Posts Tagged ‘Best Albums Of 2015’

BRAIDS – ” Deep In The Iris ” Albums of 2015

Posted: October 25, 2015 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Braids.

Breakup records are nothing new. They’re one of the most practiced concoctions in pop music today but every now and then, one comes along that pushes the art form in new directions. “Deep in the Iris”, the third album from Montreal trio Braids, is one such album. Rather than continuing the evolution of their former sound—as displayed on 2013’s stark, searing “Flourish//Perish” the band instead takes a softer, sunnier approach. While the lyrics are as cutting and introspective as anything you’ll come across, the music is anything but. Departing from jarring arrangements, the band employs warm Björk-esque beats and inviting rhythmic soundscapes as a backdrop to Raphaelle Standell’s stunning vocal work. Deep in the Iris doesn’t so much explore new depths as it does new heights. It isn’t the sound of fracturing, but the healing process.

Braids “Deep In The Iris” LP
Out 28th April on Arbutus Records / Flemish Eye.

There’s placid grace to Deep In The Iris, the third and latest full-length by Braids, but don’t let that fool you. Something’s churning beneath the album’s calm, cool surface. Unlike Flourish // Perish, the Montreal trio’s icy, challenging record from 2013, Deep In The Iris represents a thaw: Throughout its nine songs, singer Raphaelle Standell-Preston and her cohorts Taylor Smith and Austin Tufts art-rock with melodic allure, confessional directness and quivering warmth. Where Flourish // Perish used prickly electronics and cavernous arrangements to hold humanity at arm’s length,Deep In The Iris turns those same elements into lulling hymns to cleansing and redemption. Braids is not only more approachable than ever; it’s downright magnetic.

Her breathy vocals, as liquid and acrobatic as ever, elevate a line that in lesser hands would have seemed clichéd. Meanwhile, the band underscores the bittersweet melancholy with hypnotic patterns of percussion and synths. The hooks are subtle, but they’re huge.

That boldness, both instrumentally and lyrically, is even more striking in “Miniskirt.” In the past, Standell-Preston has couched her lyrics in a haze of poetic abstraction; here, she goes for the throat, calling out misogyny, the male gaze and the language of slut-shaming with piercing, confessional force. The song could almost pass as an epic R&B ballad, at least at first: After a sumptuous, stadium-worthy intro, it corkscrews through a tangle of jittery beats and atmospheric eeriness that never wanders into self-indulgence. Even within the album’s most complex and confrontational track, there’s an immaculate pop edge that mesmerizes.

By the time “Warm Like Summer” bursts into a dazzle of soulful croons, glimmering loops and shuffling drums, it appears that the album’s springtime release is no accident: This is the sound of renewal and regrowth, as joyful and as painful as that can be. In “Letting Go,” Standell-Preston sings with dreamy contentment, “We laid on the bank and had our fill.” On the lush, stuffed-to-bursting Deep In The Iris, Braids has done exactly that.

GIRLPOOL – ” Before The World Was Big ” Best Albums Of 2015

Posted: October 22, 2015 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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The world is fucking huge! That realization usually hits us sometime in our teens, and we start to come to terms with the fact that we’ll never get to go everywhere we want to go or do everything we want to do. It’s such an old way of thinking when we’re young setting ourselves up for disappointment before anything happens and Girlpool’s debut often feels like yearning for a life that’s too short. The duo is out there seeing the world now, but this album was mostly written before any of that seemed like a possibility. They sound both impossibly young and already world weary.

The debut album by Girlpool came out 1st June 2015 (2nd June in the US) on Wichita Recordings worldwide.

Available to pre-order now on Wichita store – CD + LP includes a signed poster, Directed by Allyssa Yohana. Taken from Girlpool’s debut album, “Before The World Was Big”, Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad, the two members of this band, are products of LA’s still-teeming DIY punk scene, but they don’t have to play loud to be heard. And they’ve since relocated to recent DIY mecca Philadelphia, but while they’re nearly as tuneful as their big-sister band Waxahatchee, they haven’t lost any of their basement-hardcore urgency. Instead, they sing songs about feminism and friendship and fucking assholes, their voices in nyah-nyah close harmony over their minimal guitar-and-bass backdrops. They don’t have a drummer because they’re too punk to need a drummer.

SLEATER KINNEY – ” No Cities To Love ” Best Albums Of 2015

Posted: July 3, 2015 in MUSIC
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Sleater-Kinney, No Cities to Love
The trio still snap and crackle on their first set since 2005. No Cities might sound chaotic at first, but each element Corin Tucker’s sweet snarl, Janet Weiss’ rugged beats, Carrie Brownstein’s noisy solos—is exactly in its right place. Of course Sleater-Kinney was going to reunite—everybody reunites these days—but
Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker and Janet Weiss were stealthy about it: the trio didn’t let slip that they had been working on their first album in 10 years until it was already finished.

And what an album! The interplay between Brownstein and Tucker has rarely been tighter or more ferocious, their voices and guitars twisting, turning and intertwining over explosive drumming from Weiss on songs that are as tuneful as they are hard-hitting. Sleater-Kinney had built an enviable catalog before dissolving in 2006; No Cities to Love is a staggering return that ranks among their best work.

JASON ISBELL – ” Something More Than Free ” Best Albums Of 2015

Posted: July 3, 2015 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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This former Drive-By Trucker has been steadily and quietly improving since he first went solo in 2007, and we’re now to the point where he completely overshadows his old band. This album does a great job showing why. Isbell’s lyrics are warm and incisive and empathetic — quick, economical sketches of people in go-nowhere towns who rarely get to hear themselves depicted with this level of real-talk dignity. And his music is intuitive and lived-in. Isbell’s miles-deep baritone can be conversationally pleasant on the verses, but when he hits the chorus, it always wells up into something huge.

Jason Isbell — Something More Than Free (July 10th, Southeastern Records)

Former Drive-By Trucker Jason Isbell is one of alt-country’s most reliable voices, particularly in light of his modern classic Southeastern. To follow-up that 2013 LP, Isbell reunited with its producer, Dave Cobb, for a collection of songs that examine life’s small details and big questions with the same level of astounding sincerity and humble wisdom. Isbell oftentimes sounds like frequent tourmate Ryan Adams during his Cardinals era, particularly when Isbell strips down his sound and lets himself get real blue in the spirit of the Southern literary tradition (see “Speed Trap Town,” then have a good cry). But he also sounds quite different (and traditional, in a classic country sense) when backed by a full band, oftentimes topped off by a piano, a fiddle, and strings.

JENNY HVAL – ” Apocalypse Girl ” Best Albums Of 2015

Posted: July 1, 2015 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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It’s impossible to encapsulate the various themes that Jenny Hval invokes on her anthemic offering, Apocalypse, Girl, but above all else, this album is an exploration of sexuality. “I’m six or seven and dreaming that I’m a boy,” Hval sings on “Sabbath,” before interrogating exactly what it means to be that: a girl displaced by her own body and the carnal desire that it inspires. Hval’s sound is performative and spoken-word heavy, but her earnest, prose-driven monologues inevitably descend into melodic choruses. Hooks jut out like elbows and knees in the tangled bed sheets of her narration as she questions what true intimacy should look like: “It would be easy to think about submission, but I don’t think it’s about submission. It’s about: holding and being held.

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Taken from the album “Apocalypse, girl” out June 9th on Sacred Bones. & Su Tissue (Norway).

Think big, girl, like a king, think kingsize. Jenny Hval’s new record opens with a quote from the Danish poet Mette Moestrup, and continues towards the abyss. “Apocalypse, girl” is a hallucinatory narrative that exists somewhere between fiction and reality, a post-op fever dream, a colourful timelapse of death and rebirth, close-ups of impossible bodies — all told through the language of transgressive pop music.

When Norwegian noise legend Lasse Marhaug interviewed Jenny Hval for his fanzine in early 2014, they started talking about movies, and the conversation was so interesting that she asked him to produce her next record. It turned out that talking about film was a great jumping off point for album production. Hval’s songs slowly expanded from solo computer loops and vocal edits to contributions from bandmates Håvard Volden and Kyrre Laastad, before finally exploding into collaborations with Øystein Moen (Jaga Jazzist/Puma), Thor Harris (Swans), improv cellist Okkyung Lee and harpist Rhodri Davis. All of these musicians have two things in common: they are fierce players with a great ear for intimacy, and they hear music in the closing of a suitcase as much as in a beautiful melody.

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And so Apocalypse, girl is a very intimate, very visual beast. It dreams of an old science fiction movie where gospel choir girls are punks and run the world with auto-erotic impulses. It’s a gentle hum from a doomsday cult, a soft desire for collective devotion, an ode to the close-up and magnified, unruly desires.

Jenny Hval has developed her own take on intimate sound since the release of her debut album in 2006. Her work, which includes 2013’s critically celebrated Innocence Is Kinky (Rune Grammofon), has gradually incorporated books, sound installations and collaborations with poets and visual artists. For Hval, language is central, always torn between the vulnerable, the explosive and total humiliation.

Jenny Hval has just finished the first run of US shows w/ St Vincent, which was truly AMAZING, Thanks to  everyone who came to see us, cheered, got a bit terrified by the bananas, bought Soft Dick Rock shirts (or bought Soft Dick Rock shirts for their friends/girlfriends/boyfriends/kids! WORD!). Most of all: a big thank you to the amazing St Vincent + my exquisite band: Håvard Volden, Zia Anger and Annie Bielski. LOVE. Shows continue in a few days when we meet up w Perfume Genius.

“Meshes of Voice”, my collaboration with the wonderful Susanna, will finally be released on vinyl! Please support this very special release by pre-ordering here.

Apocalypse, girl

“Meshes of Voice” by Susanna and I won the Norwegian Grammy in “Åpen Klasse” (Open Category)! We were very surprised and grateful and very, very close to completely speechless. Thanks to everybody who were involved in the project, both back in 2009 (when it was a concert piece) and for the 2014 record!

Meshes of Voice will be performed at CTM festival in Berlin, and we’re also doing a Scandinavian mini-tour in February (see above). What will it be like? Take a look at these beautiful sneak peaks: 1 &2.

Susanna (Wallumrød) and I have released a collaboration album, ‘Meshes of Voice’ (via Susanna’s excellent label SusannaSonata). We recently performed the project at Ultima Festival in Oslo, at (the excellent! feminist!) magazine FETT’s 10 year anniversary in Bergen, and at UNSOUND Festival in Krakow…and hopefully there’s more to come. There have been some excellent reviews:

FATHER JOHN MISTY – “I Love You Honeybear ” Best Albums Of 2015

Posted: June 12, 2015 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Father John Misty,”I Love You, Honeybear” aka Josh Tillman, has released the video for “I Love You, Honeybear” from this year’s album of the same name. Tillman co-wrote the video with his wife, Emma, and co-directed the video with Grant James, who also worked on two videos from Father John Misty’s 2012 LP, Fear Fun (“This Is Sally Hatchet”, “Funtimes in Babylon”). The video stars Brett Gelman (The Other Guys) and Susan Traylor (Greenberg). Tillman describes it as “a portrayal of an average night in the lives of two EMTs.”
He may sound like he wandered away from an L.A. ashram, but don’t be fooled by the beatific-hippie vibes. There’s a killer songwriter’s instinct beneath all those dreamy Laurel Canyon melodies the man can write a cutting lyric like nobody’s business).

Father John Misty’s “City of Music” session, featuring a performance of the song “I Love You, Honeybear”.
Directed/shot/edited/audio by Trent Waterman

On paper, “I Love You, Honeybear” is a nightmare: Suave yet cripplingly self-aware bearded bohemian millennial falls madly in love, grapples at length with becoming a different kind of walking cliché, and tops it off with an on-the-nose takedown of the American Dream. But what some listeners might register as smug self-indulgence strikes me as one of 2015’s realest and rawest dissertations. Josh Tillman’s misanthropy is far-reaching; he’s an equal-opportunity roaster, sparing no target including himself. His lyrical eviscerations are on-point and often laugh-out-loud funny, and they’re couched in throwback lounge-lizard arrangements far too pretty to be retro kitsch. Plus he sweetens the deal with some truly romantic declarations of love. This album is every bit as smart and beautiful as Tillman believes it is

ALABAMA SHAKES – ” Sound and Colour ” Best Albums Of 2015

Posted: June 12, 2015 in MUSIC
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Alabama Shakes, Sound & Color
The Shakes could have stuck with the vintage Southern soul that won them so much acclaim on their 2012 debut. Instead they get gratifyingly weird, dipping into spacey experiments and giddy fuzzbomb freak-outs. There are no more limits for Alabama Shakes—not even the sky. Staring down the dreaded slump that so often accompanies second albums, the band defied all Boys & Girls-based expectations, kicked “the box” to pieces and put together a 12-song set that is, in badass lead singer Brittany Howard’s words, “beautiful and strange” above all else.

Tracks like “Shoegaze” and “Miss You” are reminiscent of the soulful yet straightforward retro blues-rock that defined the band’s Grammy-nominated first outing, but beyond that, Sound & Color sees the Shakes growing in a far deeper and more dynamic direction. Howard and company have never been funkier than they are on the irresistible “Don’t Wanna Fight” and “Future People,” while “Gemini” and the dreamy title track demonstrate that the Shakes are just as comfortable floating through space as they are on solid ground

CHASTITY BELT – ” Time To Go Home ” Best Albums Of 2105

Posted: January 9, 2015 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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The last several days, a number of music blogs were abuzz with the song “Time To Go Home,” the title song to the new album by the Chastity Belt which came out on March 24th on Hardly Art records.
Featuring guitarists Julia Shapiro (the singer and primary songwriter) and Lydia Lund, bassist Annie Truscott, and drummer Gretchen Grimm, the band are from the Seattle area, Walla Walla, Washington. They released their debut album, “No Regrets”, which got favourable reviews when it was self-released in 2013, Then following two EPs they released in 2012 (available on their Bandcamp page). About their new album, The music is an indie-rock swirl of guitars and careening drums that recalls the team efforts of classic bands like the Raincoats.
title song “Time To Go.” It’s a heartfelt, straight forward rock and roll song, touched by punk, fuzzy guitars, and reverbed vocals that just hits all the right chords.

On the surface, Seattle punk band Chastity Belt is just plain silly. Its members wear mom jeans and turtle necks in its press shots, for crying out loud. But there’s more than just frivolous nostalgia at play on the group’s Hardly Art debut, Time to Go Home.

The song that rightfully gets the most attention is “Cool Slut,” as guitarist and vocalist Julia Schapiro trashes tired rock tropes that cast sexual conquests as a measure of manhood and point of shame for women. Satire gives way to solemnity on other standout tracks, as “IDC” (“I got drunk out of boredom/I did not want to be there”) and the title-track sum up the end of the night, when regret sets in and there’s a chance you’ll be holding back a puking friend’s hair.

While the lyrics are strong, the music itself will hook in repeat listeners. “Lydia” is wistful enough to have been from a popular indie songstresses’ songbook, while “The Thing” is lightning-fast West Coast punk that begins and ends with a blood-curdling scream. Sure, other well-written, feminist friendly albums have been released in 2015, but those artists are not likely as clever, fun, and free as these girls.

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