Albums of 2015

 Coming back or going solo

Blur – The Magic Whip

The Libertines – Anthems for Doomed Youth

Albert Hammond Jr. – Momentary Masters
Sleater-Kinney - No Cities to Love

jennylee – right on!

Every year there are some bands who decide to pick up where they left of and make a new album. Some people do the complete opposite and take a break from their band to work on their own projects.  

This year we got the honour of welcoming another Blur album in our life. We all know Damon Albarn was busy with being Damon Albarn, Coxon did some other music related things, Alex James went back to his farm to make some cheese and the drummer probably did something as well. It took them 12 years to get back in the studio and make some great music but the result was worth waiting for.

Another band we were happy to see again on stage were The Libertines. Problem child Peter Doherty got reunited with his best friend Carl Barât and for once it didn’t look like they we’re going to ruin eachother again. Gunga Din, the first single of the album, is another great classic and songs like You’re my Waterloo prove that they haven’t lost the talent of good songwriting over the past years.

Besides that Albert Hammond Jr. proved again that he doesn’t need his friends from The Strokes standing next to him to make an amazing album. Even on stage we can see that he earned his place in the spotlight as frontman of his own band. We can almost call 2015 the year of great comebacks when also Sleater-Kinney decided to drop a new album. Our favourite threesome of screaming ladies proves with No Cities to Love that girl power will never die. Who even needs the Spice Girls for that anyway? Talking about girls, Jenny Lee Lindberg aka every art boy’s dream girl, took a break from Warpaint. On right on! she basically still does the same thing but not as good. Oh well, I can’t really say bad things about Jenny Lee but let’s keep it at “It’s just not as good as Warpaint”.

Dancing queens

Florence and the Machine – How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful

Wolf Alice – My Love Is Cool

Marina and the Diamonds - Froot

Grimes – Art Angels

Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

Now over  to my all-time favourite category. They all have a very secret weapon: two X-chromosomes! Please don’t let this turn out into a ‘female artists are just artists as well’ kind discussion and let me have this one.

Obvious number one here is Florence Welch and her machine. People who’ve known me for longer than 1 day know that in the magical world I live in everything that Florence does is amazing, so is the new album. An album dedicated to her demons, which shows us that even you can overcome your darkest times. If you want a 100 pages long essay with other reason why Florence and the Machine is amazing you can contact me.

Maybe not in the right category but we take Wolf Alice in their Moaning Lisa Smile music video to explain why they deserve the title of dancing queens. Their debuut is a mix of grungy screams and poppy tunes which do make it hard to not move. 

Other queens in the list are Marina Diamandis, also known as the queen of glamour. In this new area she dumped her image of heartbreaker and turned Froot into an emotional ride to show us how it is to be a strong independent woman! Claire Boucher is named queen of weirdness this year. Her experimental songs never disappoint even when the twist in it is sometimes a bit too twisty. Last but not least we have Courtney Barnett, our queen of honesty. In her Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit she takes us on a journey to painfully true situations that everybody has once experienced in their life. Maybe you should just sit, think and listen to her amazing songs. 

Young and British

Drenge – Undertow

Gengahr – A Dream Outside

Peace – Happy People

Palma Violets – Danger in the Club

Swim deep – Mothers

When you live on the other side of a huge puddle of water you start thinking that everything that comes over must be pretty great. In Belgium being an young and British band has turned into a success formula with the cooler kids (including me, an actual adult). 

For Undertow the Loveless parents decided to adopt another child so now Eoin and Rory are joined by their new brother Rob who can play some bass. Besides that not much changed within the band, their sound is a bit more grown up but still haunting and they are still very tall people.

In 2014 we had Superfood and Childhood at the top of this list, this year only one new band caught our attention: Gengahr. Their unusual mesmerising sound makes it hard to put a label on what they do. Do they make you want to crawl under a big duvet, listen to their soft music and pretend everything is okay? Yes! Do they make you want to do weird dancemoves that you might have stolen from Lorde? Also yes! Other good thing about this band is that they just are the loveliest people walking on this planet.

Peace was still In Love in 2013 but they became Happy People in 2015. Chilli Jesson, Sam Fryer and the two other bands from Palma Violets who's names have nothing to do with food gave us a lesson in what and who can be dangerous when you go out to a club. Because sometimes living on the edge needs some safety tips. Swim Deep did something lovely for their Mothers. What a bunch of nice guys they are!

Heartbreakers of the year

One Direction – Made in the AM

Tobias Jesso Jr. – Goon

The Vaccines – English Grafitti

Years & Years - Communion

Justin Bieber – Purpose

For this category we can bring out the big clichés and let my love for commercial popmusic take the lead. I’ll still have to throw in some real ‘quality’ artists to keep up my credibility as a self-respecting music lover but come on it’s 2016 now, we don’t have to be ashamed of liking One Direction anymore.  

Speaking about One Direction, 2015 was really their year. After the tragic departure of Zayn Malik our mourning process wasn’t even done yet and the rest of the band announced that they we’re going to have a break. They might have taken the heartbreaker thing a bit too literally? Anyway, before they left to hang with the Kardashians (How could you Harry?) they still dropped a pretty great album. Over the years their boyband bubblegum pop lost a bit of the pink sticky chewster. Still poppy though, still very poppy. 

Tobias Jesso Jr. is the very tall man that came out of nowhere this year with a great album to accompany you on a night of crying, being lovesick/homesick and overall pretty miserable. Apparently he is besties with the Haim sisters and wrote a song for Adele, who brought us another fun album to have a cry to. Let’s move on quickly now before I drown in my own tears.

Self-proclaimed handsome man of the year, Justin Young, and his vaccinators are already on their third studio album. It wasn’t as short as the first one or as angry and filled with teen angst as the second one. It was a new sound but still kind of the same as we have heard before. I guess it’s kind of hard to really change your sound when you have the same voice. Besides that awful joke they did a great job to mix their upbeat songs with a handful of slower ones. If you already thought All in White was great for your imaginary wedding you should listen to (All Afternoon) in Love. A true heartbreaker!

About Years and Years we can say that it sounds way better on the album than it does live. They were the BBC sound of 2015 so let’s give them the joy of selling out huge venues. It’s just that I’m going to have dance parties on my own with the actual album instead of being bothered about how bad they are live. I couldn’t even afford to buy tickets for Justin Bieber so I put ‘Sorry’ and ‘What do ü mean?’ in my Sandy’s swaggy dance hits playlist as well. Please knock before entering my room! Knock hard! Only enter when I say something in the lines of yes! That makes it all less awkward for the both of us when I’m breaking out my moves in front of the mirror. 

Also worth mentioning

The Maccabees – Marks to Prove It, Foals – What Went Down, Tame impala – Currents , Spector – Moth Boys, FIDLAR – Too, The Garden – Haha, Girl Band – Holding hands with Jamie, Ezra Furman - Perpetual Motion People, Slaves - Are You Satisfied?, Only Real - Jerk At The End Of The Line and many, many more ….