Best Music of 2015

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

— The Classical (@the0classical) November 24, 2015

God bless David Bowie.⁴



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.

UPDATE: He made it available. Here it is.



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.

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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.^↩

All Of Our Fault

by Gary Pryor

The movie San Andreas is what is commonly referred to as a “popcorn movie” which, according to

Wiktionary makes it “a motion picture without serious dramatic content, a weighty message, or intellectual depth, which serves simply as enjoyable entertainment.” But much like the snack food from which it takes its name, the real source of worry is the toppings of the popcorn. Just as light, harmless popcorn can be slathered in butter flavored chemicals and salt, what seems like a harmless, fun movie is drenched in sexism, mindless patriotism, and fear mongering.

We'll start by addressing the film's sexism, since that will let me introduce the cast. First there is the subplot featuring Paul Giamatti (known for his great roles such as Heckler #2 and Guy in Sleeping Bag, according to IMBD) playing a character who is essentially the same scientist who appears in every disaster or monster movie who has figured out everything already but is sadly ignored. He is presented as a generally non-sexual character (likely because he is educated and middle aged) though he still manages to “rescue” the female reporter barely-a-character (played by Archie Panjabi) by pulling her under desks several times during the film.

The main cast which consists of a divorcing husband and wife, their daughter, the wife's evil boyfriend, and an out of place pair of brothers who pal around with the aforementioned daughter. The father figure (who may have had a name, but is so often referred to as “father”, “dad”, or “husband” that I didn't remember it—for simplicity's sake we will just call him the Patriarch) is played by Dwayne “I don't want to be called the Rock anymore” Johnson (known for his roles of having his head animated onto a giant scorpion, and wearing a speedo while yelling at rednecks, according to me). The Patriarch is the man's man, he is here to rescue you, and he will (especially if you are related to him). He enjoys the fun attributes of having no character defects, being strong enough to rip off a car door, having inexplicably caucasian offspring, and having the sound of his voice warp reality in such a way that if you do what he says, no harm can come to you. He does feel bad about the death of another daughter, which he only mentions enough to prove that he is humble and ready to discuss his feelings with his estranged wife, thus reclaiming her. He also spends most of his screen time saving women in distress with his earthquake defying helicopter or making lewd sexual innuendos toward his wife as countless people die all around them.

Next we have the wife (played by Carla Gugino known for being the mother of spying children and having sex with a guy in an owl costume according to IMBD), who hangs around to be the target of the aforementioned innuendos, drive various vehicles while the Patriarch is busy rescuing people, and turn on her new boyfriend in the first 20 minutes so that the central family can reunite before the credits roll. With the exception of the minimal driving, she could easily have been replaced by the family dog—which would have had the benefit of making the innuendos seem really strange. Or with a little more work, a dog could drive and it would be awesome (see San Andreas director Brad Peyton's previous work on Cats & Dogs: Revenge of Kitty Galore).

Now we have the new boyfriend played by Ioan Gruffudd (famous for being THE Horatio Hornblower as well as being the voices of lots of things in lots of American cartoons, according to IMDB). He starts out being portrayed as a well meaning nice guy, but “abandons” the daughter after going for help and taking a severe blow to the head, for which he is never forgiven. We only see him twice after that, his only purpose is to have a character you don't mind getting earthquaked. The Patriarch never directly slanders him (but praises his wife for doing so), showing that he reclaim his prize without breaking proper bro etiquette. A true gentleman indeed.

Finally, we get to the daughter played by Alexandra Daddario (who is famous for having breasts in True Detective and for being in a bunch of TV shows I've never seen, according to IMBD). She is our eye candy, from her introductory scene in a bikini, to several plot points where she has to remove clothing for some contrived reason, spending most of the last portion of the movie soaking wet. The camera lets you know what it wants as it continually happens to look down her shirt. She is characterized as both smart and brave like her father, though she cannot complete any heroic action without yelling about how she learned it from her father, undermining any sense of her being independently brave. She has two companions: a 20-something male love interest and his kid brother, who both compliment her looks in just about every other scene. The manner in which she is the primary sexual focus of the film intercut with scenes of her parents searching for her and talking about parental love just feels wrong. Am I supposed to simultaneously want to fuck her and want her to reunite with her uber-macho dad? The combination of her being the damsel in distress (in spite of being portrayed as capable) and the dissonance between the goal of reuniting with her family and the visual of constantly looking at her cleavage are representative of the film's problematic portrayal of women.

I'll address the film's mindless patriotism next. The Patriarch is introduced in the first scene as an Iraq war veteran, which is supposed to help identify him as a hero. Right or wrong, the idea that people who like dumb things (like this movie) also like the military runs deep in Hollywood. You are here so you most be dumb, so you must love America. Do we really need to see the filmmakers drape the American flag over a ruined Golden Gate Bridge like we are proud that our shit fell down? All I can say is that, for me, every time a movie throws propaganda on the screen to try to convince me that I should like somebody more because he was in the military or happened to live in the U.S., it is a waste of the filmmakers' time and mine.

Lastly, I will discuss the film's fear mongering. I am convinced that the movie is a “what if it happened here” reaction to the Tōhoku earthquake. The Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011 took place on March 11, 2011. Not coincidentally, according to Wikipedia, “on December 1, 2011, it was announced that New Line Cinema was developing an earthquake disaster film.” So earthquakes were trending, people in the U.S. were scared about it happening to them. Hollywood could never pass up such low hanging fruit. The problem is there are 15,891 confirmed deaths from the Tōhoku earthquake. Real people. Not a fun summer movie—real people who have died. And because people are reasonably afraid of natural disasters, it is incredibly easy to sell people a ticket to a fantasy world where the perfect dad swoops down in a helicopter to save you at the last moment from an exciting disaster. Also according to Wikipedia San Andreas grossed “a worldwide total of $461 million, against a budget of $110 million.” So this capitalizing on actual deaths and legitimate fears sure as hell worked. Surprise! Hollywood is terrible. New Line Cinema should be ashamed of cashing in on an actual tragedy, and you should be ashamed for buying a ticket (even if your girlfriend made you like mine did). So all in all San Andreas was a terrible experience on every level: it's a terrible movie, and you are terrible for watching it.

Gary Pryor is an asshole who complains about movies, has other first world problems, and is an all-around white guy.