An Ocean In Between The Waves: AOIBTW: 2015 Picks. Albums, Reissues, Tracks and Gigs of the Year

As always, there was so much terrific music to enjoy and get lost in in 2015. Below are lists of the Albums, Reissues and Tracks which have been my favourite, most played records of the last 12 months. No doubt, there are some releases that I have missed or haven’t gave a fair trial, but the ones I’ve chosen point towards a solid, often fantastic year, in my opinion. Indeed, some rules had to be self-imposed to bring my Top Albums down to 30: albums originally released in 2014 were discounted, meaning D’Angelo (vinyl edition was this year, but the album first appeared very late last year) and Gwenno (repressed, having signed for Heavenly) missed out; I can tell that the John Grant and Low LPs are great but don’t feel like I’ve spent sufficient time with them to justify places on the list; though absolutely thrilling in parts, Fuzz’s Fuzz II was a slog over 70 minutes, meaning that, for the first time in years, a Ty Segall-associated record doesn’t appear.

So what did make the cut?

We had wonderful, personal, characterful, immersive records from Julia Holter, Joanna Newsom and Jessica Pratt. All of those adjectives could be used to describe Father John Misty and Ezra Furman too, though their presentation was far more flamboyant and attention-seeking. Twistin' and a-groovin', Leon Bridges brought a contemporary cool to classic R&B which appealed to everyone from Urban Outfitters shoppers to Radio 2 Playlist compilers, scoring him a Top Ten album. Keen to follow in the tradition of songsmiths like Randy Newman, McCartney and Nilsson, Tobius Jesso Jnr turned past disappointments into melodic pop made to last. “Think I’m gonna die in Hollywood” he sang remembering a previous gamble that hadn’t paid off; now one of the industry’s most respected young talents, he ended the year with a writing credit on the Blockbuster Album of 2015, Adele’s 25. It came as a slight surprise to me to find out that Ryley Walker was from Chicago, as many of his touchstones are British: the intricate finger-picking of Bert Jansch, the pastoral jazziness of John Martyn, the sympathetic piano trills of Nick Drake; even Primrose Green’s sleeve seemingly nodded to both Graham Nash’s Songs For Beginners and Van Morrison’s His Band and the Street Choir. Esteemed players from Chicago’s jazz and post-rock scenes provided backing on Walker’s tremendous album, while the rich country-soul of Matthew E White’s Spacebomb band was the perfect accompaniment for Natalie Prass gorgeous, wispy vocals, inadvertently making White’s own Fresh Blood LP look a bit anaemic by comparison.

As well as putting out an ace album under the name Damaged Bug (Cold Hot Plumbs), John Dwyer produced some of his best garage-psych-punk to date on Thee Oh Sees’ Mutilator Defeated at Last, “Web” being a particularly exciting opener. The warm electronic jazz of Floating Points’ Elaenia swirled around and pitter-pattered across the room…left for a while…before returning with an almighty clatter. Espers-frontwoman Meg Baird and Trembling Bells offered two very different takes on folk music, though both burned with passion, mystery and intrigue. Produced by partner Cate Le Bon, H Hawkline’s In the Pink of Condition was a charming, odd-ball collection of pop, glam and psych in the spirit of countrymen Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and Super Furry Animals. Some took against Ruban Nielson’s move away from cosmic guitar jamming on Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s third album Multi Love, but I really dug it: the funky, skewed pop hooks and smudged textures recalling fellow one-man-bands Shuggie Otis, Cody Chesnutt and Prince. Ought, Lonelady and Viet Cong captured the year’s sense of twitching anxiety and agitation in their own idiosyncratic ways. On Carrie & Lowell, meanwhile, Sufjan Stevens meditated on the death of his mother and made the album of a lifetime: so heart-breaking that you needed to psyche yourself up to listen to it, so beautiful you never wanted to turn it off.

Following a deeply disappointing gig at the SWG3, I went from thinking Deerhunter's Fading Frontier was a delightfully easy-on-the-ear, satisfyingly succinct listen to viewing its nine song, 36 minutes as miserly and mean-spirited (one of the members of the band suggested afterwards that perhaps they had been a bit "too casual" on stage - not the first words that came to my mind in the immediate aftermath!). A few months after the event, having finally calmed down, I realise I was right the first time, and that singles "Snakeskin" and "Breaker" are two of the songs of the year. A very pleasant surprise was how much I loved and played Alabama Shakes’ second LP: with a shift in emphasis from soulful blues-rock to psychedelic soul and stunning, three-dimensional production from Blake Mills, Sound & Color was the sound of a band finding themselves, morphing from retro rockers into – to borrow one of their song titles – future people. Legendary Swedes, Dungen returned on a wave of flutes with my psych-rock album of the year, Allas Sak (translation: “everyone’s thing”), while the highly addictive Sonic Praise by space-rockers Ecstatic Vision was on another astral plane.

One track into a woefully underpopulated set at the Hug & Pint – a furiously thrashy “No Views – and Blank Realm guitarist Luke Walsh was having to replace a broken string. “This happens a lot” said drummer and vocalist Daniel Spencer, part rueful, part proud. Such conviction is probably what compelled the Australian edition of The Guardian to describe them as “the world’s greatest live band”: one who can do it on a cold, damp Monday night in Glasgow. Illegals in Heaven, their most complete LP yet, had the rollicking falling-down-the stairs numbers they're known for (“No Views”, “Costume Drama”), as well as stunning Electric Mainline-era Spiritualized drones (“Cruel Night”) and twinkling ballads (“Dream Date”, “Gold”). The Australian rock scene is ridiculously fertile at the moment, and Dick Diver (stop your snickering – they’re named after an F. Scott Fitzgerald character) have associations with just a few of its biggest names: Total Control, UV Race, Lower Plenty, Boomgates. There were four distinctive songwriting voices on Melbourne, Florida but, to the band’s credit, the tunes all sat together snuggly like a lovingly-made mixtape.

For a group with the gang-mentality and self-belief of Young Fathers, labels and expectations are there to be confounded. “File Under Rock & Pop!” read the sticker on the vinyl sleeve after record shops had placed their previous album Dead in the Urban section. They laughed in the face of the so-called Mercury Curse, returning less than a year after the Mercury Prize-winning Dead with White Men Are Black Men Too: an urgent, energetic genre smash-up, with more than its fair share of hooks. A graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Christopher Duncan composed Architect, an understated, wintery, dream-a-little-dream-pop album. Look at the title and the Rennie Mackintosh-inspired sleeve: this was someone creating a world, an impressive body of work. Even his chosen stage-name – the alluring curves of “C Duncan” – felt elegant by design. Conceived on the Isle Of Jura and displaying a distinct new age flavour, Lease of Life was Errors‘ best album to date. Vocalist Cecilia Stamp added a New Orderish pop sensibility to the likes of “Slow Rotor” and “Dull Care”, while “Through the Knowledge of Those Who Observe Us”, with its beautiful, subtle shifts, may just be my favourite 13 minutes of music released this year.

If 2015 belonged to anyone it was Kendrick Lemar. How do you follow an instant classic like good kid m.A.A.d. city? On To Pimp A Butterfly, Kendrick looked deeper within himself and further out – past his neighbourhood – to comment on what was happening in his country and the wider world. Angry, poetic, antagonistic, thoughtful, witty, sexy, wise, funny: its 80 minutes were densely packed with different characters and voices. It began with a sample of Boris Gardiner’s “Every Nigger is a Star” and ended with Kendrick interviewing Tupac, seeking advice on success, fame and authenticity; in between, practically every form of black music ever was expertly weaved together. It was a timely album, an important album, a complex at times difficult album, but also a hugely rewarding and enjoyable one – one that has raised the bar for what a long-player can be and do. A collaborator on TPAB, Kamasi Washington released his own project in 2015 and everything about it – the sound, the length, the cast list, the artwork, the vinyl package, the title – was Epic. I’ve only just scratched the surface of this three-hour interstellar soul jazz extravaganza but, with its next-level playing, heavenly massed vocals and genuinely breath-taking production, I know I’ll be delving deeper and getting more out of it for many years to come – something I hope to do with all the records on this list.

Tuesday 22 December 2015

AOIBTW: 2015 Picks. Albums, Reissues, Tracks and Gigs of the Year

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