2016 Top 40

At long last, here's the top 40 for 2016's albums. It's a lot later than I'd planned to do it - Blame a 2 week blackout with our internet connection for that. I've given a couple of retrospective A* to the top 2 records, they both are something very special and they deserve it. This blog is already miles long, so I'll just get on with it:

40: Kayo Dot - Plastic House On Base Of Sky – B

39: Nine Inch Nails - Not The Actual Events – B

38: Adult Jazz - Earrings Off! – B

37: Kanye West - The Life Of Pablo – B

36: M.I.A - AIM – B

35: Trixie Whitely - Porta Bohemica – A

34: Czarface - A Fistful Of Peril – B

33: Meshuggah - The Violent Sleep Of Reason – A

32: Iggy Pop - Post Pop Depression – B

31: Kid Cudi - Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin' – A

30: Roisin Murphy - Take Her Up To Monto – A

29: Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker – A

28: Animals As Leaders - The Madness Of Many – A

27: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Cell Phone Bikini – A

26: Avalanches - Wildflower – A

25: Metallica - Hardwired... to Self-Destruct – A

24: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - A Lovejoy – A

23: Anderson .Paak - Malibu – A

22: The 1975 - I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It – A

21: Aesop Rock - The Impossible Kid – A

20: Band Of Horses - Why Are You OK? – A

19: 65Daysofstatic - No Man's Sky: Music For An Infinite Universe – A

18: Bon Iver - 22, A Million – A

17: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Sworn Virgins – A

16: Melt Yourself Down - Last Evenings On Earth – A

15: Mystery Jets - Curve Of The Earth – A

14: Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool – A

13: Kate Tempest - Let Them Eat Chaos – A

12: The Dillinger Escape Plan - Dissociation – A

11: De La Soul - and the Anonymous Nobody... – A

10: BADBADNOTGOOD - IV – A

BBNG's 2nd year in a row in my top 10 is a nice surprise to me, a group I'd not heard of 18 months ago but now at the forefront of my listening habits due to their stellar bank of releases. The cinematic, polished Hip-hop beats of Sour Soul, a masterful collaboration with Wu legend Ghostface Killah was one of the finest records of 2015, and they've followed that up with IV, a more orthodox release for BBNG.

What lifts IV above the general hubbub of Jazz records and indeed some of it's very own material is the guest vocal spots, serving as islands of conventional structure that break up the general fuzz of the experimental, drawn-out instrumental bulk of the record. That stuff is the key element to understanding the wonderful creativity behind IV, but those guest appearances - Mick Jenkins' fierce verse on Hyssop Of Love, the only full Hip-hop song on the album, Charlotte Day-Wilson's beautiful vocal take on In Your Eyes, and the top cut from the album, Time Moves Slow, with Sam Herring's velvet-toned delivery - These songs elevate up IV to something really special. Certainly a superb album, but one for those with an acquired taste.

09: Yeasayer - Amen & Goodbye – A

Amen & Goodbye is the 4th studio effort from experimental rock arty-New-York-dudes-with-crazy-names group Yeasayer. Famous for their forays into several styles of music at a time, this album is no different, kicking off with the huge, synth-infused epic I am Chemistry - One of the finest cuts of the year - serving as the first song proper on the album. In five minutes, Yeasayer travel through electronica, acoustic guitar breakdowns and a children’s choir. The mutant vista of the song is accessible yet complex; it stretches out its lifespan to a sum much greater than its parts. Songs like Silly Me, Cold Night and Dead Sea Scrolls travel down a more traditional pop/dance/anthemic groove, while Prophecy Gun and Divine Simulacrum explore more experimental realms. Amen & Goodbye covers a huge amount of ground within the set parameters of the group’s earlier work – This feels like a summation of their career to date.   

So it goes for the entire album, as each song starts, a new journey begins. Baroque Pop cuts a deep vein through this record, and is its only true leitmotif. The bridging track Child Prodigy attests to this, a harpsichord solo piece with applause and crowd noise in the background. Some of the lyrical subject matter is academic to an absurd point, which is actually a good thing, as it adds to the classical high-art feel and helps to make Amen & Goodbye a cohesive, end-to-end project. Amen & Goodbye is brimming with hooks, catchy tunes and downright bangers that make the listening experience one of the smoothest and most enjoyable rides of 2016, while keeping the sound fresh and full of variety. Yeasayer’s quirky funkiness is spread joyously across from start to finish, and makes them a shoe-in for the top 10 for the year. A delightful, unexpected treat.

08: Adrian Younge - Something About April II – A

Something About April II was an early year perk-up from Adrian Younge, serial songsmith and much-sampled hero of the L.A scene. Younge’s work has been compared to such disparately positioned artists as Ennio Morricone, The Beatles and Otis Redding. April is as solid a representation of his style as anything else he’s put out in his career, and continues a remarkably prolific arc of releases. Hell, he’s released 2 more since this one!

This is similar to Anderson .Paak’s Malibu, released the same month and lauded by critics. April was far more slept-on, unjustly – It’s a supreme, expansive accessible Jazz/Pop record, as short as you like, 13 songs all under 4 minutes, all sweet, radio-friendly numbers, simple and polite. Intricacy takes a hike for the beauty of melody. Most of the rest of this top 10 are well-known hits of 2016. This one’s a bit more exclusive. Take the time to listen to it.

07: A Tribe Called Quest - We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service – A

One of the most celebrated rap records in 2016 came from one of the biggest acts in the game, barely 6 weeks before 2017, topping many end-of-year lists and rubbing shoulders with the genre’s newest and brightest stars. There’s a new golden generation coming through, but it seems there’s still room for some of the old heads to have their say.

Thank You’s staying power lies in the weird idiosyncrasy of its content. Nothing sounds quite like a Quest record, the scope of their sound is immense, flitting from the mellow head nodders like Melatonin and The Killing Season to whacked-out nutty sessions like Mobius, Kids…, and Black Spasmodic and the straight-up experimentation from Solid Wall Of Sound, they don’t settle for an easy beat or soft landing.

Quest’s sound has an unmistakable old-skool edge to it, the intro to Dis Generation, the hook to Lost Somebody, the bassline to We The People, it all harks back to their signature 90’s sound. There’s a millennial glow to it all though, and along with the guest spots from some of the finest contemporary princes of Hip-hop, they strike a solid balance. Thank You is a worthy way to honour the late Phife Dawg, and a huge statement for Quest to bow out with.

06: Frank Ocean - Blonde – A

Blonde has that instant classic quality, the sound you know will go down as the sound of the decade. The vocal harmonies touch on Pop, Soul, R ‘n B and Hip-hop sensibilities, while simultaneously transcending those labels and forming into something more. This multi-textural distilled chill-out is Ocean’s bread and butter, he floats along the lazy river of each song’s fuzzy-lude-dream delivery and watches as it dissipates into the atmosphere.

Blonde is the album I think Kanye wanted to make with The Life of Pablo. It’s light dustings of keys over vocal sketches, field recordings and library footage. It’s deep organs and vocal trills. It’s short compartmental suites that flow through together and form sweet little pockets of 3 or 4 songs you have to listen to in one go. The guest spots are nuanced - I didn’t notice half of them before reading the credits. This is Ocean’s salutation to life. As Ocean observes in Pink And White: “Like glory from above.”

Blogger is very helpful and only lets you put videos from Youtube on your blog, so. Yeah. Here's the Vimeo link for Nikes: https://vimeo.com/179791907

05: Bat For Lashes - The Bride – A

Bat For Lashes is the musical vessel for the multi-instrumental efforts of Natasha Khan, one of the most talented and brilliant songwriters to come out of the UK in the last decade. her 4th record The Bride is a concept album about a woman whose fiancee dies on the day of their wedding. The Bride deals with the story from that point, all the fall-out and emotional turmoil that such a life-changing event would bring is explored and laid bare. It's a complex, difficult album, but it's highly rewarding on repeat listens, and that's why it sits comfortably in the top 10 from 2016.

It's tough to categorise this album, Khan's lyrical consistency and song(wo)manship makes it tempting to lump her in the Singer-Songwriter trope, but that's far too broad a definition for her work. At times, the musical content of The Bride is challenging, with some sparse noise tracks, but it's all held nicely together by the concept and storyline. There's no "single" as such on The Bride. It's not easy listening, or something you play in the car with your grandparents. That's the point, though. The Bride pushes you to understand the weight of passion and despair contained within it, and once you let yourself in to the lonely, depressive world of The Bride's eponymous heroine, you unlock a superb record that begs to be listened to in full, over and over again. 

04: Laura Mvula - The Dreaming Room – A

This has been one of the most slept-on releases of 2016. I’m disappointed that more outlets didn’t pick this one up, because it’s exactly the kind of album music critics love. There’s a lot of styles explored on The Dreaming Room, Mvula plays around with elements of pop, rock, funk and world music, but in the end though, I think it’s best described as experimental pop. Mvula’s song writing touches on a wide variety of themes and that coupled with the fantastical magic realm of her music makes The Dreaming Room an irresistibly rewarding album to listen to.

There’s a feeling on this album that I get while listening to Bjork’s music. The way Mvula sings and manipulates her voice in post-production makes it sound alien at times, and like Bjork, Mvula uses her voice as an instrument first, and as a conveyance of lyrics second. This attitude of her vocals being fair game for experimentation opens up a huge amount of possibility.

With such a wealth of sounds present on The Dreaming Room, it’s exciting to think that this is only the 2^nd full length album from Laura Mvula. The work accomplished on this album will hopefully be a taster of things to come. It’s going to be well worth following Mvula’s career – She’ll more than likely be putting out records of this calibre for many years.

03: Regina Spektor - Remember Us To Life – A

The hugely talented Regina Spektor released her 7th album in 2016, carrying on her legacy of solid, masterful records. It’s another sleeper release; too many publications shoved Remember Us To Life in the doldrums of a top 100, or missed it off completely. Such a shame, but their loss is our gain. The album’s intro salvo is positively rambunctious, Bleeding Heart starts off as a blippy pop-indie cut and finishes with a full-on rock guitar outro, Older And Taller is a summery, sentimental American Folk tune, The Grand Hotel’s rich piano melody sounds like a warm 90’s Hollywood blockbuster soundtrack, Small Bill$ stalks and undulates through a moderate beat, and before you know it, Spektor has covered any number of musical styles and genres within 20 minutes.

My top pick from Remember is the vast, symphonic cut The Trapper And The Furrier, the emotional zenith of the record, a scathing monolith of a piece that begins with a haunting spoken word intro and builds up into the stratosphere, at times Spektor’s hands slamming down on the piano keys make you almost want to click the volume down a few notches to save your ears. Pure passion.

The rest of the album follows suit, the key element binding this together is Spektor’s magnificent songwriting, the fact that she sits alone on the piano writing these tunes and envisions the enormous compositions they are going to be makes the music that bit more personal. Her lyrical content deals in the literal, metaphysical and downright cryptic, most songs encapsulating all three. Spektor enjoys telling us about her personal tragedies, she creates characters with back stories, and she opines on the world in her own unique fashion. It’s all tied together sweetly to form a bright and brilliant gem of a record. You gotta listen to this one!

02: Kendrick Lamar - untitled unmastered. - A*

Kendrick Lamar’s latest record might just be his finest moment. From the high reached last year, it would have been understandable if Kendrick took a break to work on a follow-up, after all, how can you follow such a huge project like To Pimp A Butterfly? The answer is with untitled unmastered.

What strikes me about this record is the brazen roughness of it. Releasing it with no promotion and putting out straight on to Spotify requires a huge level of self-confidence. The lack of song titles, some tracks holding more than one song, the extended jam and studio chatter at the end, it’s all so mutant and frayed. It gives the project a truly unique sound, the experimentation is magnified with every dud note and odd key stroke.

Kendrick’s the brightest star in a golden generation of rappers. To Pimp A Butterfly was truly magnificent, perhaps even era-defining, but it was too opulent. That’s what pushed it off the edge of being a perfect record. untitled unmastered strips that sheen off and gives us the goods with no pretension and that’s why it’s so important. History may forget this quicker than Butterfly, but after all’s said and done, this is the top rapper in the game at his best.

The nature of this project means there's been no official music video release yet, so take a look at this superb live performance from last year:

01: Chance The Rapper - Coloring Book - A*

Legendary albums are zeitgeist. It’s a vital quality of any top-tier release to represent the time it was released. People go on about “timeless” albums, but do they really exist? That’s a question worthy of lengthy discussion, for sure. When a great record comes out that could only have been released when it was released, that cranks it up a notch. Coloring Book is one of those legendary classics.

Chance’s moniker may lead the uninitiated to believe that this is a Hip-hop record, when it’s actually much more than that. Yes, Chance does rap, but there’s also a full gospel choir on most of the songs, there’s Sou­­l and R ‘n B tracks, there’s a centrepiece slow-jam track featuring Justin Bieber, all this and more to form a sweet, sunny ultra-feel-good album. One of the songs is just D.R.A.M, a friend and collaborator of Chance’s repeatedly affirming that everyone is special in their own way – “This I know is true, when I look at you.” The album’s cover is a shot of Chance smiling and holding his newborn child, the songs Blessings and Angels are about the joy of friendship, love and fatherhood. Joy is the theme throughout Coloring Book, and it never lets up.

One of my absolute favourite songs from 2016 is on this album, Same Drugs, a sentimental nostalgic piano-led piece about growing up and seeing old friends after years apart – “Wendy you’ve changed, Wendy you’ve aged/I thought you’d never grow up, I thought you’d never…/Window closed, Wendy got old/I was too late – A shadow of what I once was.” Childhood is so fleeting in memory. A genuinely spine-tingling moment.

With the tumultuous socio-political situation in the USA becoming more chaotic by the day, it’s comforting to see such a positive record released by a prominent artist from the POC community. Dark times tend to bring out the best in good people. Coloring Book implores and obligates you to be the finest person you can be. An album that spans so many genres, has a unique sound and has such a peaceful message has to top the list of 2016’s albums.

July 2016 Review

July was the best month yet for music in 2016. It's been so good I've decided to do my first ever top 6, such was the quality on offer. My first 4 are especially brilliant records, and all of them would have topped the chart on a weaker month. It's been difficult once again to rank the best from July, I pretty much only made up my mind last night, but it's been lots of fun getting acquainted with some wonderful, varied music as the summer has swung through London.

I have 3 levels of music consumption that I run concurrently. The top level is what I write about, which is new releases. Another is old classics (The first 3 Stereophonics albums these past few weeks) that I have a cheeky spin of when I'm hungover in the mornings and can't deal with explorative Jazz improvisation. The last is where I sweep through back catalogues of artists that I like. Right now, I'm in the middle of a quest to listen to EVERY Wu-Tang Clan related album. That's not the whole army, mind. I do have some semblance of a life. It's the original 9 plus Cappadonna. I'm currently trawling through some of the more high-profile solo outings, and let me tell you, the 2nd half of Uncontrolled Substance is ferocious. Enough of that, though. On with the show.


The Rest:


Dirty Heads - Dirty Heads - C

Reggae/Ska


Metronomy - Summer 08 - C

Electro/Dance/Indie


Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Corazones - C

Pop-rock/Folk/Americana


ORB - Birth - C

Hard Rock/Metal/Stoner


The Best:


01: Bat For Lashes - The Bride - A

Rock/Baroque pop/Experimental


Concept albums are a rare commodity in today's world of Soundcloud demos, live Facebook feeds and download-only singles. Like many musical hallmarks of decades past, they have begun to dwindle and shrink as an entity. Call me old fashioned, but I think a well executed concept album is the pinnacle of musicianship and creativity, and I think there's still some room for it in 2016.

Thankfully, Natasha Khan, (AKA Bat For Lashes) thinks so too, and has put one out herself with her self-produced 4th studio effort The Bride. The album is the story of a woman who's fiance dies in an accident on the way to their wedding, and of her struggle to come to terms with the spectrum of emotions in the wake of the event. The Bride covers an enormous range of mental states, which would be impossible to cover in the short form I give to myself for these reviews, but Khan's own words about the album cover it better than I can: "The trauma and the grief from the death of[..]the groom [is] a metaphor and it allows me to explore the concept of love in general, which requires a death of sorts."

Death and darkness are a strong theme throughout The Bride, which touches many musical tones. None of the songs could be said to be a "single" as such, though there is a large swathe of accessibility that hooks you in early. On the other end of the scale, some pieces are downright dreamy and esoteric, the squeak and echo of heavily distorted guitars rumble through sections of ambient reflection, reaching out to elements of rock, folk, and pop to create a murky swirl of sadness and longing. The album is sprinkled with some hopeful moments too, and the last couple of songs I Will Love Again and In Your Bed melt the fog and jerk you out of the sparse nightmare and make you feel safe again. The Bride is a perfectly balanced work of art, and fully deserves July's top spot.

02: BADBADNOTGOOD - IV - A

Jazz/Soul/Hip-hop


BADBADNOTGOOD, in spite of their atrocious band name, are responsible for some of the sleekest Jazz grooves in today's musical landscape. IV captures 50 minutes of  the band enjoying a trip through clean, layered instrumental grooves, piqued by occasional vocal contributions from an eclectic range of guests.

The wonderful thing about IV is that it's complexity never gets too dense. Often when the band are deep into an intense jam section it's tempting to wince at the blaring trumpet pushing through your headphones, but they drop into calmer sections at the right time, not wavering too long on one section or milking a riff. BBNG have endless melodies that stretch through every part of IV. It's as fresh as the first time on the 15th listen.

My top pick from IV is Time Moves Slow, a soulful old-school slice of chilled Jazz, featuring a superb vocal performance from Sam Herring. Herring's gentle voice repeatedly observes a cryptic truism, "Running away is easy/it's the leaving that's hard" which sums up the listening experience of IV. It doesn't give you everything straight away, which is entirely the point; each spin unlocks more of this rewarding, precise record.

03: Roisin Murphy - Take Her Up To Monto - A

Electronic/Art pop/Experimental 

04: Avalanches - Wildflower - A

Plunderphonics/Psychedelic/Hip-hop


I'm often critical of artists who take too long between albums. I don't see the point in waiting for longer than 3 years, because the longer you leave it, the more potential it has to fail. Plus, what are you doing all day? Get in the studio, or get a job like everyone else. Having said that, when I heard The Avalanches were finally set to release their 2nd album 16 years after their debut, I knew it wasn't going to disappoint.

Wildflower is exactly what you'd expect from an album by The Avalanches in 2016. Their style has not changed much, but that's OK because there's plenty to explore in their head-swimming world. You wander around a vibrant soundscape, every now and then you'll hear a second or two of a song you know that fades away before you can capture it. The effect is a sunny, joyful waking dream. Wildflower is crazy, it's beautiful, it's lush. The wonderful thing about The Avalanches' sound is that by it's very nature it's timeless - They take musical ideas from all eras of modern music, sampling snippets from a diverse range of influences, making it impossible to pigeonhole, so it sounds as new now as it did a generation ago.

The reason why it's lower on my list is that Wildflower is unflatteringly front-loaded. The opening set of Because I'm Me, Frankie Sinatra and Subways promise a bombastic thrill-ride of banging hits, however the big guns stop firing around the time the tracks get into double figures. I get that the album is meant to be a big explosion followed by a gradual, meandering finish, but it's about 15 minutes too long. Still, Wildflower is a glorious return for The Avalanches, and hopefully their 3rd album will be come a little sooner than 2032.

05: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Sworn Virgins - A

Experimental rock

I'm warning y'all now - You're gonna be seeing a lot of this guy in the coming months. OR-L is releasing 2 albums a month from July until the end of the year, and as a huge fan of his work, I will be listening to every last blessed one. So I'm sorry, but you're gonna have to deal with my obsession.

Sworn Virgins is the first of the compendium of albums OR-L is releasing on Ipecac. The albums are all from the last 5 years or so. I always say OR-L is the Frank Zappa of his generation. He's wildly prolific over a number of styles, and his music is an electic savantism, a huge creative intelligence that is both amazed and disgusted with the world, expressed through that weird, sober cutting edge. Sworn Virgins is as typical an album as you can get from an artist with such an expansive list of genres in his locker. It's loud, grinding, and achingly repetitive.

Underneath the frantic exterior of chopped up melody lines and noise is a surprising catchiness that bleeds through every now and then; To Kill A Chi-Chi is almost radio-friendly. Almost. The highlight of Sworn Virgins is the climactic suite of Crow's Feet/Heart Mistakes, which features an oscillated guitar line and a clip of John Lennon exclaiming "Those freaks" to create a maddeningly simple groove that will run around your head for days.

I get the feeling that we'll have as many misses as hits from this forthcoming series of releases, but Sworn Virgins is surely going to be one of the best of the lot. It's got everything an OR-L fan could want from an album of his, and after a 3 year wait from his last solo effort (an ice-age in OR-L terms) it's a sizzling return from El Maestro.

06: Aphex Twin - Cheetah - B

IDM/Electronic

So that's your lot for July, I'm pretty chuffed with the whole of my top 6 if truth be told. If you're only gonna listen to 1 of my top picks I suggest Wildflower. It's the most accessible of the lot and it's one of the most summery, happy albums I've ever heard. It's awesome for drifting off in a daydream on a bus or sitting in the park watching the world go by. I'm gonna be dropping Frankie Sinatra at every party I'm at for the next year, it's too good to keep under wraps, man. See you all in a month.

2015 Top 20

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.

04: BADBADNOTGOOD & Ghostface Killah - Sour Soul (A)

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.