8 Tracks
8 Tracks to blast when you're trying to avoid small talk and accidental eye contact on your commute
8:41 PM
At the start of 2015 I made a resolution to spend more structured time doing the things that I love in music. This meant scheduling blocks of time exclusively devoted to being a better musician. No more playing when I felt like the urge, no more writing only when I “felt inspired”. A wonderful creative person taught me that those are habits for lazy people. You get better at your craft by doing it all the time. Writing crap, playing like crap, but doing it over and over again until it's a little less crap. It’s really difficult.
Since I was doing all this difficult structured nonsense, I also decided to give myself a fun resolution: to listen to a new album a week all year. By “new,” I mean new to me (there’s something from 1998 on this list). In the current listening landscape of Pandora and Spotify it’s been really easy for me to get completely wrapped up in the thrill of music discovery, but totally lose focus on the artistry of an album. First I'll state: there is no “wrong” way to listen to music. However, there are incredible musicians pouring thousands of hours into making 10-track compilations, which are subsequently picked apart in order to find the most marketable “singles,” which are then overplayed into oblivion on the radio and a handful of Pandora stations. The cohesiveness, design and complete message of the album are completely disregarded by the general populous.
Aside from making it nearly impossible for indie artists to make a living off of music sales, I’m not completely writing-off the way people listen to music now. I have a Google Play subscription that I use religiously, and have listened to almost every album on this list using the service.
For 2016, I want to keep this site as a running journal and record of what I’ve listened to, and how things make me feel. It will be subjective. It will have the magnitude of about 1 billionth of Pitchfork. You will probably hate it. Read it or don’t. There is a high likelihood that this will join the graveyard of other abandoned blogs by June.
Anyway, here are the 52 albums that I listened to in 2015, listed alphabetically by artist.
| Album | Artist | Year |
|---|---|---|
| 25 | Adele | 2015 |
| Sound & Color | Alabama Shakes | 2015 |
| Alvvays | Alvvays | 2015 |
| Burn Your Fire for No Witness | Angel Olsen | 2014 |
| Running with the Wolves | Aurora | 2015 |
| Depression Cherry | Beach House | 2015 |
| Beau EP | Beau | 2015 |
| All Around Us | Briana Marela | 2015 |
| Every Open Eye | Chvrches | 2015 |
| Dear Miss Lonelyhearts | Cold War Kids | 2013 |
| Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I just Sit | Courtney Barnett | 2015 |
| Fading Frontier | Deerhunter | 2015 |
| Painted From Memory | Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach | 1998 |
| I Love You, Honeybear | Father John Misty | 2015 |
| Fear Fun | Father John Misty | 2012 |
| Stay Gold | First Aid Kit | 2014 |
| How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful | Florence + The Machine | 2015 |
| Art Angels | Grimes | 2015 |
| Evermotion | Guster | 2015 |
| Double Youth | Helado Negro | 2014 |
| Jungle | Jungle | 2014 |
| 6 Feet Beneath the Moon | King Krule | 2013 |
| King Krule | King Krule | 2011 |
| B'live I'm Going Down | Kurt Vile | 2015 |
| After | Lady Lamb | 2015 |
| Some Are lakes | Land of Talk | 2008 |
| If You Wait | London Grammar | 2013 |
| Strange Trails | Lord Huron | 2015 |
| Wildewoman | Lucious | 2014 |
| Somewhere Else | Lydia Loveless | 2014 |
| Froot | Marina & The Diamonds | 2015 |
| Maximum Balloon | Maximum Balloon | 2010 |
| Owl John | Owl John | 2014 |
| Dark Arc | Saintseneca | 2014 |
| Last | Saintseneca | 2011 |
| Such Things | Saintseneca | 2015 |
| And the War Came | Shakey Graves | 2014 |
| Are We There | Sharon Van Etten | 2014 |
| Swimmin' Time | Shovels and Rope | 2014 |
| HEAL | Strand of Oaks | 2014 |
| Carrie & Lowell | Sufjan Stevens | 2015 |
| Sylvan Esso | Sylvan Esso | 2014 |
| Dark Bird is Home | Tallest Man on Earth | 2015 |
| Antares, Mira, Sol | Tame Impala | 2008 |
| Currents | Tame Impala | 2015 |
| Innerspeak | Tame Impala | 2010 |
| What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World | The Decemberists | 2014 |
| Ego Death | The Internet | 2015 |
| Runners in the Nerved World | The Sidekicks | 2014 |
| Seeds | TV on the Radio | 2014 |
| Warpaint | Warpaint | 2014 |
| The Offer | Yowler | 2015 |
