by Douglas Slayton My taste in music is myopic and driven entirely by emotional reaction. This list is not objective and is mostly about listening to sad music while being sad. The list is ordered in a haphazard manner; don't attach any significance or meaning to the order.
Time Spent Driving Passed & Presence
When I was in high school and developing a curated affectation that would solidify to the bullheaded personality that I now embody, seeing this group of older guys playing the sort of music that I was just discovering (I was five years younger than most of the band's fans, at the time) really made an impression on me.
Some number of years later, they made a record that feels like something that would have come out when I was still eighteen and still discovering this music.
I spent several cold winter weeks in 2015 sitting on curbs listening to this album and crying but feeling alright about it.
The Saddest Landscape Darkness Forgives
It is hard to talk about this record without feeling tears well up in my eyes.
The Saddest Landscape has perfected a certain sort of immediacy to their delivery. This record exhibits that and never feels well worn.
Foxing Dealer
This fucking record. Albatross was a seemingly insurmountable achievement that was annihilated when this was released.
I was able to see them on either side of the release of Dealer this year and post-release was easily one of my greatest experiences from the entirety of 2015. I remember walking home, having my headphones on and not listening to anything, just going over it again and again in my mind, trying to make sense of it all, then sitting on my porch just breathing in the entirety of the night.
Envy Atheist’s Cornea
This has a lot in common with the Saddest Landscape's record. But where the Saddest Landscape are immediate, Envy is pensive and contemplative. Though not as sprawling as their previous efforts, the brevity doesn’t go against their strengths.
Envy has always been a band the matters greatly to me but I can never really explain why to anyone unless they already know.
Spraynard Mable
Spraynard says all the things they think and feel and don’t hide it under much metaphor, which makes them very antithetical to my usual favorites.
They fit into a style of punk that I don't usually like. But the uncut honesty makes this album something that I spent a lot of time listening to last year, and will probably continue to listen to in the future also.
Football, Etc. Disappear
This has a fair amount in common with the Time Spent Driving record, except it taps a separate vein of the same scene that birthed TSD a decade or so ago. Plus Football, Etc. is younger than those bands, so it still brings in other touches that are new and exciting.
They have lots of other EPs and even a full length but this is easily my favorite release of theirs.
Warm Thoughts Intangible
This record is two songs, and they are both really good. Like really good.
Dikembe Ledge
Dikembe released a really good full length in 2014 called Mediumship, but this EP is better.
They talk a lot about not being good enough or living up to your own expectations, and that is something I can really get behind. Plus their song titles are usually inside jokes, so it feels like they could be your cool friends who smoke a lot of weed in order to deal with their anxieties and insecurities.
Make Do and Mend Don’t Be Long
Make Do and Mend sound like Hot Water Music, which is hard to top.
I am a sucker for someone who shouts their feelings in songs, and that is a feature of most of this record—in the best way.
Hop Along Painted Shut
This is angular pop, and so much more. They manage to transcend that and everything else that they touch.
Plus Frances has a singular voice, one from which it is hard to turn away.
Doug Slayton is Professor Editor-in-Chief of Uncanny Valley Magazine
by Chris Alarie
What follows is my personal, highly subjective list of the best music of 2015, including songs, albums, and live performances, organized in ascending order from 20 to one. If you disagree, that is your prerogative. But I will personally judge you very, very harshly. Alright, with the preliminaries out of the way, on y va!1
20. Gary Pryor - "Grizzly Bears"
Normally (Uncanny Valley Magazine contributor) Gary isn't deserving of "best of" accolades, neither as a person nor as a musician. But with "Grizzly Bears", he has improbably managed to create an excellent synth-pop song that represents his varied, eccentric tastes. He put three different versions of this song up on his SoundCloud profile this year. All three are good but my personal favorite is this fuzzy take. In addition to the fucked up Sega Genesis style production, the song features such inspired lyrics as "Feel the power in your hand / You know it's time to be a man / Like a grizzly bear" which come across as a mutated version of some inspirational song from a 1980s sports movie. Honestly, Gary has no fucking right to make music this good. Oh well.
19. Kamasi Washington - The Epic
Saxophonist Washington's appropriately titled album2 evokes both the large-band hard bop of Oliver Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth and the sort of post-Coltrane, earthy music that artists like Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp released on Impulse! in the late 1960s.
Of course, that explicitly retro quality does undermine the importance of the album quite a bit. Everything that Emily Lordi told Eric Ducker about Leon Bridges is more or less equally applicable to Washington's album. It is good but non-essential music. Of course, this leads me to wonder why I would include The Epic on my list of the best music of 2015 but wouldn't even begin to consider Leon Bridges's pleasant-but-limp album, Coming Home. Is it because Washington is reviving a style of music that was even underappreciated in its own time while Bridges is just engaging in limp, displaced nostalgia that exists purely to provide an empty but affirming answer the meaningless question "Why don't they make music like they did in the old days?" Is it because my personal tastes align more with Washington's music than Bridges's? Or is it just that The Epic is simply a better album in every way than Coming Home? I'd suspect that the answer lies in a combination of the three.
18. BAUS - DEMO 2015
I saw these Oakland post-punk weirdos open for Violence Creeps a couple of years ago and they only seem to have gotten better since then. Their demo from this year is a straight shot of groovy, nervy, distorted goodness.
17. Ghostface Killah & BADBADNOTGOOD - Sour Soul
The only reason this album isn't higher on my list is because I included one of its singles on my list for 2014. But this excellent album that he made with the otherwise horribly dull, Canadian trio of jazz dweebs, BADBADNOTGOOD, continues the late career resurgence of 2013's Twelve Reasons to Die and 2014's 36 Seasons. 3 With all the other bummers associated with the Wu-Tang Clan this year, it's nice to know that we can count on Tony Starks to provide us his usual high-quality, idiosyncratic blend of drug dealing tales, oddball slang, and dark humor.
16. Death Grips - Jenny Death
Welcome back, Death Grips. Stay weird.
15. David Bowie - "Blackstar"
I think the Classical—whose album Diptych was on my best of 2014 list—summed it up best:
You might think David Bowie is ripping us off but actually we're just both ripping off the same Scott Walker era https://t.co/Gr1gkQ4rLN
14. Vince Staples - Summertime '06
My dislike of Drake and Kendrick Lamar and general indifference toward Future kept me mostly out of the hip hop zeitgeist this year. But Summertime '06 is a really good album and the music video for "Señorita" is awesome.
13. Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit
Most of Courtney Barnett's songs blend together in my mind, but that's not necessarily a problem because they are generally very good. She reminds me a bit of Pavement in that she makes clever, unassuming songs that are memorable despite the fact that they are mostly unremarkable. Her music is much better than my description makes it seem.
12. Shannon and the Clams - Gone by the Dawn
Our friends, the Clams have long since established their signature blend of 60s pop melancholy, punk energy, and outsider music weirdness. Gone by the Dawn is their most fully realized album, featuring their most sophisticated songwriting, production, and vocal harmonies. "Corvette" and "Telling Myself" are particular standouts.
11. Joanna Newsom - Divers
I am unable to explain why I love Joanna Newsom's music without delving into my feelings and personal life. So let's just say this album is really good and leave it at that.
10. Violence Creeps - On My Turf
Crushing, funny, angry, weird—the best of Oakland in microcosm. All hail Violence Creeps!
9. Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell
I didn't actually listen to this album much but I want to include it because of the concert I saw him perform on Halloween. While his (admittedly amusing) cover of "Hotling Bling" got most of the attention, the entire concert was an intense, immersive, borderline religious5 experience. Sufjan and his band of multi-instrumentalists created a sound that veered from spare, fragile, achingly pretty acoustic numbers to loud, electronic, almost violently cacophonous sounds. And the lights and projections were fantastic.
As a side note, my friends and I met a friendly, middle aged, Chinese tourist on the train to Jersey City. My friend who had bought the tickets struck up a conversation with this man and offered him a spare ticket. So this man, who had never heard of Sufjan Stevens and had not begun his night with any intention of attending a concert, joined us. His look of awe and amazement at the end of the concert spoke to the power of Sufjan's music.
8. Julia Holter - Have You In My Wilderness
Her music reminds me of several artists from across the spectrum of catchy pop weirdos, particularly Karl Blau and Kate Bush. This album is full of strange earworms. Highly recommended.
7. Titus Andronicus - "Fatal Flaw" The Most Lamentable Tragedy, Titus Andronicus's rock opera about manic depression is, in its entirety, borderline unlistenable. But "Fatal Flaw" succeeds where much of the rest of the album fails, with its sugar rush, in-the-red6 pop punk giving way to an energy deflating crash.7
6. Built to Spill - Untethered Moon & There's Nothing Wrong with Love
Built to Spill's new album, Untethered Moon, is not markedly different from the rest of their oeuvre, both in terms of style8 and quality.9 Additionally, the music videos for "Living Zoo" and "Never Be the Same", when viewed in succession, make for two of the most genuinely funny music videos I've ever seen. Doug Martsch is a strange man.
Also, this year, Sub Pop reissued Built to Spill's classic 1994 album There's Nothing Wrong with Love. I don't know if there are any funny music videos to go with that reissue, but it is an excellent album.
5. Kurt Vile - "Pretty Pimpin"
I read a description of "Pretty Pimpin" as the best song that Neil Young never wrote. I find that description apt, as this song has the same hazy, addictively catchy stomp as some of Young's stonier 70s hits such as "Walk On" and "Are You Ready for the Country?". The rest of Vile's album is unmemorable but this is one of the best songs of the year.
4. Ben Goldberg - Orphic Machine
I wrote a review of this album for Elmore Magazine. This is an album of incredible depth and weight. It rewards repeated listening.
3. Dave Rawlings Machine - Nashville Obsolete Nashville Obsolete is an excellent album that seems both consistent with the music Rawlings and Gillian Welch have released under her name and something different in and of itself. Letting Rawlings's excellent guitar playing and warm, reedy voice take centers stage complements the relatively long, shaggy songs on this album. Like with Vile's song, there are strong shades of 70s Neil Young, particularly on "The Trip"—which also evokes Bob Dylan's long, addled mid 60s songs like "Desolation Row" and "Queen Jane Approximately" (which the Machine has covered in concert). "Pilgrim (You Can't Go Home)" is more like the songs on the Gillian Welch albums: a beautiful, humanist tune that fits snugly within the tradition of American folk and country music.
2. Unoperator - Something Something Something: Part 1
Returning to my list for the third time, Dak has crafted another unique, bizarre album. As is his wont, he released a bunch of music this year, including multiple versions of some songs. And, as is also his wont, he subsequently made much of that music unavailable. But this particular album was his best of the year and one of his best ever. It is the fullest realization of the dichotomies he so often explores with his music: catchy and noisy, funny and terrifying, fragile and heavy. If he makes it available again, I will update this entry.
1. Rihanna - "Bitch Better Have My Money"
When this song first came out back in March, I declared it the best song of the year. Eight and a half months later, this remains true.
Chris Alarie is Senior Editor-in-Chief of Uncanny Valley Magazine. 1 In the interest of blatant self promotion (hidden in a footnote as a nod toward modesty), I'd like to point out that Doug and I released three new albums this year. Check them out here.↩ 2 It is a triple album.↩ 3 In retrospect, I should have put this album on my 2014 list↩ 4 During a recent Uncanny Valley Magazine editorial discussion, Professor Editor-in-Chief Douglas Slayton actually said that he didn't think that David Bowie was cool. Despite the extremely evident stupidity of this statement, we ultimately decided against asking him to resign from his post. We support the freedom to express indefensibly dumb opinions here at UVM.↩ 5 Not necessarily (for me) due to the overt religiousness of Sufjan's lyrics while still acknowledging that the religiousness is probably inseparable from the meaning of the music.↩ 6 Or, to use a term from another song on the album, dimed out.↩ 7 I asked a friend of mine who is diagnosed as schizo affective to offer her analysis of the song with regards to the experience of a manic episode. She said that the song was far too slow to accurately reflect her experience of manic episodes but that the wooziness at the end did evoke some of the sensations of the crash that comes at the end of the episode.↩ 8 Melodic, knotty, guitar-driven.↩ 9 Really fucking good.↩
The worst movie I watched on an airplane:
Entourage. Watched it on the plane ride back home
from Hawaii via Los Angeles.
The best movie I watched on an airplane: Amy. A fantastic documentary about Amy
Winehouse. I was amazed at the amount of raw footage of her that exists,
including lots of recordings made before she was famous and didn’t think it
possible that she could make a career of singing. I’d like to note that she
wasn’t putting herself down as a singer, she just didn’t think of it as
something she could do as a career. It made a fan out of me, though I only took
so long to appreciate her music because I hadn’t much previous exposure.
The best place I went: Kauai with my mom & sis. The island
is overflowing with elaborately colored roosters and many chickens. My mom
convinced me the bushes were overflowing with eggs, but I didn’t check.
Best food: Cart food or maybe cheap sandwiches,
$3.50 at a deli near me. DELIS! CARTS! Chicken over rice, man. *When I say cart
food, I mean hallal, specifically. I want to make special mention of the
delicious food available at the Barclays Center. It is fancy and well prepared,
and they have lots of Kosher options, too.
Best Holiday Occurrence: Cooking most of the Thanksgiving dinner
while drinking Kahlua and coffee and then later adding vodka having it all come
out pretty okay.
Best date: This goes over the course of a couple of
dates, actually. I went out with one person several times and they kept
explaining how a potentiometer works. It was super interesting.
Best venue visited: I went to 3 sports arenas that I hadn’t
visited previously in 2015, and that’s a personal best as far as visiting new
sports arenas goes. Some friends and I drank Coors Lite on the Finnerty’s
gamebus on the way to Citi Field, and even though we watched the Mets beat the
Giants (may the Mets championship dreams rest in peace) it was great fun. Without
being terribly rowdy, and attracting far less attention than I expected, a
whole sections’ worth of San Francisco fans- mostly expats- sat together and cheered
not only the Giants, but the Golden State Warriors, too. The Dubs were playing
game 4 of the finals that night, and the game started while we sat in a muggy
summer sweat that marks baseball in June on the East Coast. The stadium itself was
very clean and easy to navigate, though not particularly charming in terms of
architecture. Perhaps the character will come with time.
Yankee Stadium,
where I saw the Yankees beat the Mets, was also very clean, well organized and
full of particularly edible arena eats. And also very concrete and stale. A
nice place to see a baseball game, but with few particularly attractive
features, save the fact that you can see the train going by from most seats in
the park. It’s nice to know that you are nestled neatly in the Bronx, right
there in the mix. The Barclays Center in Brooklyn was my favorite.
This choice was
difficult, as I much prefer baseball over basketball, however, the Barclays
Center has a very interesting design, with its circular strip of screen that
you can see while standing underneath the open structure in front of the
entrance gates. The outside of the structure itself is a raw-looking metal that
is covered in copper rust, and it has mossy greens covering part of it, as
well. The seating inside arena goes up very high, the nosebleed sections are
steep indeed, but it seems you can see the action well from any seat. They
played good music during the game, lots of 90s hip-hop, among other crowd
pleasers. There was a lot of Jay-Z too, which was probably just a coincidence since
he no longer has a stake in the arena. The worst thing about the Barclays
experience was their sound system. The music sounded awful; the tracks sounded
blown out and the volume was low at times. This was highly surprising,
considering the newness of the venue and the typical auditory fanfare that goes
with live sports events. A final exciting note about the game I attended specifically:
about half the audience was wearing blue and gold. There were audible cheers
for Stephen Curry, there was applause, and it was not just in our bay area
gamebus section. I am so thankful that I got to witness a game during the
Warriors historic season starting streak of 2015.
Best change: Leaving Whole Foods Market after four
solid years of working there. Grateful for the friends I made, grateful to be
creatively explosive upon leaving. New Beginnings, that’s what happened.
Best annoying thing I did: Make out in subway stations, at the bar,
on the train. All over town, basically. At some point during 2015 a New York
native told me that New York is a sexy town, and I think he was right. I see
more public displays of affection than back home, that’s for sure.
Best movie: Love
& Mercy. I saw it
with my mom and I think it was a little dark for her. The story was inspiring
and very sad and Paul Giamatti was very twisted and terrifying. John Cusack, who
plays Brian Wilson as an adult, did an excellent job of talking in that fairly
shy yet halting manner while still managing to highlight the humanity in a
diseased mind through an evolution of a loving relationship. Paul Dano, with
delicate execution, showed us the genius of Wilson’s musicianship, particularly
as an arranger. He too was quite good at showing the internal pain and
confusion as his disease first unfolded.
This is just one
of three movies that Paul Giamatti starred in this year. Dr. Eugene Landy certainly
was his finest roll. Playing a somewhat similar musical handler of sorts in Straight Outta Compton, he was a much
more subtle villain, but still convincing, and in San Andreas he was a weak nerd.
Best album release: Marilyn Manson- The Pale Emperor. Just kidding, I haven’t even heard that record.
But I like the name because it’s ridiculous. That man loves bein’ freakin’
pale. And since I don’t like Drake and I wish that band UFO was more
interesting, I will go with Justin Bieber’s Purpose.
Also, I’m really thankful that Snoop Dogg went back to such a name after being
Snoop Lion and starring in hot pocket commercials. ***Really though, Dave Rawlings
Machine record was cool.
Best celebrity sighting: None. There are no celebrities in New
York City. ALTERNATELY: I recognize no one outside of my own family and I
refuse to answer this question. Actually, I suffer from face blindness.
Best NY chillers: Thankful to all of the people who came
out to New York and made a point to say hi. This includes my sister, my dad and
his girlfriend, Eden, Derek, Mark and Crystal, Scott, Sam and Maggie, Nikos,
Walter, Lynne, Victor and Hannah (thanks for taking me to Yankee Stadium), Christine
before she moved to New York officially, running in to Anthony on the street in
Williamsburg, Talia. Can’t wait for Kat to get here on New Year’s Even— you’re
gonna love it here.
Best concert: Thee Oh Sees with Zs as their opener at
Warsaw in Bushwick, Brooklyn. This took me by surprise, since I’ve never been a
huge fan of this SF originating band. However, their sound has changed quite a
bit since I’ve last listened in. Perhaps their move to LA did them some good.
They were tight and groovy with a big, rowdy, double drum set set-up. Zs was
great, very interesting, but I was so infuriated and distracted by the rudeness
of the audience that I feel ill-equipped to critique their set. The echo of the
audience talking over their performance is what I remember most.
Most entertaining TV moment: Steve Harvey announced the wrong winner for the Miss Universe competition. He had to correct himself on live tv, leading to an extremely awkward moment whereby the crown had to be taken from Miss Colombia and given to Miss Philippines. Harvey compounded this mistake by offering an apology via a (since deleted) tweet in which he misspelled both countries. He was a great host up until this moment and I loved watching him anyway.
Alexis Faulkner is Unicorn Editor-in-Chief ofUncanny Valley Magazine.
