The Best Albums of 2015, #8

8. Florence + the Machine, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful (Island) I’ve been a big admirer of Florence Welch since her debut six years ago, but after the flamboyant grandiosity, I couldn’t help but wonder just how much more ostentatious she and her band could get before feeling like pure bombastic overkill. It’s just […]

The Best Tracks of 2015, #9

9. Blur, “Go Out” For an album that charmed me so much by how familiar Blur sounded, my favourite song from The Magic Whip is the weirdest one on the whole dang record. But the genius of “Go Out”, like other weirdo Blur diversions of the past, is how it balances formula with experimentation. You […]

The Best Albums of 2015, #9

9. Carly Rae Jepsen, E•MO•TION (604) Imagine the pressure of following up one of the biggest pop singles of the past 15 years. You are under crippling demand to catch lightning in a bottle a second time, and so many times artists have buckled under all that weight. Carly Rae Jepsen, however, approached the challenge of […]

The Best Tracks of 2015, #10

10. Clutch, “A Quick Death in Texas” As mentioned in the albums category, Clutch delivered their tightest album in more than a decade with Psychic Warfare, and the best track on the entire record is “A Quick Death in Texas”, which is a perfect microcosm of what this band is doing so well these days. […]

The Best Albums of 2015, #10

10. Jenny Hval, Apocalypse, girl (Sacred Bones) In 2015 there was a lot of talk about the continued marginalization of women in the music industry, and justifiably so. The accounts by the brave women who spoke out were harrowing, not to mention extremely embarrassing in this day and age. So it feels a little ironic […]

The Best Tracks of 2015, #11

11. Kendrick Lamar, “King Kunta” It’ll probably be years before I can fully grasp the breadth and power of Kendrick Lamar’s massive, 80-minute To Pimp a Butterfly, but the one track on this wildly ambitious, incessantly funky album is its funkiest moment. Combining hip hop braggodocio with African-American pride, Lamar is eloquent on the Roots-referencing […]

The Best Albums of 2015, #11

11. Clutch, Psychic Warfare (Weathermaker) There is no such thing as a bad Clutch album. At least since 2004. I’m not wild about Pure Rock Fury. But starting with Blast Tyrant 11 years ago the Maryland band has found its identity, shedding their stoner and hardcore roots, embracing the blues instead, and over the course […]

The Best Tracks of 2015, #12

12. Kacey Musgraves, “Biscuits” Sure, “Biscuits” was a complete thematic rehash of Kacey Musgraves’ memorable 2013 single “Follow Your Arrow”, right down to its cheeky, right wing-baiting permissiveness, but it’s impossible to deny that she does that “think for yourself” shtick extremely well. It’s all in her personality: she’s strong but gentle, politely poetic yet […]

The Best Albums of 2015, #12

12. Blur, The Magic Whip (Parlophone) It’s funny to think that it had been 20 years since I heard a Blur album I really loved. They’ve never been short on great songs, but ever since stepping outside their classic Britpop sound of the early 1990s their albums started to lose me more and more. Personally I’ve […]

The Best Tracks of 2015, #13

13. CHVRCHES, “Empty Threat” Lauren Mayberry of CHVRCHES quickly became known for being a rather irascible lyricist, and is indeed tremendously gifted at confrontation, which I will get into later on in this list. What makes “Empty Threat” so remarkable, on the other hand, is how she cautiously embraces positivity while at the same time foreseeing […]

The Best Albums of 2015, #13

13. Galley Beggar, Silence & Tears (Rise Above) I’ve been slowly getting more and more into British psychedelic folk as the years have gone on. Part of that has to do with my lifelong habit of expanding my musical horizons, and part has to do with how life has taken me in that direction. The […]

The Best Tracks of 2015, #14

14. Chelsea Lankes, “Too Young to Fall in Love” If you ask me to name my favourite singles of the 1980s, Mötley Crüe’s “Too Young to Fall in Love will be right up there. It’s their greatest moment, in which it struts with such menace and masculinity, putting on an air of braggadocio, but at […]

The Best Albums of 2015, #14

14. High on Fire, Luminiferous (eOne) It felt like an eternity had passed between albums by Matt Pike and the mighty High on Fire. Indeed a lot had happened since the release of 2013’s De Vermis Mysteriis, most importantly that Pike had admitted himself into rehab to deal with his alcoholism. It was one of those […]

The Best Tracks of 2015, #15

15. Torres, “Strange Hellos” You won’t find a more visceral record in 2015 than Torres’s astounding Sprinter. In fact there are moments more convincingly heavy than the vast majority of extreme metal I head all year. Mike Scheidt, mastermind of the heaviest band of our generation, told me once, “heavy is people.” It’s not tone, […]

The Best Albums of 2015, #15

15. Ghost, Meliora (Loma Vista) Why did so many people dislike Infestissumam? in the lead-up to Ghost’s third album this year, writer after writer went off about how the Swedish band’s 2013 full-length was a mis-step, how it lacked the energy of the near-classic debut, how it lacked riffs. It was one of those moments […]