Favorite Albums of 2015

With each passing year, it gets harder and harder for me to make these lists. It’s not that I’m less interested in music. More like my fingers seem to get further and further from the pulse of the music industry and what is popular now.

I’m 36, so this was bound to happen. There are whole new genres of music that I am simply not aware of.

Dubstazz? A mashup of dubstep and jazz? Really?! This was a style of music that someone actually thought the world needed to hear?

CDM? I can’t even stand to listen to mainstream country music or mainstream dance music. Why would I subject myself to Country Dance Music? In fact, why would actual /fans/ of country do this to themselves? Two scions of country music who knew how to whip a crowd into a dancing fury, Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt, have got to be turning in their graves.

Heroine Pop? A good friend played a Lana Del Ray track for me a couple years ago. It wasn’t half bad. It wasn’t half great, either. It just was. And really, let’s be honest here, Lana Del Ray, Charli XCX, and Iggy Azalea sound like second-tier 1980s pornstarlet names.

Despite all of that, over the past year I have noticed a few interesting and encouraging trends in music — jazz making it’s way back into indie rock, the rise of grunge-revivalists, more politically-aware songwriters finding their voice. Foremost for me has been the rise of the empowered, no-nonsense female lead singer. I’ve long been a fan of Neko Case and Sleater-Kinney and other female-fronted groups. And while they obviously had some sort of influence on the younger generation, there’s something different about this younger crop of artists.

The songwriting feels much more like a statement of their womanhood rather than an excuse. Too often, it felt like female artists either avoided their sex almost entirely, fell back on stereotypes, or subsumed it by trying to write and sing like “the guys” did. While they were consistently turning out very good music, none felt fully authentic.

That’s not a knock on those artists at all. It’s an acknowledgment of the societal and generational norms that they operated within and the music industry that shaped their sound in one way or another so that it would palatable to the right audiences.

For example — No Doubt’s “Just A Girl” pushed against the silly stereotypes that confined women at the time, but Gwen singing in her cutsy, pouty little girl voice effectively neutered the harshest social critiques in the song.

So when I hear musicians like Bully singer/songwriter/guitarist Alicia Bognanno sing about one-night stands, waiting for her period, and getting hit by a man — with no apologies, no excuses, and an attitude that definitely does not give a single fuck — the difference is palpable.

It’s also wonderful.

So many very good records came out of that younger crop of female artists this year. We were treated to great records from Summer Cannibals, Hop Along, Ibeyi, Courtney Barnett, Alabama Shakes, Coleen Green, Torres, Eskimeaux, Palehound, Beach House, and Natasha Kmeto, and many more.

Women making music that is true to their experience without trying to sand off the rough edges or cater to male expectations of female artists is exhilarating to hear. That punkish, Patti Smith-type of self-confidence is, honestly, incredibly attractive — and not necessarily in a sexual way. I’ve always enjoyed hearing people who are being true, in one way or another, to themselves. It takes guts to put yourself out there like that.

That true-ness is a common thread in the records that caught my ear this year (and, honestly, most years), so why not jump right into my favorite records from?

Recently, I’ve held off on actually arranging my picks in a true, numbered “Top 10,” opting for a random list. It’s a cop-out, of course, but one I readily took. But as I started putting together my list this year, it became clear almost immediately what my top two records were, so why not let that continue?

Here are some of my favorite records from the year that was.

1. Titus Andronicus — A Most Lamentable Tragedy

2. Kendrick Lamar — To Pimp A Butterfly

3. Torres — Sprinter

4. Bully — Feels Like

5. Divers — Hello Hello

6. Sleater-Kinney — No Cities to Love

7. Protomartyr — The Agent Intellect

8. Jason Isbell — Something More Than Free

9. Young Fathers — White Men Are Black Men, Too

10. Courtney Barnett — Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit