The twenty albums released in 2015 that I ended up diggin' the most? I took the whole month of January 2016 to mull the the thing over. Now here they are in alphabetical order.
feedtime "flatiron" (Sub Pop)
Smashin' Transistors review here.
HEATERS "Mean Green" (Beyond Is The Beyond)
Smashin' Transistors review here.
Andy Human And The Reptoids s/t (Ss Records) If Gary Numan never ditched the guitars completely
and decided that being a junk shop glam merchant was a better idea than becoming a robot. https://andyhumanthereptoids.bandcamp.com/
BLACK TIME Aerial Gobs Of Love (Förbjudna Ljud) Read Smashin' Transistors review here.
BUCK BILOXI and the FUCKS Streets Of Rage (Hozac) Either these guys are total clever in making thinking their kings of lunkheaded high school dropout KBD trash rock or they're total lunkheads that are more clever than the teachers at their high school which they dropped out of ever gave them credit for. https://buckbiloxiandthefucks.bandcamp.com/album/streets-of-rage
CROSSS Lo (Telephone Explosion) Read Smashin' Transistors review here.
DAWN OF HUMANS Slurping At The Cosmos Spine (Toxic State) A billion suburban dudes with lumberjack beards are claiming to be post hardcore but just end up sounding like a lame Pantera tribute band that start whining during a calculus exam. Then there's these New York weirdos who are so post whatever their bash and grind sounds like some primordial take of the future. https://lavidaesunmus.bandcamp.com/album/slurping-at-the-cosmos-spine-lp
DAY CREEPER Central States (Superdreamer) Making scruffy and earnest rust belt rock-n-roll that doesn't fall into some kind of grandstanding or sounding like some fictional tale of the life of the working man that has never been personally experienced has become a bit of a lost art. Slightly boozy, usually cynical, occasionally frazzled and constantly catchy, Columbus, Ohio's Day Creeper bring the sound back to barroom poets, backyard barbecue prophets and those that gotta brown bag it because any lunch break money they may have had went into the gas tank so they can get to work and back. https://daycreeper.bandcamp.com/album/central-states-lp
DEAF WISH Pain (Sub Pop) Strange quirks and artsy brooding have always been an ingredient to what most people call post-punk and the offspring of the sort. Along with that, the darkness, disaffection and distortion that are de rigueur are all over this Melbourne foursome's fourth album. Scatterings of sparkled melodies twinkle through a maelstrom. Punk rock in fluorescent colors flays about. Deaf Wish are not afraid to open up the curtains and let some sunlight shine on a normally deathly pallor.
GOLDEN PELICANS Oldest Ride, Longest Line (Total Punk) Read Smashin' Transistors review here.
HELEN Original Faces (Kranky) Liz Harris of Grouper, Eternal Tapestry's drummer Jed and Scott Simon of Eat Skull on bass. The results is a dense and dreamlike cosmic fog of fuzz.
JACK NAME Weird Moons (Castle Face) Clanky proto-Industrial tendencies get cozy with post-industrial acid pop. Then they go dancing under mood altering lunar cycles.
OBNOX Boogalou Reed (12XU) Read Smashin' Transistors review here.
PHYLUMS Phylum Phyloid (Dirtnap) Read Smashin' Transistors review here.
ROYAL HEADACHE High (What's Your Rupture) Every couple of weeks or so I tuned by the so called Alternative Rock stations on the area dial to see what's up. Usually they were playing something from Metallica's really shitty later albums or the same three Alice In Chains songs. When they played something new it was Mumford and Sons who have apparently shifted from being a Mom Rock band with ukuleles to something Dad Rockers would listen to until a new U2 album comes out or Nickelodeon Kid's Choice winners Twenty One Pilots. Meanwhile, these Aussies released a scruffy, high energy batch of well crafted and gruff pop rock songs. With nods to Northern Soul, the mod punks that copped ideas from the same thing, the golden ages of college rock and the hard working spirit of the folks from the land down under, this should have been heard all over the place in 2015. Either the programmers of such frequencies are just assholes who hate their listening audience so they're constantly trolling them or the listeners are just a prosaic as my neighbor who gets all excited when he hears "More Than A Feeling" by Boston for the fifth time in a day on the classic rock station. https://royalheadache.bandcamp.com/album/high/
SHAWN DAVID McMILLEN On The Clock With JJ and Mitch (12XU) I slept on this record when it came out in the spring of the year but by the time August rolled around it was getting listened to every day. Sleepy-eyed and sometimes lackadaisical, there's a laid back but clued in trance this record induces. White boy blues in a way where it's almost like wakin' and bakin' on a dewy summer morning and listening to a Junior Kimbrough record that you found in a used book store. It's not white guy blues in where some old guy in a freshly pressed jean jacket and a goatee wants to talk to you about Slowhand all night.
SLOW WALKER s/t (Stale Heat) Read Smashin' Transistors review here.
SWIFTUMZ Everybody Loves Chris (Melters) Itchy power pop finger snappers and garage goth weepers to romanticism of the 90's alt-rock scene (more Dinosaur Jr and Pavement, less Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam) and fizzy New Wave boppers. Chris McVicker and his friends made something here that's like some cool compilation album while keeping a common thread strung though everything.
TANG SOLEIL Outboard Sensory Meridian Response (Dusty Medical) Read Smashin' Transistor
review here.
TROPICAL TRASH UFO Rot (Load) Read Smashin' Transistors review here.
Thee TSUNAMIS Saturday Night Sweetheart (Magnetic South) Read Smashin' Transistors review here.
WIREHEADS Big Issues (Tenth Court) Sometimes I'm thinking a really smeared view at the Mekons "roots" era. Other times it's the first few Roxy Music albums if they wore dirty t-shirts they picked up off the kitchen floor (which in turned ended up making them sound more like the Fall.) I really liked their album of 2014, The Late Great Wireheads, and I really, really dig the skronk and slurred sound of this. Produced by a Calvin Johnson who is not the wide receiver for the Detroit Lions.
Honorable mentions:
Hagerty-Toth Band Qalgelbra (Three Lobbed)
Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones Stoning Josephine (Certified PR)
Frankie and the Witchfingers s/t (Permanent)
Timmy's Organism Heartless Heathen (Third Man)
Uh Bones Honey Coma (Randy Records)
Let's throw in a handful of EP's and Singles while were at it too.
Hagerty-Toth Band Qalgelbra (Three Lobbed)
Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones Stoning Josephine (Certified PR)
Frankie and the Witchfingers s/t (Permanent)
Timmy's Organism Heartless Heathen (Third Man)
Uh Bones Honey Coma (Randy Records)
Let's throw in a handful of EP's and Singles while were at it too.
EX-CULT Cigarette Machine (Castle Face) A metallic punk pummeling a la early Killing Joke records. Memphis, TN's Ex-Cult sound as serious as Killing Joke about the whole thing too but don't come off sounding like such dicks about it.
http://www.castlefacerecords.com/products/ex-cult-cigarette-machine
http://www.castlefacerecords.com/products/ex-cult-cigarette-machine
feedtime "flatiron" (Sub Pop)
Smashin' Transistors review here.
HEATERS "Mean Green" (Beyond Is The Beyond)
Smashin' Transistors review here.
SEX TIDE Vernacular Splatter (Superdreamer)
Smashin' Transistors review here.
Smashin' Transistors review here.
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