Remember November? When Keith Chegwin was still alive, and we didn't know who the winner of the 2017 edition of The Apprentice was yet. It's like it was a different era! November's traditionally the last proper month of releases in music, after that everyone's wrapping up their tours and going on their jollies. November 2017 was no different, as it saw some final pushes for the top of end-of-year lists, some wonderful, some brilliant, and some not so good. This month's top 2 in particular are very good, and the 3rd place album ain't so bad either if you fancy a surprise release from an established artist. The Rest:
Baths - Romaplasm - C
Hello Skinny - Watermelon Sun - C
MED - The Turn Up - C
Talib Kweli - Radio Silence - C
Yung Lean - Stranger - C
The Best:
01: Charlotte Gainsbourg - Rest - A
It's another female songwriter in the top spot this month. Charlotte Gainsbourg's much-anticipated Rest, her first album in 6 years, is a triumph of breathy atmospherics that bristles front to back with the kind of vitality usually displayed by artists in their formative years. Rest has a pulsating urgency that never lets up. Minor key piano sections form the lion's share of the musical soundscape and make each song flow effortlessly into the next. With occasional orchestral stabs and simple electronic beats thrown into the fire, Rest is a ruthlessly engaging album, one which demands your attention but doesn't punish you with harsh sounds. Everything is smooth and measured. It is a logical, evenly-spaced album, with plenty of hooks.
The start of Rest is virtually apocalyptic; the first song Ring-A-Ring O' Roses is like the opening credits of a film, the synth-harpsichord melody that forms the back bone of the song driving right through to Lying With You, an emotional keys-led piece, both with Gainsbourg's carefully produced vocal laid delicately over the top. Gainsbourg lives in London but she has roots from across the English Channel, and sings half the album in French. This (to a boorish Englishman who can't speak a word of French) creates an exotic, faraway feel to the record, and on huge beat-driven songs like Deadly Valentine, Songbird In A Cage, and the utterly wonderful Sylvia Says, Gainsbourg's mastery of her voice across two entirely separate languages gifts Rest a vibrant, ultra-saturated sound palate.
Rest combines electronic pop with post-punk and goth styles. It's bouncy, happy and clever, but it's also melancholic. The music is virtually all synthetic, but presented with so much honesty and pathos that it's one of the warmest listens you'll have all year. Rest's final track is Les Oxalis, ending the album with characteristic epic choruses, rich synth lines and the driving bass sound that keeps the whole thing bumping like a carnival right to the end. Gainsbourg enjoys a breakdown section at the finish, then resists the urge to drop into a 3rd chorus, instead choosing to turn a vocal sample from a young child (presumably Gainsbourg's daughter) into a big finish, aptly closing a record about the death of her father with the voice of the next generation. Flip it over and play it again, Rest is too good to leave alone!
02: Bjork - Utopia - A
It's tough to write about an artist as lauded and universally acclaimed as Bjork, because really, after years of mind-melting experimentation, everything that's going to be said has been said about her. She covers a vast width of musicality, taking inspiration from countless obscure and mainstream choices and constantly mutates her voice and the instrumentation around it to form music that is challenging, comforting, familiar and unique all at the same time. Utopia is the latest album from this wonderfully idiosyncratic genius.
Bjork attained escape velocity and left the solar system some time in the late 90's, after a wave of huge alt-pop hits left her balanced squarely in the golden spot between mainstream success and critical acceptance. Building on that position with her first 2 records Debut and Post, each of her subsequent albums have gone further and further in pushing the envelope of what can be considered music. Utopia is denser than most of the recent output Bjork has given us; it's altogether more lush than 2015's Vulnicura. This is actually what makes Vulnicura a better album, though. It's much more focused than Utopia; the album's meaning and direction can falter at times. It's easy to get lost in the forest of sounds, and it doesn't wait for you to catch up before hitting you full force with the next section.
This is of course, still a brilliant record. Utopia's pinnacle is Losss, a composition spanning nearly 7 minutes. It starts gently, with Bjork's inimitable voice seeping through stuttering beats, and evolves through newer and newer levels. The music gets more complicated with each passing minute, before the final chaotic section of madness, the gentle plucked strings give way to a full-on electronic-blipped freak out, the malevolent creeping percussion does what it's been threatening to do all song and breaks through the mix, overwhelming the rest and washing over you like an enormous cleansing tsunami. Then just as quickly - The song is over. What do you even call this kind of music? It's beautiful, dangerous, emotional and robotic. It's vibrant and stark. It's Bjork all over. She's been on top form for decades, and there's no sign that she's going to slow up any time soon.
03: Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - Who Built The Moon? - B
Noel Gallagher has spent the last few years building himself up from the wake of the breakup of one of the biggest rock bands in history. Since his debut solo release in 2011, he has managed to make a status for himself entirely apart from the lager-fuelled hedonism of Britpop, and the phoning-in of the post-90's Oasis years. His solo work has been pleasantly bereft of the trappings of his previous rock stardom, and has focused around what we knew he could do all along - Writing honest, accessible songwriter's pop-rock. The kids have been sent upstairs to bed, and now the grown-ups are cracking open that hours-chilled bottle of Rosé. Let's have a proper conversation, shall we?
Who Built The Moon? is different to what you'd expect from the 3rd Noel Gallagher solo effort. While it would be remiss to suggest that this album is experimental, (especially compared with Bjork's release from the same month) it is the strongest curveball Gallagher could possibly throw at this point in his career, and for that you have to give him a lot of credit. He could churn out a collection of brusque ballads every 18 months and be done with it, and a lot of his fanbase would probably be very happy about that, so for him to put out such a psychedelically informed record is a big statement. The compositions are brimming with guitar noise, euphoric choruses, and big beats. Gallagher's unmistakable calm voice leads the musical journey, and ties the whole of Moon together, to make a complete listening experience unlike anything else he's ever put out.
There are straightforward tunes like Holy Mountain and Keep On Reaching which maintain the no-nonsense Gallagher brand while simultaneously allowing the more adventurous pieces such as Fort Knox, It's A Beautiful World and Be Careful What You Wish For to shine brilliantly. While his brother plays around in the sandpit with rhyming couplets and 6th form guitar riffs, Noel Gallagher is spreading his wings and exploring new lands. Moon is more compelling than anything Oasis put out in their final decade of existence, and frankly if this is the sort of thing Noel wants to put out under his solo moniker, then that big money-spinning reunion can wait.
04: Converge - The Dusk In Us - B
05: Joji - In Tongues - B
George Miller, questionable Youtube starlet and instigator of the enormous Harlem Shake meme (remember that? 2013 feels like a different world, doesn't it?) also does music, as I discovered a few weeks ago. I'd heard nothing of Joji, his newest endeavour, and mainly picked this E.P from the fact that it was so highly rated on albumoftheyear, which is where I find most of this odd stuff I listen to. In Tongues is a wonderful little E.P, and it's a shame it's not any longer because it feels like the ideas Joji explores on it could very easily be stretched to a full-length effort. It's generally a sombre record; opening track Will He sounds a lot like something that could be on Sampha's early-year highlight Process. It stays the same all the way through In Tongues, and the tripped-out beats, drippy piano chords and floaty falsetto vocals means 16 minutes flies quickly by.
Bitter Fuck is the best song on In Tongues. Joji's style on this song melds elements that bring to mind the styles of Frank Ocean and Beck into a simple mix of instrumentation that ends the E.P on the highest note of all, even though the lyrical content is about loss and despair. It encapsulates the mood Joji wants to explore on In Tongues - Life is shitty, but I'm making the most of it. So even though Joji wanders around morosely throughout this E.P, the overall experience is nourishing and positive. It's a mature project from a young artist who's trying to move to the next level. Someone give this kid a full album deal!
06: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Polygondwanaland - B
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.
