Home List Music Monday: Best Of 2015 (So Far)
Music Monday: Best Of 2015 (So Far)

Music Monday: Best Of 2015 (So Far)

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Though slightly passed the halfway point, we’re still just about in the twilight of the year where we’re passed the Spring releases and not yet in the Autumn/Winter deluge. As such, it’s a good time to take stock of what the highlights have been from January to now, perhaps revisiting some stuff that hasn’t been aired in a few months. Being a chronic listener of basically anything with a good groove (and much that rejects any such semblance of good taste), these are a few of the records and songs that have been the soundtrack to my 2015 so far.

Meg Myers – ‘Sorry’

I tend to keep my pop listening to an almost strict recommendation policy as, frankly, it’s just not a genre I enjoy exploring all willy nilly. Meg Myers happened upon my twitter feed one too many times, so I decided I had to give her a listen. I was, and remain, floored. ‘Sorry’ is the exact right kind of emotionally driven high tide of hooks on top of synthetic beats that just sits in the mind for days, having you gently hmmm-ing that chorus away to everyone’s annoyance except your own.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor – ‘Peasantry or ‘Light! Inside of Light!”

Really, you should never dissect a Godspeed album. They are designed like fine multi-course meals to such a degree that taking a morcel to taste is just blasphemy. But asking you to sit through a 40 minute post-rock dirge would be presumptuous, pretentious and run a serious gambit of wasting your time, so I won’t. Instead, here’s the opening track off of Asunder, Sweet and Utter Distress, and it is astonishing. Being an instrumental group, Black Emperor rely on creating visuals to compel the listener along and the lob-sided swing on the driving edge of this track paints quite the picture indeed. A lumbering machine just wheeling along, this is one that you might need to work with to get your head around (if you enjoy it at all), but if it works, it REALLY works.

Neck Deep – ‘Can’t Kick Up The Roots’

Welsh pop-punkers Neck Deep certainly aren’t reinventing any wheels, but they are bloody good at writing short, catchy tunes. The lead single off Life’s Not Out To Get You, ‘Can’t Kick Up The Roots’ is a standard pop-punk anthem to the bittersweet soft spot one develops for the town they grew up in. Second verse has a bass break and the chorus makes you want to jump on the spot, what more do you want?

Purity Ring – ‘Push Pull’

Singer Megan James‘ delicate vocals over Corin Riddick‘s samples and instrumentation in Purity Ring is ceaselessly interesting to navigate. Second album Another Eternity is another masterclass in being simultaneously heavy as an anvil and light as a feather with huge beats drawn way out while James makes her way over them with ease. Won’t be long before this pairing are getting big festival traction, that’s for dam sure.

Cattle Decapitation – ‘Manufactured Extinct’

Actually just realised I hadn’t included any metal, and I’m on the 5th selection. So, here’s a record that’s currently towards the front of my selections for best of the year so far! Cattle Decapitation are one of the finest death metal bands currently producing noise pollution. Visceral, focused and captivating, the band just don’t know any other way than relentless. Their latest, The Anthropocene Extinction, is another slab of brutality that one needs to spin all of to really get the gist of what they’re doing. But again, since that’s not feasible, here’s the intro song, ‘Manufactured Extinct’.

Chelsea Wolfe – ‘Iron Moon’

‘Iron Moon’ hails from an LP called Abyss and truly there is no better titled record on this list. Chelsea Wolfe has merged drone, metal, rock and folk into a surrealist soundscape of only her design. Listen and drown.

Periphery – ‘Alpha’

Just when you think you have this band figured out, Juggernaut happens. Periphery move from strength to strength like few other bands currently spending 10 months of the year on the road. Progressive metal has never sounded quite like these lads and single ‘Alpha’ demonstrates many of their core strengths in full sway. Huge riffs, lots of melody, completely unpredictable and Spencer Sotelo‘s vocals that just get better with every listen. Unstoppable.

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