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We’re nearing the end of 2015, and with it comes another opportunity to spend late nights debating whether or not you want to feel more important than everyone else and put an obscure record from a band with no Facebook page high on your list that you only kinda like, while snubbing that latest major label record everyone heard that you actually like a lot more, and risk coming off as “normcore.” Yes, December is a magical time for music publications, as they all compete to see who can publish the highest amount of arbitrary, hastily thrown-together “best of the year” lists in an attempt to keep traffic levels up around the holidays.
I haven’t spent a terribly long amount of time on this planet, but from the small amount of time I’ve been around, 2015 was easily the worst year I’ve ever witnessed. It seemed like every single day I would wake up to a new absolutely horrific happening in the news, to the point where every instance I ever left the house was spent in unending fear and paranoia. Meanwhile, the political climate is more toxic than I’ve ever seen it, with goodhearted political figures looking to make much-needed change getting ignored by the mainstream media in favor of doing more pointless reporting on the most recent statements from cartoonishly evil man-children who couldn’t win voters over if they bribed them with free hookers and Milky Way bars.
…But anyways, even in a year as grey, depressing and apocalyptic as 2015, there was a lot of great music that came out, which is why I’m here to deliver from my high horse my picks for the ten best albums that came out in the Pacific Northwest in 2015. As always, the picks and placements on this list are determined by nothing more than how much I personally liked each album, and not by how many members of each band I hang out with on a weekly basis.
Before I get into my Top 10 Pacific Northwest Albums of 2015, I’d like to run through my honorable mentions of five records that maybe weren’t blowing me away, but still deserve to be mentioned and checked out.
Ever So Android
Disconnect
independently released
As electronic music steadfastly becomes the most cutting-edge and interesting thing the Western Washington music scene has going for it, long-time music fans originally turned off to the bleeps and the bloops are now slowly but surely being forced to make peace with it. Lucky for them, Seattle’s Ever So Android is a good gateway drug into seeing just what electronic music is capable of.
Disconnect mixes modern, DFA Records-esque synth-heavy pop-rock and electronica with the sort of hooky alternative rock you might expect from a Seattle rock band. While it isn’t a great record, it is a bold debut album for the electro-rock duo, and does have a few killer tracks on it.
Nacho Picasso x Blue Sky Black Death
Stoned & Dethroned
SRFSCHL Recordings
While I do enjoy Stoned & Dethroned overall, it’s far from a perfect record. As you might expect from anything Blue Sky Black Death does, the production on this record is incredible. Grainy, ice-cold synthesizers and samples are matched with heavy, watery sub-bass and slow-paced trap percussion. Tracks like “So Dark” and “I’m to Blame for the Rain” feature some of the best hip-hop production you’ll hear in 2015, regardless of geographical location.
However, where this album falls apart is the rapping from Nacho Picasso, which is too blunted to be charismatic, and his lyrics are too shallow to make up for his lethargy. It’s clear he’s going for a Live.Love.A$AP sort of vibe with his rap style, but he doesn’t have the swagger or even flow that A$AP Rocky had that made that album’s mindlessness tangible, and actually complimented that album’s similarly trippy production. I find that this album is best listened to three or four tracks at a time, as, even though it’s only like 45 minutes, it can feel like it goes on for hours when you listen to it from beginning to end. Despite that, the production is godly enough to make it worth listening through at least once.
La Luz
Weirdo Shrine
Hardly Art
I’ve never been a La Luz fan. The band’s bland mix of summery power pop and group-vocal doo-wop music has never sat well with me, and I always saw the band as just a tacky Cumulus or Tangerine. With Weirdo Shrine, however, La Luz come a lot closer to flooring me, with a really sweet, alluring musical vibe.
Weirdo Shrine is the soundtrack to awkward first-time teenage love-making on a hot summer night, with a lot of jangly surf rock guitars and sensual, pleasant vocals from all members of the band. Tracks like “You Disappear” and “I Wanna Be Alone (With You)” in particular are great highlights.
Death Cab for Cutie
Kintsugi
Atlantic Records
I don’t really understand the mixed-to-negative response that this album received from critics upon its release. Sure, in the growing Death Cab for Cutie catalog, this album is no Transatlanticism, We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes or even Plans, but it isn’t the manqué disappointment that the latest Decemberists record was. Lead singles “Black Sun” and “The Ghosts of Beverly Drive” alone make this album worth listening to, and deeper cuts like “Little Wanderer” and “You’ve Haunted Me All My Life” keep the album afloat, even as the occasional mundane track does kill Kintsugi’s momentum.
While the increase of electronic programming on this album does make me wish that instead I was listening to a new Postal Service album, Kintsugi is an underrated effort from the indie rock veterans, at least in my opinion.
Chastity Belt
Time to Go Home
Hardly Art
I almost feel bad for not liking this album more than I do. Chastity Belt is a band comprised of great musicians, who write great songs with a lot of great, urgent lyrics, but this album really falls apart for me in its recording, mixing, and production. The production on this album feels cheap, and not in a particularly rewarding or charming lo-fi way. The vocals are mixed very poorly and are muffled and swallowed to the point where it’s hard to make out what they’re saying without a lyrics sheet in front of you.
The individual pieces of music during the louder spots on this album just bleed into each other into a really ugly way (particularly on the brittle noise rock track “The Thing”), and songs that seem like they should have a lot of punch and bite to them, like “Why Try” or “Cool Slut,” just sound really weak and more toothless than they should be. Not to mention the dragging 6-minute track “On the Floor,” which isn’t nearly as purposeful and transcendent as it tries to be.
Still, I do really like the messages and the lyrics on this album, and I think in general Chastity Belt has appeal and is capable of delivering a lot, but Time to Go Home leaves a lot to be desired on the execution front, in my opinion.
Alright, with that out of the way, let’s start the list proper.
