The Line of Best Fit's 50 Best Albums of 2015

Bold experimentalism is key for Californian Julia Holter. Her third album is a melange of thoughtful, alternative approaches to pop. “Feel You”’s harpsichord jauntiness and skittish drums provide the idea platform for the album’s textual tapestry. Syncopated jazz (“Vazquez”), hypnotic shanties (“Sea Calls Me Home”) and aching torch songs (“How Long?” and “Night Song”) all follow, but the tone—while opulent, rich and dramatic—never feels false. “Silhouette” is a gorgeously off-kilter, while “Betsy on the Roof” builds from barely a whisper.

Have You In My Wilderness is Julia Holter’s most intimate album yet, a collection of radiant ballads. Her follow-up to 2013’s widely celebrated Loud City Song explores love, trust, and power in human relationships. While love songs are familiar fodder in pop music, Holter manages to stay fascinatingly oblique and enigmatic on her new album. Have You in My Wilderness is also Holter’s most sonically intimate album. Here, she and producer Cole Marsden Greif-Neill lift her voice out of the layers of smeared, hazy effects, putting her vocals front and center in the mix. The result is striking—it sounds as if Holter is singing right in your ear. It sounds clear and vivid, but also disarmingly personal. The focused warm sound and instrumentation — dense strings, subtle synth pads — adds to the effect. Like Holter’s previous albums, Have You in My Wilderness is multi-layered and texturally rich, featuring an array of electronic and acoustic instruments played by an ensemble of gifted Los Angeles musicians. Have You In My Wilderness deals with dark themes, but it also features some of the most sublime and transcendent music Holter has ever written. The ten songs on the album are shimmering and dreamlike, wandering the liminal space between the conscious and the subconscious.

The follow-up to 2013's A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart sees Bill Ryder-Jones offer us an insight into his private world. The stories he tells eavesdrop on a set of encounters that go about “turning stories into beautiful truth” set to glorious molten melody that explodes like fireworks over water.

“Don’t remove my pain / It is my chance to heal.” Delivered in a wounded cry of desperation, this lyric—from standout track “Notget”—is emblematic of Björk’s profoundly vulnerable ninth studio album. Given sonic texture by her lush string arrangements and the skittering beats of co-producer Arca, *Vulnicura* was written in response to the dissolution of Björk’s longtime relationship with artist Matthew Barney. Following the cosmically conceptual *Biophilia* (2011), it’s disarming yet reassuring to hear the Icelandic icon’s stratospheric voice wailing bluntly about recognizable human emotions. In the vibrant album closer “Quicksand,” she sings of finding new life through heartache: “The steam from this pit / Will form a cloud / For her to live on.”

Courtney Barnett\'s 2015 full-length debut established her immediately as a force in independent rock—although she\'d bristle at any sort of hype, as she sneers on the noise-pop gem \"Pedestrian at Best\": \"Put me on a pedestal and I\'ll only disappoint you/Tell me I\'m exceptional, I promise to exploit you.\" Warnings aside, her brittle riffing and deadpan lyrics—not to mention indelible hooks and nagging sense of unease with the world—helped put *Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit* into the upper echelon of 2010s indie rock. The Melbourne-based singer-songwriter stares at stained ceilings and checks out open houses as she reflects on love, death, and the quality of supermarket produce, making *Sometimes* a crowd-pleaser almost in spite of itself. Propulsive tracks like the hip-shaking \"Elevator Operator\" and the squalling \"Dead Fox\" pair Barnett\'s talked-sung delivery with grungy, hooky rave-ups that sound beamed in from a college radio station\'s 1995 top-ten list. Her singing style isn\'t conversational as much as it is like a one-sided phone call from a friend who spends a lot of time in her own head, figuring out the meaning of life in real time while trying to answer the question \"How are you?\"—and sounding captivating every step of the way. But Barnett can also command blissed-out songs that bury pithy social commentary beneath their distorted guitars—\"Small Poppies\" hides notes about power and cruelty within its wobbly chords, while the marvelous \"Depreston\" rolls thoughts on twentysomething thriftiness, half-glimpsed lives, and shifting ideas of \"home\" across its sun-bleached landscape. While the topics of conversation can be heavy, Barnett\'s keen ear for what makes a potent pop song and her inability to be satisfied with herself make *Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit* a fierce opening salvo.

Not quite country, Americana, folk, songwriter or pop, Daniel Romano’s exquisite and expansive new album, If I’ve Only One Time Askin’ is pieces of each, but ultimately the work of a singular mind. To peer inside, all you have to do is listen. Self-produced and largely self-performed in his hometown Welland, Ontario, a picturesque water town near Niagara, the album features Romano’s baritone croon and poetic hard luck storytelling set atop an expanded palette filled with sweeping strings, blasts of horn, stately piano, twangy pedal steel, an 808 drum machine and swaths of accordion. Not a retro preservationist, nor a post-modern cowpunk, the songwriter embraces classicism and sadness in its extremes to create something beyond nostalgia.

Deafheaven’s sublime 2013 album *Sunbather* was an alloy of black metal aggression and shoegaze melodicism as beautiful as it was punishing. Opening with a murmur of ambience before giving way to the sound of church bells and Slayer-like thrash, *New Bermuda* pushes the band’s formula even further, juxtaposing twinkling guitars with searing growls (“Baby Blue”) and lurching, hardcore-style breakdowns with chord progressions that could’ve come from a moody English alt-rock record circa 1988 (“Gifts from the Earth”). It’s an adventurous blend from an extraordinary band.

The Expanding Flower Planet is an album, a song, a cosmic ideal, a form of psychic expansion and expanded capability. It’s original and personal. It transmutes ethereal abstractions into crystalline harmonies and sinuous grooves. It’s music nurtured with the idea of healing, exciting, inspiring, enlightening. Drones, dissonance, warmth, and love. Even if you’re unfamiliar with Angel Deradoorian’s name, you’re likely familiar with her voice. As the former bassist and vocalist for Dirty Projectors, her lepidopteran flights helped buoy the Brooklyn-based group. She’s been a member of Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks and sang on Flying Lotus’ “Siren Song.” Her fist song collection, 2009’s Mind Raft EP elicited praise from Pitchfork for being “passionate and lovingly crafted.” The Fader hailed her “zen weed energy” and “moody dervish spirals. But her debut LP, The Expanding Flower Planet reflects a remarkable creative journey. The title came from a tapestry hanging on the wall in front of Deradoorian’s workstation—a Chinese embroidered image of a flower mandala. “It started to represent to me the growing consciousness of the human mind in the world today,” Deradoorian says. “So the first song I wrote, which I felt appropriate for the album, was called Expanding Flower Planet and represents this desire to broaden the mind and it's capabilities beyond what we are told it can do. Others imitate the past and others divine inspiration and transmit it elsewhere. This is the latter instance. If you listen close enough, you can detect faint hints of Alice Coltrane and Can, Terry Riley, and Dorothy Ashby. A new world springs from ancient traditions—with East Indian, Middle Eastern, traditional Japanese musical inspiration aligned with Deradoorian’s singular orbit. Recorded in various locales over a period of several years, sessions began from scratch in Baltimore, 2011, before moving to her studio in LA. Some tracking was done in a church. Extra tracks were recorded at The Topaz Chamber, which belongs to Deradoorian’s friend, Kenny Gilmore. This is an album so refulgent that it actually sounds like it was made in a Topaz chamber. Roughly 90 percent was written and performed solely by Deradoorian, with assists from drummers Jeremy Hyman and Michael Lockwood, guest vocalist Niki Randa, Arlene Deradoorian and Gilmore, who helped the songs breathe. It’s essentially the offspring of a labyrinthine odyssey of self-exploration. In the course of cutting it, Deradoorian realized a more profound communion with music than she’d ever experienced. It’s salient in the songs, which glow and warp, burn brightly and float gracefully past sun and assorted stars. “It seemed endless, but eventually the shift occurred and it was like a revelation,” Deradoorian describes the epiphany. “I was incredibly grateful for when that day came. It was the first time I really had to force myself to be patient and understand that good things will take time. It won't all happen when you want it to. It'll happen when it's supposed to—when you're truly ready.”

Don\'t be put off by sad-voiced crooner Dan Bejar\'s stage name: the only thing this enigmatically evocative Canadian songwriter is guaranteed to destroy is your preconceptions. The erstwhile New Pornographer\'s 11th album makes a sharp right turn following *Kaputt*\'s \'80s-jazz soft-pop. His dramatic fusion of rich, string-driven balladry (\"The River,\" \"Girl in a Sling\") and the saxophone-fueled rock fury of Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band (\"Times Square,\" \"Midnight Meet the Rain\") transform New York bohemian despair into glorious rock epiphanies.

EL VY is a low-key collaboration between two high-minded guys: Matt Berninger (of indie-rock pinups The National) and multi-instrumentalist Brent Knopf (of Ramona Falls and the proggy Portland crew Menomena). A moody, funky (and subtly funny) album, *Return to the Moon* charts a serpentine journey through the hazy backyard barbecues and surreal afterparties of Berninger’s recently adopted Los Angeles. “Went to bed and woke up inside another man’s head/Nobody noticed,” Berninger mumbles on the title track—it’s a dry-witted punch line on an album that\'s full of them.

Following his scintillating debut under the Father John Misty moniker—2012’s *Fear Fun*—journeyman singer/songwriter Josh Tillman delivers his most inspired and candid album yet. Filled with gorgeous melodies and grandiose production, *I Love You, Honeybear* finds Tillman applying his immense lyrical gifts to questions of love and intimacy. “Chateau Lobby 4 (In C for Two Virgins)” is a radiant folk tune, burnished by gilded string arrangements and mariachi horn flourishes. Elsewhere, Tillman pushes his remarkable singing voice to new heights on the album’s powerful centerpiece, “When You’re Smiling and Astride Me,” a soulful serenade of epic proportions. “I’d never try to change you,” he sings, clearly moved. “As if I could, and if I were to, what’s the part that I’d miss most?”

*A word about the refurbished deluxe edition 2xLP* With the new repressing of the deluxe, tri-colored vinyl that is now available again for purchase, we ask just one favor that will also serve as your only and final warning: The deluxe, pop-up-art-displaying jacket WILL warp the new vinyl if said vinyl is inserted back into the jacket sleeves and inserted into your record shelf. To prevent this, we ask that you keep the new LPs outside the deluxe jacket, in the separate white jackets that they ship in. Think of these 2 parts of the same deluxe package as “neighbors, not roommates” on your shelf, and your records will remain unwarped for many years to come (assuming you don’t leave them out in extreme temperatures or expose them to other forces of nature that would normally cause a record to warp…)! *The LP is cut at 45 rpm. Please adjust your turntable speed accordingly!* “I Love You, Honeybear is a concept album about a guy named Josh Tillman who spends quite a bit of time banging his head against walls, cultivating weak ties with strangers and generally avoiding intimacy at all costs. This all serves to fuel a version of himself that his self-loathing narcissism can deal with. We see him engaging in all manner of regrettable behavior. “In a parking lot somewhere he meets Emma, who inspires in him a vision of a life wherein being truly seen is not synonymous with shame, but possibly true liberation and sublime, unfettered creativity. These ambitions are initially thwarted as jealousy, self-destruction and other charming human character traits emerge. Josh Tillman confesses as much all throughout. “The album progresses, sometimes chronologically, sometimes not, between two polarities: the first of which is the belief that the best love can be is finding someone who is miserable in the same way you are and the end point being that love isn’t for anyone who isn’t interested in finding a companion to undertake total transformation with. I won’t give away the ending, but sex, violence, profanity and excavations of the male psyche abound. “My ambition, aside from making an indulgent, soulful, and epic sound worthy of the subject matter, was to address the sensuality of fear, the terrifying force of love, the unutterable pleasures of true intimacy, and the destruction of emotional and intellectual prisons in my own voice. Blammo. “This material demanded a new way of being made, and it took a lot of time before the process revealed itself. The massive, deranged shmaltz I heard in my head, and knew had to be the sound of this record, originated a few years ago while Emma and I were hallucinating in Joshua Tree; the same week I wrote the title track. I chased that sound for the entire year and half we were recording. The means by which it was achieved bore a striking resemblance to the travails, abandon and transformation of learning how to love and be loved; see and be seen. There: I said it. Blammo.” -Josh Tillman (A.K.A. Father John Misty) All LP versions are 45 rpm. All purchases come with digital downloads.

Elaenia is a dazzling score which puts Shepherd in the spotlight as a composer who has produced an album that bridges the gap between his rapturous dance music and formative classical roots that draws upon everything Shepherd has done to date. Growing up in Manchester - he started out as a chorister at an early age - Shepherd eventually arrived in London for university, where he spent the next five years engineering Elaenia, all the while DJing in cities across the globe and working towards his PhD in neuroscience. An album that draws inspiration from classical, jazz, electronic music, soul and even Brazilian popular music, Elaenia - named after the bird of the same name - is the epitome of the forward-thinking Floating Points vision in 2015. Musically, the mesmerising ebbs and flows of Elaenia span moments of light and dark; rigidity and freedom; elegance and chaos. The lush, euphoric enlightenment of ‘Silhouettes (I, II & III)’ - a three-part composition that acts as a testament to those early days Shepherd spent playing in various ensembles, complete with an immensely tight rhythm section that ends up providing a cathartic, blissful release. Elsewhere, Shepherd’s knack for masterful late night sets bare fruition to the hypnotic, electronic pulse of ‘Argenté’, which leads into final track 'Peroration Six' - a track with one of the biggest tension-and-release moments in music this year. Shepherd - the ensemblist, the producer and scientist - even built a harmonograph from scratch to create the artwork for Elaenia, the end result created by using it and 2 fibre optic cables of 0.5 and 1.5mm diameters, which were connected to light sources responding to bass drum and white noise percussive sounds from the album track ‘For Marmish’. Like his contemporaries Caribou and Four Tet, Shepherd has nurtured the Floating Points name into one renowned for ambitious and forward-thinking DJ sets, having performed all over the world at events and clubs such as Output NYC, Trouw, Sonar, Unit in Tokyo, Panorama Bar and, of course, Nuits Sonores (which lent its name to his seminal track from summer 2014) as well as the much missed Plastic People, where he held a residency for five years. Elaenia also features a huge variety of contributors, including drums from Tom Skinner and Leo Taylor plus vocals from Rahel Debebe-Dessalegne, Layla Rutherford and Shepherd himself. Elsewhere there's Susumu Mukai taking up bass, Qian Wu and Edward Benton sporting violins, Matthew Kettle on the viola, Alex Reeve on guitar and Joe Zeitlin on the cello.

GoldLink sure doesn’t make easy work for himself. On *And After That, We Didn’t Talk*, the rapper reels yarns while spitting circles over chopped-up, off-kilter beats that’ll make your head spin. All the while, he unearths some pretty deep relationship wounds. “Spectrum” is a year-in-the-life tale that’s playful, sentimental, and rapped at hyper speed atop a woozy, house-inflected club track. But for every introspection, there’s a late-night indulgence: “Dance on Me” spins a Lyn Collins breakbeat into a supple jam that just swims in funky, soulful vibes.

Holly Herndon's second album Platform proposes new fantasies and rejuvenates old optimism. Herndon has become a leading light in contemporary music by experimenting within the outer reaches of dance music and pop songwriting possibilities. A galvanising statement, Platform signals Herndon's transformation as an electronic musician to a singular voice. For More Info: shop.igetrvng.com/collections/all/products/rvngnl29

A wondrous debut from the house producer of indie-pop romantics The xx, *In Colour* is the sound of dance music heard at helicopter height: beautiful, distant, and surprising at every turn. Whether summoning old-school drum ’n’ bass (“Gosh”) or dancehall-inflected pop (the Young Thug and Popcaan double feature “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)”), the mood here is consummately relaxed, more like a spring morning than a busy night. Laced throughout the thump and sparkle are fragments of recorded conversation and the ambience of city streets—details that make the music feel as though it has a life of its own.

Think big, girl, like a king, think kingsize. Jenny Hval’s new record opens with a quote from the Danish poet Mette Moestrup, and continues towards the abyss. Apocalypse, girl is a hallucinatory narrative that exists somewhere between fiction and reality, a post-op fever dream, a colourful timelapse of death and rebirth, close-ups of impossible bodies — all told through the language of transgressive pop music.

Harpist and singer/songwriter Joanna Newsom’s idiosyncratic take on folk and Americana has always been a powerful—if polarizing—experience. Her fourth album strikes a balance between the ornate orchestral explorations of 2006’s *Ys* and the more stripped-down confessions of 2010’s *Have One on Me*. She blends labyrinthine wordplay (“Bleach a collar/Leach a dollar/From our cents/The longer you live, the higher the rent”) and obscure subject matter (the names of Lenape villages on what is now New York City) into songs that are passionate, sincere, and surprisingly immediate.

Hailed as the post-Internet savior of New York rap, A$AP Rocky fully embraces the weight of those lofty expectations on his ambitious sophomore full-length. *AT.LONG.LAST.A$AP* finds the unflappable Harlem native marveling at his own meteoric success through an expertly curated set of beats—with production that corrals toothsome rock and soul samples, atmospheric pop menace, and trunk-rattling traditionalism. While “Wavybone” is a simple yet deeply satisfying highlight that also features sterling performances from two of Rocky’s most audible influences, Juicy J and UGK, “L$D” combines woozy low end and a glittering tangle of xx-like guitar lines for a psychedelic love song that’s sung but not rapped. “Everyday” turns a soulful Rod Stewart vocal sample (from the 1970 Python Lee Jackson cut “In a Broken Dream”) into a massive, Miguel and Mark Ronson–assisted meditation on fame and happiness.

Thanks to multiple hit singles—and no shortage of critical acclaim—2012’s *good kid, m.A.A.d city* propelled Kendrick Lamar into the hip-hop mainstream. His 2015 follow-up, *To Pimp a Butterfly*, served as a raised-fist rebuke to anyone who thought they had this Compton-born rapper figured out. Intertwining Afrocentric and Afrofuturist motifs with poetically personal themes and jazz-funk aesthetics, *To Pimp A Butterfly* expands beyond the gangsta rap preconceptions foisted upon Lamar’s earlier works. Even from the album’s first few seconds—which feature the sound of crackling vinyl and a faded Boris Gardiner soul sample—it’s clear *To Pimp a Butterfly* operates on an altogether different cosmic plane than its decidedly more commercial predecessor. The album’s Flying Lotus-produced opening track, “Wesley’s Theory,” includes a spoken-word invocation from musician Josef Leimberg and an appearance by Parliament-Funkadelic legend George Clinton—names that give *To Pimp a Butterfly* added atomic weight. Yet Lamar’s lustful and fantastical verses, which are as audacious as the squirmy Thundercat basslines underneath, never get lost in an album packed with huge names. Throughout *To Pimp a Butterfly*, Lamar goes beyond hip-hop success tropes: On “King Kunta,” he explores his newfound fame, alternating between anxiety and big-stepping braggadocio. On “The Blacker the Berry,” meanwhile, Lamar pointedly explores and expounds upon identity and racial dynamics, all the while reaching for a reckoning. And while “Alright” would become one of the rapper’s best-known tracks, it’s couched in harsh realities, and features an anthemic refrain delivered in a knowing, weary rasp that belies Lamar’s young age. He’s only 27, and yet he’s already seen too much. The cast assembled for this massive effort demonstrates not only Lamar’s reach, but also his vast vision. Producers Terrace Martin and Sounwave, both veterans of *good kid, m.A.A.d city*, are among the many names to work behind-the-boards here. But the album also includes turns from everyone from Snoop Dogg to SZA to Ambrose Akinmusire to Kamasi Washington—an intergenerational reunion of a musical diaspora. Their contributions—as well as the contributions of more than a dozen other players—give *To Pimp a Butterfly* a remarkable range: The contemplations of “Institutionalized” benefit greatly from guest vocalists Bilal and Anna Wise, as do the hood parables of “How Much A Dollar Cost,” which features James Fauntleroy and Ronald Isley. Meanwhile, Robert Glasper’s frenetic piano on “For Free? (Interlude)” and Pete Rock’s nimble scratches on “Complexion (A Zulu Love)” give *To Pimp a Butterfly* added energy.

Rocked by the deaths of his longtime collaborator The Spaceape and Hyperdub artist DJ Rashad, Kode9 turned to contemplate the void. Despite his preoccupations with absence—The Spaceape himself reappears, as ominous as ever, on the ambient sketch \"Third Ear Transmission\"—*Nothing* brims with life, from the tumbling footwork rhythms of \"Zero Work\" and \"Vacuum Packed\" to the intricate, minimalist grime of \"Wu Wei.\" As always, the Scottish producer\'s palette is unusually vivid, full of prickly hi-hats and flickering loops; \"Respirator,\" with its heaving breaths and racing pulse, is like sonic CPR.

After releasing 4 mixtapes + 5 EPs, today sees the release of A CURIOUS TALE OF TRIALS + PERSONS, the highly anticipated debut album from the 21 year old Hip Hop phenomenon known as Little Simz. Released on her own independent label (AGE 101: MUSIC) the conceptual 10 track debut album (featuring the anthemic cuts "WINGS" + "DEAD BODY"), which focuses on the subject of fame and it's effects, features production from her SPACE AGE + AGE 101: MUSIC affiliates Josh Arcé and OTG, alongside Prezident Jeff, DEEZY, Tiffany Gouché, Sigurd, IAMNOBODI and The Hics (who are also the only featured artists on the LP). The Award-winning North London born rapper + musician who has made her mark on a global scale with a series of critically acclaimed mixtapes and EPs, earning her global accolade as she soon became tipped to watch by the likes of VEVO, Red Bull, The Independent, BBC, The Guardian amongst many, landing her nominations for a bevy of awards including BET, MOBO and WORLDWIDE AWARDS (where she scooped up the Breakthrough Artist Of The Year trophy), public support from hip hop legends and peers alike. “I’m in the best place in life right now. I finished my album, A Curious Tale Of Trials + Persons, I've signed to myself and got my own label - AGE 101: Music and I'm a very fortunate position where I'm able to put the album out on my own terms. This is an album without singles, it's a complete body of work, a concept album. It's time for me to show and prove and I'm more than ready to make my mark” - Little Simz.

As bands like Sigur Rós and Godspeed You! Black Emperor have pushed rock music into modern classical territory, Ludovico Einaudi’s *Elements* achieves the same crossover coming from the other side. His inspirations may be rooted in academia (Kandinsky, the periodic table of the elements, Euclidean geometry), but these melancholic compositions are both accessible and instantly affecting. Through intensifying piano-and-strings interplay, pocket-sized symphonies like “Petricor” and “Whirling Winds” match the captivating crescendos of the stormiest post-rock odysseys.

Marina Diamandis has the kind of big, slinky voice that could easily silence a room. But Diamandis—the Welsh singer and instrumentalist behind Marina & The Diamonds—would prefer everyone up and dancing. *Froot*—her third full-length—is a giddy mix of new wave and propulsive electro-pop that feels both woozy and optimistic, like careening through a city at night in the rain. Lyrically, the album serves as an earnest ode to finding satisfaction in unlikely places. “I found what I\'d been looking for in myself,” she proudly announces amid the titanic hooks of “Happy.”

Simmering with slow-burning soul, Natalie Prass’ debut features sophisticated arrangements supported by strings and a horn section. Gorgeous melodies and memorable hooks grace its nine songs and give the album a cohesive mood. Standout tracks like “Bird of Prey” and “Your Fool” play like a cross between Dusty Springfield and classic Philly soul without sounding overtly retro. Her understated, intimate voice is both delicate and darkly sly, a perfect pairing to the sensibilities of producer Matthew E. White and the Spacebomb Records house band. The result is an impressive and assured debut that deserves close attention.

Alan Palomo’s leap from chillwave poster boy to champion of hedonistic dance-pop has been a bold arc indeed. His third album as Neon Indian is the peppy proof—a neon-tinged blast of saturated synths, fat beats, and relentless pop. It’s all destined for the dance floor, from the funk guitar and rattling percussion of “The Glitzy Hive” to the ska-tinged strut of “Annie” to the flittering arpeggios and ’80s disco drive of “Slumlord.” Palomo plays the perfect host throughout, tailoring the party to his immersive soundtrack.

Drilling down on the extremes of the *Cassette* EP, the first full-length from Viet Cong (later to be known as Preoccupations) is an inspired mix of gritty and beautiful, pairing fractured blasts of noise with plush synths (“Newspaper Spoons”) and deadpan vocals with striking lattices of guitar (“Bunker Buster”)—a sound that shouldn’t make as much sense as it does. Best of all is “March of Progress,” which opens with nearly three minutes of industrial wheezing before ascending to a breathless (and surprisingly catchy) rave-up—a high point on an album full of them.

Recorded in a barn-turned-studio in rural Ontario, the seven songs that make up 'Viet Cong' were born largely on the road, when Flegel and bandmates Mike Wallace, Scott Munro and Daniel Christiansen embarked on a 50-date tour that stretched virtually every limit imaginable. Close quarters hastened their exhaustion but also honed them as a group. You can designate records as seasonal, and you can feel Preoccupations's bleakness and declare it wintry. But the only way you get a frost is when there's something warmer to freeze up. So yes, 'Viet Cong' is a winter album, but only until it is a spring record, then a summer scorcher, then an autumn burner, then it ices over again.

Referring to the silence that returns when last year's "Krómantík" EP fades out, Sóley said, "… your closed eyes slowly start seeing something much deeper and darker," and now that something is here, it's right in front of us: "Ask The Deep" is a stunningly dark and deeply personal departure after the minimalist and bleak piano compositions of said EP: Relying on guts, ghost ships, and a sonic map that doesn't show the same piano coordinates as before, her soft-sounding voice leads us deeper and deeper into the shadowy fairytale worlds only hinted at on previous releases such as her "Theater Island" EP and 2011's much-praised "We Sink" debut album. Changing tactics to fight her inner demon with every track, "Ask The Deep" sees the bespectacled songwriter open Pandora's box – and close it eventually. At least for now. "Have I danced with the devil?", Sóley Stefánsdóttir asks on album opener "Devil", then crescendoing: "Does he still love me?" And that inner demon, responsible for all the sunless spots, the moist corners where silky mosses grow, he's frequently beguiling her throughout "Ask The Deep", even spinning and dancing, since he's hardly alone: Once the melodic surges of "Devil" lead to other fairytale soundscapes – the piano no longer being "the main character" of Sóley's music –, more and more ghosts, both real and imaginary, enter the scene. Inspired by an actual news story about a man who was buried alive in Brazil, "Ævintýr" marches in circles with tribal beats underneath ethereal swirls, and "One Eyed Lady" is perhaps Sóley's most minimalist lullaby yet: It's the beatless account of a one-eyed witch that would actually "kill for love", as the song's mantra reverberates into the void. Back in fairyland, a group of girls appears as nightmares in "Halloween", sailing on a ghost ship, ambushing the boys, the dreamers of this disembodied, infernal dream built on layers of beats: "Tell me how can I wake up again." With looped forces of gravity and swerving nods to Philip Glass, "Follow Me Down" is a brooding roll call to enter the distorted depths, to go beyond the point of no return, to leave the comfort zone. And it's a reminder: We still sink. Amid the flotsam and jetsam, things appear that weren't previously there – hard-hitting drums set to Beach House vibes ("Dreamers"), a haunted church showdown with the jilted devil ("I Will Never"), a hint of unlikely, hopeful pop even ("Breath") – until the inner demon reappears once again: Built around a part of the "Devil", album closer "Lost Ship" deals with the same conflict, "my devil, my master, my mind and my soul." "It's saying I'm stronger than my devil mind, though sometimes it wants to take over everything," she explains. Her final words on the album: "… and do not forget/I never loved you". It's funny, but with Sóley's music, metaphor is never just metaphor: When the multi-instrumentalist from Iceland sang "I run away from you" on her debut album, you could actually see her running through some forest (or some barren Icelandic field), and this capability to create a sense of situation, a surreal, dreamlike scenario via sound, it's still her trademark – albeit crowed by way more ghosts and Beelzebubian shadows this time around: Taking her listeners on a journey to phantasmal grounds, her sophomore full-length is both more intricate and diverse in how it's written, arranged and narrated. And it's even more obvious that her voice is crucial in guiding the way to that place where one can live, that safe shore on the other side of the ocean. "You must face your fairytale," the former student of composition sings elsewhere on "Ask The Deep". She doesn't run. Faces him again and again. And even Willy Wonka would agree: She is the music maker – but we are the dreamers of the dreams.

Sufjan Stevens has taken creative detours into textured electro-pop, orchestral suites, and holiday music, but *Carrie & Lowell* returns to the feathery indie folk of his quietly brilliant early-’00s albums, like *Michigan* and *Seven Swans*. Using delicate fingerpicking and breathy vocals, songs like “Eugene,” “The Only Thing,” and the Simon & Garfunkel-influenced “No Shade in the Shadow of The Cross” are gorgeous reflections on childhood. When Stevens whispers in multi-tracked harmony over the album’s title track—an impressionistic portrait of his mother and stepfather that glows with nostalgic details—he delivers a haunting centerpiece.