The Best Albums of 2015

Of all my post-mission years of making end-of-year albums lists, I think I've cared about this year the least. I followed the music scene intently. Heard some great stuff. Even bought a couple new albums. But I realize my opinion is susceptible to change in the future. It always does.
Compared to 2015, I think there have been more memorable releases when it come to a year as a whole, in the last few years. I feel like everything I heard throughout the year was overshadowed by the year's obvious #1 album. This is unfair, but it's also true. I read lots of different publications, but the only reviews I follow religiously are usually The Needle Drop, maybe Pitchfork and sometimes Tiny Mix Tapes. If there's some great music out there that none of these 3 publications approved, I probably never listened to it. Sorry :( Fill me in!!!

The Most Honorable of Honorable Mentions
These are pretty great albums. I mean, when I admit I'm just too picky. I listen to these and hear some great tracks placed right next to total duds, and as good as some of the stuff here is, I'm often frustrated thinking about it. "WHY??? WHY DID THEY DO THAT???" Anyways, I generally recommend this stuff, although I may not be listening to much of it in my future.

+ Vince Staples Summertime '06
I love this guy's straightforward rap approach. This album just isn't a consistently enjoyable hour.
+ Courtney Barnett Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit
I love this girl's lyrical personality so much! But her garage rock often comes off lax and dry.
+ Protomartyr The Agent Intellect
I like the purist post-punk sound enough, but the singer often underwhelms.
+ Drake If You're Reading This It's Too Late
DRAKE! I BELIEVE IN YOU! The first part of this album is GREAT! Interesting, powerful, dark, basic. Why do you keep returning to your "trademark" style of lazy, drunken, false alt-R&B? It still sucks! You have so much potential! This is your best album! BUT WHY???

The 25 Best Albums of 2015

25 Alabama Shakes Sound & Color

This isn't nearly as corny as their last album. It keeps the same garage sound, only darker. Reminds me 2000's Jack White alt-rock, but with an amazing lead singer.










24 Travi$ Scott Rodeo

I actually like how these songs are divided into super different sections; very interesting and dark. But no, you probably won't like this album.










23 Viet Cong Viet Cong

Almost as good Women!
(you either understood that or you didn't)











22 Neon Indian Vega Int'l Night School

Neon Indian surprised me! It's super fun and sounds great at 1am!











21 Algiers Algiers

These guys fuse post-punk with gospel music. It sounds spooky, and it's the soul music within that does the trick. I'd love to hear them do Abattoir Blues covers. 










20 Joey Bada$$ B4.DA.$$

Do you like 90s New York rap? I do.












19 Matana Roberts Coin Coin Chapter Three: River Run Thee

Avant-garde jazz... like... "Matana plays saxophone and says (chants?) some random spoken-word stuff behind some brash noise, non-stop for one hour" avant-garde.










18 Zs Xe

I discovered these guys via Tiny Mix Tapes. I highly recommend their 2010 album New Slaves. This album reminds me of early stuff from Battles. Weird, artful, kinda fun.










17 Ought Sun Coming Down

Ought can never escape the fact that they'll always sound like a distinct mix of 80s post-punk bands. But they really take the cake here; more Mission of Burma and Sonic Youth influence.










16 Open Mike Eagle A Special Episode (EP)

I think this might be ranked too high, but if you haven't tried it yet, try it out! It's sick!











15 Dr. Dre Compton

I knew I'd like it, whether I liked it or not.
Over-produced? Come on, people. He's still Dre.











14 Chelsea Wolfe Abyss

It's like a Physical Graffiti for goth rock. Which sounds better than you'd think.











13 Prurient Frozen Niagara Falls

I really don't know much about industrial music. In fact, is that even what this classifies as? I think it's "ambient/electronica" covered in silky black blood and buzzing drills.










12 Death Grips The Powers That B

Disc 1 gives me a headache. Disc 2 deserves a spot in the top 10! You can tell why they used to open for Nine Inch Nails. And if you know Trent Reznor, you'd know why Death Grips pretended to break up for the sole reason of ditching their tour with Nine Inch Nails. Anyways-- they've ditched "rap" but kept their experimentation alive. Has music in common with Ex-Military.






11 Joanna Newsom Divers

I like the direction Joanna Newsom took on this album. She needed a more direct, accessible set of songs in her catalog. And this isn't "selling out," it's just more easy to enjoy.









10 Jamie xx In Colour

I've never liked The xx! So overrated! I wanted to hate this album. But it's consistently enjoyable. When it comes to matching a year to a "sound," I've wondered if this album will go down as the exampling sound of 2015. It has this very crisp, modern production to it. And the songs are as colorful as the album cover.








9 FKA Twigs M3LL155X (EP)

These 5 songs are as great as any song from her LP2 debut. The rhythms are weird, the instrumentation is... questionable made up from actual instruments. Her voice is on point-- it's hard to find this much vocal emotion in an EP. It's dark, it's sexy, I can rock this shizz all day.








8 Destroyer Poison Season

My most biased placing on this list. I love Destroyer. And this album was a surprise to me. Most of the music/instrumentals here strikes me as a soundtrack to 60s metropolitan England, but he peppers some Bruce Springsteen and some funk here and there. Lyrically, you can tell Dan's getting old. He's full of exquisite, aging memories. He's still got it!






7 Sufjan Stevens Carrie & Lowell

I have a love-hate relationship with this album. The fact that I ever actually love it sometimes must mean something though, cuz I'm pretty picky. He sings about birds too much. Nobody cares about birds. And the last song is pretty boring.
Anyways, this album is the ghost of Sufjan's youth speaking his mind through an Elliott Smith overdub machine. And "No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross" is a great track.





6 Bjork Vulnicura

It's hard to rank Bjork in any given list. She's done better than this. Critics often use this as a way to overlook the fact that she's still better than everybody else out there.
This is arguably her biggest production; her most "baroque" album. It's also her "breakup" album, making for some discomforting and heartbreaking moments here. Her voice is still gold. And you can tell she worked darn hard composing these tracks.





5 Kamasi Washington The Epic

The hardest album to rank.
Jazz music is hard to make. But I have to think: among jazz musicians, is this anything big? I feel like I don't know enough about modern jazz to critique this album fairly.
But listen: It's 3 albums (3 hours!) of pure jazz-fusion. Most of these songs are super complex, heavily produced and include countless instruments. There's a cosmic feel to it all around. Can I judge how "talented" it is? Not fairly. But it sounds friggin great, which is why all these other albums are on here,
Kamasi wins.


4 Julia Holter Have You in My Wilderness

Julia Holter always gets some critical acclaim, but it's been hard to tell how her work sounds amidst other artists in the scene; she rarely stands out in a playlist. This new album, however, comes with a very distinctive baroque sound. The lyrical imagery takes me to some mysterious place; a mystified, 1910's gray-sky ocean-side town created by Julia herself. The string arrangements are gorgeous, and any accompaniment is delicate and airy. This music is "light," but far from "lightweight."




3 Oneohtrix Point Never Garden of Delete

In my Team Management class this week, we were talking how modern technology and teamwork approaches has made things easier for us to accomplish harder business projects more efficiently. We have enough resources to produce business miracles.
It's 2015 and there's no reason why we can't make albums like Garden of Delete. Just like the old days of music, all you have to do is actually work hard. The songs here twist every minute like a symphony, and these turns are always unpredictable. The synth sounds are as modern as any high-budget EDM artist, only 0pn actually works on crazy production dynamics and unrepeatable arrangements. It's 2015 most enigmous album.


2 Father John Misty I Love You, Honeybear

Falling in love is the greatest thing that can ever happen.
I wasn't really a fan of the first Father John Misty album and came to this album 100% doubtful. From the very beginning, I was blown away. Josh Tillman is a tortured artist; a skeptic, depressed 34 year-old man. He shakes off his title as "former Fleet Foxes drummer" and replaces it with "your favorite singer-songwriter." His lyrical personality is lovable, his voice is totally identifiable, his songs are catchy, his arrangements are thick... this album was love at first listen. This will go down as one of the great Sub Pop releases.
Singing mostly about his wife (or having sex with his wife), he goes over every topic imaginable without straying from the central point. Some of my new all-time favorite love songs: "I Love You, Honeybear," "Chateau Lobby #4," "Holy Shit," "I Went to the Store One Day." And oh yeah, outside of love, "Bored in the USA" is classic.

1 Kendrick Lamar To Pimp a Butterfly

...I've written an entire separate blog post dedicated to this album. So instead, I'll water it down:
-Kendrick Lamar grew up in the hood of Compton, CA
-Kendrick Lamar became reasonably famous
-Kendrick Lamar suffers from depression under the thumb of the jaded, racist, American commercial industry
-Kendrick Lamar is humbled
-Kendrick Lamar bands his people together to defeat the external and internal evils against them
-Kendrick Lamar says all this solely metaphorically
-Kendrick Lamar is a genius, but more so proud of his heritage