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Austin B. Harvey presents: The Liquid Diet writesCHIRP Radio Best of 2015: Austin Harvey
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Throughout December, CHIRP Radio presents its volunteers’ top albums of 2015. Our next list is from Assistant Music Director DJ Austin. 30 albums, no apologies. Let's go: |
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#1 Last Forever by WESTKUST (Run for Cover) |
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#2 Y Dydd Olaf by Gwenno (Heavenly) |
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#3 Dark Energy by Jlin (Planet Mu) |
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#4 Star Wars by Wilco (dBpm) |
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#5 Mind Renovation by Dorsal Fins (Gripless/Remote Control) |
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#6 Mourn by Mourn (Captured Tracks) |
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#7 New Bermuda by Deafheaven (ANTI-) |
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#8 Wonderlust by Kid Wave (Heavenly) |
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#9 Feels Like by Bully (Columbia/StarTime) |
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#10 Summertime '06 by Vince Staples (Def Jam) |
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But wait, there's more... 11. Chvrches - Every Open Eye (Glassnote) 2015's best pure pop album was a top-down, windows-open, sing-at-the-top-of-your-lungs blast of synths and choruses. 12. A Sunny Day in Glasgow - Planning Weed Like It's Acid/Life Is Loss (self-released) The Brooklyn/Philly/Sydney outfit followed up last year's best record with a double EP of disjointed and euphoric fuzz 13. Clearance - Rapid Rewards (Tall Pat/Unsatisfied) If you wanted a record in 2015 that sounded like Pavement got back together and never hated each other, this is it. 14. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 'Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress' (Constellation) Thomas Hobbes would call the Montreal collective's fifth LP, and second since their reunion, "nasty, brutish, and short". Though the drones almost overtake the melodic moments on this record of instrumental post-rock, the high moments are gems on "Peasantry or 'Light! Inside of Light!'", and "Piss Crowns Are Trebled". 15. Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment - Surf (self-released) Chance the Rapper had the show of the year with his Pitchfork-headlining celebration of his hometown. The jazzy followup to Acid Rap is a similarly-huge and welcoming party. 16. Razika - Ut til de andre (K. Dahl Eftf.)The Norwegian quartet ditched English for their home language and their bouncy brand of ska-pop-post-punk suffered not one bit. 17. Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly (Aftermath/Interscope) Judging from late December, this one will probably be considered the most IMPORTANT record of 2015, if not also the best. Stuffed to the brim with unexpected sounds and harmonies, Kendrick Lamar Duckworth's TPAB follows up good kid, m.A.A.d city with funk, jazz, rock, gospel, and a massive dose of ruminations on himself and the ridiculous world around him. 18. Negative Scanner - Negative Scanner (Trouble in Mind) Their RIYL on Bandcamp names Savages and Protomartyr. Yep. Claustrophobic, paranoid post-punk that rocks. 19. Protomartyr - The Agent Intellect (Hardly Art) Another album of multi-influence, doom-and-gloom rock from Detroit. Soundtrack for a rainy day. 20. Baroness - Purple (Abraxan Hymns) Southern rock-influenced metal that doesn't ever approach the sound of Metallica's Black Album. Baroness are masters of what they do, still. 21. King Tut's Tomb - Shred (1980) Imagine Big Black and Sleaford Mods made an album in your basement in one night until your super found out and kicked them out. This is that record. 22. Royal Headache - High (What's Your Rupture?) RH's Shogun might have the best voice in rock today. I'm just glad that his band did another record before they reverted to their on-again-off-again status. 23. Helen - The Original Faces (kranky) Fuzzy, sad pop from Liz Harris of Grouper. So much reverb. 24. Static Daydream - Static Daydream (Saint Marie) Goth-shoegaze that knows how to dance. So much fuzz and angst. 25. Kamasi Washington - The Epic (Brainfeeder) Three hours of mind-blowing jazz that is probably insulted by my own lack of attention. I'm sorry. 26. Belle & Sebastian - Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance (Expanded Edition) (Matador) Sure, they're one of my favorite bands ever, and this isn't their best work by far. However, it's got some wonderful moments and they know how to straddle disco and guitar-pop genres without forcing either. 27. Ought - Sun Coming Down (Constellation) Apocalyptic jangle rock from Canada. No matter how many times they say "I feel all right" I'm not going to believe it. 28. Pinkshinyultrablast - Everything Else Matters (Shelflife) Self-described "Thunder-pop" from Saint Petersburg, Russia. Lots of trebly echoes. 29. Waxahatchee - Ivy Trip (Merge) Folk-rock that could've very easily opened for The Breeders 20 years ago. Katie Crutchfield's delivery soothes the ears without veering into sprechgesang territory. 30. [the band formerly known as Viet Cong] - Viet Cong (Jagjaguwar) Before agreeing to change their problematic name, the band featuring half of Women made a near-classic that's for everyone who missed This Heat. |
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1/2 Decade of Wonder (2011-2015) |
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Top 5 bands whose sound needs to come back in the next 5 years (I made this list in 5 seconds): 1. Pulp 2. The Stone Poneys 3. T. Rex 4. The Happy Mondays/The Stone Roses 5. EPMD (really, just allow for Fair Use in hip-hop again) |
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This Swedish quintet might share two members with soaring punk band Makthaverskan, but what WESTKUST have going for them is a fuzzy shoegaze sound that still manages to deliver gigantic choruses, dueling vocal lines, and superbly-catchy guitar melodies. A new sound that is still exceptionally familiar. There were new earworms in each listen, and will continue to be.
A former Pipette made this concept record about minority languages in the face of a technologically-dominated monoculture. It sounds like Charlotte Gainsbourg meeting Stereolab and it's all in Welsh and Cornish. The penultimate track is also the best Italo-disco track of the year. Inventive, rewarding, and necessarily political.
The best workout soundtrack of 2015, Dark Energy is the debut record of Gary, IN's Jerrilynn Patton. I suppose it's a footwork record at its heart, but the darkness inhabiting this party made it one of the most exciting dance music records of the decade. Vocal samples are turned percussive, and there are drum sounds from all over the sonic spectrum. But listening to the range of waltzes and stomps through these 11 tracks, one realizes it was something greater than a genre classification.
The title, the cat cover, it's all so dumb and so perfect. Wilco's best record since arguably Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a distillation of Jeff Tweedy's best songwriting tendencies in the last decade. Economy, earnestness, and vagueness are all employed in spades here while the band goes on a classic rock workout. No long jams, all killer, no filler.
The 15(!)-member Melbourne collective made 10 songs of Broken Social Scene-esque pop music that are as immediate and catchy as anything that other great pop bands of previous generations have released. Dance-y, snotty, and irresistible.
The Catalonian quartet made a record of angry songs that transcended adolescence, going beyond the tropes of "stupid boys" and "silly feelings" to tackle questions of feminism and self-definition. This is a debut of clear-eyed post-punk that's wiser than the band's years.
I didn't listen to this one too much, but each time I come back to it, I wonder why it had been so long. Taking 2013's Sunbather as a leaping-off point, the California band took their metal and dream-pop bonafides and fused them into a more-cohesive whole. The five songs here filled up almost 50 minutes, but there are no wasted moments, and when it all comes together, like the sixth minute of "Brought to the Water", it's stunning to behold.
This London quartet made an album of sunny, crunchy, guitar-pop tunes that are at once wistful and hopeful. A perfect soundtrack for socializing with adolescents of all ages.
Alicia Bognanno's voice sounds like Kurt's and Courtney's growl and pop croon. Considering the 90's-sound revival we've heard from bands like Speedy Ortiz and Clearance, it only makes sense that building a shrine like Feels Like at the relative source of the best angst of the Clinton years would be an easy pick. Melodies like "Trying" were what made 90's alternative cross into pop territory, and it's the same reason Feels Like hits so high on this list.
Unlike Kamasi Washington's jazzed-up arrangements on Kendrick Lamar's wonderful To Pimp a Butterfly, Vince Staples employed No I.D.'s spare production to give his remembrances of Long Beach a decade ago a hazy, smoggy atmosphere that incorporated enough sun and haze to place the listener both in California and Staples' memory. It's not as much of a party, nor is it as socially-conscious as Kendrick's latest magnum opus, but there wasn't a rap single as simple and silky as "Norf Norf" this year, either.Next entry: CHIRP Radio Best of 2015: Nat
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