For anyone who claims that the album is a dying art form and argues that we should cut our losses and forget about them altogether, I reflect upon the hours I spent putting together a list of my Top 10 records from 2015 (in no particular order). From the heavy clashes of Young Fathers to the wisened folked-up words of Laura Marling, the output of cohesive albums this year has been outstanding. The industry shouldn’t give up just yet.

Stand-out tracks from each of the albums have been compiled into a playlist embedded below.

1. Father John Misty – I Love You, Honeybear

He previously released music as part of Fleet Foxes and as J. Tillman. Now, as Father John Misty, Josh Tillman releases I Love You Honeybear, his sardonic ode to love, filled with lush drawn-out melodies and ridiculously witty lyrics. A personal favourite reads: “She says, like literally, music is the air she breathes / And the malaprops make me want to fucking scream.” Technical grammatical terms in raucous lyrics get me every time. Father John Misty feels like some melodramatic stage character, but these tunes are deeply personal; sarcasm is laced between profundities; tales of threesomes and awkward sex are set against romantic lines like “I can hardly believe I found you and I’m terrified of that” and “People are boring / But you’re something else completely”. These juxtapositions make the album sensual, hilarious and deftly intelligent.

Stand-out track: ‘Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins)’

2. Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

The word ‘slacker’ is thrown around a lot in the Courtney Barnett-related press but this album proves she is anything but. Meticulously-strung vocals detailing mundanities such as house-hunting in outer Melbourne or organic food shopping stand out against punchy guitar riffs and a garage-like rhythm section. These songs set into a ceaseless groove and her lyrical analysis of such day-to-day trivialities sets out Barnett’s Australian drawl as one of the resounding voices of our generation.  

Stand-out track: ‘Aqua Profunda’

3. Tame Impala – Currents

Pre-album releases – and there were several before the July release date – moved many hardcore Kevin Parker fans to fear as he seemed to have strayed from his signature antipodean guitar-heavy pysch-rock. But what Parker can do on a fret board he can do with even more ferocity on a synth, as the woozy genius of Currents proved. Yes, this is Parker in his most pop-like suit to date, but he does not let catchiness detract from his attention to sonic detail. The precise craft of ‘Let it Happen’ – which somehow manages to sound naturally free-wheeling, despite this precision – may well set it out as my song of the year, too.

Stand-out track: ‘Let It Happen’

4. Laura Marling – Short Movie

Each time she comes back – and with five albums by the age of 25 this is quite often – Marling is back with a vengeance. This time is no different as we hear Laura “go electric” with a bucked up Rickenbacker guitar and plenty of lovelorn lyrics. Instrumental riffs are tighter than ever, yet the songstress’ vocals comfortably take on a life of their own, her beautiful Dylan-esque sprechgesang more wonderful than ever. Marling’s musicianship is definite and precise, even if she still seems not to know where her head is at on accounts of love.

Stand-out track: ‘How Can I’

5. Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell

Stevens’ first album in five years details his relationship with his mother and step-father (Carrie and Lowell). It would be very easy for this record to be saturated with shmush and cliché, but these melodies are sincere without dragging, his lyrical content both elegant and hard-hitting. Stunning guitar-plucking right from the very first track underpins morbid-sounding lyrics such as “we’re all gonna die” on the undeniably teary ‘Fourth of July’. The wonder here is in the uplifting poignancy of the whole album, despite this assumed melancholy.

Stand-out track: ‘Should Have Known Better’

6. Oneohtrix Point Never – Garden of Delete

Trying to describe this myriad of pulses is a hard task. The album may well first seem brash and messy; it certainly doesn’t hold back on the texture and often outlandishly computerised sounds. But with some sensitivity and a bit of time, the stark emotion of Daniel Lopatin’s creation is evident: hiding behind computers – basic MIDIs and vocoders – doesn’t make this record any less human. In fact, the story of Lopatin’s character, Ezra, which the record – along with a series of promotional blogs – tells, is as tangible as sound waves could ever be. Reversals, squirms, whooshes: the soundtrack to a teenage life.

Stand-out track: ‘Mutant Standard’

7. Ezra Furman – Perpetual Motion People

Often categorised as good ol’ fashioned rock ‘n’ roll, Ezra Furman plays anything from garage to blues to funk-pop on this eclectic record. It is both politically outward-looking and personally introspective, with incessantly catchy riffs to boot. If Courtney Barnett is the voice of our generation, Furman is the voice of all those who have ever felt on the outside – the ingenious bystander who looks in from the periphery, with perhaps an even more intriguing story to tell.

Stand-out track: ‘Wobbly’

8. Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Multi-Love

If the enthralling backstory of Ruban Nielson’s polyamorous relationship with his wife and another woman (the real meaning behind eclectic banger ‘Multi-Love’) wasn’t interesting enough, the woozy funk of this album should catch your attention. The whole record is saturated with incredibly lush drum sounds, and the continuous ebb and flow of guitar and brass harmonies is something for your ears to really grapple with. Left belting out “I don’t want to solve your puzzle anymore!”, Multi-Love  is a serious cacophony of emotion, as if “we’re in love but I don’t get what you see in me” wasn’t enough for our tender heartstrings.

Stand-out track: ‘Can’t Keep Checking My Phone’

9. East India Youth – Culture of Volume

Bournemouth-born William Doyle doesn’t shy away from experimentation with his expansive electro-synth intricacies on this quietly genius second record. Initially, the throbs and crackles are unsettling.  But this instrumental labyrinth of encrypted sounds and slides fits perfectly underneath Doyle’s voice, which has a deft normality and slight nasal tone. This vocal honesty is warming. Through triumphant crescendos and gritty techno beats, it is Doyle’s exquisite ear for harmonic disposition which makes this record so enthralling.

Stand-out track: ‘Hearts That Never’

10. Young Fathers – White Men are Black Men Too

The curse of the Mercury doesn’t seem to have affected this Glaswegian trio. After winning the prize for their debut, Dead, last year, Young Fathers were not thrown off course and instead went on to release this startlingly down-to-earth second record. From the initial calls and shouts of the pounding ‘Still Running’to the incessant shuffling claxon of ‘Old Rock n Roll’, the vocals on this record range from warm and ringing to harsh and gritty. Shouts of “I’m tired of playing the good black” are stark and necessarily brash, with the politicised hip-hop/rap/funk once again respectably highlighting Young Fathers as one of the few current bands who have a socio-political agenda to shout about. What’s a broken heart in comparison?

Stand-out track: ‘Liberated’

“No,” she said, jamming her feet into her boots, “no, he’s not going to go like this.” She stabbed her hands into her gloves, jerked tight the cords of her hiking boots and finished the knot.

In the mountains you feel free, he remembered as the foothills fell away behind him and the mountains rose up around. He was going up too, higher and higher till all he could see was the snow on the sides of the peaks stretching free, silent, alone. You couldn’t think of anyone up here, anything – didn’t have to. In the mountains you feel free.

There were a lot more little birds than you’d expect in the snowy fir tree next to the chapel. Occasionally one would jump off into the air and soar around the little bell tower – not much more than a stack of icy rocks around an old green bell – then fly off and coast away to the peaks. Everyone was lost out here, up in the mountains where you’d only come to escape. You could wander the winter paths till they turned back into empty village streets and never really notice the change.

He had screamed at them, lost it, thrown himself out of the crowded Christmas living room with barely a thought for the pain in his mother’s look, cared less about his father. He grabbed a bag and pushed out the door into the cold, past his sister who seemed right on the point of breaking, collapsing. At the corner of the street he had paused, looked up to the mountains then turned for a second. His sister was standing on the porch. Her dark face was still covered with tears, glistening white from the ugly light above the door but there was something in her eyes that seemed different. Determined. He pushed it out of his thoughts.

People would walk into the town and stay for a few days, never talking, drifting the streets barely aware of one another. All sorts of people: old ones able to walk but with the look of people who’d been left inside like spare old sheets for years; young ones with empty faces and broken eyes. Others too – uncaring old bachelors, muttering stumbling old women, broken ill people whose worlds had tossed them aside with a pill, or a pension, or less.

The mountains beyond the town had a pull. People would stand there for days at the edge of town, right where the stone cut off suddenly and suddenly the mountains threw themselves up in front of you, spreading around and lead off jaggedly in the distance. They would stand there and look out into the snow and rocks and empty air, where the trees below seemed so small and led away shrinking till they too gave up. They would stand for a few days, alone or in little groups of two – only the old people ever came in twos – and then drift out into the mountains, their few bags left behind.

When they first stepped out, they looked – for a second – free.

His sister passed all sorts as she climbed the forest path from the plains, eyes set firmly on the icy footing, feet stamping over knotted roots and piles of snow. They were a little like ghosts, and the forest seemed to whisper as she walked past, like the gnarled old trunks hid voices and eyes.

The light up there was strange; always forest twilight, the time of night when nothing was quite right and it was hard to think of what was good with the world. The sun never quite made it up past the mountains, there, so the light stayed dull hollow grey all day and just got heavier at night.

There wasn’t much left for Rose at home; her children and grandchildren used to come by at Easter and New Year, and then that had stopped, and instead it was just a phone call once or twice a year. Then the Christmas phone call became more and more like an afterthought, and soon it was just her. She would look back over the family holiday photos: weekends down in Devon, where the kids would bury – try to bury – their Dad in the sand and she’d chat with their auntie and they’d laugh and have a glass or two or many once the children had gone to sleep. The memories were something, but sometimes it felt like they were only bound to make her feel worse. In the evenings, when there was nothing else to do and but lie in bed, her thoughts ran up and passed over and over her eyes till she could only cry or sit there hating the thoughts and the awful self she’d become. It was ok, though – numbness was coming, stronger and stronger, and that was enough for her.

His sister was halfway through the grim, teeming forest. There was a small cottage just ahead, little puffs of smoke breaking out from the chimney in cheerful waves. She could hear noise from inside, music and laughter bursting out whenever a gust of wind knocked a shutter open and gold light spilled out over the snow, for a second. The smell of something cooking drifted towards her. She went inside and sat down, and smiled at the steaming bowl pushed towards her.

Rose was one of the figures up in the mountains now, drifting always nearer to the edge of town. The brother and her almost smiled at each other, once, but the rush was too painful for them both and they turned away, grey faces afraid of the flush of warmth. They began to see each other more often, though, walking the streets past the chapel where the birds fluttered up and away.

It was not enough for her, a stranger’s smile. He could see her getting emptier and he felt the same inside him, and he cared less and less about the emptiness inside them both. They would get closer and closer to the bare rock at the edge of town, where you could see the mountains and they called you, where drifting down away from the last town was so much easier, the mountains said, was right.

But suddenly it became intolerable, suddenly the thought of that smile was like a lit cigarette burning on his skin. She had reminded him of something, there was something about the sadness and the smile lines around her eyes that reminded him of someone, he knew it. He stopped, turned wildly, rushed back, past the village, down, down the mountain until he came to the old tavern he’d half-noticed as he’d been wandering up.

He burst into the doorway, still manic, and stared in. His eyes were wide, adjusting to the sudden light and the amused, confused smiles offered his way. Then he was knocked back, blinded, his vision became a bundle of arms and a pile of hair was in his face and all he could hear was sobbing, his sister’s crying, his crying. The people in the tavern watched them knowingly, gently, as they stood there with her face pressed into his shoulder.

They stood there for a while, and his sister took his hand, like when they were little and she used to look after him -the little brother that he was. They’d used to call them Hansel and Gretel, he remembered. Such a perfect little team: they could have been from the story. There was a whisper in the air, though, and he could see the smile that had called him back here. Holding his sister’s hand he led her up to the town and they pushed back past the shadows with the warmth of the other like a lucky charm against the darkness. Rose was there, standing under the little old chapel, the last dregs of the glow on her skin draining away as the mountains pulled it away from her.

He threw himself on her and his sister did too, grabbing at her hands and pulling at her faded old skirt and shawl, skipping around like children with their grandma. Her face crinkled, cracked along the old smile lines around her eyes and suddenly the memories her loneliness had locked away flooded back, washed hot and soft around her warm, wrinkled face. Nothing had changed, in the mountains, but she saw it how it was; the light suddenly warm, the sky gold-pink with streaks of blue ink dashed on a palette, and the three of them could see what was there.

As they turned away, he looked back at the mountains and the empty village filled with drifting, lonely souls. The call of the mountains and that empty village was still in his ears, but now it was little more than a whisper. He smiled at Rose, and the three walked back through the shadows to the warmth and light, to the tables of food where they could talk, bicker, and laugh.

Their sadness has gone, in the fairy-tale way.

But reader, remember, as you chatter and play,

Those left alone on this Christmas Day.

Christmas approaches. The lights erratically flash on the tree, punters down their pints with a Christmassy wink, carol singers wheezily knock on doors, and I, much like every other Christmas, have caught a cold.

In case you have not guessed, I feel a little tepid when it comes to Christmas. However do not fear, this is not the beginning of a rant on capitalism, materialism, or any other -ism. My opinion does not stem from an interesting and article-worth indignance. I just don’t really care anymore.

Before Father Christmas dissolved into thin air, it was the pleasantest of literary realities. Even when my brothers began to openly make jokes about Father Christmas being my parents, I would shake my head vehemently. “No, no, no!”, I would exclaim, “you’ve got it all wrong!” The poetic notion of an old happy Platonic man delivering presents alongside many intelligent and benevolent reindeer, was an image I wasn’t keen to shed. I was too young to question why he gave to those who needed it far less. I tried not to question why the girl in my class got letters from him in the lead up to Christmas, whilst my parents told me that he was far too busy in Lapland for communication. The mystery of Father Christmas was my own happy little story, played out before me every year.

Alongside this were the myriad of books which appeared from our attic every year. I learnt that everybody celebrated Christmas – bears, mice, babies, and even the Grinch. As I developed into the familiar model of a grumpy teen I was once caught off-guard by the books that were reminiscently pulled down from the attic. For on every page I turned, I couldn’t find the words. Much like when YouTube clips of Pingu are sprung up on laptops by the occasional nostalgic friend, I couldn’t quite believe that Don’t Forget me, Father Christmas or The Snowman didn’t have words. Those stories remained so strongly in my head, and yet, when I tried to reread them, all that stood in front of me were illustrations.

Christmas, I learnt, is essentially a big fat lie. Told gracefully, elegantly and elaborately, but it still remains a large helping of deceit. But readers, don’t fear, there’s a moral in it – how exciting. For see! See how story-telling is so integral to our lives! Just like Father Christmas was illustrated through our parents’ story-telling, we made our own stories too through the thread of a decent picture book. For that I thank you Christmas. But that does not mean I will be humming Michael Bauble through my sniffles, or decking the halls with boughs of holly. And I don’t advise you do either. But, in the true spirit of Christmas, maybe open a book. And make sure it’s not from your reading list.

’Tis the season in which every single potato, television show, song, soup, jumper, sock, and toilet roll is in its festive edition. There are Christmas cheeses, Christmas green smoothies, and Christmas teacups waved under our noses in every shop we enter on our manic gift-sourcing tour of the town. On the radio, Christmas songs, adverts, games, and greetings dance across the airwaves. Once home, we are bombarded with seasonal episodes of our favourite sitcoms, soaps, and news broadcasts. But, in the midst of this modern, consumerist onslaught, there stands, quietly in its timelessness, the pre-eminent Christmas book; A Christmas Carol.

First published in 1843, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is an iconic encapsulation of the very essence of the Christmas spirit. Cantankerous old Ebenezer Scrooge is urged to change his miserly ways and embrace the goodwill and generosity of Christmas by the ghost of his old business partner, Jacob Marley, and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. Scrooge is encouraged, throughout the novella, to become aware of those less fortunate than himself and of the need for generosity and fellow feeling at Yuletide.

“Irrespective of his poor upbringing, Dickens really loved Christmas,” says Louisa Price, curator of the Charles Dickens Museum in London. In many of his works, Christmas is associated with humbleness, charity, love, warmth, and cheer. In A Christmas Carol, Dickens uses the altruistic nature of the Christmas spirit to draw awareness to the struggles of the working poor and the plight of child labour. In the year of 1843, before he wrote the novella, he visited charities, workhouses, and Ragged Schools across Britain. A Christmas Carol is as much a celebration of the Christmas spirit as it is an encouragement to use the benevolence of this festive spirit to reach out to friends, to family, to foes, to people experiencing poverty, loneliness and hunger.

Instead of turning to the television as the sole source of family entertainment in this bleak midwinter, crack open a copy of A Christmas Carol and travel through time with Scrooge and his Ghosts. “Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol,” says Price, “knowing it would be read aloud.” So, instead of charades – which we can all agree is possibly the most torturous of Christmas traditions – you can read out loud to your Christmas gathering of family and friends, act out Scrooge’s gruff dialogue, and share the humour, poignancy, and enduring relevance of Dickens’ writing.

 —

In the spirit of a true Dickensian Christmas, there are some excellent charities that would welcome donations during the festive period:

Crisis at Christmas offers companionship and support at Christmas to homeless people in the UK www.crisis.org.uk

The Salvation Army works to bring food and companionship to people in need at Christmas www.salvationarmy.org.uk

Age UK helps to combat loneliness and isolation amongst the elderly in the UK www.ageuk.org.uk