Baroness have had a rough couple of years. While on tour to support their phenomenal Yellow & Green, their bus crashed catastrophically in England. The wreck caused serious injuries to the band and their crew, forcing two long-time band members, Allen Blickle (drums) and Matt Maggioni (bass), to retire from music completely. John Baizley, primary songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist, was forced to undergo months of intense physical therapy after having his arm so thoroughly crushed that doctors considered amputation. It's tough for a group to come back from any hardship, but lineup changes are especially complicated. A band has to carefully integrate new members with new perspectives and styles into an already established sound, maintaining their original identity while allowing for growth and evolution. It's almost certainly more difficult to do all of that while trying to re-learn how to make your fingers work, let alone fly around a fretboard. Baroness handled this better than anyone could have expected. Baizley made a full recovery and the band recorded and released some of their strongest work a mere three years after the devastating crash that left them without a rhythm section. Incredibly, Purple sounds like it picks up right where Yellow & Green left off. Another natural step in the band's progression. Production-wise, the album continues the move toward a cleaner, crisper quality. If there is break in their sound trajectory, it's that Purple actually takes a turn for the heavier. As they've mellowed over time, relatively speaking, they've stepped back from their thick, slow-moving-beast origins in sludge metal and into a tighter form of heavy, riff-driven classic rock. It's not a bad move for an aging band, as it has given Baizley an opportunity to use his gruff, hyper-masculine voice to convey more than just anger (here's looking at you, Hetfield), and likely add a few years (or decades) to its longevity (here's looking at you, Grohl). However, where their last album slipped into mellow bits of pastoral thoughtfulness, this album powers straight ahead. When the album does tone it down, it gives the band an opportunity flex some atmospheric muscle and deliver a groove-focused instrumental that sounds like a solitary walk through a 70s noir. True to form, though, as soon as they catch their breath, they quickly punch you right in the mouth. Song-for-song, this might be Baroness's best work. The drums thunder, the basslines drive, the guitarwork is as complex and tasteful as ever, and the melodies are the catchiest of their career. As cliched as it might sound, this album actually is a triumph. After all they went through, Baroness didn't just come back. They moved forward.
Susanne Sundfør - Ten Love Songs
According to Susanne Sundfør, the Norwegian singer/songwriter/producer, she set out to write an album about violence and ended up with Ten Love Songs. Fair enough. The album's title is technically accurate, but a little misleading. Each song on Sundfør's beautiful followup to The Silicon Veil is about love, but not in the traditional pop way. The album opens with the "So, it's definite then. It's written in the stars, darling. Everything must come to an end." Sundfør focuses on the realities of real-world love and the disillusionment that comes with the realization that it looks, feels, and operates very differently than the starry-eyed infatuation to which pop music so often refers when talking about "love". Love isn't all you need. Sometimes love looks an awful lot like knowing, willful commitment to mutually assured destruction. People once truly, deeply in love can, and often do, drift apart. That may seem really heavy, but those are just the first three songs. Don't let the themes fool you, though. The lyrics are never tedious or swollen. Sundfør has a knack for conveying complicated messages through simple, careful pop lyricism. "Is that the sound of your heart? It sounds lonely" says quite a lot without actually saying much, all sung over a gently driving disco beat. She doesn't get lost in the genre, either. She's still the same artist that titled her first album The Brothel. Her idiosyncrasies come through amid the programmed basses and drums. The arrangements and production take the dark synth-folk leanings of her last album and whatever lessons learned from her recent work with collaborators Royksopp and M83 -- both of whom show up on this album -- to culminate in an accessible sound that can dance, brood, swoon, and lament. The consistent use of physical, tangible instruments -- admittedly run through layers and layers of effects -- played by real-live musicians helps to ground the dancy sound with an organic feel that anchors the songs. All of this without saying a word about her incredible, hauntingly otherworldly voice. Sundfør is a singular talent, with command of every aspect of songwriting and delivery, but her voice may be her strongest asset. No one sounds like her. Wildly expressive without ever being boisterous, able to sound distant and detached, but always vulnerable. When she sings about loneliness, you believe her. And she sings about loneliness a lot.
Nils Frahm - Solo
Frahm, a composer that more and more specializes in simple, unpretentious piano work, crafted a gorgeous, moving piece of instrumental music with the aptly titled Solo. Each song beautifully communicates an almost tangible sense of time and place, moving from one gorgeous, melancholy scene to another. Frahm has toed the line between neo-classical and ambient for some time, and understands how to build movements that can enhance the listener's current environment or transport them altogether. It's simple, elegant sonic wallpaper that works equally well framed and displayed. Although the production of most instrumental recordings is focused on removing external noise and sounding as clean as possible, Frahm goes the other direction. You can hear every sustain-pedal release and hammer strike. The result is an album that sounds like a live performance. In your living room. Three feet away.
Neon Indian - Vega Intl. Night School
Vega Intl. sounds like a soundtrack to an epic, drug-filled progressive party, a night-long house-to-house-to-club-to-house-ad-infinitum crawl through the city. As a sort of de-facto point-of-view character, Alan Palomo sounds like the trust-fund kid floating from place to place with his hip working-class compatriots, as he just woke up and their shifts just ended. His voice gives the listener something to hold on to, with his waify cool tenor cutting through the haze. This entry-point is key, too, because the instrumentation is filled to the brim with synths, with no two sounds used twice. With all its gunky low-ends, sleazy leads, and cartoony effects, there are too many to count. All of that is run through the album's tape-to-cd-to-tape sound quality that only really clears up in patches, like the only unworn section of a cassette full of recorded-off-the-radio favorites. It throbs in places, slinks in others. You could likely track the substance-use trajectory as the album progresses. The only constant is that it is infinitely danceable. It is likely safe to assume that it took a lot of time and cost a lot of money to sound this sloppy. Worth it.
Natalie Prass - Natalie Prass
Most words used to describe Natalie Prass's voice or sound come across, however unintentionally, as patronizing. Adorable, precious, cartoonish. All arguably accurate, all more than a little disparaging. It's understandable why Prass has bristled at the now popular observation that she sounds like a "Disney princess", a comment for which its author has apologized and been subjected to a --probably fair-- amount of backlash. That said, she did record and close her album with "It Is You", a song during which it would be understandable for listeners to look around expectantly waiting for animated bluebirds to fly in and land on their shoulders. Prass's lovely, delicate -- see what I mean -- voice aside, the Disney comment is really onto something. In films, particularly those made by a certain mouse-fronted production studio, the past is shown not as it is, but as we remember, or maybe, more accurately, imagine it. It's usually the same even if the film was made during the time it represents. It's a subtly heightened reality. Too perfect, too clean, too safe. Prass's album is fairly similar. Although it is technically an R&B revivalist record, with some southern gospel and country leanings, it doesn't sound like anything ever released by Stax or Motown. Like a golden-era Hollywood musical, Prass's album calls back to a time or place that kind of looks and feels like our world, but is in absolutely no way real. The arrangements lay the foundation, as they build, flutter, swing, and flourish just like you think they should. At times, they feel almost obvious. Unlike film sets, though, they aren't facades. These are incredibly well-written, fairly complicated arrangements, carefully crafted to drive home Prass's aesthetic. The songs are great, too. Top to bottom, there isn't an even mediocre song on the album. The soulful "My Baby Don't Understand Me", "Why Don't you Believe in Me", and "Your Fool" hit all the right notes, with tastefully memorable melodies, killer bridges, and spot-on delivery. Even the aforementioned "It Is You" is remarkable. It does sound like a number from a classic musical, but it does more than simply nail the style. It plays like a timeless, film-transcending number, a "Somewhere" instead of a "Gee, Officer Krupke". It usually took teams -- or at least pairs -- of time-honored, world-renowned songwriters to come up with material like this. Prass is in complete command of her voice, songwriting, and sound. So, if you're going to imagine her as an adorable bespectacled anthropomorphic woodland creature, so be it. Just remember that that librarian squirrel is the incredibly gifted guitarist, vocalist, and composer that put together one of the most endlessly enjoyable albums of the year.
Carly Rae Jepsen - EMOTION
Father John Misty - I Love You, Honeybear
Another 2015 entry in the barrage of usually-detached-artists-delivering-alarmingly-personal-records category, Father John Misty's I Love You, Honeybear has the unique distinction of being the album most likely to make you both laugh out loud and sob uncontrollably. Like, completely-lose-your-shit, first-five-minutes-of-UP cry. Hypothetically speaking, of course. No album this year was more unflinchingly cynical, unashamedly saccharine, or self-aware. As personal as the songs are, each phrase is delivered cooly. Detached and from a distance, while also sitting right next to you at the bar. Such is Josh Tillman's (aka Father John Misty) schtick. It's a good one, too, because it serves as an excellent source of misdirection that allows the lyrics to really land. Hard. The Andy-Kaufman-esque Late Night performance of "Bored in the U.S.A." might serve as a proper introduction for those unacquainted with his persona. "They gave me a useless education. Subprime loan. Craftsman home. Keep my prescriptions filled. Now I can't get off, but I can kind of deal." Each line beautifully sung, followed by canned laughter, while Tillman disinterestedly looks on. It's amazing what you can say when you act like you don't care.
Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell
Sufjan Stevens released what might have been the most surprising album of the year with Carrie and Lowell. Not because it's good; almost all of his music has been widely appreciated. Because it's simple, contemplative, and personal. Stevens is known for his short-run series of state-themed records, quirky Christmas albums, and kitchen-sink style baroque pop. He's stripped it down before, but this is a 40-year-old man who's been known to sport angels' wings at his live shows. Lyrically, he's always kept listeners at arm's length. Hints of his faith were about as personal as his music got, and even those were opaque. This album is essentially Stevens, quite frankly, working through his complicated relationship with his recently-deceased, estranged mother. Stevens's impersonal storytelling is gone, as is the opulent production. In their place are tastefully ethereal arrangements that exist to create space for his open-book introspection and lyrics that, at times, feel like scenes from a home movie. And those are some of the least intrusive moments. Throughout, Stevens sprinkles in moments of intense vulnerability, singing with matter-of-fact candidness about everything from sex to drug use. If that sounds a little uncomfortable, it is. But it's beautiful in equal measure. One of the most disarming lyrics comes from the tellingly titled album highlight, "There's No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross". "There's blood on this blade. Fuck me, I'm falling apart." Sheesh.
Grimes - Art Angels
Vega Intl. and Art Angels are like opposite sides of the same coin. Where Neon Indian uses catchy, how-is-this-not-already-a-song melodies and a clear, instantly likable lead voice as the accessible hooks to their cheap-sounding effects, goopy synths, and fever-dream mid-80s late-night-radio aesthetic, Grimes anchors her batshit melodies and delivery with pristine, crystal-clear production that sounds expensive.
In keeping with her what-the-fuck-am-I-listening-to vibe, Grimes delivered what has to be the most unique album of the year (at least). In the past, Claire Boucher -- who creates music under the name Grimes -- has focused on using obscure sounds and atmospheres to create oddly alluring pop music. Here, she turns that on its head and uses countless recognizable pop pieces to assemble the weirdest mosaic ever. Boucher combines her favorite bits of what worked so well for Gwen Stefani, Garbage, Miley Cyrus, Madonna, Missy Elliot, and others into a sound that no one would argue is anyone's but her own. And make no mistake, this is, in every way, her sound; she produced and engineered the entire record. On her one-two album openers, she moves from Enya-at-best, made-for-tv-fantasy-at-worst synthesized strings to bubblegummy country-tinged pop with edges so clean and sharp they could draw blood.** It doesn't get any less jarring from there. Dance-floor-ready to I-guess-this-is-pop, dreamy fantasy to gory horror. As if that wasn't bananas enough, Claire Boucher's voice is constantly going completely off the rails. From eerily child-like to classically trained to blood-curdling. Her schizophrenic delivery might call to mind early guest-verse-era Nicki Minaj, but her willingness to sound so fearlessly abrasive is best likened to Kate Bush at her most "dramatic" (oblique). As unsettling and difficult as that all sounds, the album is a masterpiece. It feels like the culmination of Boucher's already impressive career, combining what worked so well with recent in-between-albums tracks like "Go" with all the quirk and sinister-with-a-smile feel of her earlier releases. The result is as weird as it is good. It's really weird.
**Which is likely the point, as it's about the soul-crushing LA music scene.
Miguel - Wildheart
Aside from this, listeners may be relatively unfamiliar with Miguel. He's had a few hits, but nothing that would make him a household name. Before Wildheart, his silky smooth to ruggedly soulful voice was mostly spent on standard top-40-sounding R&B fare. In hindsight, it's almost surreal to think about his earlier work in light of his 2015 genre-spanning statement. From the first crunchy guitar chords over news broadcast dialogue, you have no idea where Wildheart is going, but you know it's going to be different. What comes next is a genre-bending R&B odyssey that's Prince-like in its all-over-the-place, lol-wut-ness (see, e.g., that bananas album cover). Interestingly, though, the only things that sound like Prince are the final, perfectly executed guitar solo --delivered by Lenny Kravitz (!!) -- and the quirky sex jam "Flesh". The Prince similarities primarily come from Miguel's indiscriminate, grab-bag, world-is-my-oyster use of any and every genre. The result is a moody, sexy tour de force. Ethereal rock, dirty slow-burners, loose hangout funk, neo-soul, golden-era 90s alt-rock, grimy cow-bell-driven throwback soul, and the list goes on. Miguel nails each one, but isn't interested in a Bruno-Mars style homage fest. He's doing his own thing, expressing what he wants to express through whatever sounds feel right to him. That said, for all the song-to-song stylistic changes, the switch-ups are never jarring. That may be the most impressive aspect of the album: Miguel somehow makes the switch from thoughtful R&B ballad to arena rock anthem to hazy night-drive soundtrack all sound completely natural, with one flowing right into the next. The themes are a little more straightforward, but always handled skillfully. From the early-relationship head-rush ballad "Coffee", to the fame-at-any-cost romp "Hollywood Dreams", to the west-coast-weather-as-surprise-ending-to-a-relationship metaphor "leaves", the lyrics are conversational, elegant, and relatively direct. Miguel doesn't get weighed down with trying to say too much. Pretty tough move to pull off a line like "I wish I could paint our love", but Miguel does it with ease. In lesser hands, and with a lesser voice, it could easily come off as clunky high-school poetry. Here, it sounds like an honest attempt to put the heady chemical whirlwind of a new great relationship into words. It's not always classy, though. Things get downright filthy more than a few times, but even those moments feel more candid than exploitative. Miguel is a handsome dude with a knack for fashion, a boatload of talent, and a voice. Honestly, based on his assumed (likely) current life experience, he's probably disproportionately talking about things other than sex. As his chameleon-like sound-shifts feel natural instead of calculated, Miguel's lines always feel genuine. Who would have thought that the same artist on the same album could deliver both a pre-chorus that is essentially just a crassly specific laundry list of female anatomy and an incredibly candid and enlightening exploration of the isolation, identity issues, and feelings of otherness that are a part of the multi-racial experience. None of that would mean all that much if the songs weren't great, and they are great. The only slight misstep is the doesn't-quite-get-there payoff in the sounded-enough-like-"1979"-that-he-just-went-ahead-and-gave-Corgan-a-co-writing-credit "leaves". The problem, if it even qualifies as one, almost entirely lies with the bewildering decision to enunciate the break-open moment with a weak, dollar-bin drum machine that directly calls back to the Smashing Pumpkins tune. Even this probably only stands out because Miguel proves he knows how to build and build and build and still somehow pay it all off with "face the sun", the through-the-roof closer. Solitary misguided production choice aside, the album is stunning, start to finish, without ever feeling forced. It's hard to produce an album this good that sounds so effortless. Like he's just playing what he's feeling at that moment. And, based on the album, what he's feeling most often is sexy.
