A standout year for new music—I know, every year produces its share, but 2015 was for me another 1992 or 2004. That I wrote about three albums from this year (the most for a single year in a decade) speaks to it, along with all the great ones I didn’t include: Edge of The Sun, Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance, How Big How Blue How Beautiful, FFS, Art Angels—all of them worthy of their own entries, denied primarily for space restraints (this project isn’t called 100+ Albums), each one represented here by a standout track, with “Nobody’s Empire” increasingly looking like Stuart Murdoch’s best song nearly two decades after If You’re Feeling Sinister.
At this year’s end, I even sent out an annual mix CD to friends, something I hadn’t done since 2010 (and haven’t again at this writing.) The first 17 tracks here more or less replicate that mix: a parade of perennials (Marling, Cracknell, Gryner, Sufjan, etc.) with a few one-offs and some newbies woven in (Vampire Weekend’s bassist’s side project Baio; Courtney Barnett cannily channeling The New Pornographers while still sounding like her eccentric self.)
The remaining 20-odd songs are split between good stuff I couldn’t originally fit on an 80-minute CD (Grace Potter’s disco-rock extravaganza, Listenbee’s EDM-folk mashup, the first good Madonna song in a decade) and, as always, gems I didn’t encounter until the following year or two: Susanne Sundfor’s superior Swedish synth-pop, Natalie Prass’ classy, out-of-time balladry, and of course, Carly Rae Jepsen. The much-praised E*MO*TION is more a solid collection of singles + filler than a Classic Album to me, but oh, what singles, especially “Boy Problems”: so blissfully, self-assuredly perfect and sophisticated teen-pop, it nearly got me through the following year.
Go here to listen to my favorite tracks of 2015 on Spotify:
- Belle and Sebastian, “Nobody’s Empire”
- Years & Years, “Shine”
- Florence + The Machine, “Queen of Peace”
- Destroyer, “Times Square”
- Laura Marling, “False Hope”
- Baio, “Sister of Pearl”
- Calexico, “Miles From The Sea”
- Robert Forster, “A Poet Walks”
- Sarah Cracknell, “Hearts Are For Breaking”
- Twin Shadow, “When The Lights Turn Out”
- Emm Gryner, “The Race”
- Jose Gonzalez, “Let It Carry You (Dino Soccio Mix)”
- Roisin Murphy, “Unputdownable”
- Sufjan Stevens, “Fourth of July”
- Metric, “Fortunes”
- Courtney Barnett, “Elevator Operator”
- Marina and the Diamonds, “I’m A Ruin”
- Hot Chip, “Dark Night”
- Jamie xx/Romy, “Loud Places”
- New Order, “Academic”
- Susanne Sundfor, “Fade Away”
- Lianne La Havas, “Tokyo”
- Carly Rae Jepsen, “Boy Problems”
- Matthew E. White, “Rock & Roll Is Cold”
- Grimes, “Flesh Without Blood”
- The Weepies, “No Trouble”
- Grace Potter, “Alive Tonight”
- Deerhunter, “Breaker”
- Natalie Prass, “Why Don’t You Believe In Me”
- Beirut, “Perth”
- Tanlines, “Pieces”
- Listenbee, “Nottamun Town”
- Madonna, “Joan of Arc”
- Lord Huron, “Dead Man’s Hand”
- FFS, “Piss Off”
- Christine and The Queens, “Tilted”
- The Radio Dept., “This Repeated Sodomy”
- Ivan & Alyosha, “It’s All Just Pretend”
- Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, “I Need Never Get Old”
- Tracey Thorn, “Let Me In”
Haunted Jukebox 