B&C's 2015 Albums of the Year AKA The One Time A Year Peef Uses Math

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:up: Good discussion in here, guys. This is what the thread's for.

I was about to listen to The Dear Hunter's new one but discovered they're a bunch of pretentious twits and have a 6 album story arc going. Decided not to Cobbler this one.


Yeah there's a band I have never been bothered to listen to.

A couple of these recent lists have reminded me I should listen to the new Helio Sequence album. I've enjoyed what I've heard before but not loved it.

Anybody who digs shoegaze should listen to Exposing Seas by Thrushes before finalising their lists. I discovered it just a few days ago and wow. It will definitely be in my list.

PS prbiker you did NOT put Drones in your honourable mentions! :tsk:
 
And I'll throw in another Axver favorite that most people likely overlooked:



Delightful melodies here. I mean their songs really stick with you, but the sound is huge and the pace is impressive. Great debut album.
 
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It's a U2 message board. MBDTF, easily the most acclaimed and talked about (and best) album of 2010 placed 4th on our poll, on a site with a lot of Kanye fans and a thriving thread dedicated to him.

Kendrick, despite running away with the critical consensus, will be lucky to place higher than 3rd IMO.
 
It's a U2 message board. MBDTF, easily the most acclaimed and talked about (and best) album of 2010 placed 4th on our poll, on a site with a lot of Kanye fans and a thriving thread dedicated to him.

Kendrick, despite running away with the critical consensus, will be lucky to place higher than 3rd IMO.

I get that but it's just a little baffling to me to see lists with Miley Cyrus and Def Leppard and no mention of TPAB. It's all me though, people are gonna listen to and like what they like. I just figured more people had heard Kendrick this year.
 
I did actually listen to that Miley album and found it to be really, really terrible, but it does have a cult following around it. Not surprised to see it pop up on at least one list.
 
B&C's 2015 Albums of the Year AKA The One Time A Year Peef Uses Math

And I'll throw in another Axver favorite that most people likely overlooked:



Delightful melodies here. I mean their songs really stick with you, but the sound is huge and the pace is impressive. Great debut album.



:up: :up:

I adore this album and it will be in my top three or four. Catchy, to the point, and the guitars are simply wonderful.

Westkust are competing with Ethereal Shroud for my third place, who put out the atmospheric black metal album of the year. I wonder what you'll make of it? It has a distinctive, immense, stunning sound.
 
PS prbiker you did NOT put Drones in your honourable mentions! :tsk:
It's ok at best. Definitely not my least favorite album of the year, but it pales in comparison to my top 15. There are some good songs on it, though.
Not big on the Honorable's but great main list!
There's a reason why they are the honorables. :wink: I'd say the closest thing that came to unlistenable in that list was the Rob Thomas album.
I totally forgot about Def Leppard album released this year!
It's a very good album, many of the songs just scream classic Def Leppard, especially 'Let's Go' and 'Dangerous'.
 
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:up: :up:

I adore this album and it will be in my top three or four. Catchy, to the point, and the guitars are simply wonderful.

Westkust are competing with Ethereal Shroud for my third place, who put out the atmospheric black metal album of the year. I wonder what you'll make of it? It has a distinctive, immense, stunning sound.


The only black metal albums this year that have really grabbed me are the new Deafheaven and Panopticon albums, glad to have more potentially interesting ones.

RYM's metal picks this year are ehhh...I got a half hour into Leprous' album and turned it off because I found it so generic and inconsequential.
 
It's ok at best. Definitely not my least favorite album of the year, but it pales in comparison to my top 15. There are some good songs on it, though.


I'd say it has no competition as the most hilariously terrible album of the year. At least Muse are forging ahead to create a new genre of conspiracy theory rock?

I listened to that Westkust album. It was pretty good!


:up:

The only black metal albums this year that have really grabbed me are the new Deafheaven and Panopticon albums, glad to have more potentially interesting ones.

RYM's metal picks this year are ehhh...I got a half hour into Leprous' album and turned it off because I found it so generic and inconsequential.


Yeah I rarely get into many of the highly rated metal albums on RYM. Partly the power metal fanboys overrate the cheesiest shit, and partly the trve kvlt guys rate highly some very extreme or esoteric stuff that I can sort of appreciate from a technical or aesthetic sense but wouldn't choose to play myself. And just personally I've gone off most death metal and never cared for traditional heavy metal stuff. A lot of the stuff I like gets dismissed as hipster non-metal like Agalloch or Wolves in the Throne Room or Isis or Deafheaven.
 
The first thing anybody needs to do when visiting RYM is filter out the metal albums. Otherwise, every recent annual list on that site is literally a metal album in every other position. Far and away the most overrated genre out there. Hell, every time Pitchfork reviews one of those (which is fairly often lately), you're almost guaranteed a score of 7.8 or higher. That and truly terrible rap and R&B gets such a free pass that it's ridiculous. :doh:
 
I'd say it has no competition as the most hilariously terrible album of the year.

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/kid_cudi/speedin_bullet_2_heaven/


Yeah I rarely get into many of the highly rated metal albums on RYM. Partly the power metal fanboys overrate the cheesiest shit, and partly the trve kvlt guys rate highly some very extreme or esoteric stuff that I can sort of appreciate from a technical or aesthetic sense but wouldn't choose to play myself. And just personally I've gone off most death metal and never cared for traditional heavy metal stuff. A lot of the stuff I like gets dismissed as hipster non-metal like Agalloch or Wolves in the Throne Room or Isis or Deafheaven.

You mean this isn't AOTY?

space1992.jpg


Recommend me a Wolves in the Throne Room album.
 
The first thing anybody needs to do when visiting RYM is filter out the metal albums. Otherwise, every recent annual list on that site is literally a metal album in every other position. Far and away the most overrated genre out there. Hell, every time Pitchfork reviews one of those (which is fairly often lately), you're almost guaranteed a score of 7.8 or higher. That and truly terrible rap and R&B gets such a free pass that it's ridiculous. :doh:

:eyeroll:

Given how many different genres of metal there are, this is a particularly ridiculous thing to say.


Touche.

Recommend me a Wolves in the Throne Room album.

Two Hunters. "Vastness and Sorrow" is the best thing they've done, and the album isn't quite the marathon of Diadem of Twelve Stars, which is about equal in quality but less accessible if you're not seriously into this sort of thing.
 
Im not a metal-head per se, but I love some metal bands. It all depends on people, I guess; some people just hate that kind of noisy, distorted guitars or way-too-much hard hitting drums. Some metal bands have touch of alt. rock-ness, which I come to love and i think these bands are probably more friendly to guys like you who are into more indie-esque bands. Like Torche or Baroness. Or even some sludge/doom metal bands like Sunn O)))) or Sleep.
 
I tried to listen to To Pimp..., but I dodn't like the beats and the music.

My pathetic little list is coming together.

Yeah I can't get into Kendrick, sorry guys. That said, I was around at a friend's on Sunday and he was playing it and it was obviously superior to the next album he put on, Father John Misty's one. Now that was actively bad.
 
I tried to listen to To Pimp..., but I dodn't like the beats and the music.

Same here. Something about his voice rubbed me the wrong way as well, so I didn't make it far. (Same thing happened when a friend recommended I listen to alt-j)
 
:up: :up:

I adore this album and it will be in my top three or four. Catchy, to the point, and the guitars are simply wonderful.

Westkust are competing with Ethereal Shroud for my third place, who put out the atmospheric black metal album of the year. I wonder what you'll make of it? It has a distinctive, immense, stunning sound.
Those two albums are also going on my to-listen list.

This thread is making me listen to so much new music. It's great. I was kind of slacking the past few months but I'm discovering some great stuff now.
 
Yeah I can't get into Kendrick, sorry guys. That said, I was around at a friend's on Sunday and he was playing it and it was obviously superior to the next album he put on, Father John Misty's one. Now that was actively bad.
:up: Couldn't get into that FJM album either.

As for Kendrick, I listened to TPAB for the first time in a while yesterday. I'm still discovering new things when I listen to it. It's just amazing. He made such an ambitious album and he made sure he didn't fail where a lot of artists who try to make an ambitious album do fail: the songs are all great. You can easily enjoy the album without listening to his lyrics. They only make it better.
 
B&C's 2015 Albums of the Year AKA The One Time A Year Peef Uses Math

FJM, you know, he's a funny guy and all (SAVE ME PRESIDENT JESUS), but the problem is that he knows he's a funny guy and tries to cram his speech patterns into his lyrics and he comes off like a prick. The Night John Tillman... actually makes him seem less likable than the girl in question. I hear so much about the warmth and vulnerability of the record, a portrait of an artist in love attempting to make sense of the subject, but the persona is just a bit too sardonic for me.

And then there are the musical arrangements. My God, has a folk album sounded this stiff since the early 70s? At times the music makes Paul Anka sound edgy. Occasionally he strikes absolute gold, where the fourth wall breaking lyricism and arch arrangements collide to make something great; Bored in the USA is funny on its own but reaches the next gear with the laugh track that's inserted. True Affection takes him out of his wheelhouse and he absolutely nails that beat. Mostly though, I feel as if the music is there because albums need music and status updates on their own don't make good albums.

I know I'm being far too harsh on what is a unique and charismatic record for 2015, it is certainly not without its good qualities, but I've liked it less and less as I've spent time with it and that's not a good thing for such a personal record. Carrie & Lowell has been literally the exact opposite way for me.
 
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Basically as soon as I heard some wanker burbling about "I looove you honeybeeeaaaarrrr" I knew it was not the album for me. Closer attention to the lyrics confirmed this. The guy just seems like a dick and the music puts me to sleep.

Unrelated: anybody who wants some metal to consider for their list, here's something really fucking unusual I just discovered - black metal meets Byzantine chant. It actually works too.

https://witchinghourproductions.bandcamp.com/album/litourgiya
 
The first thing anybody needs to do when visiting RYM is filter out the metal albums. Otherwise, every recent annual list on that site is literally a metal album in every other position. Far and away the most overrated genre out there. Hell, every time Pitchfork reviews one of those (which is fairly often lately), you're almost guaranteed a score of 7.8 or higher. That and truly terrible rap and R&B gets such a free pass that it's ridiculous. :doh:

Everything you said here is correct. Everything. Infuriating to me. Takes a list of 100 down to about 30 for me to actually take seriously. Everyone has their tastes, but these two genres get a big pass in my opinion.
 
I like the new FJM well enough, but it's nowhere near as good as Fear Fun.

I really liked the album, but while i found almost all the songs "good", i didn't think any were outstanding. I loved Hollywood Forever Cemetery and nothing is at that level on there. But still a consistent, strong, interesting album.
 
FJM, you know, he's a funny guy and all (SAVE ME PRESIDENT JESUS), but the problem is that he knows he's a funny guy and tries to cram his speech patterns into his lyrics and he comes off like a prick. The Night John Tillman... actually makes him seem less likable than the girl in question. I hear so much about the warmth and vulnerability of the record, a portrait of an artist in love attempting to make sense of the subject, but the persona is just a bit too sardonic for me.

And then there are the musical arrangements. My God, has a folk album sounded this stiff since the early 70s? At times the music makes Paul Anka sound edgy. Occasionally he strikes absolute gold, where the fourth wall breaking lyricism and arch arrangements collide to make something great; Bored in the USA is funny on its own but reaches the next gear with the laugh track that's inserted. True Affection takes him out of his wheelhouse and he absolutely nails that beat. Mostly though, I feel as if the music is there because albums need music and status updates on their own don't make good albums.

I know I'm being far too harsh on what is a unique and charismatic record for 2015, it is certainly not without its good qualities, but I've liked it less and less as I've spent time with it and that's not a good thing for such a personal record. Carrie & Lowell has been literally the exact opposite way for me.
But he's not supposed to be likable. He's not supposed to be likable in that song or in Thirsty Crow. He's said as much.

Only a few songs on the album are actually about him being in love: the title track, Chateau Lobby, and I Went to the Store are pretty much it. True Affection could be about Emma I suppose, but it's really just about modern long distance relationships. Apartment through Thirsty Crow is about him mocking himself: those two are about how petty he is, while Astride Me is about how he's not sure he's earned anything with her. Aside from the closer, the second half of the album isn't even about the "thesis" of the album. Strange Encounter is about a one night stand, and Ideal Husband lyrically sounds like it could be on Fear Fun. Bored and Holy Shit are both, according to him, more about turning back outward and looking at the world again. He said they're evidence of where the next album is going.

Basically, I'm saying that if you think The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment is about him patting himself on the back for being smarter and funnier than the girl he's describing, I think you're misreading a lot of what he's trying to say lyrically. Anyone ripping him for being a prick seems to have missed that he's doing that already.

Also, if you're going to criticize the musical arrangements of this album, I don't see why you'd stop here and not just criticize the genre as a whole. Father John Misty is one of the few folk artists I enjoy precisely because his singing and lyrics breathe life into otherwise boring music. Folk music is boring by its nature.
 
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