Top 10 Albums

10. Dr. Dre, Compton: A Soundtrack By Dr. Dre (Aftermath/Interscope Records)
After 11 years, Dr. Dre threw in the towel on the mythical Detox record. Instead, he broke his hiatus with this relative quickie album inspired by his involvement with the Straight Outta Compton movie. It raises the question: If he could just bang this record out, why in the world did Detox never get off the ground? That’s a quandary for another time, but if Compton is Dre in throwaway mode, then everyone should be nervous. The beats and production are stunning, and everyone—including Dre—brings their A-game to the mic. Of course, no Dre album is complete without guests, so you have the usual subjects (Snoop and Eminem), as well as old friends like Ice Cube, Cold 187um, and the West Coast’s favorite son, Kendrick Lamar. It’s nearly a perfect return to form, which unfortunately means some cringeworthy misogyny in the form of a skit that goes way too long and seems to mainly exist for shock value. Nevertheless, there’s no denying that there’s a reason people have stayed interested for so long and the why is in full display. As with others on this list, let’s hope it won’t be as long a wait for the next one.

9. Screaming Females, Rose Mountain (Don Giovanni Records)
Screaming Females have a sound as visceral and immediate as their name. Bandleader Marissa Paternoster is the key factor in that equation, an undeniable guitar hero who tends to reduce listeners to slack-jawed stares. They’ve always had a heavy edge, but for this go around, they leaned into it and recruited Matt Bayles, known for his work with bands like Mastodon and Isis. And while it would have been easy for the band to just crank up the amps and go at it, Rose Mountain finds the Females incorporating more melodic passages and even slowing it down a bit. That may be due to the fact that Paternoster wrote the record while dealing with illness. Perhaps the time made her a bit introspective, but still feeling the need to rock out. Rose Mountain has a clean sound that doesn’t sacrifice the power and is a heck of an emotional, sonic ride.

8. Blueprint, King No Crown (Weightless Recordings)
Blueprint is easily the most prolific of his peers, with each new year usually bringing a new release. While it would be easy to tread water, he keeps evolving while managing to balance the old with the new. His latest, King No Crown, builds off the DNA of his 2011 album, Adventures in Counter-Culture, and finds Print as concerned about the details of real life as being the best rapper. He deals with the deaths of family and friends while still threading the record with optimism. When it comes to the production, he uses a light touch that keeps it from becoming a slog even during the darker moments. It’s a record that’s both thought-provoking and head-nodding. Blueprint is the everyman that hip-hop pretends it doesn’t need, but should be thankful it has.

7. Björk, Vulnicura (One Little Indian Records)
To invoke a cliche, an album is a snapshot in time. With that in mind Björk’s ninth record is a window into her break-up with her longtime romantic partner Mathew Barney. After floating in space and the abstract for most of her career, Vulnicura finds the Icelandic chanteuse more lyrically grounded than ever before, but in her own idiosyncratic way. She’s not naming names, but the emotions hit like a wet towel snap. Joined by Arca and The Haxan Cloak, she fuses strings and acoustic instruments with beats in a manner that’s classic Björk. It’s a stunner of an album in a catalog that has a bunch of them.

6. Run the Jewels, Meow the Jewels (Mass Appeal)
A pre-order package goof morphed into a Kickstarter that raised the $40,000 goal plus an additional $26,000. (The band donated the entire amount to charity.) And while Killer Mike and El-P fell slightly short of recreating the Run The Jewels 2 album, they came mighty close only using cat sounds. There’s no reason that it should have worked, but with help from Prince Paul, Just Blaze, Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, Blood Diamonds, Boots, Zola Jesus, The Alchemist, and Massive Attack’s 3D, it actually turns a goofy idea into a fairly genius re-imagining. There’s a heightened sense of menace that develops from having even more focus on the words. And fun fact, cat purrs make really effective sub-bass.

5. Faith No More, Sol Invictus (Reclamation Recordings)
Faith No More got back together for a series of reunion shows between 2009 and 2010, with a brief South American tour in 2011 and a one-off in France in 2012. After that they suggested that the reunion had run its course, though they would possibly be recording a new record. Well, it turns out that the bait and switch was just that, and after 18 years, the band released its first new album, Sol Invictus. There’s no denying the preserved in amber aspect of the album. It’s almost like they didn’t want to get too weird on the first outing back, though there’s nothing that will slide comfortably into a Target commercial. Nevertheless, what it may lack in surprise it makes up for in sheer songcraft and performance, with delicate moments balanced with instances of raw power. It’s almost unnerving how locked in and note perfect the band is. Sol Invictus is the type of reunion album for which you usually can only hope.

4. D’Angelo and The Vanguard, Black Messiah (RCA Records)
This record actually came out in the waning days of 2014, so with just a few days between the release and end-of-year deadlines, it perhaps didn’t get the recognition it deserved. While D’Angelo may never return to the straightahead R&B sound of his debut, he still has jams and grooves a plenty. And although not directly political, its mix of rock, funk, jazz and soul seemed to capture the zeitgeist in the same way Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Going On once did. Fittingly, it helped inspire Kendrick Lamar—and you know how that turned out. Let’s just hope it isn’t another 14 years before the next record.

3. Various Artists, Hamilton: Original Broadway Cast Recording (Atlantic Records)
If you were to tell someone back in January that one of the hottest things to hit pop culture would be a Broadway musical that used hip-hop to explore the life and times of the first Secretary of Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, you might get looks that were a mixture of confusing and pity for the hangover you’d be suffering through when you sobered up. Yet here we are with Hamilton, the show people just can’t stop talking about. For those who didn’t score tickets to one of the long soldout performances, the soundtrack is the next best thing; at two hours and 46 tracks, it’s the entire show. Overseen by Questlove and Black Thought of The Roots and the show’s creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda, it’s an ambitious mix of hip-hop, pop, R&B, jazz, and show tunes. It’s the rare Broadway album that plays just as well to both the hardcore theater geek and the pop fan and an impossibly audacious accomplishment.

2. Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly (Interscope Records)
To paraphrase every cartoonish goombah in pop culture, it certainly took a pair of brass ones for Kendrick Lamar to release To Pimp a Butterfly. The idea that Lamar would follow up his string of radio-embraced songs for an album that casually dropped free jazz into the mix certainly seems ballsy. To be fair, he telegraphed that things were going to be different in his TV performances prior to the album’s release. The result is a difficult, dense record designed to be consumed as a whole. It seemed to reject even the idea of singles, despite the fact that the album spawned five. It’s a record that will leave the casual fan or the folks looking for “Swimming Pools Part 2” cold. But if you’re willing to stick with it, the audacity pays off.

1. Sleater-Kinney, No Cities to Love (Sub Pop Records)
In the year of our Lord 2015, bands reuniting is the least surprising aspect of the current music scene. After all, there are lots of festival stages that need populating. But reunion albums are nerve wracking. Usually, the best one can hope for is that it won’t be cringe-inducing. So when Sleater-Kinney announced that after a decade-long hiatus they had a new album coming out, there was cautious excitement. It turns out that there was no need for worry. No Cities to Love, the band’s eighth album and second for Sub Pop picked up as if no time had transpired. Revisiting some of the pop overtones of previous albums and adding some new tricks, it is the logical next step with no asterisk. The balance and chemistry is just as great as it ever was so hopefully the band is back to stay.

Honorable Mentions

Obnox, Boogalou Reed (12XU Records)
Obnox, Know America (Ever/Never Records)
Panda Bear, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper (Domino Recording Co.)
Dam-Funk, Invite the Light (Stones Throw Records)
Damn the Witch Siren, Back to Dreaming (self-released)
Rosin Murphy, Hairless Toys (PIAS Recordings)
Death, N.E.W. (TryAngle Records)
The Good Life, Everybody’s Coming Down (Saddle Creek Records)