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28 December, 2015

2015_Albums

2015 Music Purchases

For the past few years I’ve been running my ‘One-CD-a-Week’ campaign. It started out as a way to limit my music purchases, which were threatening to get out of hand, thanks to all the great music that was being released. But then some weeks last year (2014) I found myself desperately trying to find something that I wanted to buy, when nothing really grabbed my fancy. So in 2015 I decided to just abandon that philosophy and go back to buying what I wanted when I wanted it.

Now it’s the end of the year, I’m looking back on what I have bought – mainly so that I can compare my purchases against the inevitable ‘best of’ lists, and feel all smug that my choices were more eclectic than the mainstream media’s. Surprisingly, it turns out that I only bought 38 albums last year – some 14 under my prior self-imposed annual limit of 52 (I choose to ignore the fact that one of these ‘albums’ was an 18-CD boxed set that should really have qualified as 18 week’s worth of purchases…). So at first blush, it looks as though my ‘limit’ was actually forcing me to buy more than I would otherwise have done.

But it’s even worse than that. Looking through the list, I only bought 17 ‘new releases’ in 2015 (excluding several 2015 reissues of older material, and the Dylan set which is from ’65/’66). And on top of that, several of my purchases have been very back-catalog that I only bought to plug holes in my collection (The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sebadoh, Swervedriver…). So either there has been a dearth of good music this year, or I am getting a bit too picky in my old age.

Actually, there has been some good music released in 2015.  I really like Dying Surfer Meets His Maker by All Them Witches, and Deafhaven‘s Sunbather would be on much heavier rotation if it weren’t for the faux-‘screamcore’ vocals (seriously, it’s 2015, and no-one takes death metal seriously any more). The Lower Dens album was solid, and What Went Down by Foals is excellent throughout. But honestly, what I have probably been playing more than anything else is the Drive By Truckers live album It’s Great To Be Alive. This would normally be a bit too ‘folky/country’ for me, but for the blistering guitar over several of the tracks, and some socio-political commentary that outdoes even the much heralded return of Desaperacidos. It’s a 3-CD set, and if I skip all of the stuff that’s a little too country for my rock’n’roll heart I’m sill left with almost a couple of hours of great live music. Come at it from a Neil Young, Steve Earle, and (even) Lynyrd Skynyrd angle and you’ll find a lot to enjoy.

So given that there clearly is some good music out there, I’m thinking that maybe my reduced purchasing really is just because I am getting ‘more selective’ in my choices. Or maybe I’m just less willing to take a risk. Out of all my purchases, there are very few that are really outliers – albums that I was taking a chance on. With the exception of Deafhaven (which I bought unheard, on the basis of reviews alone) and The Amazing which I heard on 3WK, they were all pretty much ‘known entities’. At least when I was forcing myself to buy a CD every week I was ‘forced’ to discover new (to me) music. So in 2016 I’m going to go back to reinstate my One-CD-a-Week approach, and see where it takes me this time…

The full list of purchases is below, in rough order of acquisition (I did consider ranking them, but you can’t compare, say, Deafhaven against Bob Dylan…)

  1. Kevin Drew – Spirit If… (2007)
  2. Brendan Canning – Something for All Of Us (2008)
  3. The Decemberists – What A Beautiful World, What A Terrible World (2015) [Vinyl]
  4. Sleater-Kinney – No Cities To Love (Deluxe Edition) (2015) [Vinyl]
  5. The High Violets – To Where You Are (2006)
  6. Mogwai – Music Industry 3 : Fitness Industry 1 (2015)
  7. Death Cab for Cutie – Kintsugi (2015)
  8. The Amazing – Picture You (2015)
  9. Little People – Mickey Mouse Operation (2006) [MP3 only]
  10. Swervedriver – Mezcal Head (1993)
  11. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress (2015)
  12. Butterfly Explosion – Lost Trails (2010)
  13. Ride – Waves: The BBC Sessions 2012)
  14. God Is An Astronaut – All Is Violent, All Is Bright (2011)
  15. Built To Spill – Untethered Moon (2015)
  16. Ride – Leave Them All Behind (EP) (1992)
  17. Gus Gus – Polydistortion (1997)
  18. Caravan – In The Land of Grey and Pink (2015 Reissue)
  19. Lower Dens – Escape From Evil (2015)
  20. M83 – Before The Dawn Heals Us (2014)
  21. Frank Marino – The Power Of Rock And Roll (2015 Reissue)
  22. Queens Of The Stone Age – …Like Clockwork (2013) [Vinyl]
  23. Desaperacidos – Payola (2015) [Vinyl]
  24. Mew – + – (2015) [Vinyl]
  25. Foals – What Went Down (2015) [Vinyl]
  26. Sebadoh – Bakesale (Deluxe Edition) (2011 Reissue)
  27. Love Amongst Ruin – Lose Your Way (2015)
  28. The Cure – Concert (1984)
  29. Siouxsie & The Banshees – Nocturne (2009) [MP3 only – already have the original vinyl]
  30. Miles Kane – Colour of the Trap (2011)
  31. Deafhaven – Sunbather (2015)
  32. Built To Spill – There’s Nothing Wrong with Love (2015 Reissue) [Vinyl]
  33. Bob Dylan – Bootleg Series Vol 12 (The Cutting Edge) Collector’s Edition (2015)
  34. Drive-By Truckers – It’s Great To Be Alive! [Explicit] (2015)
  35. The Postal Service – Give UP (Deluxe 10th Anniversary Edition) (2013 Reissue) [Vinyl]
  36. All Them Witches – Dying Surfer Meets His Maker (2015) [Vinyl]
  37. Spoon – Gimme Fiction (2015 Reissue)
  38. Ought – Sun Coming Down (2015)

There’s also a few one-off MP3s that I picked up either because the album hasn’t been released yet, or because I really didn’t fancy the whole album. For the sake of completeness, these are:

  • Pumarosa – Priestess
  • Ryan Adams – Style (Taylor Swift cover)
  • Cloud Cult – No Hell
  • Le Galaxie – Put The Chain On
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