#10: No Joy – “More Faithful”

I continue to think No Joy are the best current band at taking the familiar sound of shoegaze and turning it into something that feels fresh and new. More Faithful feels more stripped down than its predecessors, dropping some of the band’s massive guitar riffs and putting more emphasis on songcraft.

While some fans may miss the ear-splitting guitar maelstroms from some of their previous albums (*raises hand*), More Faithful impressively pushes the band in a new direction without fundamentally changing who they are. Jasamine White-Gluz’s vocals are more central to the songs now (though still not very decipherable), and Laura Lloyd’s guitar playing is more subtle while still having the noisy shoegaze sound that is key to the band’s chemistry.

While I’ve loved all their music, I think No Joy have often been perceived as a derivative band that is just cloning previous shoegaze artists. More Faithful shuts down a lot of those arguments and proves that the band can make original, exciting music within the shoegaze framework.

#11: Sleater-Kinney – “No Cities to Love”

Given the impossible task of topping the band’s previous work, No Cities to Love is a satisfying return to form for Sleater-Kinney that dodges the pitfalls of many reunion albums. The trio of Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker, and Janet Weiss quickly settle into their old chemistry and unsurprisingly deliver one of the better rock albums of the year, with the band’s typical political commentary and Tucker’s roaring vocals being an especially welcome return.

Rather than comparing this album to The Woods, which really felt like a band going out in a blaze of glory, I like to think of No Cities to Love as starting something new for the band. And on this album, I get the sense that they’re still working out some of the kinks and getting back into the Sleater-Kinney “zone” that resulted in such consistently compelling music years ago. If all this is true, No Cities to Love is a good start, and I look forward to seeing what the band can do next.

You can read my initial post about the album here.

#12: Soccer Team – “Real Lessons in Cynicism”

The last band I’ll ever discover through rdio’s excellent new music feature (again, RIP), Soccer Team is fronted by a pair of Dischord veterans in Ryan Nelson and Melissa Quinley. Real Lessons in Cynicism has short, subtle rock songs, with split man-woman vocals that are reminiscent of the band’s labelmates The Evens.

Real Lessons in Cynicism is clearly meticulously crafted, as evidenced by the demos and discussion of them the band posted on its bandcamp page, but also never feels like it’s trying too hard. This gives the album a quiet sincerity that separated it from a lot of other rock music that I feel is very desperately attempting to be stylish or “cool.” It also has a lot of my favorite lyrics (and definitely my favorite song titles) of 2015 — many of the songs feel like listening in on interesting conversations with smart friends like “Too Many Lens Flares,” which offers a biting critique of the state of film.

The song on this album that really hit me was “Mental Anguish Is Your Friend.” Fronted by Quinley, it crams a scarily accurate depiction of, well, mental anguish, into its short running time — in particular, it nails how it becomes part of who you are over time.