyes of serious film people over the past couple of years. The recent renaissance in indie horror can largely be attributed to his influence, and the crown jewel of the movement, David Robert Mitchell’s instant classic It Follows, has more of Carpenter’s fingerprints on it than some of his own films. The most glaringly obvious similarity between Mitchell’s film and Carpenters’ is Disasterpiece’s incredible score (which warranted consideration for this list, but we decided against including film scores) which is a dead ringer for the dark master’s own minimalist electro scores of the late 70’s and early 80’s. Not to be outdone, Carpenter released his very first full length album, Lost Themes, on Sacred Bones, the go to label for indie directors-turned musicians. As the title suggests, the songs sound like they could be title track themes for hypothetical films, which makes the listening experience a little uneven. It’s not so much an album as it is a bunch of great standalone, dark synth-driven pieces, but each one is devilishly stylish and unmistakably Carpenter. Much like his films, the record was well-received when it came out, but mostly forgotten about outside of a specific group of people. Don’t let time prove you wrong on this one.
– Peter Rittweger
9) Chelsea Wolfe – Abyss
LISTEN: “Carrion Flowers”
It’s been an incredibly strong year for Sacred Bones Records, and Chelsea Wolfe released arguably the best record on the Brooklyn label over the past twelve months. On the criminally underrated Abyss, Wolfe has become more than a pretty decent folk singer with some dark elements; she’s become a pop star for the extreme music zeitgeist. The album’s marriage of dream pop and black metal feels more “of the times” than anything any other pop-minded musician is doing right now. The mainstream press may have finally caught up with Grimes’ weirdo, outsider art pop, but Wolfe’s album sounds like where music is now, rather than where it was a few years ago. Wolfe has always had extreme elements in her music, but the addition of Russian Circles’ Mike Sullivan and production by John Congleton (who has recorded Swans and Explosions In The Sky) have taken her to new, exciting places. Abyss may not be a straight up “metal” record, but it may prove as important to the genre, for better or worse, than Deafheaven’s Sunbather. It certainly feels like a post-Deafheaven record.
– Peter Rittweger
8) Mgła – Exercises in Futility
LISTEN: “Exercises in Futility I”
Exercises in Futility is depressive black metal as the Gods, if you believe in such things (and Mgła certainly don’t), intended it: Cold, unfettered, and nihilistic to a self-destructive extreme. It’s not fun and that’s not the point. It’s beautiful in the same way that funerals sometimes are. It’s the third record from a little-heralded Polish duo whose name no one knows how to pronounce, and yet it’s somehow become one of the most acclaimed, and vital, extreme records of the year. Ignore the hype or believe it, either way, this one is a truly miserable time.
– Coleman Bentley
7) Titus Andronicus – The Most Lamentable Tragedy
LISTEN: “No Future Part IV: No Future Triumphant”
As Titus Andronicus’s fourth, and shamelessly massive, full length, The Most Lamentable Tragedy, makes abundantly clear: There’s not a lot to say about a 29-song rock opera that it hasn’t already said for itself. A five-movement buddy-cop dramedy that tells the tale of a cripplingly depressed protagonist and his doppelgänger who are alike in every respect but disposition, TMLT tackles everything from sepia-soaked rock n’ roll to holiday standards as its characters grow from isolated outliers to reluctant participants in a world they never bargained for. And while it would have been easy for Stickles and co. to ride the coattails of ambition right into concept album purgatory, TMLT escapes such a fate on the back of some truly timeless songs—“Fired Up”, “Dimed Out”, “Fatal Flaw”, to name just a few—that are sure to keep the fires over at [email protected] HQ stoked for years to come.
– Coleman Bentley
6) Föllakzoid – III
LISTEN: “Electric”
Chile, and in particular, Santiago’s blossoming psyche scene has spawned numerous bands that are producing some of the best music of the last decade. Along with The Holydrug Couple, the other premier-league band is the krautrock-influenced Föllakzoid, they wowed me at Rough Trade earlier in the year, and the band’s third album (helpfully titled III) is my personal #1 release of 2015. If you just want to get into an involuntary groove, III will do that; most the songs are long and repetitive pieces that have a pulse. While previous material has had more of a straight-up krautrock 4/4 snare-driven rhythm, III concentrates on the bass drum and toms to create a deeper trance, the bass guitar is like a lullaby that plunges you in deeper, while the guitars and keyboards float in and out, delivering the odd jab. You don’t listen to Föllakzoid, you are a slave to them.
– Chris Quartly
5) Locrian – Infinite Dissolution
LISTEN: “An Index Of Air”
On a hypothetical list of albums that have been unjustly ignored throughout the year, Locrian’s Infinite Dissolution is at or near the top. The most accessible record on the Chicago outfit’s impenetrable bell curve by a wide margin, Infinite Dissolution, whether brooding in some placid dark or cresting with tsunami-like black metal mayhem, deserves all the accolades both its forebearers—such as Isis and Russian Circles—and progeny—anything with the words “black” and “gaze” in the liner notes—receive regularly and en mass. An ancillary vocal approach and protracted ambient passages (see “Index of Air” for a masterclass in build-and-release tension) ensure that will never happen, of course, but metal has never been a popularity contest, and the fact you’re digging through a local blog’s yearly best-of just to find something new to listen to is proof—should high school not have been enough—of that and more.
– Coleman Bentley
4) Protomartyr – The Agent Intellect
LISTEN: “The Devil In His Youth”
There were a few great post-punk records this year (the Viet Cong record and Institute’s Catharsis come to mind) but none matched the songwriting prowess of Protomartyr’s The Agent Intellect. It’s one of those albums like Parquet Courts’ Light Up Gold where literally any song could be your favorite song because the hooks are so strong. “The Devil In His Youth” is my personal favorite, with “The Hermit” close behind. Some may find Joe Casey’s drunken, disaffected middle-aged English teacher schtick offputting, but to me, he’s a more nihilistic Craig Finn, and everyone loves Craig Finn, right? Finn always delivered his lines too much like a goofball Bruce Springsteen for my liking, but he made up for it with charm and clever lyrics. Casey’s delivery, is more declarative and powerful, which resonates better on record. It’s more in my wheelhouse, and I’d argue more in everyone’s wheelhouse. From a pure listenability standpoint, this is arguably the best album of the year and a worthy addition to the post-punk cannon.
– Peter Rittweger
3) Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell
LISTEN: “Should Have Known Better”
Carrie & Lowell, much like Sun Kil Moon’s 2014 opus, Benji, is cut from an exceedingly rare, and fragile, cloth—a record born out of tragedy that isn’t going out of its way to be tragic. Telling the story of the Michigan songsmith’s troubled mother and the step-father who helped to raise him, this one isn’t, in the immortal words of Jeff Tweedy, trying to break your heart, it’s simply stringing out a difficult narrative with whatever fleeting moments, blurry snapshots, and bracing confessions it has left. Fittingly, the accompaniment to such material is spare—a direct homage to 2004’s minimalist classic, Michigan—but Steven’s unforgettable hooks and magpie-like love of glimmering electronics are still omnipresent, propping up Carrie & Lowell even as everything threatens to come crumbling down around it.
– Coleman Bentley
2) Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit
LISTEN: “Nobody Cares If You Didn’t Go To The Party”
This is the quintessential indie (in the all-encompassing sense of the word) album of the year. The record is a literate success, taking you to places you haven’t been or experiences you haven’t had and yet feeling like you have, made even more personable with a masterful take on various universal themes; a line like “I don’t know quite who I am, oh but man I am trying. I make mistakes until I get it right” could sound all a bit too emo in lesser hands. The music itself is no slouch either, with driving rockers like “Pedestrian at Best” and “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go to the Party” mixed up with the slow folk-jangle of “Depreston” and the epic blues of “Small Poppies.” I was enthralled the power-trio live show at Bowery, and I’d make an argument that you only come away with a deeper appreciation for the record after seeing her perform.
– Chris Quartly
1) Earl Sweatshirt, I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside: An Album By Earl Sweatshirt
LISTEN: “AM // Radio”
One record released this year expertly captured the crushing feeling of our collective hopelessness, and that’s Earl Sweatshirt’s agoraphobic I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside: An Album By Earl Sweatshirt. The record feels like a product of, not a reaction to the times. It’s apolitical, unlike last year’s consensus album of the year Run The Jewels II or Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly. Earl’s game is more cerebral and human than an impassioned call to action. As he told Grantland’s Rembrandt Brown earlier this year “I don’t know if it was a gift or curse, but for me it’s that I had to fucking find myself. That’s why I told the homies, whatever nuances I’m not feeling with a Kendrick [Lamar]–type album, I’m still so thankful for his position because he’s doing that work so that fools like me can still find myself. I just don’t do it in the same way as Kendrick. Kendrick is so explicit in the way that that n---- writes. Like, it’s so explicit. He’s the opposite of mystery; everything is fully spelled out. But it’s in [an] Everyman’s language. You can really, really understand it. It’s sophisticated but it doesn’t take a lot to understand what he’s talking about. And everyone can read it, so it’s like … it gives me room to find myself.”
His approach is refreshing. Earl Sweatshirt isn’t sitting down and eating fried chicken with Bernie Sanders, not that there’s anything wrong with that. We need rappers to do that, but we have those already. He can’t do it anyway. He’s holing himself up in his bedroom and creating existential masterpieces, because the rest of the world is hopeless. We don’t have many rappers doing that right now.
If RTJ II is our generation’s It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, then the new Earl record is our Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde. It’s inwardly focused and deeply confessional in a way that rap music usually isn’t, just like “Passin’ Me By” was. It won’t get anyone fired up, and no one is going to dance to any of it, but it’s intimate and relatable on a personal level. The scant, minimal production enhances the mood. There’s no room for bombast or any other rappers except for Wiki, on “AM//FM.” Who else but Earl himself could rap about missing his grandmother? When the dust settles I believe IDLSIDGO will go down as the best emotional rap album from this generation. IDLSIDGO feels more real than anything a cartoon character like Drake could ever write. It’s more mature than anything his former (?) compatriot Tyler, The Creator has managed to date, and he’s quickly leaving him in the dust. Earl Sweatshirt was always the top prospect on the OFWGKTA farm team anyway; the can’t miss prodigy with the weight of tremendous expectations on his shoulder. A lot of the stress from that weight served as inspiration on this record, and its therapy has enabled him to realize his full creative potential. He’s lived up to the hype, so maybe he can breathe easy now.
– Peter Rittweger