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Over/Underground’s Favorite Albums of 2015

To celebrate the end of the year, Over/Underground worked with some of our close friends and fellow musicklovers to put together a list of 2015's top albums. Enjoy responsibly.

20. Will Butler | Policy

Will Butler’s debut arrived not a moment too soon. You may know that Butler typically runs around with his older brother and the rest of The Arcade Fire. On Policy, Butler surveyed wide latitudes: throwing back to the 50's and snapping forward to the Moog-laden “Anna”.

The latter is certainly the breakout song for Butler. While each music video for “Anna” is its own treat (including a high-production gala featuring an in-form Emma Stone), we at Over/Underground prefer the earlier version. Featuring only a suited Butler, a dark overgrown background, and clever overlain graphics, “Anna” was our favorite music video of the year.

All in all, Butler’s first effort is well worth digesting. He recalls LCD Soundsystem, Buddy Holly, and Beck. Policy is vibrant, diverse, playful, and wistful, and often a mouthful too:

“I remember what I wanted to say/but the words in my mouth I just swallowed away/and the timing was wrong/and the weather was grey/and the feeling I felt/it had faded/It wasn’t real.”

But it was, it hadn’t, and we’re hungry for more.

by A. Jones

19. Ought | Sun Coming Down

Ought’s Sun Coming Down builds on many of the thoughts expressed in their debut album More Than Any Other Day. In this album, the heartfelt and thoughtful whimsy shown with “Habit” and “More Than Any Other Day” are felt equally throughout. Their musings in the banal suggest a frustration with the everyday, but through the course of the album the listener witnesses the progression from sincere introspection to finding the answer to life’s queries in those around us. Frustrations grow as treading water slakes no thirst for the growth into something more fulfilling in a broader context. This concern for the bigger picture suggests a psychological and musical growth of the band, whose preoccupations have moved beyond being able to choose a type of milk at the grocery store. This is best shown on “Beautiful Blue Sky,” where solace for these frustrations is shown through what we all share: death, the big, beautiful blue sky above us, and the ability to dance tonight to these sweet tunes.

by E. Owen

18. The Zoltars | The Zoltars

Hailing from trendy-as-ever Austin, The Zoltars slinked onto the scene this year with a hopelessly catchy self-titled LP. Although the distribution model for the record is distinctly 21st century (with vinyl sold by Happenin Records and cassettes through Burger Records), the content could not be more timelessly rock’n’roll. Listening to immaculately crafted tunes like, “16-17-18 Living,” you get the sense that the band gutted a soda fountain jukebox from decades past and filtered its sock-hopping innards through the gritty introspection of modern-day anxiety. In fact, the album is virtually consumed with anxious nostalgia, as heard when vocalist Jared Zoltar (nee Leibowich) pines for a good old fashion visit to the picture show in the stirring third track, “Movies.” Named for the mystical and mysterious fortune-telling game in the movie Big, The Zoltars embody a sense of anachronistic playfulness. At turns both light hearted and distraught, the album is a joy that bears multiple replays.

DISCLAIMER: A band that I’m in had the chance to open up for The Zoltars in Little Rock, and they are some of the most genuine and pleasant to be around people that I’ve ever met. Seriously.

by Z. Hale

17. King Gizzard and Lizard Wizard | Paper Mache Dream Balloon

This album came as a complete (and pleasant) surprise: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are known for their steady output, but they had just released another LP called Quarters in May, so I’m not sure anybody was expecting this wondrous piece of acoustic psychedelia. With a heavier jazz influence than their other albums, a psych flute that could rival Jethro Tull’s, interesting and unpredictable progressions, smart arrangements, and playful lyrics, this album is a joyful experience to listen through again and again. It literally put a smile on my face, and more than once at that! Really, listen to the whole thing, but in case you need some more convincing, try the title track, “Cold Cadaver,” “Time = Fate,” and/or “Time = $$$.”

by T. Wojcik

16. Viet Cong | Viet Cong

The (formerly) self-titled debut album from Viet Cong had an appropriate seasonal release in January; the chilly, industrial tones that resonate throughout the album matched the climate of most of those giving this album a first listen. As a post-punk band hailing from Calgary, they reinforced their dire tone with desolate lyrics of societal flaws and personal strife. Thematically, it follows a dismantling of the self through the analysis of existence without agency in a system that was made for production. Much like the Calgary winters which assuredly shaped Viet Cong, this system is not nurturing or understanding or forgiving to those who aren’t adequately bundled. As the album progresses, there is an undeniable energy that competes with the nihilistic subject matter. This contrast is best portrayed in the closing track of the album, “Death”, which opens with jingling guitars and devolves into an industrial, discordant rhythms, paired with passionately forlorn lyrics. As the weather turns again, it is worth revisiting this album to remind us what it was like to be cold in 2015.

by E. Owen

15. Jamie XX | In Colour

I could write about how Jamie XX’s first solo album harkens back to dubstep’s early days, of the “dark garage” variety, while infusing it with the more-poppy melodies that mark current electronica. But, that would cheapen the effect In Colour has on the listener and the way XX crafts the genre to his liking (as well as cheapen the quality of this blurb–too late, perhaps).

I dare you not to get lost in the second half of “Gosh,” the album opener. It begins much like dubstep itself, dirty, a combination of drum and bass, jungle, and grime–Benga and Skream with a bunch of drunks in the early 2000s. But, XX’s magic comes out mid-song. From that point, the album does not release the listener from XX’s vision. Melodic and captivating, the songs range from the pained melancholy of “Stranger in a Room” to the Summer Anthem “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times).” XX takes full advantage of the other members of the xx (the band composed of Jamie XX, Romy Croft, and Oliver Sim). Their additions impart a layer of poignancy completely absent from the schizophrenic dubstep found on our shores. “Loud Places” is particularly arresting in this regard. “I go to loud places to search for someone to be quiet with who will take me home,” the narrator breathlessly states. “You go to loud places to find someone who will take you higher than I took you. Didn’t I take you to higher places you can’t reach without me?” XX makes imagining a party-goer completely alone, surrounded by the scene, easy and tragic, “You’re in ecstasy without me. When you come down, I won’t be around.”

Amongst XX’s take on the genre, he has taken opportunities to honor those before him. XX’s single, and loving homage to his predecessors, “All Under One Roof Raving,” shows the movement from whence his sound came. But, amongst the marimba, XX brings the genre to his territory. “Hardcore will never die,” to be sure, but XX is making himself home in the second decade of dubstep.

by A. Chesser

14. Jason Isbell | Something More Than Free

Jason Isbell’s fifth studio album, Something More Than Free, is familiar. Isbell earned his singer-songwriter reputation as a member of Drive-By Truckers, and his own career exploded after his last solo album, Southeastern. In these efforts Isbell paints characters as much as he tells stories, leaning heavily on the internal conflicts rather than the world around him. Isbell writes through his own lens and discusses his personal experiences at the forefront, and this remains true with Something More Than Free.

In the album’s opening track it’s hard not to hear Isbell himself, a touring musician and recovering alcoholic, in lines like “I thought the highway loved me, but she beat me like a drum” and “I don’t keep liquor here/never cared much for wine and beer.” His strife is eventually resolved, and in his new, simpler life he will “find happiness, by and by.” This eventual uplift seems to be the theme of the album. Where Southeastern was the apparent bookend to Isbell’s darker days, Something is a look to the light.

Unlike in his acoustic driven Southeastern, Something is heavy on instrumentation. Where Southeastern was stark and dark, Something finds hope in even its more dour songs with louder and more electric strings. Something More Than Free takes fewer chances, but remains true to what Isbell knows, personal struggle and growth. And each gleeful guitar solo is a reminder that not only did Isbell beat his demons, he’s also happy again.

by M. Hill

13. PAGIINS | Opium Den Pool Party

Plenty of bands face adversity, and not all survive. Still fewer thrive. Pagiins has. Recorded over a year ago in Atlanta, Georgia, Opium Den Pool Party saw the light of day only this year.

There is plenty of pressure on bands like theirs to deliver: it can come from friends, people plunking down money, fans, everyone investing time. Within your band or within yourself.

Pagiins seems to work best when lyrically bidirectional. For Leif Hinshaw, pronouns are often all-inclusive or even intentionally deceptive. As an example, “Things I’ve Learned” works so well because the speaker could be either subject or object, or really just about anyone else:

“I’m so tired of/Your excuses/Take my Time and/Make it useless” “You’ve got no one/Left to Turn to/Can’t depend on/You to follow through”

On Opium Den, Pagiins often make it seem easy. Scrappy guitars and nigh-countrified train beats join concise lyrics and sensible melodies. Yet beneath the surface complexity rules the roost.

Despite its easy-going first blush, the arrangement is deeply conscientious. Repeated, and repeated, and repeated, bangs yield to shimmers, and rhymes combine to rhythms. Theirs was the best record released in Arkansas of 2015.

by A. Jones

Opium Den Pool Party by Pagiins

12. Upset | ‘76

Since their debut in 2013, Los Angeles pop-punkers Upset have garnered a reputation for pedaling guitar-driven nostalgia that calls to mind the low slung basses and restless energy of early 2000’s Warped Tour. Their second release, ‘76, delivers tight melodies that are equally animated by youthful resentment and seasoned contemplation, a tension that reflects the group’s intergenerational composition.

Founded by scene veterans Ali Koehler (Vivian Girls, Best Coast) and Patty Schemel (Hole), Upset has the chops and the cred to appeal to a broad base of punk and indie rock fans. On ‘76, they are as comfortable reminiscing about listening to Bleed American with an old flame as they are covering Jawbreaker’s monument to love-lost, “Do You Still Hate Me?” This album was deeply satisfying, and I can only hope that Upset has enough unresolved tension and untapped retrospection to fuel more albums in years to come.

by Z. Hale

11. La Luz | Weirdo Shrine

La Luz’s Weirdo Shrine is a great sophomore album from a criminally underrated band. One of several excellent 2015 releases from Hardly Art, La Luz sprays ocean waves as viscous, plodding darkness. The band owes more Jules Verne than Brian Wilson.

In comparison to 2013’s It’s Alive, this release takes more chances. Excellent harmony, refreshingly surfy reverb, and crisp songwriting typify yet another wonderful salvo from Seattle. Replete with dour, unwary listeners may casually set this record aside. They would surely regret it.

by A. Jones

10. together PANGEA | The Phage

Although The Phage doesn’t pioneer new territory for together PANGEA (formerly PANGEA), it is a more-than-fitting follow up to their excellent 2014 release, Badillac. “Phage” isn’t a formal “word” with a traditional “definition,” but you can bet that whatever it means, like the EP itself, has some nastiness to it. And yet the ever present underbelly of together PANGEA’s sound isn’t without humor and lightness, and even the EP’s most vulnerable moments are cut with flippant resignation (heard on the excellent track, “Blue Mirror”).

The EP also features tracks that fit neatly into the band’s comfort zone of warm, beachy fuzz, including the earworming opener “Looked In Too” and the middle track “My Head Is On Too Tight.” Ultimately, however, it is The Phage’s eclectic experimentation, (e.g., Segall-esque closing track, “She’s a Queen”) that shows together PANGEA’s burgeoning potential as vanguards of a new generation of guitar rockers.

by Z. Hale

9. Speedy Ortiz | Foil Deer

Most wordsmiths sharing a crick of a neck of a genre woods with Pavement must at some point withstand comparison to Stephen Malkmus. Surely flattering at first, such comparisons have a tendency to gloss over the new by revolving around the old. Perhaps this is why Speedy Ortiz’s excellent Foil Deer begins with a minute-long faded-in, dissonant, hard-panned-stereo slow jam. After meandering for a minute, the instrumentals of “Good Neck” swerve into menace:

“Got a lack of woe/I’ve known you not so very long/but watch your >back/because baby’s so good with a blade.”

“Raising the Skate” is waking up having fallen halfway off the couch only to find the heater was turned off sometime during the night. Sadie Dupuis jabs and jabs and jabs. Rarely does the bridge of a song unify the dynamics – both lyrical and musical – with the elegance of this gem. If it clicks for you, so will the album:

“We could hang out for the summer while you wait for your girl/Dip a toe ‘til it’s soaked and freezing/But just because I let you kill time dangling me/From the quarry doesn’t mean that I won’t land on my feet.”

As compared to their full-length debut Major Arcana, here Speedy Ortiz evoke a broader range of influences: the industrial “Puffer”, the midtown Memphis of Wowee Zowee on “Zig”, R.E.M. surf on “The Graduates.” Quarrels at the bar are rarely this deductive. With this record Dupuis continues to show her knack for linking zig and zag.

by A. Jones

8. Fuzz | Fuzz II

Fuzz II was my most anticipated album of 2015, and honestly, it over-delivered. While Fuzz’s debut, Fuzz, was more firmly rooted in the proto metal bands that former high school buds Ty Segall, Charles Mootheart, and Chad Ubovich geeked out over, the new album shows a Fuzz that’s finding their own sound. Mootheart absolutely rips through riffs and solos, Segall sings and shouts and throws in grooves and fills at a furious pace, and Ubovich provides solid bounce-y basslines and an as-close-to-Ozzy-in-Sabbath voice as you’ll ever find. This album is not for the faint of heart—if you even being to think the question “How much fuzz is too much?” then you’ve missed the point. This album is hard and rocking, and will make you want to grow your hair out and bang your head around. Just try to listen to “Burning Wreath,” “Jack the Maggot,” or “New Flesh” without jumping around in your own imaginary mosh pit.

by T. Wojcik

7. Thee Oh Sees | Mutilator Defeated at Last

Thee Oh Sees have been around since the late 90s, so it’s not exactly revelatory that the band has seen different lineups, or that their sound has evolved over the years. This newest iteration of Oh Sees, with Dwyer at the helm as always, Tim Hellman on bass, and Nick Murray on the drums (since replaced by Ryan Moutinho and Dan Rincon for an amazing two drummer lineup), might be the most frantically energetic and outright thrashiest yet. Long story short, Mutilator Defeated At Last is about Dwyer shredding, from beginning to end. Murray provides a fast-paced jazzy flare on drums that somehow fits perfectly with these tunes, and Hellman provides solid basslines to keep everything anchored. Dwyer even implements some of his growing synth knowledge gained from his Damaged Bug solo project into tunes like “Sticky Hulks,” switching back and forth between trebly riffs and melodic keys to form a seven minute long ballad that undulates and swells and subsides again. Really, if you think of yourself as a fan of rock music, you just need to listen to the first track, “Web,” to realize that you’re going to love this album. (One additional note: if you ever have the opportunity to see Thee Oh Sees live, you take it. The insane energy they bring will have you thinking about attempting to crowd surf for the very first time.)

by T. Wojcik

6. Wand | Golem

It’s impossible to describe the feeling I had when I listened to Golem for the first time. The pure ecstasy I felt when I heard the opening riff of “The Unexplored Map,” the giddy excitement for something so brutally heavy yet melodic, something unlike anything else I had heard to that point. I tend to avoid the word “epic” for many reasons, but there really is no other way to describe Golem—it is epic. The first three songs storm in and set the tone for the album; the next song, “Melted Rope,” downshifts and shows the band’s quieter side. But like the eye of a storm, what follows is a steady progression of heavier and fuzzier tunes, climaxing with the excellent “Floating Head” and the all-out noise assault of “Planet Golem,” and concluding with the airy and psyche-y track, “The Drift.” This album is an experience, a lesson in creating heavy garage songs that are somehow also harmonious and catchy.

by T. Wojcik

5. Grimes | Art Angels

Saccharine in a time when we’re all pretty sure that actual saccharine will give us cancer, Art Angels is a work of dancefloor pastiche that easily contends with Carly Rae Jepsen and Justin Beiber’s releases for the title of 2015’s pop masterpiece. As an artist, Grimes reflects the intercultural bricolage that defines global pop culture in the 21st Century, swirling the infectious energy of JPop, the trance-inducing rhythms of Euroclub, and the vocal stylings of American R&B to create a distinctly transnational sound that, frankly, kicks ass.

At 27, the Canadian indie goddess has already established herself as a genre-bending icon, inspiring “scene girls” on both sides of the Atlantic with her provocative, but not inauthentic, style. Art Angels sparkles and pops throughout its course, especially on crowning jewels, “Flesh Without Blood,” and “Kill V. Maim.” The latter track exemplifies Grimes’ wide-ranging aesthetic, blending cheeky call and response with snarling rage in a consistently danceable slurry of minor-key goodness. The entire album deserves several listens, and will serve just as dutifully backing a pumped-up house party as it will pouring out of your car speakers on a cross country trip.

by Z. Hale

4. Protomartyr | The Agent Intellect

Three albums into Protomartyr’s career, it’s still nigh impossible to find anything written about the band that isn’t also, in one way or another, about The City of Detroit. This is exactly the kind of thing the cynics among us tend to take issue with – another product of the internet echo chamber. Except, lucky for us, the ongoing preoccupation with Protomartyr and their hometown isn’t just hype.

Not unlike Dickens’ London, Protomartyr’s Detroit is the sensory manifestation of a kind of melancholy that transcends its locus in time and space. If 2014’s outstanding Under Color of Official Right sketched the desolate landscape of America’s enduring symbol for the failure of industrialization, The Agent Intellect renders the same abandoned factories in full Technicolor. Unsurprisingly, this is an album that contends with some heavy stuff – mortality, the impossibility of true fulfillment, hope lost, and dreams deferred.

This, then, brings us to the great irony of The Agent Intellect, which is the fact that it is an album of remarkable ambition. It just so happens to be about the failure of ambition, both at the individual level and on a historical scale. An album about the evil that men do ends up showcasing our highest aspirations. And Protomartyr’s portrait of American despair turns out to be nothing short of an absolute triumph.

by T. Whitehead

3. Kurt Vile | b’lieve i’m goin down

Kurt Vile has built a musical oasis in a place that only a handful of artists (Curren$y and former Woodsist labelmates Real Estate come to mind) can locate. Coupling cool, typically dispassionate delivery with artfully arranged instrumentation, Vile exudes mastery to the point that it approaches boredom. But lying in the sometimes-sleepy density of Vile’s lyrics are pockets of inescapable truth, or, at the very least, undeniable wit. Vile’s humor comes across on all planes of b’lieve i’m goin down, from the jangly instrumentation in “I’m an Outlaw” to the unforgettable description of, “a headache like a shop vac coughing dust bunnies,” in “Dust Bunnies.”

While the lead single, “Pretty Pimpin,” is a formidable stack of guitar licks and lyrical turns, my favorite track has to be the nearly seven-minute, “Lost my Head there.” That track finds Vile wielding his screwball delivery to tackle bouts of mental instability (“a bit of funky psychosis”) before spiraling into an instrumental stretch that would be at home on a 1970’s dancefloor. While it may not have the energy of some other top albums, b’lieve is a journey worth taking, with enough twists to keep you engaged even when your eyelids get heavy. It wouldn’t hurt to enjoy it with a cup of coffee, though.

by Z. Hale

2. Kendrick Lamar | To Pimp a Butterfly

Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly is everything that you could hope for in a hip-hop album: smart, socially conscious, fun, self-aware, and political. Despite the seventy eight minute run time, the album never feels overlong; largely due to the powerful combination of Lamar’s lyrics and expertly constructed instrumental tracks. From the free-jazz explosion of “For Free?” to the 90s hip-hop back-beat of “These Walls,” the album is filled with musical references to Carlos Santana, The Funkadelic, Public Enemy, and Miles Davis. Lamar’s lyrics focus largely on challenges African-American’s face; whether that be white suprematism, police violence, or divisiveness within the African-American community. Kendrick is not only an exceptional lyricist but also a chameleon vocalist: changing the timbre and tone of his voice to match the concept and content of his rhymes. While Kendrick’s ability to attract high-caliber collaborators (Bilal, George Clinton, Thundercat, and Snoop Dogg) is impressive in itself; his ability to remain at the helm of every track is a testament to his talents as an artist. The album climaxes with an interview between Kendrick and one of Hip-Hop’s late-great philosopher kings that is too good to spoil. Just listen to it.

by S. Sanderson

1. Courtney Barnett | Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

To open as strongly as Courtney Barnett did in her debut is nearly unprecedented. She’s smart, crafty, heavy, but all the while careless. Her brand of cool is undeniable yet undefined. While Barnett is quick to remind her audience that she ought not be put on a pedestal, it’s impossible not to crush on her quick-witted storytelling.

From the opening track Barnett proves herself a clever wordsmith and technical musician. In “Elevator Operator”, Barnett convinces an adrift young man not to jump off a roof. Later she tells the story of a swimmer passing out while trying to impress his competitor. Of a couple’s house hunt turned soul search. She talks to Jesus (who happens to be a woman); she realizes that nobody really cares if you don’t go to the party; and, like every young woman, stares at the ceiling wondering what her crush is up to. Barnett dives deep into the human psyche. There she finds that the most human concerns are often distracted by the trivial.

Barnett’s Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit is a twenty-something stream of consciousness probe of what’s wrong with the world, all the while constantly second-guessing whether fixing it matters. She asks big questions atop perfectly crafted, cool riffs and feedback fuzz. Her monotone couples with clever lines like road-kill as a ‘opossum Jackson Pollock’ and references to SimCity, glazing over the obscure with playful sass. On Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, Barnett is a riot girl that speaks gossip girl, and it translates beautifully.

by M. Hill

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