Favorite Songs of 2015
Jan. 4th, 2016 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretLast year I made a playlist for bookherd of my favorite songs from 2014. Here's the 2015 version.
Favorite Songs of 2015
-"Elevator Operator" by Courtney Barnett. "Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit" was my favorite new album this year, which should be of little surprise as I've posted about it several times and written fic for "Pedestrian at Best". I was torn between putting "Elevator Operator" here or putting "Pedestrian at Best" here or both, but my gut tells me "Elevator Operator" is a step up. The inversions it takes you through, with such wicked lyrical precision... it is a deep song disguised as something petty and insignificant, or vice versa.
-"Young Moses" by Josh Ritter, the best song on Ritter's new album, and it is no surprise a new Ritter album means a place on my best of 2015 list. I love what this song says about American faith in the context of traditional faith, and also faith as a journey of constantly growing.
-"Ready to Get Down" by Josh Ritter, the other best song on Ritter's new album. My favorite thing here is Ritter's riffs through Biblical storylines: "It's four long years studyin' the bible,/ Infidels, Jezebels, Salomes and Delilahs" and later "Every little thing they ever hoped you'd never figure out/ The Red Sea, the Dead Sea, the Sermon on the Mount." This is a song about how the antidote to bad religion is actually READING THE FUCKING BIBLE.
-"Lincoln's Nigun/ Yamin U'smol" by the Joey Weisenberg and the Mechon Hadar Ensemble, which has unexpectedly stolen my headspace for the past week after a friend posted a live recording on Facebook. It's a lovely melody, and the album cut is gorgeous, but the live cut is what really does it for me. It was recorded at SCI, a weeklong seminar in using Jewish song to uplift Jewish communities and hearing dozens of Jews singing together out of the pure joy of singing is just wonderful.
-"The Ascendant: No. 1. The Beginning And" by Wally Gunn, performed by Roomful of Teeth, setting of a poem by Maria Zajkowski. This was so lovely that I sought out the poetry book it's from, a small volume of simple but marvelously composed poems about death and what comes after. Unsurprisingly, Roomful of Teeth knocks it out of the park.
-"Somebody Will" by Ada Palmer, performed by Heather Dale. The original Sassafrass version is amazing, but isn't from 2015 but Heather Dale's new cover is pretty great, too. I first met this song at Balticon, when Jo Walton introduced it as her favorite song and asked Sassafrass to perform it as part of her Guest of Honor Q&A. It speaks so much to the geek's sense of purpose, that there is a meeting of the mind's between being dreamers and being practical workers toward a better future.
"No Anthems" by Sleater-Kinney... It was such a joy to hear Sleater-Kinney reunite this year, picking up their place in the culture as if a decade hadn't happened.
"Foreign Object" by the Mountain Goats because of all the lulz. Such a delightfully danceable melody, such delightfully murderous lyrics.
bookherd of my favorite songs from 2014. Here's the 2015 version.Favorite Songs of 2015
-"Elevator Operator" by Courtney Barnett. "Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit" was my favorite new album this year, which should be of little surprise as I've posted about it several times and written fic for "Pedestrian at Best". I was torn between putting "Elevator Operator" here or putting "Pedestrian at Best" here or both, but my gut tells me "Elevator Operator" is a step up. The inversions it takes you through, with such wicked lyrical precision... it is a deep song disguised as something petty and insignificant, or vice versa.
-"Young Moses" by Josh Ritter, the best song on Ritter's new album, and it is no surprise a new Ritter album means a place on my best of 2015 list. I love what this song says about American faith in the context of traditional faith, and also faith as a journey of constantly growing.
-"Ready to Get Down" by Josh Ritter, the other best song on Ritter's new album. My favorite thing here is Ritter's riffs through Biblical storylines: "It's four long years studyin' the bible,/ Infidels, Jezebels, Salomes and Delilahs" and later "Every little thing they ever hoped you'd never figure out/ The Red Sea, the Dead Sea, the Sermon on the Mount." This is a song about how the antidote to bad religion is actually READING THE FUCKING BIBLE.
-"Lincoln's Nigun/ Yamin U'smol" by the Joey Weisenberg and the Mechon Hadar Ensemble, which has unexpectedly stolen my headspace for the past week after a friend posted a live recording on Facebook. It's a lovely melody, and the album cut is gorgeous, but the live cut is what really does it for me. It was recorded at SCI, a weeklong seminar in using Jewish song to uplift Jewish communities and hearing dozens of Jews singing together out of the pure joy of singing is just wonderful.
-"The Ascendant: No. 1. The Beginning And" by Wally Gunn, performed by Roomful of Teeth, setting of a poem by Maria Zajkowski. This was so lovely that I sought out the poetry book it's from, a small volume of simple but marvelously composed poems about death and what comes after. Unsurprisingly, Roomful of Teeth knocks it out of the park.
-"Somebody Will" by Ada Palmer, performed by Heather Dale. The original Sassafrass version is amazing, but isn't from 2015 but Heather Dale's new cover is pretty great, too. I first met this song at Balticon, when Jo Walton introduced it as her favorite song and asked Sassafrass to perform it as part of her Guest of Honor Q&A. It speaks so much to the geek's sense of purpose, that there is a meeting of the mind's between being dreamers and being practical workers toward a better future.
"No Anthems" by Sleater-Kinney... It was such a joy to hear Sleater-Kinney reunite this year, picking up their place in the culture as if a decade hadn't happened.
"Foreign Object" by the Mountain Goats because of all the lulz. Such a delightfully danceable melody, such delightfully murderous lyrics.