With Little Comets and Asylums sitting on top of our Christmas tree this year, Live4ever’s end of year countdowns come to an end today with our writers’ own stand-out albums of 2015. You’ll find a varied selection box below, from the crazy new world of young guitar bands to the man whose third LP has restored many people’s faith in hip hop.
Season’s greetings to all our readers and all the very best for 2016!
Christine Hogg: Francesca Belmonte – ‘Anima’
Francesca Belmonte is not painting a pretty picture. Instead, her debut LP ‘Anima’ haunts the listener’s soul with cold rhythms, droning futurism and soul-electro-enhanced r&b. The beauty of this record lies in its unpretentiousness, and Belmonte’s spine-chilling vocal range intensifies its hypnotizing spell. Her crystal clear voice alternates between warm and cold, setting a mature melody over icy beats. Anima brings triphop’s gloomy style to new ears and gives it a more complex personality – one that understands the bittersweet intervals between high and low.
Dylan Llewellyn-Nunes: Slaves – ‘Are You Satisfied?’
Even difficult questions require answers, and picking the album of 2015 is no simple matter. In all directions the horizon has been filled with excitement, inventiveness and plain brilliance. So, how to answer this tough question?
To my mind the only option is take the exception to the rule. The feeling you can’t shake. Whilst everyone else stands before you, creating beauty and passion that marvel and enchant, another band runs up from behind and smacks you aggressively in the face. There’s no beauty, just belligerence. There’s no poetry, just prose. No hidden imagery, just dark and brutal humour.
Welcome to the world of The Slaves. ‘Are You Satisfied?’ loudly states the obvious; that Slaves quite clearly don’t give a f*ck! And the f*ck they don’t give is an apathetic explosion. No matter what turns 2015 has taken musically, in this house it has constantly returned to the sheer childish angst of Slaves. No amount of repetition fades the vigour and bile with which each track on the album is delivered, it’s seemingly a thirst that cannot be satiated.
With the ominous, growing, repetitious drone of an approaching chainsaw, ’The Hunter’ feels more dangerous with every second. Its brilliance emanating from its repulsion at the hypocrisy that surrounds it; it crawls all over the listener, leaving them sullied. Which is contrasted by the sheer ferocity of ‘Sockets’; before it starts the world is a certain place, sockets is not a perverse or expletive word. By the time it finishes that has all changed. Dictionary challenges aside, it lacks for nothing – how a duo from Royal Tunbridge Wells can make such a noise is still beyond the entire population of the town, who are probably still sat politely wondering what they could have done to have inspired such utter contempt. But when rage and disgust sound this good, who cares, because all you want is more.
And, there is so much more, and then more. ‘Are You Satisfied?’ is built on claustrophobic soundscapes, intense, cloying blasts of anger. None of the tracks here have any respect for personal space, they stand wide eyed and screaming only millimetres from your face. And nowhere is this more true than on ‘Hey’. It’s the terrifying heart of the album, and it’s beating wildly.
They scream like punks. They are as angry as punks. They are as loud as punks. And they are constantly compared to punks. But they are not punk. They are far too arch and knowing. But why should that matter, because what they are more than anything is 2015’s most intense experience outside of the violence and horror of world events.
‘Are You Satisfied?’ took 2015 by the neck and has been holding tight until it stops kicking. And as its end draws near and the days grow shorter, its last moments will not be filled with sweet remembrances and sorrow, instead it will end its days kicking and screaming. But kicking and screaming is the very essence of rock and roll’s soul, and Slaves are claiming it for their own. Even the devil was never this bold, or exciting.
Andy Peterson: C Duncan – ‘Architect’
We now know more about Christopher Duncan than at the moment of ‘Architect’s release, due mainly to an unexpected, but deserved, but unsuccessful, tilt at the Mercury Prize. If metaphorically rubbing shoulders with the likes of Florence Welch, Jamie xx and Roisin Murphy on the shortlist made for an unlikely spectacle, the Glaswegian must have finally come to the realisation that he was no brazen gatecrasher, but there by right. On the evening itself we found out why there are few poor bookmakers (and why even fewer of them make any music), but losing must’ve seemed like far too stronger word; with its creator peeking through the window from outside of the industry, he could live in the satisfaction that ‘Architect’ had made waves without any need for hype, hipsters or hollowness.
But what did the critics know? ‘Architect’s main strengths lie in anachronisms, in its warmth, lack of pretense and songs that are crafted like handmade mementos of a simpler time. That it was self produced and self played was a revelation, but whereas laptop mavens consistently draw on their own muse to varying effect, Duncan cheerfully threw half a dozen free wheeling influences into the melting pot, characters as mouth wateringly diverse as Robin Pecknold and Cole Porter.
With the writer dispossessed of any ego, his songs were allowed to flourish without being self conscious. There was, for instance, the chromatic ‘For’ – its backdrop almost choral and laced with interlocking harmonies like a precise joy. Or take ‘Garden’, a tumbling guitar loop and nonsense words as if taken from the mumbo-jumbo of our salad days. Darkness was mainly someone else’s problem: in ‘Novices’ and the petal-delicate ‘Silence and Air’ it was as distant as the moon. Being picky, it could be argued that this conscious lack of street disqualifies ‘Architect’ from being classed as contemporary music. Duncan’s ear is a nuanced one though, and his outward inwardness meant that closer ‘Gone For Winter’ was as sweet as it was sepia.
Like all great records, ‘Architect’ also posed questions it chose to let only the listener answer; enigmas such as how something so meticulously put together could sound so spontaneous, innocent and carefree. Perhaps sitting there amongst bona fide pop stars and ingenues may have come as an epiphany to Christopher Duncan, pushing him into directions less good for the soul. Whatever happens next, the charming byways and deep sighs of his first record will last until long after a choice is made.
Trey Tyler: Kendrick Lamar – ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’
When Kendrick Lamar’s anomalous second full-length ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’ dropped in March, it initially caught a lot of listeners off guard, despite receiving mass critical attention and acclaim. A similar phenomenon happened to Radiohead after they followed ‘OK Computer’ with ‘Kid A’; a lot of people didn’t really know what quite to make of it. The familiar feel and pellucid cinematic narrative that made ‘good kid, m.A.A.d city’ an instant classic evolves into something completely different on ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’. The former felt vintage in its accessibility as an album experience, it’s an easy record to love and digest, whereas the latter diverts into an outré genre-busting exploration detailing Kendrick’s conscious maturation and struggles with fame.
Enlisting an eclectic crew of collaborators and guests, Kendrick creates a dense and dark groove based sound, inspired by freeform jazz and poetry. Legends such as George Clinton and Snoop Dogg give throwback performances. Clinton adds an ass-shaking funk to opener ‘Wesley’s Theory’, while Snoop’s suave delivery effortless settles in on the jazzy Rhodes-led ‘Institutionalized’. The sensual bouncy funk of ‘These Walls’ and the laidback lounge feel of ‘You Ain’t Gotta Lie (Momma Said)’ are especially alluring. Elsewhere, bassist virtuoso Thundercat adds a deep dub on the G-funk inspired ‘King Kunta’, while saxophone extraordinaire Kamasi Washington spars with K-Dot’s rapid-fire rhymes on the free jazz explosion of ‘For Free?’. The album’s only true guest verse isn’t wasted, as Rapsody gives an awe-inspiring performance on ‘Complexion (A Zulu Love).’
Admirably fearless, Lamar’s themes and emotional range have grown wider and deeper. Expertly sequenced ‘u’ is a piercingly raw portrait of a dark of the soul as it acts as a major turning point within the album’s narrative. Elsewhere, the vicious ‘The Blacker The Berry’ crushes and booms unapologetically however, on ‘Alright’, Kendrick finds power in the inclusive embrace of hope and perseverance. The humble soulful dub of ‘Momma’ and the real-recognize-real diplomacy of ‘Hood Politics’ are equally captivating.
‘To Pimp a Butterfly’ isn’t the most playable record of the year, but it is the best album of the year. The struggle of Kendrick’s spiritual awaking collocates with ever-growing challenges of racism in the 21st century. In five to ten years this journey will be as relevant to 2015 as Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’ was to 1971. After the sweeping finish of ‘Mortal Man,’ a recurring spoken word montage pieces together Kendrick’s personal and professional metamorphosis as he reads a poem and converses with his idol 2Pac. The distinctively personal journey has led Kendrick to a universal conclusion: have self love and be selfless despite the struggle.
In just four short years, Kendrick has grown into not only one of hip hop’s most vibrant voices, but he has became one of the most musically innovative and socially conscious artists of his generation. ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’ is high art; it’s a complex, unique and transcendent piece of work.
Steven White: Girl Band – ‘Holding Hands With Jamie’
Time-travelling musicophiles from another dimension would do well to land their asses here on Earth at the end of 2015. For it has been a good year of albums. From psychotropic Tame Impala to garrulous Sleaford Mods, a rejuvenated Blur to a histrionic Benjamin Clementine, and even The Libertines didn’t completely sink their Albion Galley with ‘Anthems For Doomed Youth’. But the grand prix goes to Girl Band’s debut ‘Holding Hands With Jamie’.
The Dublin foursome’s pot of post-punk and experimental rock roots has sprouted out something of an anti-album. Choruses, verses, melodies, the usual trio one expects to hear on an album, are mostly done away with. In their place are nine songs worth of frontman Dara Kiely’s chaotic warbling of splintered lyrics, difficult to fully dissect behind the cacophony of noise his bandmates mash together in equal fervour. Did he really just ask if Batman and Robin ever kissed on ‘The Last Riddler’? Or say he had a daughter called Paul on ‘Paul’? Or admit to looking like Colombo if he winked a bit on ‘Witchdoctor’? Ostensibly, Kiely’s words are complete amphigory, sparked by his mental breakdown two years ago and pieced together like a William Burrough’s novel. Against the manic of the music, anything overtly meaningful might lose its meaning.
The guitar shrills and the drums batter down on ‘Umbongo’s exhausting two minute intro. ‘Baloo’ chugs out a beat worthy of a frenzied dance. ‘Fucking Butter’ is an eight minute ode to Nutella riding on a nauseous bass line. ‘Texting An Alien’ is the softest moment, but Kiely screeching “I’m out of it!” never lets the nerves quite settle. Girl Band is the most exciting noise to fling itself out of guitar music since Alex Turner told us not to believe the hype. So f*ck Jamie, this album makes you want to hold hands with Girl Band in eternal gratitude for having enough gumption to make such a satisfying racket. Buy it, download it, stream it, steal it from your neighbour. Just have it and listen to the best album of the year.
