The albums released in 2015 that kept endlessly repeating in my head and my player the most often were:
- With the In Dream album Editors have gone to a seemingly small-scale sound. Until one starts discovering the layers, the sounds, the interwoven patterns. They seemingly picked up where they left off with the slightly disturbing (and pretty electronic) In This Light and On This Evening. It seems they had to go through their identity and personnel crisis with The Weight Of Their Love. Which re-established them as a band. Allowing them to move towards In Dreams. In Dreams has a bonus disc, Phase 2. The bonus songs add depth to the regular album. It is indispensible.
With the Pylon album Killing Joke produced another greatly balanced work in the original line-up. Maybe less indispensible, but the bonus disc widens the album’s horizon even more. What helped me personally in appreciating the album, but also the band’s complete back catalogue, was reading Jaz Coleman’s self-published book Letters From Cypher. It shows the unified life of the band, against its founding, its history, its coming and going of people, its relative stability, its philosophical foundations, the joker and the back jester.- After the return on stages around the world several years ago, Faith No More confirmed their musical status with the great album Sol Invictus. The album demonstrates their grand and fluent mix of pathos, lyricism, hard rock, funk, engagement.
- If you didn’t like Florence + The Machine before the crisis that knocked out Florence for a while, but helped her look for exotic places to record How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, you won’t like her/them now. I guess. But if you did like her/them before, you will do even more now.
- Many bands are into the Steve Albini (and Shellac) musical school of directness. Fewer get Steve Albini to produce their album, and release an album that is not a copy-paste, but shows identity, is powerful and totally true to the band’s proper musical identity. It’s what Raketkanon did with their second album Rktkn#2.
- For too long, Dez Mona is being ignored by the masses, mistaken as they probably are because of the -agreed- somewhat cultish image that singer Gregory Frateur has. The Origin album shows a very diverse side to the band, but also a very sophisticated side, very rhythmic, very passionate, but never over the top. Time to get some recognition.
