Single of the Year
- 1. Ezra Furman — “Lousy Connection”
- 2. Chvrches — “Clearest Blue”
- 3. Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment — “Sunday Candy”
- 4. Tame Impala — “Cause I’m A Man”
- 5. The Decemberists — “Make You Better”
- 6. Drake — “Hotline Bling”
- 7. Kendrick Lamar — “King Kunta”
- 8. Natalia Lafourcade — “Hasta La Raiz”
- 9. Vince Staples — “Norf Norf”
- 10. Lana Del Rey — “High By The Beach”
- 11. Laura Stevenson — “Jellyfish”
- 12. Carly Rae Jepsen — “I Really Like You”
- 13. Kendrick Lamar — “Alright”
- 14. Natalie Prass — “Bird Of Prey”
- 15. The Wonder Years — “I Don’t Like Who I Was Then”
- 16. Pusha T — “Untouchable”
- 17. Dutch Uncles — “Decided Knowledge”
- 18. Nate Ruess — “Great Big Storm”
- 19. Fashawn — “Out The Trunk”
- 20. Freddie Gibbs — “Fuckin’ Up The Count”
Best Singing
Erykah Badu
Best Rapping
Lupe Fiasco, especially on “Mural,” a nine minute water walk.
Best Vocal Harmonies
All over the Social Experiment album.
Best Bass Playing
Thundercat. Did you know he put out a solo album? He did — and he sings on it, too. (He’s not half bad.) It’s called The Beyond, and if you dug his playing on To Pimp A Butterfly and Kamasi Washington’s Epic, you ought to check it out. At 20 minutes, it’s definitely the most manageable leg of the journey.
Best Live Drumming
Marco Minneman is the foundation that makes the prog-out that is Hand. Cannot. Erase. possible. If you call yourself a prog-rock fan — somebody with even passing interest in the history of progressive rock from Magical Mystery Tour to Marillion to Strange Mercy — and you told me you didn’t like Steven Wilson’s latest album, I wouldn’t believe you. It would be as hard to swallow as an indiepop fan who claimed to be able to resist Let’s Get Out Of This Country. While we’re on the subject of live drumming, Roisin Murphy gets an absolutely mesmerizing performance out of a percussionist named Eddie Stevens on “Exploitation.” It’s probably computer assisted, but hey, so am I.
Best Drum And Instrument Programming
Timbaland for the umpteenth time. This year it was his creepy, abandoned funhouse beats on the Pusha T album that did it. Virginia is a weirder place than you think it is.
Best Synthesizer Playing Or Programming
Dutch Uncles, a British band that recalls (in no particular order): ABC, Duran Duran, Simple Minds, Tears For Fears, A-Ha, Frankie, Talk Talk, Scritti Politti, David Sylvian, Naked Eyes. All of the sleek, jazzy feel and sleek, jazzy flourishes, none of the sleek, jazzy hooks. But the music is never less than interesting, and the words, which concern a young man alternately adopting and mocking the ritual masks he has to wear in order to assimilate to successful adulthood, are even better. This year’s Metronomy/High Llamas/’80s-throwback sophistipop album. Now I hafta go hear their other three.
Best Piano, Organ, Or Electric Piano Playing
Adam Holzman of the Steven Wilson band.
Best Guitar Playing
Laura “Just A Girl Who Can Play Guitar” Marling. She says so herself; who are you to cross her, knave? Now we know she can do Chrissie Hynde as well as she can do Sandy Denny. I hope I live long enough to see what else she has to show us, because I have a feeling we’re not even at the midpoint of this story. Short Movie kicks fanny, but to truly understand where Lord Marling’s butter-colored head is at right now, your best bet is YouTube. Here she is, blowing the lid off of “I Feel Your Love.” On the album, she’s meditative and maybe even sorrowful; in performance, she swings the song around like a cleaver. One she just got sharpened, mind you, and that she’s eager to try out on a side of beef, or somebody quite like one. How about this electrifying version of “How Can I?”, shorn of the string section that she recorded without letting them practice beforehand. Here, it’s just you, her acoustic guitar, and her voice, and that smoke you smell right now is coming from your eyelashes. I’m a musician, sort of, and I do occasionally ask people to come hear me play. My studio performances are doctored, amplified, Auto-Tuned, comped; whatever we have to do to get them presentable. I never want to hang it up more than I do when I see Laura Marling knock out flawless one-take versions of her songs that are even better than the stunning ones on her album. It sure does hurt. But yup, I keep right on playing them, and re-playing, and re-playing.
Best Guitar Playing, Stealth Division
We know about Richard Thompson and the guy on Hand. Cannot. Erase. who sounds more like Steve Howe than Steve Howe has in years. Brad Paisley didn’t put out anything new this year, but the trailing singles from Moonshine In The Trunk bounced away on country radio all summer. All of that was plenty flashy. But sometimes virtuosity isn’t what you need from a six-string player — sometimes it’s more important to get a few notes in the right place and hit them with absolute conviction. Meet Kerry Alexander and Chris Hoge from a Minnesota outfit called Bad Bad Hats. They’re an indiepop band, and we all know I have a weakness for the style; if you don’t like indiepop, you might think that they’re a couple of no-distortion wimps. But if you do like indiepop, you might agree with me that the guitar licks on “Say Nothing” and “Psychic Reader” are ruthlessly effective. They might even prompt a heart-flutter, which is the goal here. Alexander has a severe case of generic girl voice, but she knows how to use it: on music a little too pro to be cupcake pop, but which attains its charm via its acknowledgment of its own attainable ambitions.
Best Instrumental Solo
The ludicrous, over-the-top synth-guitar ride that decorates “Shameless,” a cheeseball power ballad that Max Martin gifted The Weeknd. The liner notes tell me that it was played by a man named Klas Ahlund, a hired gun from a Swedish band called the Teddybears. No kidding. Abel Tesfaye and a teddybear — a sickeningly appropriate combination. Runners up: the yakety-yak sax honk that puts the exclamation mark on the end of Ezra Furman’s “Wobbly,” Holzman’s Moog widdle on Steven Wilson’s “Regret #9,” Ben Gibbard’s wasp-sting in the middle of “Black Sun,” and Stevie Jackson’s runaway go-cart lead during the closing jam of “Book Of You.”
Best Instrumentalist
Kevin Parker
Best Songwriting
Straight outta Coatapec in Veracruz, it’s Natalia Lafourcade. Long have I dreamt of an artist who can do the indiepop thing and the Latin pop thing simultaneously. Ximena Sarinana almost had it in her hands, but it slipped through and sizzled away on the desert floor. (No Todo Lo Puedes Dar, though — that was pretty fucking cool.) Julieta Venegas nearly made it happen, too, but she was never quite delicate enough to turn the trick. But Lafourcade is the alchemist with the proper solvent for any obstruction, chemical or otherwise — she takes her inspiration equally from Nick Drake and Agustin Lara, and on the first four tracks of Hasta La Raiz, she puts the jigsaw puzzle together with such efficacy and confidence that you won’t even notice the grooves between the pieces. The rest of the album isn’t quite as good, but she’s got such a tasty cupcake of a singing voice that it all demands to be gobbled up until you’re scraping the wrapper for crumbs. More, please.
Best Arrangements
Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment
Best Production
No I.D., whose dreamy, chilly, deeply musical productions gave Vince Staples the exact backdrop his storytelling needed. Remember how I said that Kendrick was corny? Well, Summertime ’06 wasn’t corny at all, and much of that had to do with No I.D.’s oversight. My favorite production on a single track was “Terrence Loves You”; I really dig what they did with the reverb on Lana Del Rey’s voice. Give LDR this, at least: few artists have ever matched a personal brand of bullshit with a sonic aesthetic that suits it so well. In retrospect, the link between Portishead and Sinatra’s depressed Capitol albums was always pretty apparent. Leave it to Ms. Grant and her producers to make that clear to slowballs like me.
Best Lyrics On An Individual Song
“Sunday Candy”
P.F. Rizzuto Award For Lyrical Excellence Over The Course Of An Album
Kendrick Lamar
Band Of The Year
The Social Experiment. Also, I, like you, wasn’t too impressed by this year’s Decemberists album, but give them this: they’ve all gotten mighty good at their instruments.
Best Show I Saw In 2015
Brian Dewan @ Pianos. Some hymns, some originals, autoharp, zither, and accordion, mock authoritarianism expressed through a straightforward version of “Do Not Mortgage The Farm” from the 1891 Grange Songbook, Edward Lear’s “Akond Of Swat” recited from memory while banging a marching-band bass drum, some ancient anti-tobacco polemics, etcetera. The Dewan concert experience still feels like falling into the best sort of schoolbook, filled with jokes, admonitions, bizarre asides and attitudes that were cashiered for no other reason besides the demands of fashion. (He still looks like a John Tenniel illustration, too.) Dewan needs to swoop down to the city from his Hudson Valley aerie more often.
Best Bill
Gospelfest, as usual.
Live Show You’re Kicking Yourself For Missing
Steven Wilson did Hand. Cannot. Erase. at NJPAC. We must have been out of town. I expect I’ll regret missing that until the end of my life, or the end of the synthesizer solo; whichever comes first.
Best Music Video
Gotta be “Hotline Bling,” right?, but you already know that one. How about one that you might not have seen? Natalie Prass’s clip for “Bird Of Prey” is as customized for small-screen viewing as Drake’s — all the action is right there in the center of the screen — but it was clearly done for pennies, proving again that a music video doesn’t need a big budget to be effective. The special effects here? A woman, a wardrobe, a brolly, and Roy G. Biv.
Best Choreography In A Video
Apologies to Aubrey, whose dancing really is astonishing (not to mention gutsy), but I’ve got to go with Cecilia Suarez and friends in Julieta Venegas’s clip for “Suavecito.” Don’t look for the song on Algo Sucede; it’s not there. Wish it was.
Videos That Best Captured The Themes Of The Albums They Were Shot To Promote
Vince Staples’ “Senorita” and “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar. These are superficially similar — they’re both protest clips shot by artists who know what it means to be poor and black and at constant risk of harassment by authorities. But when you look a little closer, the differences in the rappers’ worldviews become apparent. Kendrick is the superhero who flies through the air and pits his empathy and openness against the cold, impassive policeman; his vision is Romantic with a capital R, his struggle is noble and even beautiful, and since he believes the one in front of the gun lives forever, he accepts his bullet with a smile. He’s a Christian, and the heavens are his friend: the streets may be murky, but the sky above him is open. Staples, who walks the streets of his neighborhood desensitized to violence, is much more pessimistic. The officer in the “Senorita” clip is scared shitless, and for good reason — he’s trapped on the inside of a bubble made transparent for a viewing audience with an appetite for exploitation and carnage. Death is arbitrary and senseless, and is no triumph over anything; instead, it’s just entertainment. Also, if I haven’t persuaded you yet to check out Donnie Trumpet and The Social Experiment, now might be the time. There aren’t many things in life better than being in the school play.
Most Romantic Song
Laura Marling, “How Can I”
Funniest Song
Lana Del Rey’s “Salvatore,” la da da di da, soft ice cream. I’ve said it before — her greatest talent is for keeping a straight face. Doesn’t mean you have to.
Most Frightening Song
Joanna Newsom’s “A Pin-Light Bent,” which is about a stewardess falling out of an airplane. The imagery was vivid enough to give me some pre-January vacation nightmares about spacerocks and bird-strikes and nosedives into the freezing Atlantic Ocean, so thanks for that, Newsom. Seriously, though, she continues to be a polarizing figure in this Poll, with many voters thinking that she’s brilliant, and many others thinking that the voters who think she’s brilliant are maybe not so brilliant. I hope we can all agree that she’s an extraordinary, singular talent, even if you know what you’re getting from her these days. Joanna Newsom has become a pro, and I do mean that in ways both good and bad. In 2015, we know her songs are going to be wordy and worldly and “well done,” but she’s not really interested in expanding the lane. Divers turned out to be a smooth ride, which, given the pilot’s taste for turbulence, came as something of a shock. The incessant vocal tremolo remains an issue, but her singing has gotten stronger since Have One On Me; her lyrics can be digressive and hippy-dippy, but they’re never less than smart, and for every overstuffed mouthful of syllables, she’ll turns a phrase poetically and succinctly. Then there’s the harp, which sounds just as nice in ’15 as it did on The Milk-Eyed Mender. In a strange way, she’s become one of the most consistent entertainers in America, which is not what I would have thought would happen when I first heard Yarn & Glue. Call her good old reliable Newsom Newsom Newsom Detroit.
Most Moving Song
Wait, did you watch that “Sunday Candy” video? Go on and click that link above. Also, there’s Courtney Barnett’s “Depreston,” a small-scale tearjerker about house-shopping in the charmless exurbs that is likely to tickle your urban planning bone. Sometimes I Sit And Think: good songwriting, good lyrics, good singer, good band, nothing not to like here. It’s the kind of project that makes it seem easier than it really is. It’s not this easy.
Sexiest Song
Carly Rae Jepsen’s “All That,” plus, once I got a good translation of it, Natalia Lafourcade’s “Antes De Huir.” Sigue atrapandome en este rincon indeed.
Most Inspiring Song
“Mortal Man”
Meanest Song
Emile Haynie’s We Fall is an interesting album from a peculiar fellow with a regular-guy motivation. Haynie, as you might remember from the hours you’ve spent poring over Kanye West tracklist credits, co-produced “Runaway,” which gives him bragging rights for life and the sort of ironclad credibility that L.A. industry-types don’t often enjoy. Anyway, his many cool points did not stop him from getting dumped by a starlet, which is an occupational hazard in Southern California no matter what business you’re in. He retaliated by getting some legendary jerks, including Brian Wilson, Colin Blunstone of The Zombies, Nate Ruess, Father John Misty, and Randy Newman (!) to sing absolutely vicious songs about his ex. A toast to the douchebags indeed. (In fairness, Lana Del Rey contributes a song that’s meant to represent the other side of the argument.) Haynie is spared the trophy in this category by Kevin Barnes, who is now on his forty-fifth breakup album in a row. His is a record of sustained lyrical savagery unequaled in modern pop, and for his own sake if not his cardiologist’s, I hope he now takes up gardening or something. “Empyrean Abbatoir” isn’t even directed at his usual target — his ex-wife. Instead, it’s a broadside against a former bandmate, and if you’ve followed Of Montreal over the past four years or so, you can’t mistake who he’s slandering. Obviously some shit hit the fan, and I’m still a fan. But did you ever get the feeling that it would be hard to be Kevin Barnes’s friend?
Saddest Song
“Happy Returns” from Hand. Cannot. Erase.
Most Notable Cover Version Or Interpretation
But You Cain’t Use My Phone. All of it.
Rookie Of The Year
Julien Baker goes for distraught and guitar-stark and Nebraska-ey, which is always a nifty way to set a wrist-slitting mood. What distinguishes Sprained Ankle from the forty thousand other albums that employ the same calculus (see Torres, Sharon Van Etten, various Oberst projects) is the rolling boil it reaches about… hmm… three times over nine tracks. If that sounds like a batting average that’d get you dropped from the team, well, maybe you don’t enjoy a rolling boil as much as I do.
Best Guest Appearance
Bun B on “Wavybone”. He always feels like the adult in the conversation.
2015 Album You Listened To The Most
Currents
2015 Album That Wore Out Most Quickly
Jay Rock’s 90059. Just because I defend rappers against charges of misogynistic worthlessness doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be really fucking nice if they’d stop rapping about how women did them wrong. Here I give you Jay Rock, Top Dawg Entertainment featured performer, talented rapper, Kendrick collaborator, and a theoretical hardcore act who wastes bar after bar on whiny-ass complaints about girls. “Hanging with Laquita brought the ho up out you.” What’s your excuse, pal?
Most Convincing Historical Recreation
No kidding: Home Blitz really does sound like Game Theory. That’s not a sentence I ever expected to write about any band, ever.
Most Convincing Historical Fakeout
The Tallest Man On Earth. Dark Bird Is Home is the kind of project that used to get called Dylanesque. It’s very American plains/folkie stark — the acoustic guitar is mixed so that there aren’t a lot of overtones, like a high pass filter has been applied to the whole shebang, and the drums, when they come in, play in that Midwestern death march style popularized by Levon Helm. The lyrics, too, are homespun in a crocheted How To Make An American Quilt sort of way. Which is why it’s no surprise that Tallest Man On Earth is from North Dakota. Right? Isn’t he? No? Wait, he’s from Sweden?!? Honest Injun? I swear these Scandinavians are pod people. Get your own culture, Swedes. You can start with the lingonberries and build from there. Quit putting our singing cowboys out of work. You’re making Donald Trump’s case for him.
Best Sequenced Album
To Pimp A Butterfly
Artist You Don’t Know, But You Know You Should
Sounds like I’d like the Sleaford Mods. King Krule, too. Maybe I ought to turn my attention back to the United Kingdom. Oh, and I have to check out Carla Morrison. Gonna do that right now; hold on, I’ll be right back. (Some time elapses.) Yeah, wow, that’s dynamite. Kind of like a cross between Ximena Sarinana and Lana Del Rey. That’s going to be part of my 2016 for sure.
Album That Felt Most Like An Obligation To Get Through And Enjoy
The Most Lamentable Tragedy. I guess we have to take this seriously. No, really, we do. It’s about ninety years long and it comes from a magnum opus specialist, so to quote Phife, it gets the E for effort and T for nice try. A couple of these numbers are goodenuff punk rock tunes, and the band always goes for “it”, where “it” can be defined as a ceaseless spastic fartout signifying protest against the galaxy. Unfortunately, Patrick Stickles insists on barking out all of his lyrics like an autistic gunnery sergeant. It’s wearisome on song number one; by song one thousand and one, you’re ready to give up your CBGB badge and enlist in the Celine Dion army. And while I don’t necessarily think that recording an epic triple album about your specific and personal mental problems is per se self-indulgent (I do love In Defense Of The Genre) humorlessly ramming it all into the ears of listeners does not exactly strike me as a humanitarian gesture. Though I guess his fans do. They’re welcome to him.
Crappy Album You Listened To A Lot Anyway
What A Time To Be Alive
Album That Sounded Like It Was The Most Fun To Make
Surf
Album That Sounded Like It Was A Chore To Make
Pagans In Vegas
Most Inconsistent Album AND Most Predictable Commercial Compromise
Beauty Behind The Madness. What with mainstream America obsessed with the ins and outs of the S&M lifestyle, I guess we all could have seen this coming. Sex researchers suggest that there are more ems out there than esses, so the task was to match the (mainly female) M audience with the rare pop singer shameless enough to be an S. So here comes Abel Tesfaye, with those cartoonishly evil fantasies, that voice of his and, natch, a song called Shameless. Next thing you know he’s number one not with a bullet but a whip. But after the velvety reverb fades, does this music have any lingering charms for those few of us left who’d like to keep the b.s. capitalist power dynamics out of our bedrooms? Tune in tomorrow on Yet Another Fifty Shades.
Most Consistent Album
The Blade by Ashley Monroe. High quality throughout; nothing that would have knocked a song off of the first Pistol Annies set.
Album That Should Have Been Longer
Natalie Prass. Five very good songs, a reprise, some Stax-Volt wannabe iffiness, and total Tinkerbell nonsense like “Christy” and “It Is You”. Her voice ain’t the most powerful instrument in pop, but she knows how to write ’em, so she’s got the hard part covered. She could make a really good album if she determined to cut the crap.
Album That Should Have Been Shorter
Kurt Vile, B’lieve I’m Going Down. Still more mellow marijuana music to mellowly smoke marijuana to. This probably sounds good if you’re high as fuck, but so does a busy signal. If you’re stoned enough to boogie down to a sixty cycle hum, save yourself ten bucks (or the hard drive space) and short-circuit a toaster.
Album That Turned Out To Be A Hell Of A Lot Better Than You Initially Thought It Was
Aureate Gloom
Album That Was The Most Fun To Listen To
Paper Wheels by Trey Anastasio. The knock on this guy is that he can’t sing. I’ve always resisted this, because you don’t go to a Phish show to hear Hayley Williams, or Pavarotti. Jam band music requires a subordinated lead vocalist. But after listening to Paper Wheels a bunch more than I usually listen to Anastasio’s solo albums, or even recent Phish albums, I begin to see what the detractors mean. This is a good record — much more Dan (Steely, not Rather) than Dead (Grateful, not Night Of The Living) — and it would be even better if Trey could seize any of his stories by the horns, hop in the saddle, and ride them around. But he can’t. Instead, he sings his pseudophilosophical observations in that friendly, knowing, winking, emotionally detached voice of his. He’s got an awful knack for making the stakes of his lyrics feel far lower than they actually are. It does not help when he is shouting such things as: Skinny little legs!/heads removed! But that’s Trey. That which inspires him is not what inspires other humans, and we should be grateful (Dead, not Hezekiah Walker gospel choir). Anyway, if you, like me, agree that the Kamakiriad has aged well, you might want to give this a shot.
Album You Like More Than You Respect
San Cisco, Gracetown. Further goofballin’ from the Land Down Under. Though they’re basically an indiepop band, San Cisco devotes a large amount of time to inexpert funkouts. Time and again they are saved by their lightfootedness; their sensayuma too. Much of this album suggests the band Supergrass could have been had they ever gotten serious about scoring toothpaste commercials. Regardless, your shrimp on the barbie party could do worse.
Thing You Feel Cheapest About Liking
After getting banned from NXNE, Action Bronson called himself the white Luther Campbell. That’s a massive exaggeration, because no policeman was waiting at Yonge and Dundas with handcuffs. The Canadians are allowed to run their dopey festival the way they want, and if that means no grotesque Albanian-Americans allowed, that’s their mean-spirited prerogative. But it’s dispiriting to me how many of the arguments used against Action Bronson were exactly the same ones — practically verbatim — that the PMRC trotted out thirty years ago to warn impressionable yoof away from the Mentors records. I would have hoped that we’d grown in sophistication, or simply in understanding of how artistic representation works, since then, but the Internet keeps showing me that we haven’t. We’re still fighting the same old battles, and even though I’d like to blame Canada and say it can’t happen here, we all know damn well it can. Telling it is that the concerned citizens who went after Action Bronson had no problem with leaving two other rappers on the bill who aren’t exactly gentlemanly — and of course they did, because those rappers are black and photogenic, and Bronsolino is an obese, filthy, ugly white guy. He is an easy target to assail from the so-called left, and I wish these people would start calling a spade a spade, or in this case, a non-spade a non-spade. Now I realize that I am and have always been easy to caricature as First Amendment Absolutist Man, or Artistic Expression Man, or just Hip-Hop Apologist Man, and I’m okay with that, because goddammit, you’ve got to draw a line in the sand somewhere. Words do hurt, and rap lyrics can be awfully nasty, and we can all afford to be less careless, but pulling lyrics and images out of context and hanging storytellers on the basis of those lyrics and images is really best left to the Spanish Inquisition. Because when you put the stuff in the context of works such as Mr. Wonderful, you see Action Bronson for what he is: a total fucking clown about as threatening to the public welfare as his hero “Mediterranean” Mario. Bronson is a mean rhymer, and he does indeed sound like Ghostface. But he’s also a thematic lightweight who sticks bad Broadway crooning interludes in the middle of his records and takes lyrical inspiration from Billy Joel. He is not somebody the moralists really need to worry about, and hey, here’s an idea: the next time an artist comes to Toronto whose music loudly celebrates alcohol, why don’t the citizens get together and raise a fuss about that? The next assault in Canada won’t be inspired by Action Bronson’s music. But I’ll bet you dollars to Tim Horton doughnuts that booze will be involved.
Least Believable Perspective Over An Album
Frank Turner’s Positive Songs For Negative People. Funny that he used to get Billy Bragg comparisons. Not only is he increasingly allergic to Bragg-style lyrical subtlety, it’s also become clear that he’s not much of a social democrat. When he first confronted arena crowds with his acoustic guitar and no backing band, he won plaudits for his courage. He still deserves them. But the weight of his strident one-man-on-the-barricades fantasy of himself has now crushed every ounce of nuance out of his music. These days, he may as well be Shepard Fairey: all of his tactics are borrowed from the reds, but he’s got no cause to apply them to other than his own capitalist-individualist mythmaking. Not something B. Bragg would have appreciated. Incidentally, Butch Walker produced this. Butch… did not have a banner year.
Most Alienating Perspective Over An Album
The Blur comeback. Former United Kingdom spazmos get melancholy and ruminative in old age. Reports that Graham Coxon played on The Magic Whip remain unconfirmed. As for Damon Albarn, who, naturally, dominates this album?, his latest quasi-ironic position statement on our modern technodystopia is that There Are Too Many Of Us. And people wonder why I have always sided with the Gallaghers.
Most Sympathetic Perspective Over And Album
Ezra Furman
Album You’re Most Ambivalent About Evaluating
The Alabama Shakes. Everything about Sound & Color is an almost. As in: the band rocks almost as hard as it should to justify its Southern rock ambitions, and the singer is almost as rowdy as she wants to be, and the contempo-R&B experimentation is almost audacious enough to turn the heads of people who like contempo-R&B, and the legit-smart words are almost enough to make you think. How many times can you miss the bullseye but still get credit for the prettiness of the target or the elegant dart-chucking form? I understand the enthusiasm for it, and I might be dead wrong about this. But it still hasn’t grown on me yet, and too much of its tentative revisionism feels like straight-up Grammy bait.
Artist(s) You Respect But Don’t Like
Tobias Jesso, Villagers, and Father John Misty. Jesso is pretty good at bouncy piano pop, Conor O’Brien of Villagers does the sensitive male thing fairly well, and Father John Misty is a very good singer. But none of these artists has any idea how to turn his assets into a good song, let alone a good album. Jesso aims for cute and ends up cutesy, O’Brien shoots for impressionism and drowns in his own abstraction, and Father John tries to be an asshole and, predictably, achieves his aim. I Love You, Honeybear plays like weird sociopolitical cabaret, and that only works (and even then, rarely) when the sociopolitical points being made aren’t thumpingly obvious.
Biggest Head-Shaker
Zac Brown. I am not sure anybody in the country is wasting his talent as spectacularly as this guy is, and yes, that includes Yasiel Puig and the President. Consider his assets: when he sings, he actually sounds like James Taylor, which is an endeavor that just about every other male American has failed at. He’s got a kickass band that can play in a variety of modes, and he’s a sure hand with an anthemic chorus. So what does he apply himself to? Why, bro-country/bro-electronica crossover, of course. Perhaps that we can be thankful that he is concentrating all the bro styles in one place where they can be crushed with a mop like a bunch of cockroaches. On my generous days I tip my cap to his energetic grab for the lowest common denominator. Those generous days come infrequently, though. Most of the time I see Brown as just another casualty of runaway populism.
Album You Regret Giving The Time Of Day To
Rattle That Lock. Remember how I said how I wished there were some Gilmour vox to break up the monotony on Distant Stream Of Urine, or whatever that last Pink Floyd album was called? Be careful what you ask for.
Album You Learned The Words To Most Quickly
Honeymoon
Album Or Artist You Re-Evaluated In 2015
I spent most of February and March discovering Jackson Browne’s back catalog. Not every Jackson Browne album is great, or even good, but if you’re a fan of ’70s soft rock, you should make Late For The Sky part of your life.
Album You’re Probably Underrating
Y Dydd Olaf. Gwenno, former lead singer of the Pipettes, kicks nine synthpop songs in Welsh and one in Cornish, which makes this a good rebuttal piece the next time I’m going on and on about how music needs to be intelligible to be good. I have no idea what she’s singing about, but I keep replaying this anyway. Then again, I don’t think it’s much of a coincidence that this came out in the year of Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP insurgency, and rumblings from Plaid Cymru, too. When was the last time a Welsh-language album was released in the USA anyway? Gwenno’s dad turns out to be a poet in Cornwall and an outspoken advocate for local self-determination. Chances are good that he’s got the same opinion of the Tory Like The Cat With The Cream as Stuart Murdoch does. Chances are good that his daughter does, too. The United Kingdom: enjoy it while you can.
Worst Song Of The Year
Meghan Trainor and Charlie Puth, “Marvin Gaye”. Marvin didn’t die for your sins so you could use him as a verb, pal.
Worst Song On A Good Album
Natalie Prass, “Christy”
Worst Video
Taylor Swift & Kendrick Lamar, “Bad Blood”. I mean, I guess it’s funny? Sort of? But how much money did they spend on the execution of each joke? After awhile, it starts to feel a little like the Jeb Bush campaign: three thousand dollars for each vote he got in Iowa, and plenty left to blow. We’ve got enough evidence now to declare Taylor Swift a poor video performer, which is fine!, she can’t be good at everything. Like Colin Meloy, she was meant for the stage.
Worst Singing
Action Bronson
Worst Rapping
Kanye West on “Jukebox Joints”.
Worst Lyrics
“Cha Cha”. “I like to cha cha in a Latin bar with a Dominican that resembles Taina?” “I am not of Spanish descent but I’m fucked up so that’s the way I talk?” Really? No matter how sweet he croons it, it’s still dumb as heck. Fairly offensive, too. Come back, Phil Collins, all is forgiven for “Illegal Alien”.
Worst Lyrics By A Good Lyricist Who Should’ve Known Better
Colin Meloy. I don’t think he exactly phoned it in this year, but it did feel like he turned a few of these songs over to the Decemberists lyric generator, which is how everything became misbegotten and ill-begotten and cannonball in the bosom of your belly-ish.
Most Overrated
Dan Bejar. You know, I have always put up with this guy because he is a member of a really good band, even though he is at best an adjunct member of that band, even though he won’t tour with that band, even though his contributions to that band tend to be the least repeatable songs on any given album, even though the originals of those songs are dullburgers that are polished for presentation by bandmembers he won’t even tour with or harmonize with, even though his vocals suggest what Robyn Hitchcock would sound if he was indifferent to pitch, rhythm, or timbre, even though he has never, ever, with the possible exception of “Myriad Harbor”, written a single lyric that bears up under scrutiny, even though his attitude toward pop is condescending at best, which reflects badly on his bandmates, who, with all their faults, do love a good melodic hook. What I cannot tolerate is his new belief that he is some sort of Chet Baker style crooner. He cannot hold a tune when he is doing garage rock, and he thinks he can get away with noir B.S.? I would think he was baiting us, if I had any faith that he cared a jot about the rest of the human race, which I certainly, certainly, certainly do not.
Also Way Overrated
In Colour by Jamie xx. Great music for shopping for high-end perfume. Eau de bullshit.
Not Overrated, But Widely Misrepresented In The Music Press
Young Thug. “We already knew he was rap’s most wildly creative stylist: a rogue alchemist of undiscovered melodies, an electrostatic bonding agent for new metaphors.” PFFTFTFTHHHTHF. Pitchfork: prompting spit-takes since…. when did they start paying attention to hip-hop, anyway? I feel like it was pretty damn far into their run, and it still shows. Back in the day, there were no brothers on the wall. Now, they’re ready to hyperventilate over every “zany” negro on the mixtape circuit. It’s really two sides of the same coin, and the coin just got spent on their stupid festival and now there’s no money to hire writers. I personally like Young Thug, but I will not pretend that he, or Future or Fetty or Ty Dolla $ign, sings about anything other than (1) cooking/selling/doing drugs (2) joyless, machine-like sex (3) how he is superior to his enemies and will personally murder them or have them shot by his goons. That’s it; that’s all he’s got for you. There’s nothing visionary about any of that, and these people are going to force grandma over here write a letter to the editor. C’mon, don’t make me write a letter to the editor asking why you people can’t recognize a southern dirty-blues singer when you hear one. Young Thug does indeed have a terrific ear from melody — not the undiscovered or electrostatic kind, but the timeworn pentatonic stuff that’s been washing up on the banks of the Mississippi since the days of Robert Johnson. Ty Dolla $ign is basically a blues singer, too, but he’s got a slightly wider range; that said, his album peters out like crazy at the end and the same cannot be said for the mixtapes of Future and Thugger, all of which maintain a remarkable level of consistency given their ostentatious offhandedness.
Somewhat Underrated, All Things Considered
twentyonepilots. The new Panic! At The Disco, and I say that not just because they record for Fueled By Ramen. Like Panic!, twentyonepilots has built a mass audience by peddling an aggrotheatrical version of yoof music to malajusted male semi-adults too busy getting tatted up and/or putting on makeup to smash the state. Fifteen years ago that meant mall emo, but in 2015, Tyler Joseph is required to rap. As an emcee he is marginally better than the guy from the 1-877-KARS4KIDS commercial, but his choruses do tend to be memorable, and the records have personality and “guts,” which in pop is usually better than guts, if you can put aside any cravings for authenticity. And if you can’t, there’s no way you’re listening to twentyonepilots in the first place. As was the case with Panic!, no tastemaker will admit that he likes twentyonepilots until ten years have passed, and by then they’ll have broken up. It’ll be okay to write a revisionist thinkpiece. The coast will be clear. Nobody’s pass to the Fader Fort will be revoked.
Most Thoroughly Botched Production Job
No Closer To Heaven by The Wonder Years. That’s just way too murky and aggressive, guys.
Song That Would Drive You Craziest On Infinite Repeat
“Ahha” by Nate Ruess.
Song That Got Stuck In Your Head The Most This Year
“I Didn’t See It Coming”
Hoary Old Bastard Who Should Spare Us All And Retire
Cee-Lo. Do I vote for him every year? Very well, then, I’ll make a more painful call….
Hoary Old Bastard Who Should Spare Us All And Just Produce Records For Others
Dr. Dre. “And don’t forget that I came from the ghetto.” Gee, Andre, I totally forgot; I spaced on the last twenty five years of popular music and mistook you for a Short Hills native. The problem with this guy is always the same: his craven need to self-mythologize always gets in the way of his putative social statements. Is Compton a hellhole where the black American Dream goes to die, or is it a romantic-survivalist proving ground that produces wonderful battle-hardened specimens like (the character) Dr. Dre? He would like to have it both ways, of course, but he’s never been a good enough rapper to resolve the internal contradictions of his screwed-up worldview. Notably he farms out the I Can’t Breathe moment to Kendrick, who is really cornering the market on afropsychodrama. Dre could never have pulled that off himself. Snoop also throws him a couple of much-needed lifelines. He’s a good man in a pinch.
Lovable Old Bastard Who Is Losing Altitude
Craig Finn has now sustained diminishing returns longer than anybody since Cesar Cedeno. I guess that testifies to how great he was when he was great. He had a long way to slide.
Young Upstart Who Should Be Sent Down To The Minors For More Seasoning
FKA Twigs. I am still waiting for my lightbulb moment with FKA, who I am assured is really artful and really socially-conscious, though nobody can point to the song where she demonstrates any of that. She’s got a weak voice, her songs are indifferently constructed, and her lyrics are about as feminist as Roosh V the pickup artist. I don’t get the appeal. Maybe it’s the diastema.
Also Cut From The Team
Halsey. Jersey kid, blue hair, anthemic voice-of-a-generational lyrics over regurgitated Swedebeats, allegedly bisexual, grotesquely tattooed. Representative chorus: “We are the new Americana/high on legal marijuana/raised on Biggie and Nirvana.” Speak for yourself, Halsey; no need to drag your innocent peers into this. Badlands is selling, but I think it’s mostly because of the Bieber co-sign. Move along, nothing to see here.
Right On The Bubble
Little Simz. For a British rapper, not half bad. Not half good, either: too often she slips into that bakalakarakalaka flow that, I guess, denotes seriousness of intent to U.K. audiences. They don’t call it hard, I’m told they say “grimey.” They’re cute, them and their crumpets. Give them a break — Nicola Sturgeon and Gwenno’s dad are tearing their nation apart.
That Breakout Is Probably Never Gonna Happen
This might not be true straight across the country, but in the blast radius of Philadelphia that includes Jersey, there is no man who causes more rambunction in a live setting than Meek Mill. He comes out and does his holler my way out of poverty routine, and the crowd goes apeshit nuts. This has never been translated to wax for the same reason that Bim Skala Bim and Plate O’ Shrimp couldn’t capture their live act in the studio either: there is a variety of rambunction that only works onstage, and this is it. If Mephiskapheles could not make the necessary adjustment, why would we have any higher hopes for Meek?
Good Artist Most In Need Of Some New Ideas
Brandi Carlile. She says she has a drawerful of pop-country songs stashed under her bed. I think she needs to raid that drawer.
Should Have Been Better
Secret Someones. In theory this outfit ought to be fantastic: Bess Rogers on lead guitar and Lelia Broussard on bass, a fine songwriter named Hannah Winkler fronting the act, and a decent drummer, too. Theory must be verified in the lab, though, and this test tube of chemicals seems oddly inert. The baking powder volcano is fizzling out and now the second grade class is getting fidgety. In the press material I got, they called themselves Weezer with boobs, and regardless of how the boy drummer feels about that, it’s a horrible image, and now I have to brush and floss my brain. (Sorry to pass it on).
If I Could Be In Any Band Or Musical Project, I’d Pick This One
Belle & Sebastian, of course.
Lifetime Achievement Award
You could make the case that Tracy Bonham has had as much career value as Joanna Newsom. And you’d lose that case badly, but you could sustain your argument for a few sentences before you crashed and burned. Bonham has made five good to very good albums, each of which has its own distinctive personality and sound. That puts her around where Kate Miller-Heidke is. Maybe the songwriting hasn’t been as consistent, but she’s such a good singer that she makes up for it there. I’m almost out of gas here, people, the finish line is in sight, and I’m popping off. Funny that “Mother Mother” was lumped in with the rebellious “angry woman” stuff when it came out. Even at the level of the plot, the mother and the narrator have a good relationship; she ends “I miss you, I love you.” She just yowls louder than Alanis can. And Alanis can yowl.
Place The Next Pop Music Boom Will Come From
Richmond
Will Still Be Making Good Records In 2025
Chancellor Bennett
Will Be A 1-Hit Wonder
Rachel Platten
Biggest Musical Trend Of 2016
Neo-masculine backlash (ugh.)
Best Album Of 2016
Metronomy 5.