I've tried to put this in order but undoubtedly my choice is skewed with what I have been listening to lately and that is probably why I have Gaslamp Killer at number 1 but it really is a quite amazing album. I can't stop listening to it. Ghostpoet is well deserving of the second slot with an album that, in my humble opinion, is a dead cert for a Mercury Prize nomination. In third place is Stealing Sheep. Their 2015 album 'Not Real' just begs you to hit the repeat button I could listen to it all day, every day. It's been a so-so year for music so far, in my opinion, with the good albums being very good but a lot of weak material out there too. Maybe it will pick up later in the year, we have of course Blur's comeback album out soon and available for streaming right now.
Probably the most noticeable absence from my list is Kendrick Lamarr. I get why the album is raved about so much but, sorry, it's just not for me. I've written before on this blog that it's a little too knowing, a little too self-congratulatory and the repetitions get right on my wick. Too many bad memories of Wyclef Jean in the Fugees. Another absentee is Bjork. Now I love Bjork, really love Bjork and her latest album is also her most personal so it should be up there as one of my favourites too. I just wish it had a killer tune on it and she sounds so sad, too sad. It's not comfortable listening.
The biggest disappointments of the year have undoubtedly been Belle and Sebastian with an over-produced, disco-inspired mess that ruins some all too infrequent great moments and the Waterboys who sound like a pub blues cover band with their comeback album. Purity Ring's 'Another Eternity' is an album that puzzles me. Critics rave about it but to my ears every tune sounds the same, vocoded and formulaic. And then there's that Prodigy album. Dear oh dear. I'm not sure they should have bothered. Did they actually bother or is their latest just the bits left over from previous albums that didn't make the cut? Godspeed! You Black Emperor wasn't what I was hoping either. The last track is them in their finest pomp but before that you have to get through a lot of post-rock guitar, the sort that Explosions in The Sky do so much better.
So here's my list:
1 The Gaslamp Killer - 'The Gaslamp Killer Experience Live in Los Angeles'
2 Ghostpoet - 'Shedding Skin'
3 Stealing Sheep - 'Not Real'
4 Father John Misty - 'I Love You, Honeybear'
5 The Districts - 'A Flourish and a Spoil'
6 Stornoway - 'Bonxie'
7 Marika Hackman - 'We Sleep At Last'
8 Monophonics - 'Sound of Sinning'
9 Sufjan Stevens - 'Carrie & Lowell'
10 This Is The Kit - 'Bashed Out'
11 Dan Mangan - 'Club Meds'
12 Courtney Barnett - 'Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit'
13 Lonelady - 'Hinterland'
14 The Decemberists - 'What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World'
15 Krill - 'A Distant Fist Unclenching'
16 Moon King - 'Secret Life'
17 Nadine Shah - 'Fast Food'
18 Public Service Broadcasting - 'The Race For Space'
19 Showstar - 'Showstar'
20 The Wave Pictures - 'Great Big Flamingo Burning Moon'
And here's that Gaslamp Killer album
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