Vic Galloway – A Festive Fifty - My Favourite Albums of 2015

Another 12 months flies by and another set of gigantic lists appears on the internet, pointing you towards some of the annual musical highlights… so here’s my tuppence worth! My 50 favourite albums and my single/track of 2015 - another great year for music at home and abroad. I say it every time, but it’s been really hard choosing a favourite album, or even getting the number down to 50! As ever there are indie, rock, punk, electronic, acoustic, psychedelic and global sounds in here – some you’ll know, some you might not. Investigate, share and eventually buy them all…
Album of the year:

• C Duncan – Architect (FatCat)

Then in alphabetical order:

• Admiral Fallow – Tiny Rewards (Nettwerk)
• Andrew Wasylyk – Soroky (Empty Words)
• Art of the Memory Palace – This life is but a Passing Dream (Static Caravan)
• Belle & Sebastian – Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance (Matador)
• Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat – The Most Important Place in the World (Chemikal Underground)
• Bixiga 70 – III (Glitterbeat)
• Bop English – Constant Bop (Blood & Biscuits)
• Boxed In – Boxed In (Nettwerk)
• Carbs – Joyous Material Failure (Save As)
• Chvrches – Every Eye Open (Virgin)
• Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I sit and think, sometimes I just sit (Mom+Pop)
• Cristobal & the Sea – Sugar Now (City Slang)
• Deradoorian – The Expanding Flower Planet (Anticon)
• Django Django – Born Under Saturn (Because)
• Dutch Uncles – O Shudder (Memphis Industries)
• Ela Orleans – Upper Hell (HB Recordings)
• Errors – Lease of Life (Rock Action)
• Ezra Furman – Perpetual Motion People (Bella Union)
• FFS – FFS (Domino)
• Found – Cloning (Chemikal Underground)
• Gaz Coombes – Matador (Caroline)
• Girl Band – Holding Hands With Jamie (Rough Trade)
• Gnoomes – Ngani (Rocket Recordings)
• Hudson Mohawke – Lantern (Warp)
• Idlewild – Everything Ever Written (Empty Words)
• Jacco Gardner – Hypnophobia (Fulltime Hobby)
• Julia Holter – Have You in my Wilderness (Domino)
• Kathryn Joseph – Bones you have thrown me and blood I’ve spilled (Hits the Fan)
• La Luz – Weirdo Shrine (Hardly Art)
• Lockah – It Gets More Cloudy (Donky Pitch)
• Lonelady – Hinterland (Warp)
• Mac Demarco – Another One (Captured Tracks)
• Mbongwana Star – From Kinshasa (World Circuit)
• Membranes – Dark Matter Dark Energy (Cherry Red)
• Miaoux Miaoux – School of Velocity (Chemikal Underground)
• Owiny Sigoma Band – Nyanza (Brownswood Recordings)
• Public Service Broadcasting – The Race for Space (Test Card Recordings)
• Siobhan Wilson – Say it’s true (Reveal)
• Sleaford Mods – Key Markets (Harbinger Sound)
• Sleater Kinney – No Cities To Love (Sub Pop)
• Songhoy Blues – Music in Exile (Transgressive)
• Tame Impala – Currents (Fiction)
• The Deadline Shakes – Zealots (Flowers in the Dustbin)
• The Phantom Band – Fears Trending (Chemikal Underground)
• Thee Oh Sees – Mutilator, Defeated At Last (Castle Face)
• Trembling Bells – The Sovereign Self (Tin Angel)
• Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Multi-Love (Jagjaguwar)
• Wand – 1000 Days (Drag City)
• Young Fathers – White Men are Black Men Too (Big Dada)

Music isn’t a competition, folks… we all know that, yeah? The above list of 50 was whittled down from a number nearer 100… yikes! So honourable mentions go to: A Mote Of Dust, A New International, Battles, Beirut, Best Girl Athlete, Bjork, Blur, De Lux, Deerhunter, Dennis Bovell, Dr Cosmo’s Tape Lab, Euros Childs, Garden of Elks, Ghost Culture, Here We Go Magic, Hot Chip, Jaakko Eino Kalevi, Jamie XX, Jane Weaver, JD McPherson, Joanna Newsom, Kosmicher Laufer, Kurt Vile, La Priest, Laura Marling, Lola Colt, Micachu & the Shapes, Moon Duo, Nils Frahm, Numbers Are Futile, Panda Bear, Pins, Prides, Ratatat, Roots Manuva, Sacri Cuore, Shamir, Squarepusher, Supermoon, Terakaft, The Jackals, The Magnetic Mind, Ultimate Painting, VASA, Woodenbox, Yppah for more tremendous albums in 2015. Phew…

Oh, and my single/track of the year is most definitely:
Kathryn Joseph – The Bird

Merry Christmas, Happy Hogmanay and here’s to a great 2016 y’all!