This has been the first full month of my commitment to rating and slating as much of this year's music as possible, and I have a feeling it will be one of the easiest. I have been pleasantly surprised at the amount of releases I've wanted to to listen to this month, and better still the amount I have genuinely enjoyed. I actually haven't listened to everything I wanted to this month, and there may be some I look back on in a quieter month and kick myself for not adding. There's not been too many big hitters releasing this month, and that's left it open for other artists to come in and populate the top 5 with original sounds that some of you may be completely unaware of. I'm really into my top 3, all candidates for a top 20 spot at the end of the year. Each month I'll be ranking at least a top 5 with a video under The Best. Anything else I listened to falls under The Rest. I'm gonna also have a Dud section for truly awful records. None that I listened to were that poor this month, but we might get one in February... The Rest: The Black Queen - Fever Daydream - B Electronic/Ambient David Bowie - Blackstar - B Experimental Pop I know some of you are spitting feathers at me for this right now, but I just don't get this one. Blackstar is meant to be Bowie's last will and testament, the final monologue from seminal artist, but it falls short in so many ways. The music lacks any kind of cohesive direction. It's so hard to fit this in a genre, and not in a good way. The whole thing is grey slush with a few noodlings every once in a while. The intro and title track is 10 minutes long, and nothing happens for the first 5. This trend continues throughout Blackstar to form a whole lot of unsatisfying hot air. Bowie's voice had been ravaged by his illness and is presented to us through a heavy vocoder effect throughout the entire album. That's kind of cool and quirky for a while, but for 40 minutes? No sale. Lyrically, Blackstar is so abstract it hardly makes any sense. The album attempts a zenith with the ending duo of Dollar Days and I Can't Give Everything Away but it's so lethargic that it never gets there. It's a habit of most music listeners to give undue credence to releases from a legendary artist just by virtue of them being so exalted, but that seems to be the only praise this release can muster. One for the purists only. Hinds - Leave Me Alone - C Garage Rock/Indie Ignite - A War Against You - C Melodic Hardcore Savages - Adore Life - C Post Punk/Indie/Alternative Saul Williams - MartyrLoserKing - B Saul Williams is Death Grips for the more subtly-minded. He has a unique style of whispered poetry/accusatory shouting over heavy repetitive motifs that lends him some clout. Williams dips into many different forms on Martyr, but never settles. Each song feels like a bridging track in the middle of an album. You're always waiting for it to start, but it never does. The constant need to make a point gets grating after a while, as does the boisterous vocal shouting. His earlier work covers all musical styles and lyrical themes presented on Martyr, so this is superfluous. It's not a bad album, but it offers nothing new. Villagers - Where Have You Been All My Life? - C Indie/Folk The Best: 01: Adrian Younge - Something About April II - A Soul/R 'n B/Pop/Funk Adrian Younge is part of an exciting scene is Los Angeles, that of the journeymen of local music. This album is neither Soul, nor Hip-Hop, it is neither Pop, nor Funk, yet it is all of those and more at once. Younge hits the quad-point of these styles all the way through Something About April II, pushing out lilting gold nuggets of music. Each song is accessible and radio-friendly, yet deep and creative enough to keep repeated listens a must. April is barely 30 minutes long. You can plug this in for your commute and it'll be done while you're still on the tube. Anderson .Paak released a similar effort earlier this month with Malibu, (see below) and while that has some wonderful melodies and songs, the length is a little prohibitive and some of the tunes can get commercial and samey. Not so with April. This album keeps rewarding with welcome ear worms, a full cadre of back up musicians and other lead singers expand the music far beyond the reach of any other record in terms of style, mood and form I've heard this month. It's smooth, it's funky, it's dirty, it's exciting, and it's everything L.A has to offer right now.
02: Mystery Jets - Curve Of The Earth - A Alternative/Progressive/Post-Rock Mystery Jets have been firmly off my radar for almost a decade. They were one of those names that popped up from time to time, supporting bigger bands and getting sage nods from Indie aficionados whenever their moniker was mentioned. This is their 6th album, but the first I've ever listened to. I'm glad I did, because Curve Of The Earth is a superb record. This is emotional and epic. Curve is soaring, feedback-laden guitars, anthemic choruses and melodic hook lines everywhere, with a couple of ballads in there to spruce it up. The songs are almost all in excess of 4 minutes, but never get too long or outstay their welcome. Mystery Jets have so many sounds and musical progressions in their palate, it's a real effort from them to keep this album at 41 minutes, the perfect length for Curve to be. But keep it they do, and their ideas are ripping apart the edges of Curve minute after minute. Top pick for me is Midnight's Mirror, but check out the video for Telomere:
03: Anderson .Paak - Malibu - A
Hip-Hop/Soul/R 'n B
04: Bloc Party - Hymns - B Indie/Alternative Dance Bloc Party have formed and changed subtly over the years. Intimacy was a flashpoint of divide for their fan base, the band choosing an alternative downbeat direction to contrast their early career Indie sensibilities. This would eventually prove a solid decision, as it extended their material's reach and longevity, making sure Bloc Party didn't die out after The Mid-00's Indie/Garage Rock Revival ebbed away. Kele Okereke's song writing has matured brightly over the past decade-and-a-bit. His mood on Hymns is always upbeat, even on the quieter pieces. Most of the songs are about love, in different guises. The Love Within and Only He Can Heal Me are about Okereke's relationship with god, while Exes, Virtue and My True Name are impassioned, tender messages to a lover. The band are in a solid groove of their own, all the while nodding to their heroes and contemporaries with musical cues. The Good News is my top pick from Hymns, check out the late-career-Blur-esque guitar lick on that one:
05: Daughter - Not To Disappear - B Alternative Pop/Indie
That's that for January, I'm looking forward to the rest of 2016, but I've already got some great shouts for the end of year top picks. As always, tell me what you think, am I right, wrong or just plain daft? See you in a month.
Here it is. Top 20 albums of 2015. Read 'em and weep.
A quick note on my rating system can be found here.
As this post is already about 4 miles long, I'm not gonna do an intro. Just the list. Agree or disagree? Let me know:
20: Panda Bear - Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper - (B)
Psychedelia/Jazz/Electronic Pop
19: Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell(B)
Acoustic Folk/Singer-Songwriter
Haunting, emotional and personal. This album has topped many critic's lists, but I feel that it doesn't showcase all of Stevens' abilities and talents. It's almost impossible to write music of this quality when it's just one guy and a guitar, and sometimes this album feels samey. Nevertheless, his lyrical quality and songmanship shine through on a stark record of reflection, love and loss. Some of this is beige wallpaper, some is tear-jerkingly emotional. It all melds together nicely and flows on down the stream.
18: Squarepusher - Damogen Furies - (B)
EDM/Drill 'n Bass/Electronic
17: Faith No More - Sol Invictus(B) Art Rock/Experimental Metal/Symphonic
16: Foals - What Went Down(B)
Indie/Alternative
15: Czarface - Every Hero Needs A Villain(B)
Hip-Hop
The sleeper record of 2015. I don't think I've seen this on anyone's best-of. Such a shame, as Inspectah Deck, one of the unsung heroes of the Wu-Tang empire brings a full force of intelligent rap, paired with 7L and Esoteric across simple, 90's-era beats. The pace and veracity of Lumberjack Match is a clear highlight, the live guitar and big keys samples urgently mixing a scandalous flow. Effortless. With guest spots from MF Doom, GZA and Method Man, this one is a truly spinnable throwback to the 2nd Golden Age of Hip-Hop.
14: Tame Impala - Currents(B) Indie/Electronica/Pop
Advert-friendly smooth-edged Antipodean indie darlings push out an ambitious sea change for their One After The Big One record. Far more introspective than their previous try-outs, with an emphasis on the vocals and lyrics over long-winded soundscapes this time around. Synths are everywhere in this album; there's an 80's feel to a lot of the music. Most of the songs are based around lead-dude Kevin Parker's failed relationships, with a hopeful and often comical take on love and romance.
I absolutely love The Less I Know The Better, a marching 3 minute pop splurge and also Yes I'm Changing and Let It Happen, the huge intro tidal wave. Hands up who checked to see if their MP3 was skipping during that last one? Cause I'm A Man is the dud on here, with corny simplistic lyrics and an arcane feel of "When men were men" about it.
This feels a lot more personal and is a cold winter compared to the sunny bleached-out summer tones of their previous efforts. Kevin Parker is virtually a solo artist on Currents, which can be restrictive at times.While there are high points here, and the music is subtly complex, the record ends with a feeling of "Oh, was that it?" Lonerism is still the zenith.
13: Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress(B) Post Rock/Ambient
12: Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit(A) Indie/Folk Rock
A long-awaited debut from one of Australia's most promising singer/songwriters, Sometimes I Sit... is full of stories, ideas, moods and shapes, and has sat happily (and deservedly) in many end-of-year lists. Barnett takes storytelling to an effortless level. It feels like she's sat on the sofa next to you the whole time. The songs are hewn from personal experience, Barnett leading her band through tales of road trips, breaking up friendships and dreamy lyrical garden-paths.
Depreston is the top pick, to a sparse guitar backing Barnett loses herself in the emotion of buying a house from a deceased old couple, and wading through the fact that an entire lifetime was spent there. The lyrics to this record have a "less is more" concept, reading back on some songs I can't believe how short they look in text, but that's just evidence of great storytelling.
Some deep moments knock you sideways, and there are enough hooks here to keep a wandering mind interested, but what strikes me about this one is that you could put it on in the background and do the washing up or drift away on the bus with it coming through your ears, listening to every word. An album that brings more than the sum of it's parts.
11: Swervedriver - I Wasn't Born To Lose You(B) Shoegaze/Indie
10: Sleater-Kinney - No Cities To Love (A) Indie/Alternative
In a year of average comeback records (Blur and Libertines, anyone?) Sleater-Kinney's first full length in a decade bursts out the gate with the energy of their previous albums. It's like they stepped out the room for just a moment, you know. The return of the underground indie queens is acutely catchy, with impeccable pacing throughout. Every song on this album runs around in your head for days after each listen. I found myself humming the melody to the title track for weeks after 2 listens.
One top moment on this album is Hey Darling, both exciting and mournful. Lead vocalist Corin Tucker's lament is savoury and sweet all at once: "It seems to me, the only thing/That comes from fame is mediocrity." That's starkly honest, and either a stab at their contemporaries or an admission of failure. I hope it's the former, because this is a superb record. Songs such as Price Tag and No Anthems triumphantly soar along, and never let up or get dull.
The levels are up to the ceiling for the whole run through, and 30 minutes is just about enough. A good quality of production and sequencing is knowing when to stop before it gets too much, and No Cities... ends right at the time you want it to push out for another 2 minutes. Just right. A solid comeback.
09: Between The Buried And Me - Coma Ecliptic(B) Progressive Metal/Death Metal
Complex, precise and layers everywhere. This one shocked me with the quality of the songwriting and musicianship. Wins the award for Most Pretentious Album Title of 2015. These guys have been around for a while now, and with plaudits from such high overlords of Metal as Dreamtheater, they should be churning out riff-fests like this for years to come.
Some of the songs on here need a lot of patience, one of my top picks is The Ectopic Stroll, which jerks through several different levels of crazy, with 2 separate time signatures that are switched unpredictably. The psychotic piano intro with the swaggering guitar hook grooves out for 2 minutes before all hell breaks loose. The genius in this song is how they push your head under the water and only let it surface back again for that intro hook.
This needs several listens to bed in, so give it time. If you do, Coma Ecliptic opens up layer after layer of reward, and testifies to the kinship of a band who have been making music together since 2000. The Coma Machine is by far the best song on this record, but Youtube says no-no, so The Memory Palace, a 10 minute behemoth is your homework:
08: Blanck Mass - Dumb Flesh(B)
Techno/Beats/Industrial
Benjamin John Power of the offensively-titled Drone group Fuck Buttons took a bit of time out in 2015 to carve out this pounding assault, and the result was the tight bundle of skin and tendons we call Dumb Flesh. I'm not too up on my dance music genres guys, so please tell me if I'm wrong, but this is some hard-ass Techno, right? It's got piston-pressured synth cymbals all over it, balancing out the beats with an Industrial influence. The best dance music is one you envision traversing a crowded club floor while listening, and this does just that. Dumb Flesh is an octahedron crystal, pulsating condensed raw energy out into the blackness of space. There might be lasers, but you can't touch them, because the beat is pounding your heart off-kilter. The obvious centrepiece and quintessence is Dead Format, coming with all the fuzz and fury of the other 7 tracks. My personal favourite from this album is Atrophies, a welcome switch-up to a softer, kinder sound in the album's mid-section.
I listened to this one on a whim. A friend of mine is obsessed with dance music, and urged me to give it a chance. After 1 minute of Dead Format, I was fiending. The sound created is that paradox of 90's Techno-Futurism - We all thought this was how the world would be 25 years hence, but now that futuristic sound is dated to the pre-millennial era and coated in nostalgia. That's entirely a good thing, though. Big tunes and big beats make repeated spins of Dumb Flesh a breeze.
07: Tyler, The Creator - Cherry Bomb (A) Hip-Hop/Soul/R 'n B/Alternative Hip-Hop
Our misunderstood friend Tyler has been the source of several waves of controversy and hype over the past few years. The most mainstream-friendly of the Odd Future gang, Tyler's psychotic shape-shifting in his earlier releases earned him a reputation as a shock artist. Yonkers was his statement and breakthrough, painting a picture of a next-gen bizarro-Kanye, and though his work has been lauded for it's overall quality, Tyler has also been tarred with the gimmick brush.
Cherry Bomb is a little different. This is Tyler's mature release, his coming of age. Cherry Bomb plays delightfully, like switching through radio stations while cruising down the freeway. Tyler is a rapper first and foremost, but he has his fill of Soul and R 'n B sections here too, which add levels of depth. This album warrants multiple plays and will keep you coming back over and over because there's so much subtlety you miss the first 4, 5, 6 times. Lead single Fucking Young/Perfect is the top pick, a delicate fusion of soulful string sounds and earnest vocal display, underlying a sinister/comical narrative about falling in love with an underage girl. Add in a daft video (see below) and you've got classic Tyler.
The methed-out nuttiness is still there, but it's peaked. It's no longer a constant barrage, more a methodone-sweet dosage, with just a peek of relapse threatening over the horizon. Tyler is clearly moving away, morphing into his next stage. The goblin grew into the wolf, and now to this. Our little boy is growing up.
06: Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly(A)
Hip-Hop/Soul/R 'n B/Funk/Jazz/Experimental
Everyone's favourite album. Kendrick's stock is sky high in the rap game right now. He is top billing in an era of creativity and inspiration in Hip-Hop. Butterfly is seen by most as a masterpiece of modern music, a magnum opus for an artist who is just getting started. The styles and forms covered on this record are highly expansive, and some of them work incredibly well. Others, not so much.
While King Kunta, The Blacker The Berry, i, and You Ain't Gotta Lie are certified bangers, there are just as many dud tracks on this record. Who wants to hear Kendrick repeatedly announcing "This dick ain't free!" over a busy Jazz jam 4 minutes into the album? Does Butterfly need a bunch of perfunctory skits between songs that add nothing to the musical patchwork? Do we need to hear Kendrick conducting a pretend interview with Tupac for 10 minutes at the end of the record? There is so much self-indulgence here, and it's hard to get through a listen without wanting to skip the statements and random shit at the end of most of the songs. Butterfly wants to constantly re-assess itself, to constantly change into something else. If Kendrick stopped second-guessing and allowed himself to settle into one form, we'd have an A* on our hands, here.
There are more producers than tracks on this album, and I think it's a clear case of Too Many Cooks. Everyone wanted to stamp their brand on this one. The music never decides what it's going to do. Ideas, whether half-baked or fleshed out over months are thrown into the cooking pot, with little discretion over how it affects the tone of the whole album. This album will be remembered for it's social commentary and political slants, for it's timing in the wake of so much racial violence and tension in America. This is fair, as when Kendrick is angry and making a point, he is at his best. Hopefully, the boring, annoying and pointless flourishes that pepper this record will be forgotten. Butterfly, when riding on it's many peaks hits the best moments of 2015, and that's why so many have chosen to top their lists with it. Kendrick is an intensely exciting prospect for Hip-Hop, and has produced diamond quality on about 60% of this album. But there are just as many troughs, and if I have to hear "I been A-1 since day 1/Y'all niggas boom-boom!" again, I might have to break something.
05: Everything Everything - Get To Heaven(A)
Alternative Pop/Indie
4 young men from the north playing guitars. It's a tried and tested trope. Oasis, Arctic Monkeys, Courteeners, all fit for football lads, chunky birds going "Wooo!" in Malaga and men who wear cargo shorts in October. (Disclaimer: I am well into all 3 of those bands but. Come on. You know what I mean.) It's a welcome surprise then, that Everything Everything sound nothing like I thought they would do.
Get To Heaven is brimming with quality songwriting. The form is simple; a standard rock band set-up playing catchy Indie-Pop. The production is clear and crisp, everything sits nicely together, lead singer Jonathan Higgs' distinctive voice wailing over the top; warm, friendly and vulnerable. The album is based around the band's observations of numerous events across the world, with songs about the Arab Spring, Alan Henning and the UK general election. It's a testament to the skill and musicianship of the band that even with such dark subject matter, the album has a cheery upbeat feel throughout. Songs such as Regret, Distant Past and Get To Heaven are hyper-catchy, but display enough quirk and verve to listen to over and over.
The band list such wide-ranging influences as Beyonce, Radiohead and R. Kelly. Their music reflects this, lyrically astute, but also with an eye on how the music sounds, and more importantly, putting that first. One band I kept thinking of with this album is Talking Heads, an act the boys would surely be happy to be compared with.
Get To Heaven is so good because it is of it's time, both in terms of musical style and political and social awareness. It is good because Everything Everything have their own distinct sound, with clear influences from right across the board. Get To Heaven has some serious mileage. You won't get bored, even after 20 or so spins.
Jazz/Hip-Hop
A surprise list-topper from 2015, a collaboration between the greatest Wu-MC and the unfortunately-named BADBADNOTGOOD, a jazzy experimental/covers band, Sour Soul expands the remit of both acts into uncharted territory. This album is a classy statement of New York-flavoured tunes. Ghost is as distinctive and powerful as ever on the mic, pushing forth with all the gusto he had in the 90's, but now having matured into his 40's offering advice on such matters as religion, eating fish ("That food'll make you smart") and life in general. BBNG are his backing band.
Collaboration is the right word, as even though the fame and presence of one of the greatest rappers of all time tips the scales of notoriety, the band fill their boots and soundtrack a 32 minute score that is often chilled, sometimes grand and always fresh. The instrumental breaks littered throughout Sour Soul allow BBNG to showcase their unique brand of cool, laid back Jazz. There are big trumpet walls, subway train percussion sections, and there are also poignant piano moments, delicate keys dropping from the ether. This all adds context and depth to Ghost's New York drawl. He can be rapping about dirty gangsta dealings before the band bring you back down to earth with 8 bars of lush sound, soothing your brain and washing out the dirt like the stark morning sunshine in early spring.
The element of this record I love is the fact that Ghostface is laid bare for all to see. Usually, a rapper can hide behind the hood and cap of studio trickery, long-winded samples, skits, over-production, quality guest performers and so on, but Sour Soul strips all that back, leaving us with the raw energy and rhymes of a true master of Hip-Hop. The guest spots are sparing, MF Doom makes a welcome appearance on Ray Gun, and the cryptically-named Tree brings his brand of laid back not-quite-singing-not-quite-rapping vocals to the fore in Street Knowledge.
All in all, this has the hallmarks of a true classic, and though brighter lights have shone in the Hip-Hop world in 2015, Sour Soul takes it to a higher level. This album is consistent, produced brilliantly, and crafted to within an inch of perfection. Blammo!
03: Jaga Jazzist - Starfire(A) Progressive Jazz
Placing an entirely instrumental album in 3rd is not what most people do with these lists, but Starfire is legitimately one of the best records I have heard in years, and deserves any plaudits it can receive. This was my personal favourite of 2015, and I spun it the most.
Jaga Jazzist are a collective of highly talented musicians, headed by 2 Norwegian brothers, Lars and Martin Horntveth. They have been making music together for over 20 years, and the chemistry is obvious throughout this album. The songs reach newer and newer heights of glory, scraping the top of the stratosphere midway through the 14 minute epic Big City Music and dropping back to terra firma just as quickly. This patterns repeats throughout. The band set up a summit to a song, then trick you into thinking you've reached the top before revealing another platform of music to explore. The emphasis is on building, showing off leitmotifs early on in the song then returning to them later, only bigger and brighter this time.
The peak of Starfire is the swirling beautiful orchestral string section in the final 1/4 of Oban, again the layers sitting on top of one another as the emotion and intensity build and build right up, then dropping everything bar an oboe and a synth line for the last 30 seconds, waking you out of the daydream you've slipped into over the previous 10 minutes. It's incredible stuff. Starfire is like a soundtrack to a 70's futuristic film, an alternate Logan's Run that was never commissioned. The whole project feels cold, but in the best way possible; it makes you feel alone but safe; cut off, but with the advantage of the higher ground. The lack of vocals and lyrics make this all the more enigmatic, and by the time the Middle-Eastern orchestrations of closing track Prungen fade away, you're left none the wiser than you were before, but feeling a whole lot better.
02: Björk - Vulnicura(A) Experimental Pop/Ambient
There are many artists that are said to switch up their style from project to project, but few can claim such enormous upheaval between albums as Björk. She is simply one of the most creative, original and talented artists of all time, constantly pushing the envelope in terms of what can be considered music, and what she can achieve as an artist. Her 2015 album was always going to be high on this list. Vulnicura is nowhere near Björk's best work, and it shows how far ahead of the game she is that an average album by her standards can be so great. Vulnicura deals with the break-up of Björk's 13 year relationship a couple of years back, expressing a wide range of raw emotion and musical insight. The songs display anger, love, heartbreak, despair, hope, joy, lust, and just about any other emotion you can think of, often all in one song. This is a supremely personal album for Björk. She is laying her soul completely bare for the world to see, and some of it is very, very dark. The soundtrack is more often than not very sparse, populated with cold synths and unpredictable string sections. The focus is all on the vocal delivery.
Björk's voice is a true wonder. Now 50, she had surgery a few years back to alter damage caused by bad singing technique in her youth. While some purists would argue this has curtailed her vocal abilities, Björk still possesses one of the most ethereal and versatile voices in music. At times, she sounds like an alien, mashing together language and sound to create a white hot ball of emotional energy. The depth of expression in Björk's voice is stunning, and to my mind, has not dropped much, if at all. She is still one of the big hitters, a true living legend, and she achieved a superb album in Vulnicura without getting out of 2nd gear.
01: Kamasi Washington - The Epic (A) Jazz
The most aptly titled album on this list clocks in at 8 minutes shy of 3 hours, with not a second wasted. Kamasi Washington is listed as the solo artist for this record, but in actual fact, this album was made by a crew of around a dozen musicians. Washington is the band's leader. This project was years in the making; most of the musicians in Washington's collective grew up together in Compton, one of the poorest areas of Los Angeles. They made a point of escaping the drugs and gangs through music. With The Epic, they have done just that.
Jazz is typically an insular style, some folks can recognise the difference between styles, others cannot. The reason I have labelled this simply as "Jazz" is that it actually cover all styles of Jazz, and as such, I believe The Epic is an attempt to sum up the genre in one fell swoop. There are shades of just about any Jazz legends you can name here, (Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock initially spring to mind) but Washington leads his band into new territory, splicing up his own style and releasing a fresh, wonderful compendium that utilises an already overpopulated scene to push Jazz into the next generation.
What tips this over the edge for me is the vocal tracks. If it was merely instrumental Jazz, I would have ranked it outside the top 5, but the more traditional lyrical songs on The Epic make it highly accessible, and are islands of calm in an ocean of trumpets and saxophones and solos. The house vocalist Patrice Quinn's performance on The Rhythm Changes and Cherokee, the two centrepieces of the record completely lift and elevate The Epic above all other releases in 2015. The whole project, long as it is, is executed thoroughly by a tight group of talented musicians, and what seeps through is their sheer, unbridled love and enjoyment for the music they make. That's what matters most in the end, and that's why I've made this bright, sunny album my top pick for 2015. Check out Cherokee. It's my favourite song from last year:
If you've made it all the way down here - Thanks for reading! I promise my next post won't be as big as this.
I've decided to start blogging about music again, after a few years off. I took it upon myself to listen to at least 50 albums in 2015, and publish a top 20. I have to say, it was far more fun than I had anticipated. There were a number of albums I was already looking forward to last year, and they were obviously easy to listen to. Some releases I picked because I knew bits about the band and wanted to check them out. Some I picked on recommendation from friends. Others I literally picked because the artwork was cool, or I liked the album title. Most of the music I listened to was at least enjoyable, and some was downright transcendent.
I try to listen to as many different styles of music as possible, sometimes deliberately choosing music I don't like to see if I can get my head around it. While I (like most other people) like to think that I have a broad taste, and that I "like a bit of everything," you'll notice clear prejudices in my ratings. I'm really into guitar music, be that Rock, Metal, Grunge, Shoegaze, Indie or anything else. I also love Hip-Hop and Rap, and Electronic blippy dancey music, and also weird and experimental jazzy music. I like noise, feedback and experimentation, but I like catchy commercial stuff too. So while there's plenty of those kinds of records in there, I do listen to music outside of my comfort zone, to get as broad a spectrum as possible.
I try to listen to everything 5 times in order to get a good feel for it. Some albums were a joy to listen to, and I spun them 20 or 30 times. Others, not so much. Some were instant favourites, others grew over time. Overall the experience was fantastic, I've not listened to this much contemporary music since I was a teenager, and I feel far more informed about music going into 2016. I've made some surprise and welcome discoveries that have coloured my music taste nicely. I'd not even heard of 4 of my top 10 artists before I listened to them. This year I plan to listen to at least 100 albums, and give a top 40. I will be posting monthly round-ups, and then another end-of-year review around this time next year.
You're probably wondering why I left it until now to do my top albums from last year. Most music outlets publish their end-of-year list in December, which seems to make sense on the surface. But if you publish a music magazine in December, it means you write it in November about music that was released in October or before. This leaves out the last 2 months of the year, which is unfair to late releases. Are they not as worthy as the earlier releases? Besides, what do you do if the greatest album of all time gets released on New Year's Eve? By posting my top 20 at the end of January, (read: beginning of February) I have given each 2015 release at least a month to make it's mark.
I've also created a grading system, which I won't go into fully here, but is quite detailed. I took inspiration from Robert Christgau. He grades albums with letters, and writes short (often very brutal!) reviews about them. I want to take a similar route, assessing albums on several categories, coming up with a grade and then writing a short review about them. My grading system is as follows:
A*: Instant Classic.
This rating is reserved for the absolute best albums. The genre-spanning, era-defining multi-million selling stadium-filling records that everyone has heard of. I'm aiming to rate less than 1% of music with this grade. No albums I heard in 2015 reached this level, though my top 3 came close. Examples of past albums that would gain an A* grade would be Dark Side Of The Moon, OK Computer, Thriller, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Blonde On Blonde. The cream of the crop. A: A Great Record.
This rating is for albums that fall short of the top rating, but nevertheless are very good. These albums are often the best of an artist's career, and are just as listenable, quality and brilliant as the A* bracket but drop down as they lack the spark to be a true classic. This rating is an example of a highly commendable record, and should still be counted as "critically acclaimed." Most popular artists will reach this grade at least once. An example from 2015 of an A grade record is Bjork's Vulnicura.
B: A Good Effort.
This rating is for albums that don't quite cut the mustard in terms of critical acclaim, but are generally worth listening to. An album with this rating may be a debut from a young band that are a little rough around the edges, a mid-career release from an established artist that's not quite at their best, or an album that's good but might be too long or have too much filler on it. An album with this rating may be a little unoriginal or lacking in substance. This is not necessarily a bad record, but it's certainly not A grade either. An example from 2015 of a B grade record is Tame Impala's Currents.
C: Average To Poor.
This rating is for albums that aren't recommendable, but may have a number of redeeming features that elevate them above the bottom ranges. These albums are the experimental whacked-out phase of an established artist, they are the gimmicky style-over-substance records that come in the wake of legitimate music scenes. An album with this rating will probably be derivative or badly crafted. It may have poorly thought out concepts or lots of filler and throwaway lyrics. Most of the time, it will be one-note, and boring. There is some worth in albums with this rating, but the official line is proceed with caution. An example from 2015 of a C grade record is Django Django's Born Under Saturn.
C-: Honorable Mention.
This is a rare rating given to albums that would usually receive a D grade but have maybe one or two songs that are worth listening to. This happens when an established artist releases an album and gets asked to write a single to promote it. That song is clearly better than the rest of the album, and is worth a shot. This also may be an album released by a debut artist, signed off the back of them having one good song, but with no other recommendable material. An example from 2015 of a C- grade record is Cappadonna's The Pillage II (52 Blocks is a tuuuuuune, man!)
D: Do Not Listen To This!
This is for the abject worst of the musical landscape. These albums bear no fruit in terms of popularity, relevance, creativity, originality or technicality. It would be a waste of time to listen to an album with this rating. Not many albums will get this grade, as I try to look for the positives and something to love in every release, but some records just stink. An example from 2015 of a D grade record is Method Man's The Meth Lab.
So that's my rating system in a nutshell, (honestly, I could have written WAY more) and I hope it all makes sense. It's open to interpretation, and you can rate it or slate it as much as you want. Or you can ignore it. I'll be posting up my top 20 tomorrow, and I hope y'all like my picks. Some are obvious, others not so much, but I think I got a good selection covered. Until then!
