4. The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Third World Pyramid
5. Tuff Love - Resort
6. Summer Flake - Hello Friends
7. Blaudzun - Jupiter
8. Heron Oblivion - S/T
9. Douglas Dare - Aforger
10. Ghost Wave - Radio Norfolk
11. SubRosa - For This We Fought the Battle of Ages
12. Cross Records - Wabi-Sabi
13. Aan - Dada Distractions
14. Ulrika Spacek - The Album Paranoia
15. Emma Ruth Rundle - Marked for death
16. Flyying Colours - Mindfullness
17. Sugar Candy Mountain - 666
18. Leggy - S/T
19. Sofi Lofi - Buried
20. Gunns - She's a Rainbow
Favorite albums 2015
It
was as usual hard to put together this annually list of my favorite
albums of the year. I wanted to include 30 bands, because there has
been a lot of good music this year.
1. Wand – Golem
These Americans really
blew my mind away when I saw them perform at the Incubate Festival in
Netherlands this year. I like the way their sound shifts from quiet,
slow tempo psychedelic drone music to explosive noise and heavy, fast
riffs – and backwards. “Golem” is a excellent album, it is easy
to choose this as my favorite album this year.
Favorite track: “Self
Hypnosis in 3 Days”.
2. La Luz – Weirdo
Shrine
There are so many cool songs on this album. I love the
mixture of psychedelic, garage and western rock. Consisting of four
pretty girls (I saw them on the festival in Netherlands as well), La
Luz is one of my favorite girls band right now.
Favorite track: “You
Disappear”
3. Ceremony – The L - Shaped Man
Ceremony
is an American punk rock band, and has been playing in 10 years and
produced 5 studio albums in that time. I had not heard about them
till this year. “The L – Shaped Man” is a helluva decent album.
It is easy to understand that they are influenced by Joy Division.
Favorite track: “The Bridge”
4. Chastity Belt -
Time to Go Home
Chastity Belt became my second favorite girl
band after La Luz this year, and is not so far away from that sound.
I also think about Electrelane when I listen to this. “Time to Go
Home” is a great album, and almost every song is enjoyable.
Favorite track: “Lydia”.
5. Pale Honey – S/T
So
we have a Swedish band on the 5th place. Pale Honey reminds me of
Cardigan's “Gran Turismo” and The White Stripes. I like this very
much.
Favorite track: “Youth”.
6. Tess Parks,
Anton Newcombe – I Declare Nothing
Since The Brian Jonestown
Massacre is one of my favorite psychedelic rock bands, (or favorite
bands in that matter), Anton Newcombe's cooperation with Tess Parks
could not be shit. Tess Parks has a lovely whiskey-rusty suitable
voice that mix in perfectly with the psychedelic, beautiful sounds
that I am familiar with BJM. I was lucky to say hi to Tess Parks
during the Incubate Festival, and she seemed very down to earth and
friendly.
Favorite track: “Voyage de L'âme”
7. Landshapes –
Heyoon UK psychedelic alternative
rock band. Great album! Favorite track: “Francois”.
8.
Protomartyr – The Agent Intellect It
sounds a bit like Parquet Courts and maybe (early) Pavement, and that
could not be bad. Favorite track: “Why Does It Shake?”
9.
Fufanu – Few More Days to Go
Icelandic
electronic, psychedelic, alternative rock. Great sound! Favorite
track: “Wire Skulls”
10. Chelsea Wolfe
– Abyss Chelsea Wolf is probably
the only artist I listen to in the doom rock genre. It reminds me of
a darker PJ Harvey. Abyss contains a lot of great heavy songs. My
favorite: “Iron Moon”.
11. Gwenno – Y Dydd
Olaf
Welsh psychedelic pop with a album title meaning
something like “the last day”. Gwenno took me by a surprise one
day, making me think “wow, this music is really cool”.
Favorite
track: “Calon Peiriant”.
12. The Districts – A
Flourish and a Spoil Favorite
track: “Peaches”.
13. Land Lines – The Natural
World Favorite track: “Limb
From Limb”. It is a bit bad quality of sound on this movie. You should check them out on Spotify.
14. Dirty Dishes – Guilty Favorite
track: “Androgynous Love Song”.
15. Ekkolodd –
Javel, Ravel So my favorite
Norwegian album this year. I think these guys will have a good future
for making great music. Favorite track: “Nok æn tier inn”
16.
The Brian Jonestown Massacre – Mini Album Thingy Wingy Anton
Newcombe will never bore me with new music every year. This does not
stand out much from previous work, but I really enjoy the psychedelic
tunes that are served here. Favorite track: “Pish”.
17.
Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just
Sit The reason I did not
rank this higher up is because of the lack of more good songs on the
album. Favorite track: “An Illustration of Loneliness
(Sleepless in New York)".
18. Royal Headache –
High Favorite track:
“Garbage”.
19. Julia Holter - Have You in My
Wilderness Favorite track:
“Sea Calls Me Home”.
From 21-30 I have Django Django, Hooton
Tennis Club, And And And, Dig Deeper, Built To Spill, Fuzz, Creepoid,
Deerhunter, The Smoking Trees and Kurt Vile.
So my favorite album this year consists
of 9 very great songs of total 9 tracks. The band's own description
of their music is this: “AAN
is a fearless experimental pop band
from Portland, Oregon mixing heavily textured guitars with rich vocal
harmonies.” I think that suits them well.
Favorite track: “Bubble bath Bop”.
2. Rivulets – I Remember
Everything
With only 5 or 6 good
songs of a total of 10 tracks, Rivulets' melancholic album really got
into my heart.
Favorite track: “Ride
On, Molina”
3.Secret Colours -
Positive Distractions
With so many good songs it was easy to rank
this psychedelic pop/rock album as number three.
Favorite track:
“Get to the Sun”.
4. The Wytches – Annabel
Dream Reader
Annabel Dream Reader is a
hell of a tough album. It is garage/surf rock with psychedelia of the
greatest sort.
Favorite track: “Summer
Again”.
5. Thurston Moore – The
Best Day
This album reminds me of
my favorite Sonic Youth album, “Murray Street”.
My favorite track: “Speak
to the Wild”.
6. I Was a King – Isles
of Yours
The greatest Norwegian band this year.
Favorite track: “Oslo
Share”.
7. The Brian Jonestown
Massacre – Revelation
BJM's 14th album proves
they are still capable to produce a lot of great songs. Their concert
at John Dee was one of my favorite shows this year.
My favorite track: “Vad
Hände Med Dem?”
8. The Horrors –
Luminous
I heard this band for my
first time at some bar in Oslo this year, and the bartender urged me
to check out The Horrors' latest album. I got hooked.
Favorite track: “So Now
You Know”.
9. The Vickers – Ghosts
Finally a great
Italian psychedelic rock band! A lot of good pearls on this album.
Favorite track: “All I
Need”.
10. Creepoid –
S/T
Creepoid's second album is a bit darker, heavier and better
than the first one.
Favorite track: “Sunday”.
11. Mark Lanegan Band –
Phantom Radio
Not as good as “Funeral
Blues”, but it has a lot of quality songs.
Favorite track: “The
Killing Season”.
12. Dark Horses – Hail
Lucid State
British stunning
psych-rock with a pinch of electronica. A new band for me, makes me
want to check out their previous two albums.
Favorite track: “Live on
Hunger”.
13. Ultimate Painting –
S/T
The Guardian gave this
album full score, and that is quite reasonable. The cheerful rock is
easy to enjoy, it reminds me of The Clean, Liam Finn and even Mazes
and Veronica Falls, the bands the two members are from.
Favorite track: “Ten
Street”.
14. Die Nerven – Fun
The German
punk/noise/garage rock band is grand. The music is raw and some of
songs make my head bang without noticing.
Favorite track:
“Rückfall”.
15. Total Control –
Typical System
When I first listened to “Flesh War” I thought
this Australian band would give me an album ranked in my top five.
That track is superb, post-punk influenced, makes me think of Joy
Division. The rest of the songs are unfortunately not in the same
quality, but there are still some other highlights.
Favorite track: “Flesh
War”.
16. Parquet Courts -
Content Nausea
This American garage/rock
band gave out two full length albums this year. They should waited,
collected the material and given out one instead, in my opinion. The
thing is, Content Nausea has maybe four or five really great songs,
the rest of the album consists of short “in-between songs” and
noisy annoying tracks. The music is a bit similar to Pavement and The
Clean.
Favorite track: “Uncast
Shadow Of A Southern Myth”.
17. Tweedy – Sukierae
Jeff Tweedy, foreman of
Wilco, has delivered a long nice album consisting of twenty (!) nice
songs of different calibers. I think about seven of them are
noticeable good, the rest is a bit monotonous.
Favorite track: “Slow
Love”.
18. Yuko – Long Sleeves
Cause Accidents
This exciting Belgian band reminds me of Radiohead
and Blonde Redhead. A great album.
Favorite track: “Justine
Part 1”.
19. Gulp – Season Sun
Welsh indie pop quartet that reminds me a bit of Electrelane and
the Low Frequency in Stereo.
Favorite track: “Seasoned Sun”.
20. Spoon – They Want My Soul
There are about three
really cool tracks on this album, and that is that.
Favorite
track: “Inside Out”.
Albums from 2013 that I liked a lot:
Courtney Barnett - The Double ep
The Wave Pictures - City Forgiveness
Tripwires - Spacehopper Kevin Morby - Harlem River Dead rabbits - the Ticket That Exploded
Toy - Join the Dots
The Underground Youth - the Perfect Enemy for God
Grim Tower - Anarchic Breezes
Kiev - Falling Bough Wisdom Teeth
Flyying Colours - s/t
It may
be four years late for me to write about this album, but I didn't
discover it before last month.
She
Makes War consists of multi-instrumentalist Laura Kidd, and the music
can be compared to Cat Power and Kristin Hersh. The whole album is
good.
Dead
Rabbits – The Ticket That Exploded (2013)
This
psychedelic rock band sounds like The Black Angels, The Warlocks and
similar bands, but with a hint of shoogaze. Nice.
Total
Control – Typical System (2014)
This
Australian band should be one of my favorites of 2014. It sounds a
bit if it was from the 80s with the synth and post-punk influenced
music.
Kevin
Morby – Harlem River (2013)
This
guy plays in Oslo at my birthday this September. The beautiful music
reminds me of Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand", Spain, Kurt Vile.
Tripwires
– Spacehopper (2013)
It
took me some time to enjoy this album, but that should be a good sign
of a great piece of music.
Spacehopper
sounds like it could be from the 90's and sounds a bit like
Radiohead, Muse and maybe even Smashing Pumpkins.
Grim
Tower - Anarchic Breezes (2013)
Grim
Tower is a collaboration between Imaas Wasif and Stephen McBean
(Black Mountain) and the result is a powerful, beautiful, dark album.
I think it sounds like True Widow and Creepoid sometimes, and that is
not bad.
Hammerhead
– Into The Vortex (1994)
It
may be twenty years too late for me to write about Hammerhead. I
haven't heard about it before now, and the music hits me right in the
face. It sounds a bit like Offspring.
Die
Nerven – Fun (2014)
This
German punk/garage rock should also be one of my favorites this year.
The music makes me want to jump up and down with my fist in the air.
Sort of.
It was easy to put
Grandfather's second album on top of the list this year. The music is
raw, dark and beautiful, and sounds a bit like a mixture of Tool and
Deftones.
My favorite track: Wishes
2. His Clancyness –
Vicious
The Italian Jonathan
Clancy with his band members delivers some really
great, playful indie rock.
My favorite track:
Progress
3. The Low Frequency in
Stereo – Pop Ubskura
I think this is my
favorite album from this band. Their concert at Blå in November was
the best show I attended in 2013. My favorite track: Colette (subie
subie).
4.La Maison Tellier –
Beaute Pour Tous
French folk-rock with
beautiful melodies and vocal. Favorite track: La Maison de nos peres
5. Wolf People – Faint
Nice prog-rock with a
clear great vocal. The music reminds me a bit of Arbouretum. Their
concert at Oslo Psych Fest in December was outstanding. Favorite
track: Thief
6.Kurt Vile – Walking on
a Pretty Daze
If it hadn't been for the
first popular track “Walkin on a pretty day”, this album wouldn't
be on this list. The song is superb, and the rest of the tracks are
not bad, but some are too monotonic.
7. Division of Laura Lee –
Tree
I was surprised I didn't
knew about this Swedish interesting band. After listening to Tree, I
began to go through their previous releases and I discovered a lot of
great songs. The music reminds me of Sonic Youth and Black Rebel
Motorcycle Club.
Favorite track: Great
Machinery
8. Team
Ghost – Rituals
French synth
rock/electronic shoegaze. I dig it. Favorite track: Somebody's
Watching.
9.
Izakaya Heartbeat – Enter – Rainbow Lake
I
have listened to this album a lot. This Norwegian band delivers great
noisy, psychedelic rock and I don't have any band to compare them
with. That is great sign. Favorite track: Crystal Eyes.
10. Jacco Gardner –
Cabinet of Curiosities
This Dutch guy delivers a
nice mixture of psychedelia and pop. Favorite track: the title track.
11. Hooded Fang – Gravez
Favorite track: Bye Bye
Land.
12.Black Hearted Brother –
Stars Are Our Home
This group reminds me of
The Earlies, The Flaming Lips and Dosh.
13.Grooms – Infinity
Caller
It took me some time to
like this album. That is maybe because the best songs appear to be in
the middle of it. Grooms reminds me of Spoon, Stephen Malkmus and
Built to Spill. Favorite track: Completely.
14. Scout Niblett – It's
Up To Emma
This is the 6th album from
this cute girl. The three first tracks are very good, but
unfortunately the rest of the album does not give me much. Favorite
track: Can't Feel Me Now.
15. Feeding People –
Island Universe
This band's music hit you
right in the face with its powerful, energetic, raw psych/noise-rock.
Some songs are more slow going, and with those it is easier to enjoy
the nice female vocal. Favorite track: Insane
16. Strangers Family Band
– s/t
This is nice psychedelic
music influenced by the 60's. Favorite track: Yaer Time.
17. Luder –
Adelphophagia
This is the second
album from Luder. The band plays a mix of metal, psychedelia,
and alternative rock and it is very relaxing to listen to. Favorite
track: Astrolabe.
18. Deerhunter – Monomania
Deerhunter's 6th album is a bit more
noisy and more garage-rockish than their earlier works. Monomania has
a lot of great songs, and my favorite is T.H.M.
19. The Moondoggies – Adios I'm A
Ghost
Favorite track: A Lot To Give.
20. Madensuy- Stabat Mater
Madensuy's
third album is far as god as the last one, “D Is
Done” (2008) and was a small disappointment for me. I've listen
through the album 9-10 times by now and I have not grown tired of the
songs, but I miss some spark. Favorite track: Give.
I
bought the two albums “Reichenbach Falls” (2007) and “Holiday
Life” (2012) for some months ago, but as I check out a lot of new
music this band became lost for me. I had listened through the songs
and felt that it didn't attach me.
But
then suddenly when I was driving from Molde to Oslo (an eight hours
drive) listening to my mp3 player set on shuffle, Ravens & Chimes
popped up and I was wondering “nice, what is this playing?”. Yes,
it took me some time to appreciate this music. It sounds happy and
melancholic in the same time, it is playful indie rock with piano and
a remarkable voice. Ravens & Chimes can maybe be compared to
Andrew Bird and Arcade Fire.
From "Reichebach Falls" I think the track "For m." is the most beautiful:
From "Holiday Life" my favourite track is "Past Lives":
Today's band is an Italian band I stumbered upon when looking for new music this saturday. Their music got me attached right away. It sounds like Interpol, The KWB and Madensuyu. Check it out:
This
is one chill song. Reminds me a bit of Yppah, and makes me happy :)
I've listened through “Weird Stories” (2012) where it is from,
but I can't yet decide if the album is good or not.
Joy
Zipper - S/t (2007)
Joy
Zipper is relaxing rock music. It's playful, cheering, slow and nice.
It reminds me a bit of Yo La Tengo.
My
Bee's Garden
“Hunt
the Sleepers” (2010) is dark and beautiful.
Hookworms
After
listening through the four-track single album “Hookworms” (2011)
on Spotify, I bought their recent album “Pearl Mystic” (2013). It
is great psychedelic rock, a bit similar to Psychic Ills. I've
listened through the album some times now, but I am not sure how much
I like it yet.
Feeding
People
I
discovered this band by listening to my favorite radio disk jockey,
Harald Are Lund. Their album “Island Universe” (2013) is great
piece. It shows a lot of variation.
I don't think this is the best track, but I didn't find my favorite tracks of the albums on youtube.
Wampire
Speaking
of Harald Are Lund, Wampire was also discovered listening to this
guy. “Curiosity” (2013) is a cool album. Check it out!
