Top 10 Albums Discovered in 2015

Like the character in my novel, I enjoy making lists of things.  A list is a cross section of an idea, and depending on how you slice that idea, you get a different list.  I'm thinking about the gap in time between when music is recorded and when you hear it for the first time.  Are there meaningful divisions that can be articulated that put that experience into different categories?  For example, say you hear ten new songs today, songs you've never heard before, never even heard about.  For you, would it be meaningful to discover when those songs were recorded?  What if one of them was from the 70s, one from the 90s, and the rest were recorded in the last year?  Would it be important to separate out the old songs from the new?  What if you didn't know which ones were the old ones without being told?

As you can see, this is an idea I'm exploring, and I don't have a solid grasp on it yet.  But do you see what I'm trying to get at?  How much of the pleasure of music is tied to the context of its production?  Do we enjoy some music more because of when it was made?  Is there a threshold behind which all music is equally 'old?'  Do we toss Nirvana, The Clash, The Beatles, and Elvis all in the same pot?

Okay, anyway, back to the list, which is simple.  It doesn't need all this thought.  It's just a list, and a very subjective one at that.  Researching for Gilly has led me to discover a ton of new music, some of which I wrote about in the novel, but most of which is just an interesting bi-product of research.

My Top 10 Albums Discovered In 2015, as of 3/17/2015

1. The Modern Lovers - Self-titled - 1976
2. Eloy - Ocean - 1977
3. Kraftwerk - Computer World - 1981
4. Romeo Void - Benefactor - 1982
5. Nina Hagen Band - Self titled - 1982
6. Payola$ - No Stranger To Danger - 1982
7. Deafheaven - Sunbather - 2013
8. Tobacco - Ultima II Massage - 2014
9. St. Vincent - Self titled - 2014
10. Torche - Restarter - 2015

This is only in order by release year.  I won't say how much I like any of these albums, because I don't know any of them that well yet.  We only just met, see?  I can tell you though that I like where the relationship is going in most cases.  The only one that I feel disappointment around is the Tobacco album - it feels incomplete, somehow.  It's like the vocals are so fuzzed out that they no longer have any kind of emotional resonance.  They're just another instrument in a haze of experimental instruments, and I kept searching for a more meaningful thread to the songs.  The album has some fantastic moments, too - but lately those moments just remind me of what the rest of the album is lacking, and how much I love Black Moth Super Rainbow's Cobra Juicy.