My 2015 #MusicalAdventCalendar🎶🎅🏼

The self-indulgent experiment you never asked for is making a comeback! I’m dusting off #MusicalAdventCalendar for 2015. Same rules apply: instead of a chocolate a day until Xmas, it’ll be a haughty write-up of one of my fave tracks from the year.

1. Alabama Shakes ‘Don’t Wanna Fight’
   Let’s not deliberate; it’s all about Brittany Howard. Sure, those wiry guitar lines are fierce and the rhythm section is Muscle Shoals swamp perfection but it’s Brittany’s sweaty, soulful performance — from her jaw-dropping kettle whistle entrance to the howling, bluesy peaks — that really sells the song’s balance of fiery determination and gut-wrenching defeat. As well as harnessing that life-or-death rattle with a kind of swaggering yet sorrowful strut, the song also heralded the arrival of one of 2015’s best albums. Sound & Color demonstrated Alabama Shakes’ retrofitted Southern Rock chassis had been upgrade with weirder, more wonderful features.
2. Zun Zun Egui ‘African Tree’
   Alas, Zun Zun Egui, I hardly knew ye. I only just got to figuring out how to pronounce your tongue-twisting name, or how to sell your exotic soup of Afro-beat, math rock, and art funk to other musically adventurous folk. “It’s like Talking Heads jamming with Battles, or TuneYards meets Television” I’d tease, emphasising your cultural jamming line-up of musos from Mauritius, Japan, and Britain. How you turned me on to Seggae, a fusion of reggae and creole folk music. But then you go and break up! The very same year you made an instant convert outta me, as I stomped along to your chants and user-friendly experimentalism. Well, we’ll always have our first moments together: the three minute party of ‘African Tree’, after which the roots ran very deep indeed. There’ll never be a follow-up album to Shackle’s Gift but that just makes it all the more potent and precious… right?
3. Teeth of the Sea ‘All My Venom’
   Here’s one for the late-nighters. London’s Teeth of the Sea open their latest LP with this menacing instrumental — a cinematic crescendo that channels post-rock dynamics but is dictated by industrial electronics and sleek, sinister production. Beginning with an unsettling atmosphere of drones and a mechanical pulse, cries of mournful trumpet and glowering guitar peal through the dread and are swallowed up again in the brace for impact. Then, after five-and-a-half brooding minutes of ominous anticipation, the digital distortions clatter into a mechanical groove against muted, indecipherable screams. To use a sci-fi analogy: If The Matrix Reloaded’s people of Zion chose a muddy rave for their moment of defiance, ‘All My Venom’ imagines what the Machines’ might ‘dance’ to on on their day of victory.
4. Hiatus Kaiyote ‘Breathing Underwater’
   Nai Palm, the mercurial lunged matriarch of this Melbourne future ensemble, has openly talked about this near six-minute trip being a progged out version of Stevie Wonder. But even with that as your brief, how do you even begin to come up with music so naturally complex yet persistently soulful? Sure, it’s daunting (even challenging) listening at first, but once you tug at the various melodic and rhythmic threads, the knotty sonic tangle starts to unravel and seems more like a serpentine tapestry of neo-soul, acid jazz, free funk, pastoral RnB, and “muli-dimensional, polyrhythmic gangster shit” — as the band themselves coined it. There really is nobody making music quite like Hiatus Kaiyote, and as such nothing else comes close to giving you the unique satisfaction that one of their next level jams does.
5. Holy Holy ‘You Cannot Call For Love Like A Dog’
   Announcing its arrival with slashes of guitar and a commanding rhythm, Holy Holy’s boldest single yet lets loose the volume and histrionics without renouncing their sophistication. Lyrically, it treads well-worn territory — the wily nature of love: unrequited, untamed, unforgiving. But what really makes the track soar is how the stormy, sweltering musical backdrop and ’80s rock flourishes (echoing harmonies, crackles of far-off guitar like lightning on the desert horizon) articulate what Timothy Carroll’s warm, soaring vocals can’t. Then there’s THAT heroic guitar solo from Oscar Dawson: a show-stealing ascension up the fretboard that’d make David Gilmour shed proud, manly tears. The howling fireworks draw to a close, then — a primal crack of four snare hits signals one last thunderous coda down the highway and out of earshot. …Until you hit play and air-shred like a loon all over again.
6. Father John Misty ‘Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins)’
   Of the 11 terrific sermons on FJM’s sophomore album and its central concept (romantic cynic meets his match, marries her, philosophises about the goddamn irony of it all) none play the tenderness of it as directly or gorgeously as ‘Chateau…’ Cherry-picking from the ’70s songwriter playbook of grandiosity, it swoons with foxtrot percussion, strings, and mariachi horns (full credit to co-producer Jonathan Wilson on that front) as the usually tongue-in-cheek narrator tones down his typical sass to express how falling in love feels like for a skeptic who rejected the very concept of it as some civilian B.S. ideal to begin with. It’s the sound of a man razing his own ego and dropping the sarcastic veil to expose (in his own words) “this deep, sincere, profoundly excited, and joyful perspective on finding someone.” And if a self-described intimacy skeptic can find a film school cheatin’ muse who hates all the same things as him, then there’s hope for us all. As far as satirical-yet-heartfelt love songs go, it’s one of the best ever. (P.S. wasn’t he just sensational at @fairgroundsfestival)
7. Blood Orange ‘Do You See My Skin Through The Flames?’
   Kendrick Lamar will (justifiably) get the lion’s share of plaudits when it comes to documenting and articulating Black America’s ongoing struggles in 2015 but if anyone deserves extra attention for their important thoughts on the (#BlackLives)Matter, then it’s Blood Orange’s Devonte Hynes and this meditative sound collage on identity, prejudice, injustice, and those that are forced to endure the bigotry that America’s social forces allow to prosper. More tone poem than protest song, Hynes beautifully conveys the sadness and crushing exhaustion of weathering sustained persecution and everyday racism. In October, he compressed his social commentary into the emotive (and also brilliant) RnB slow-jam ‘Sandra’s Smile’, but it’s here in the earlier, sprawling blueprint of free jazz, sorrowful funk, spoken word, and spare piano that his unmediated thoughts really hit home. The music may be informed by specifically Stateside incidents — police brutality, gun violence, racial tension — but the message addresses the same deep-rooted racism we’ve seen rear its ugly head locally with Reclaim Australia, Islamic xenophobia, and the ‘fuck off we’re full’ mentality. Personally, the key takeaway is a variation of the old adage, ‘evil triumphs when good men do nothing’. Discrimination and intolerance flourishes if we fail to recognise it; or worse, choose to ignore it. So don’t. Take the 11-minute plunge and really see the skin through the flames.
8. Courtney Barnett ‘Dead Fox’
   Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit is just one of those albums where you have a new favourite track with every few spins. For me, right now the standout is Courtney’s exacting concerns about big business and botched priorities dressed up as a road-trip down the Hume Highway. Having taken that same long, isolating slog between Sydney and Melbourne myself a few times in the last year (skipped the Holbrook burgers though), it serves as proof of the grunge bard’s ability to take everyday experiences and gift the seemingly mundane with the purposeful and profound, even anthemic. Who else would think to turn something as humdrum as a trucker warning into a sing-along, You Am I flavoured chorus? Or describe roadkill with the frank, funny lyric “a possum Jackson Pollock painted on the tar”? That the witty insights and canny realism is rendered by a seemingly raw, rambling narrator makes them all the more relatable. Then there’s the bloody catchy flannel-friendly rock to boot, filled with charming details like those ricochets of reversed guitar. There’s a delicious irony in the underdog songsmith from Melbourne becoming one of 2015’s big success stories. But if she continues to produce songs this great each time she puts pen to paper, Aussie proverb to power chord, ol’ mate CB will continue to hoover up awards and global attention for a long time to come.
9. Floating Points ‘Silhouettes (I, II, & III)
   There’s no tag lavish enough to really capture the refreshingly original music of Sam Shepherd, the British composer/neuroscientist/boffin behind the Floating Points pseudonym. Categorising it as progressive electronic jazz or majestically minimal dance music seems too clinical and a disservice to the emotional impact his transcendental fusion conjures. Case in point: three-part masterpiece ‘Shadows’, which synthesizes the organic and digital as fluidly as breathing. It’s alive with elegant bass, moody organ, and agile drum pattering (direct from the Phil Selway playbook of rocksteady), which offer a sense of momentum while warbling synths, dreamy strings and choir gently glide the music upward to celestial heights. It’s an 11 minute odyssey that though wordless, is intense with expression; abstract and elusive yet penetratingly tangible; beautifully imaginative yet unimaginably beautiful.
10. Unknown Mortal Orchestra ‘Multi-Love’
    Tame Impala weren’t the only psych-loving project of a studio prodigy that rebooted their sound with heavy doses of technicolour funk, hazy RnB, and progged-up disco and soul this year. UMO mastermind Ruban Nielson conducted a similar revolution on his alien beatnik music, dismantling the glazed fug of his lo-fi jams and reconstructing them with vibrant new elements. You can almost hear that breakthrough ‘eureka’ sensation in the first minute of ‘Multi-Love’ where a bombastic breakbeat jolts the keys and cursive vocal melodies into a kaleidoscopic tumble-dry of production trickery, faux sitar, and vintage synths resurrected by Ruban in his studio basement — as captured in burning pink light on the album’s cover. You can just imagine him tinkering away into the early hours of morning as he attempts to get his ponderous thoughts on being caught in the middle of a functioning, active love triangle down on tape. If we’re talking polyamorous relationships, he succeeded in birthing the otherworldly lovechild of Stevie Wonder, Prince, and Frank Zappa. But even that holy trinity couldn’t conjure such a multi-dimensional take on love’s turbulent and unpredictable nature, with ferocious lyrical visions of prescription drugs, Norse mythology, gender warfare, and secrets buried under sushi restaurants.
11. Kendrick Lamar ‘King Kunta’
    The most accessible moment on the dense To Pimp A Butterfly, and undoubtedly the funkiest, ‘King Kunta’ manages to encapsulate complex social commentary into a full-on stank of rubbery grooves, low slung bass, honky call-and-response, and ambitious production. The deep word play of Kendrick’s braggadocio rap is genius, employing the metaphor of a fictional 18th century plantation slave who, despite having his foot cut off, is still running the game. This rap MVP is “taking no losses”, and even one appendage short, gives a severe ass-kicking to ghost-writing rappers, brown nosin’ ‘ballers’, and “goat-mouthed mammyfuckers” in a dazzling display of lyrical skill and musical muscle. But the hopeful future Mayor of Compton’s cockiness belies the campaign he’s really running for: a cultural revolution — a serious step up from the rap coup he instigated in his now famous ‘Control’ verse. The self-proclaimed King of New York even dares his people to seize the liberation they so desire. In the song’s coda: he offers up the funk — an allegory for black culture’s historical power and pride. It’s there for the taking and should be, with both hands, otherwise ‘the enemy’ will keep you walkin’ when you deserve to be running. With bold rallying cries like that, it’s no wonder 2015 has seen Kendrick positioned at the masthead of a neo-Civil Rights movement; the hip hop monarch is master of his kingdom. Long may he reign.
12. Steven Wilson ‘Home Invasion/Regret #9’
    On his fourth solo album, the prolific modern day Prince of Prog offers some of his most concertedly user-friendly material yet, pushing his combined skills as a studio virtuoso and songwriter further beyond the hallmarks and traditions of the genre into new territory. Except on this delightfully throwback epic that is, which harkens not only to ’70s pioneers (King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Rush etc.) but all of Porcupine Tree’s best bits too. The stop-start djent riffage, and the dissonant synths that welcome them, give the track a thrilling metal drive before off-kilter organ stabs tumble the song into its next movement, featuring Wilson’s trademark themes of technology, isolation, and a gorgeously melancholy chorus. But as satisfyingly familiar as the first half is, it’s the extended fireworks of ‘Regret #9’ that really charge into truly memorable territory. There’s not one, but two searing displays of technical virtuosity: an increasingly frenzied synth solo from Adam Holzman, followed by Guthrie Govan’s majestic guitar wizardry — pitch-bending and then plectrum-razing to a grand climax. It makes me feel as invincible as these experts sound, caught up in the electric rapture of the moment as they tear up their instrument. Indulgent? Bombastic? Yeah, definitely. But I’d rather have a well-crafted, intensely rewarding nostalgia-indebted epic than a socially acceptable chart-topper any day of the week.
13. The Drones ‘Taman Shud’
    How do you deal with the problem of white Australia’s increasingly ugly jingoism and cultural decay? Well, if you’re Gareth Liddiard — corrugated-ironed voice of The Drones — you write a song about it. Summoning all the vitriol he can muster, he spits lyrical acid rain all over the nation’s softy lefties, self-righteous righties, have and have-nots alike, because why take sides when all of them are rotten? Power-hungry 1%-ers, barons of malicious media and the dopey masses that consume it, patriots, pollies, even prime ministers — nobody is safe from having their blinkers rattled with this jittery mutant funk of primitive rhythms and spare, slithering guitars. Those savage lyric and sonic swipes are wrapped like barbed wire around the conceptual backdrop of Taman Shud, an unsolved murder case and little known piece of Australian history, and as Gareth told The Guardian, “a bunch of people who don’t their own history probably shouldn’t be saying what is or isn’t Australian.” Just as a generation of non-natives who’ve risen to power shouldn’t dictate the brutal foreign policies of a country founded on migrants. Lest we forget that we’re all just the offspring of entitled colonials who discovered a country only after taking a wrong turn on the trade route, and settled it once they’d butchered the natives and ruined their traditions. The Drones express that hypocrisy as succinctly as a bullet in a chamber, firing the filthy kiss-off “you came here in a boat you fucking cunt!” Our lucky country should count its blessings that we have a band as vital as The Drones to fire such thrilling wake-up shots across our bows.
14. Natalie Prass ‘Why Don’t You Believe In Me?’
    Timeless. It’s a description that’s regularly pegged Natalie Prass’ way and it’s a quality that this highlight from the Virginia-bred, Nashville-based songwriters’ debut LP simply oozes. That’s largely thanks to the splendid arrangement provided by the crack in-house band of @spacebomb, the record company/studio of Matthew E. White, which operates like the best ‘60/’70s label wheelhouses. It’s all there in the glowing clarity of the instrumentation, cherry-picking Motown rhythm, Atlantic worthy strings, Stax-specialised horns, and a sprinkle of Muscles Shoals’ country-soul magic. But raising it from mimicry to mastery is Prass herself, evoking Dusty Springfield, Joni Mitchell, and Joanna Newsom with her subtle, arresting voice — courting vulnerability and confidence in each sumptuous phrase. Her tale of a gradual separation is the kind of heartbreak anyone can relate to but it’s not played as a straight woe-is-me weepy, there’s an understated swagger and faint optimism to her delivery even as she coos “I wanna call but I don’t/I want to be smarter.” It’s a far cry from ‘I Will Survive’ but as the song reaches its conclusion, there’s a feeling that the downtrodden narrator may never understand what they did to deserve such cruelty but they’ll most certainly endure it, because sometimes self-belief is the best kind of perseverance.
15. Everything Everything ‘No Reptiles’
    There are artists who settle for variations on a tried-and-true theme and what’s expected of them. And then there’s Everything Everything. Edging their devilishly unpredictable and addictive brand of hyper-saturated arch-pop towards a wider audience for album #3, the band worked with producer Stuart Price (somebody who’s no stranger to radio-friendly territory). He’s helped funnel their blitzkrieg of willingly peculiar ideas and knotty hooks into rewarding new configurations — as heard on ‘No Reptiles’. Like some sonic trojan horse, it’s a deceptive crescendo that initially seems unwieldy before it unloads a surprise emotional payload on you. Hovering above an agitated click track and windy atmospherics, Jonathan Higgs’ trademark falsetto first tickles with a hyperspeed delivery of surreal imagery. Then comes the comic set-up to the socio-political punchline, that it’s not a conspiracy of reptilian overlords that rule the world but “soft boiled eggs in shirts and ties”, the old white suits and power brokers that keep society ticking along. In the face of such banal despotism, it’s easy to feel as helpless as “a fat child in a pushchair” — a lyric that’s ear-grabbingly preposterous the first time you hear it. But as the line loops over and over, swelling synths, vocal harmonies, and strings billow on the horizon to meet it, transforming the absurd into the profound; a stirring call-to-arms come coda. It’s an unconventionally beautiful, bold, and memorable water mark that underscores Everything Everything as a refreshingly imaginative and increasingly indispensable musical force.
16. Majora ‘Iridescent’
    One of my favourite Aussie finds of the year was Newcastle instrumental crew Majora, who just so happen to be responsible for the best prog-charged post-rock release of the year (imho), the six-track Iridescent EP. All the convincing you’ll need is found in the goosebump-inducing grandeur of the title track. Spare, technical drum fills and arpeggiating guitars create some sublime mood-setting, creating space for the arrangement to breathe before it builds to tectonic-shifting climaxes of gripping, turbulent riffage and volcanic rhythms. The shifts from spirited atmospherics to crushing crescendos might be familiar genre tropes, but they are (as I wrote for @triple_j_unearthed) techniques that in the right hands, can make for some devastatingly effective music, and Majora’s collective eight hands are pretty darn skilled. The tidy production really gives the dynamics muscle too, the drums boom in all the right places and the dovetailing guitar melodies cascade together beautifully as low-end and electronic touches edge the framework. All in all, everything just effortlessly ticks the boxes and while Majora might still show their influences on their sleeve(makeswaves), it’s hard to fault when everything is so confidently conceived and well-executed. It’s colossally impressive work for a debut release and with the band wrapping up writing sessions for a follow-up EP over summer, I can’t wait to see into which territory these potential titans-in-waiting tread next.
17. The Amazing ‘Picture You’
    I fully anticipated that my requisite dose of Scandinavian psych this year would come from Dungen’s first new album in half-a-decade. Instead it was their guitarist Reine Fiske’s band that supplied it, way back in February, flooring me with the title track of their third album. For nine-and-a-half sumptuous minutes, ‘Picture You’ sustains a spellbinding aura. Don’t be scared off by the length, this aural journey is neatly divided into two halves. In the first, the band communes with the spirited innocence of ’60s British pop and dreamy-eyed ’70s rock, as Christopher Gunrup’s pensive, breathy voice hovers like mist around pastoral guitar plucking and an enchanting folk-infused atmosphere that seriously scratches the Fleet Foxes/Midlake itch I’ve been harbouring. The sublime haze is then unseated by ominous chiming chords, which signal the beginning of the second act: an autumnal instrumental that reveals a proggy, psych-rock underbelly. Fiske summons tranquil melodies that ripple over taut yet graceful grooves, creating a momentum that doesn’t so much build as eddy and swell in ever larger waves and textures, absorbing flute, feathery drum fills, and yawning washes of keys and guitar. Whenever I’ve sought some instant sonic comfort this year, I’ve turned time and again to these Stockholm sorcerers and their rarified serenity.
18. Yeo ‘Icarus’
    Of the many elements I’ve long admired about Yeo’s work, it’s the traces of videogame music that resonate the most. So I was particularly smitten when hitting start on the chiptune charm of ‘Icarus’. The spare lattice of hummable synth, snapping percussive accents, and MJ-worthy clap snare; it’s as if (indulge me here) the ’90s dream team of SEGA composers, Yuzo Koshiro and Masato Nakamura, were handed the Timbaland/Timberlake RnP(op) playbook. Glueing together the contagious groove and sly funk touches is Yeo’s vocal, a tender baritone offering a classic lyrical metaphor with smart, understated melody. Nearly 10 years on from sneaking on to the Melbourne music scene, ‘Icarus’ proves Yeo’s DIY skill in marrying the playful with the polished has thoroughly outgrown its bedroom origins, but none of the homemade charisma. People are (finally) starting to notice too, with ‘Icarus’ gifting this ‘Quiet Achiever’ (another of his fine singles this year) the airplay and wider attention he deserves. With another album of pocket pop marvels on the horizon, here’s to more in 2015. Ganbare Yeo-chan!
19. The Paper Kites ‘Electric Indigo’
    There’s an interesting backstory that goes some way to explaining this evocative, addictive single’s dreaminess. It was — like every track on twelvefour — written in the semi-graveyard shift of midnight to 4am, “based around a theory that an artist’s creative peak is between [those] hours,” according to chief Paper Kite Sam Bentley. His exhaustion was well worth it. Ditching the band’s folk purity, along with his sleeping patterns, in favour of an electric overhaul (clue’s in the title), he allows himself to indulge in the spirit of ’80s soft rock. Framed by a hypnotic beat and spectral melodies, the band spins a reverb-drenched tale of redemption that stirs like a quiet declaration, its secrets whispered through hushed guitar licks and ornate male/female vocals. An absorbing anthem of lucid emotions and great beauty that might dim with age, but it certainly hasn’t after countless spins on the ‘heart-string tugging’ jukebox this year.
20. Enya ‘Even In The Shadows’
    The way loyalists feel about Tay Tay and Queen Bey, that’s the way I feel about Enya. She’s sold millions of albums, has a steadfast production team working to support her godlike pipes — many of the pop star parallels fit with one major exception: she’s been absent from the charts for 7 years. But then she returned, like a radiant Lothlorien matriarch, to remind her devoted subjects that she remains a constant in a vastly turbulent music landscape. Surely as artists will rise and sales will fall, Enya endures. She’s essentially the AC/DC of ethereal quixotica, writing the same grand, gossamer romance over and over with mild deviations to enormous success. As such, I could champion any empyrean cut from Dark Sky Island — they all offer the familiar warm embrace and serene escapism her music has provided since she let the ‘Orinoco Flow’ those many Shepherd Moons ago. I’ve trumped for the gentle throb of ‘Even In the Shadows’, because in its breathtaking horizon of multi-tracked vocals and pillowed synths, those four-ish minutes feels like an eternal invitation to cocoon and wonder about the big intangible mystery of it all, the kind of singular zen fantasy that nobody but Enya can instil.
21. Ainslie Wills ‘Hawaii’
    Following her stint with #1 Dads and the pre-EP belter ‘Drive, songcraft sophisticate Ainslie Wills is finally moving off the ‘criminally underrated’ watch-list and getting her due praise and exposure. As a major enthusiast for a good number of years, I’ve gotta say, it’s about bloody time. It’s been a sound investment too, the Melbourne melodist (and her songwriting partner Lawrence Folvig) get better with every recording. Of the six gems encrusted into September’s Oh The Gold EP, ‘Hawaii’ arguably sparkles as the brightest example of Wills’ boundary-pushing techniques. A slowly blossoming “gospel inspired 80s power ballad” (her words), its deeper treasures are unlocked over the course of the song and through multiple listens. The initial draw is Ainslie’s beautifully expressive singing and a dramatic second act. But it’s the constellation of gorgeously rendered details you’ll return for: the watery drums, shimmering keys, and stacked harmonies. The verdant production (handled by Brisbane wiz Matt Redlich) and dynamic execution makes for a memorably majestic whole, one that glows with subtle intricacy and elegant purpose.
22. Jamie xx ‘Gosh’
    I’ve never been a huge fan of The xx. Their glacial style, though pretty to listen to, always seemed too dreary and repetitive. Music to sleep to. Accusations you could never level at Jamie xx in solo mode because although the delicacy remains, it’s music designed to move to.
    Paradoxically, the first half of ‘Gosh’ seems anything but delicate — a low purr of bass, brushed beats, and clipped samples of a hype MC. But from out of the garage beats and ominous texture, the sublime is conjured. The surprise synth that appears gradually gifts the track an exquisite melodic core that pulls it out of a subterranean rattle that moves you physically, towards a stratospheric rapture that also moves you emotionally. It’s a plot twist worth revisiting again and again, if only to marvel at the progressive producer’s stunning sonic architecture and the vivid spectrum of colours and shades that glisten through its framework like stained glass.
23. Big Scary ‘Organism’
    Striding into earshot on stonking sax, loping bass, and an unorthodox groove that functions just fine in getting funky to, the arrival of the organ-jabbing ‘Organism’ seemed almost rude in the slipstream of Not Art, with its lush vistas of opulent piano and fragmented beats. But what it lacks in poise, this frisky, playful single more than makes up for in stone-cold catchiness and serious smarts. Firstly, as an experiment in trying to do more with less, tit succeeds magnificently — there’s really just a few wonderfully odd, essential sonic ingredients doing all the heavy-lifting. Then there’s the way it toys with song structure — that edgy, syncopated break and closing vocal reprise, for instance. It all harkens back to the genre exploration of Big Scary’s earlier work but with the newfound studio nous and methods Iansek has learnt from a successful year with #1Dads and producing others (@airlingx@slumsociable @banffmusic, etc.) to pull it off convincingly. A peculiar dance where indie rock, eerie funk, electro pop, and atypical RnB intersect, it’s a thrilling preview of the aural adventures to come on album #3from my favourite Melbourne twosome. Oh, and the video kicks ass.
24. David Bowie ‘Blackstar’
    It feels slightly unfair to bump a host of this year’s great tracks in favour of a late contender to feature on an album due in a matter of weeks. But c’mon, it’s Bowie. And Bowie at his off-centre, radical thinking best, no less. Charting as far a course from convention as he can, the sonic chameleon sails on vapours of Middle Eastern noir, eerie pitched mantras, and surreal jazz flourishes. The odyssey briefly beaches halfway, then disembarks for a section of gaudy showtune levity, as the ringmaster reflects in Dada rhetoric. But his sermon (“You’re a flash in the pan/I’m the Great I Am”) inevitably succumbs to a sickly swagger, sliding towards a meditative conclusion of snaking sax rock. You can almost hear Scott Walker prick his ears up at another vintage pop iconoclast finally rapping at the door of his creepy out-there musical domain. ‘Blackstar’ is yet another terrifically audacious creative leap for Bowie and in a nearly 50 year career characterised by such bold moves, that’s quite the accomplishment.
25. Tame Impala ‘Let It Happen’
    It’s March 10, 2015 and two people I hugely respect are dropping a bombshell on me. They say that one of Australia’s (and my) favourite artists is releasing the first track of their new album tomorrow. Be prepared.
    March 11, mid-morning, and after spinning this game-changing psych-pop saga as many times as its expansive length will allow in a few hours, I’m already fawning over the details, confident I’m listening to the song of the year.
    Eight months and a full album later and I’m convinced; ‘Let It Happen’ is a masterpiece containing several strokes of genius. It’s probably the closest Kevin Parker has come to realising on tape the sounds in his head and the deepest we’ve been allowed to venture inside it. He blurs the distinctions between producer and band, embracing the looping tension and release of pop and EDM and fusing it with the kaleidoscopic psych-rock zeal he’s previously perfected. A tsunami of synths, snapping drum fills, and counter-melodies propel the compelling lyrical narrative forward, doubling as both zen introspection and widescreen odyssey, synthesising melancholy with ecstasy. Then there’s the masterstroke revelation — the glitchy CD skipping.
    Who would think to derail their momentum by deliberately throwing an obstacle onto the tracks like that? Someone able to stylishly reset the groove with faux strings and a Billie Jean beat, then divert the song’s flow towards vivid new panoramic dimensions.
    The poly-voiced Parker’s half-mumbled self-motivations, the sawing guitar riff (all the more gratifying for its delayed arrival) — the various parts cascade into a transcendental vamp that drifts off into neon infinity, as if we’ve heard just eight minutes’ worth of an ongoing alien transmission. That idea’s almost more plausible than the facts: it was all written, recorded, performed, produced and mixed by one man in his Fremantle home. That’s ultimately what sticks about ‘Let It Happen’. Beyond its borderless and contagious ambition, there’s a very human intimacy: the sound of a person (albeit a super-talented one) scrutinising themselves, hashing out their limitations and anxieties, and deciding to let go — to let the ‘Currents’ pull them where they may. Then setting that epiphany to equally inspired, visionary music.

Wow, got through it! Thanks everyone who enjoyed #MusicalAdventCalendar with me, whether you admired from afar or liked/commented on the posts — it means a great deal. (Any further feedback? I’m all ears). If it brightened up your social feed, helped articulate some thoughts, or put you on to something you might not have checked out, then it was a successful enterprise well worth the many late nights and self-imposed stress.

Finally, shout-outs to Beach House, Bjork, Deafcult, Dick Diver, Dreller, Gang of Youths, Grimes, I Know Leopard, Intronaut, Kamasi Washington, Kurt Vile, Mac DeMarco, Sampa The Great, Shura, Slum Sociable, Wilco, and all the other amazing artist who provided incredible tracks this year. I’m sorry I couldn’t get to you all but if the Excel spreadsheet and 57 page Google doc are any indication, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Happy holidays to y’all and to y’all good music. Always.