Anyone who tries to tell you that 2015 didn’t offer up a wide variety of excellent music wasn’t paying attention. This year was actually really happening in the global music industry. You just have to do a little digging to find the best records. Dhaka Tribune intends to made the job a little easier for you. Here is the best of the best of what the year had to offer.
To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar
Musically, lyrically and emotionally, Kendrick Lamar’s third album is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece – a sprawling epic that’s probably the year’s most bumptious party music. A rap superstar at last, after years on the underground grind, Lamar wrestles with the depression and survivor’s guilt that followed his fame and success by turning to heroes from Ralph Ellison and Richard Pryor to Smokey Robinson and Kris Kross to Nelson Mandela and Tupac. He lives large. He contains multitudes.
25 by Adele
The feverish four-year wait for the follow-up to Adele’s triple-platinum blockbuster, 21, was unlike anything we’ve seen this decade – and she didn’t disappoint on this thunderous triumph. 25 tells the story of a young woman making her uneasy peace with adulthood, like Carole King on Tapestry. Adele and her A-list co-conspirators (Max Martin and Tobias Jesso Jr) fly from drum-cannon 80s balladry to classic gospel and blues to the kind of piano power surges that are her epic signature, holding it all together with the nuanced, towering vocal performances that have already made her iconic.
Currents by Tame Impala
The leaders of the Aussie psych vanguard all but severed ties with guitar-based noise on Currents – “They say people never change, but that’s bullshit” was mastermind Kevin Parker’s apt reminder on Yes I’m Changing. Fans needn’t have feared the disco-flecked new sound: Parker’s niggling insecurities still sounded intoxicating.
My Love Is Cool by Wolf Alice
No one really expected Wolf Alice to release an album as inventive, invigorating and sublime as this. From roaring choruses (Fluffy and You’re A Germ) to softer reflections (Soapy Water and The Wonderwhy), it surged with ambition, proving there is so much more to them than sounding a bit like a load of grunge bands on their early singles.
Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit by Courtney Barnett
The year’s best debut came from a 27-year-old Australian singer-songwriter who marries the observational wit of Jerry Seinfeld, the word-ninja flow of Bob Dylan circa ‘65 and the guitar poetry of Stephen Malkmus. As its title implies, these are songs wrought from a specific type of everyday quarter-life malaise – one brilliant song is about the stuff that runs through your mind when you can’t fall asleep, another is about a botched meet-cute at a swimming pool. But Barnett’s ability to pack her songs about nothing with vivid imagery and insight, literary detail and political insight, is astonishing.
Honeymoon by Lana Del Rey
2015 didn’t deliver loads of stuff to laugh about, and Lana Del Rey’s crushingly bleak third album tapped into the zeitgeist. Honeymoon was a broken Disney fairytale of bankrupt Hollywood dreams in which vocals ached, strings pined and our heroine gasped lines like “You’re so art deco, out on the floor/Shining like gun metal, cold and unsure.”
Vulnicura by BJORK
Bjork released Vulnicura in a rush way back in January. The rush was necessary because the album had been leaked. This is quite possibly the most beautiful and heartbreaking work of Bjork’s career and it plays like a classical orchestra piece. The album tells the story of a break-up in chronological order. As it progresses, it gets more chaotic and more intense in order to illustrate the devastating effects of heartbreak.
Beauty Behind the Madness by The Weeknd
Canada’s Abel Tesfaye redefined what it means to be an R&B auteur with his breakthrough second LP. After a series of mysterious mixtape releases built around weeded-out goth moodiness (and one half-baked major-label debut, in 2011), he went for full-on top 40 grandeur this time, without diluting any of his eerie allure.
Something More Than Free by Jason Isbell
Jason Isbell chronicled hard-won sobriety and marriage on 2013’s breakthrough South-eastern. Instead of remaking that album on this follow-up, the most thoughtful roots-rock singer-songwriter of his generation delivered a stunning chronicle of Southern life.
Black Messiah by D’Angelo and the Vanguard
D’Angelo dropped his first LP since 2000 in the final days of 2014, as his big statement on America in a year of deep racial turmoil. At first it might have sounded too good to be true, but after a year of listening, Black Messiah stands even taller.
