Our favorite albums of 2015 — Honorable mentions

It’s that time of year again. Time to start publishing year-end lists. I’ve been much more organized this year, and I’ve also been overwhelmed with the quantity of good stuff that came out in 2015. In a normal year, I put about 110 or so new albums in my library, spend a lot of time with half of them, and have only a little bit of trouble whittling my list down to 40 or so titles.

This year, I added more than 200 new albums to my catalog, and I spent quality time with more than 125 of them. Make no mistake: I’m not a rich man. I couldn’t afford to buy all of those at retail. A good portion of those were promo copies. A lot more were “name your price” downloads, and I paid what I could. A lot more were gotten via eMusic, which is a great way to get music legally and inexpensively. Of course, there were also a bunch that I paid retail prices for. Anyway… It took considerable doing to cull that list of 125 that I liked a lot down to my favorite 50. This’ll be the longest list I’ve ever done. Not only that, but for the first time ever, I’m gonna do a list of the records that just barely missed the final list. And trust me when I say that it was difficult to limit this list of honorable mentions down to only 25.

A few of these were albums that I was greatly anticipating and was slightly let down by. Some of these broke my heart to leave off of the main list. These are all really good records that I would happily recommend to you. I just like the stuff on the main list a little bit more. That main list will be published in chunks over the coming weeks.

Without further ado, here are those 25 honorable mentions, listed in alphabetical order without commentary. Click on the album art to go to where you can listen and buy. Click on the band name to see what I’ve written about their new album.

All Dogs — Kicking Every Day

Beliefs — Leaper

Caspian — Dust and Disquiet

Cemeteries — Barrow

Des Ark — Everything Dies

Distortion Girls — Party

Dråpe — Relax/Relapse

Echo Lake — Era

Echodrone — Five

Evans The Death — Expect Delays

Girls Names — Arms Around a Vision

Grave Pool — Mnemonics

Guts Club — The Arm Wrestling Tournament

Hayden — Hey Love

Helen — The Original Faces

J Francis — to adore

Jenny Hval — Apocalypse, Girl

Joanna Gruesome — Peanut Butter

Julien Baker — Sprained Ankle

Novella — Land

Takaakira (“Taka”) Goto — Classical Punk and Echoes Under The Beauty

Tamaryn — Cranekiss

Waving — Waving

Wickerbird — The Leaf Maker

Widowspeak — All Yours

That’ll do it for now. Like I said, I recommend all of those albums. Because of the quality and quantity of new releases this year, there just wasn’t enough room in the top 50 for these.

As I normally do, I’ll break my final list into chunks, starting the countdown at 50. Look for the first installment in a couple of days.

08.26.2015 — “That Kind of Girl” by All Dogs

All Dogs

If you only listen to one song today, make it “That Kind of Girl” by All Dogs (2015, from the forthcoming album Kicking Every Day).

All Dogs is, per their press release, a “loud rock band that plays pop songs”. The DIY punk-influenced quartet from Columbus, Ohio released a four-song EP in 2013 and a standalone single called “Georgia” last December. Their debut album Kicking Every Day will be out this Friday via the Detroit-based Salinas Records. That label is the home of Swearin’ (Allison Crutchfield) and P.S. Eliot (Katie and Allison Crutchfield), but not Waxahatchee (Katie Crutchfield). Katie has climbed the indie rock ladder and is now on one of the biggest indies, Merge Records. Although we’re not here to talk about the magnificent Crutchfield twins, it’s easy to bring their names up in a conversation about All Dogs. They share some common RIYL tags, and to some extent, they sound like each other. I know that All Dogs has played at least a couple of shows with Waxahatchee, but I don’t know about their touring history with Swearin’.

I had never heard of All Dogs until I got a promo copy of the album in the mail bag this morning. The email grabbed my attention with some press clips like “Fuzzed out guitars, unfussy production values…” (New York Times) and “Loud guitar, unpolished but affecting vocals… (I)mpressive and intoxicating” (NPR), and references to 1990s college radio playlists. It only took a few seconds for me to know that this is right up my alley. From the aforementioned fuzzy guitars, to some tricks in the stereo field, to singer Maryn Jones’ voice that’s somewhat reminiscent of That Dog frontwoman Anna Waronker. There’s an occasional hint of growl or vocal fry, but for the most part, Jones comes out cleaner than some similar sounding singers like Alicia Bognanno from Bully or Lyn Heinemann from Drawn Ship.

Today’s song is the fourth song on the album, but it was the first that I played. Whenever I’m previewing an album, I rarely start with the first track. Like I said, it only took a few seconds to decide that I really really like this.

“That Kind of Girl” by All Dogs

There’s a subtle bit in the intro that tugged at some heartstrings for me. The first few seconds are weighted really heavily towards the right channel. Right at 0:07, the drums come crashing in and the balance sort of evens out. It seems like the drums might be heavier left than right, but I might be imagining that. Incidentally, they use this same trick on the album’s opener “Black Hole” I’m always a sucker for that, and it adds icing to a cake that was already pretty delicious.

A lot of reviews have mentioned All Dogs in the same breath with Bully and Hop Along. Both of those bands have great new records this year, and I’ve already mentioned that both of those bands evoke the last “golden age of indie rock” — the mid 1990s.

As I spend more time with this album, I expect that it’ll climb its way into the top 20 or so of my year-end list (along with those records by Bully and Hop Along). Historically, I’ve made year-end lists of more than 35 but less than 50 full-length new release albums. This year, I might have to make it more like 80. If the year ended today, I would already have a really hard time narrowing my list down to the top 50.

You can pre-order Kicking Every Day from Salinas here.