No Ripcords Top 50 Albums of 2015

No Ripcords Top 50 Albums of 2015

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50.

September 18, 2015
Critic Score
75
38 reviews

48.

May 4, 2015
Critic Score
80
1 review

47.

February 3, 2015
Critic Score
75
17 reviews

Sauna presents itself as a unique amalgamation of each release’s strengths, embodying the tranquil, hearth-warm sonic pallet of Clear Moon while stretching and expanding these sounds into the endless ether akin to Ocean Roar.

46.

October 16, 2015
Critic Score
78
23 reviews

Never does it wallow or feel desperate, and instead takes a soulful, Michael Hutchence-like approach of tugging at the heartstrings with passionate, swooning sincerity.

45.

April 27, 2015
Critic Score
79
45 reviews

Even with its faults, The Magic Whip is remarkably cohesive; not a single track is superfluous, flippant, or jarring. While Blur may not have the perceptible onerousness for each other that they did fifteen years ago, they certainly have the zeal.

44.

July 16, 2015
Critic Score
79
30 reviews

42.

August 7, 2015
Critic Score
78
28 reviews

Despite the weak ending, Wolfe brings a chaotic, engulfing sound that makes this one of her heaviest works yet.

40.

October 30, 2015
Critic Score
78
24 reviews
Though Beach Slang are charged with a direct, oftentimes wholesome simplicity, it’s in their weathered optimism where they defiantly soar.

39.

September 25, 2015
Critic Score
77
35 reviews

b’lieve i’m goin down is further evidence of Vile’s conclusive authenticity, and his position as one of songwriting’s most understated commodities.

38.

October 16, 2015
Critic Score
75
22 reviews

37.

Jamie Woon - Making Time
November 6, 2015
Critic Score
70
16 reviews

Jamie Woon has dropped a second LP every bit as captivating as his first, and it’s hard to find any faults with this piece of work. Sumptuously slick, and with the humidity of a tropical locale.

35.

May 19, 2015
Critic Score
87
14 reviews

33.

May 26, 2015
Critic Score
79
30 reviews
Though Nielson’s penchant for psychpop and might be the defining feature of the band, Nielson’s LSD-inspired musings burrow themselves a comfortable niche of their own throughout the album.

31.

July 28, 2015
Critic Score
79
33 reviews

The Most Lamentable Tragedy presents an abstracted story as its emotional core, and it’s significantly harder to respond to that more distant lyrical perspective. Taken on its own, however, the album is one of the more compassionate, prideful and ultimately moving depictions of mental illness on record in recent years.

29.

June 2, 2015
Critic Score
77
39 reviews

The greater the risk, the greater the reward. And I can think of no better reward than this album.

28.

May 19, 2015
Critic Score
79
29 reviews

Although more stylistically cohesive than her 2012 debut Movement (which felt more like a calling card for her diverse talents than an album proper), Platform suffers from the breadth of its ambition.

27.

April 21, 2015
Critic Score
78
28 reviews

With Foil Deer, the band show more strings to their bows than they have with any of their previous releases.

26.

May 5, 2015
Critic Score
82
15 reviews

23.

March 17, 2015
Critic Score
79
26 reviews

22.

March 23, 2015
Critic Score
81
34 reviews

Marling has a talent for instilling in her work an awareness of what listeners are thinking, and this self-awareness goes hand-in-hand with one of the album’s most compelling features: the urge to push the boundaries of artistic mediums.

19.

August 28, 2015
Critic Score
79
44 reviews

18.

November 13, 2015
Critic Score
78
32 reviews

Despite the repeatedly creepy nature of his recent efforts, G.o.D is, to a degree, its more sinister in tone, more maddeningly madcap than his usual pursuits.

17.

May 5, 2015
Critic Score
79
25 reviews
These are songs that mostly get to the heart of the matter with open-hearted directness, and in balancing the coarse with the refined there’s a clearer sense of what Scott wants to find even if she struggles to understand the conditions that affect her most deeply.

15.

January 20, 2015
Critic Score
85
41 reviews

14.

January 20, 2015
Critic Score
80
30 reviews
Rarely do records with such an off-kilter composition sound so vital and exciting, especially considering the emotional rupture that sets them into motion.

12.

June 30, 2015
Critic Score
84
23 reviews

Staples has so much to say in Summertime '06 that it’d be impossible to fully dissect in one listen, and his ingenious phrasing makes for a constantly amusing variety of vignettes. A record is only as good as the music that accompanies, though, and collaborative producer No I.D. delivers in spades and then some.

11.

August 28, 2015
Critic Score
82
34 reviews

Poison Season is even more sumptuously complete, sleek and highly refined, repurposing the champagne-coated synths of Kaputt with the aid of a full band to further accentuate his high-brow witticisms.

9.

July 17, 2015
Critic Score
83
49 reviews
Parker is a once-in-a-generation talent, and this album is conclusive evidence of it.

8.

October 23, 2015
Critic Score
89
43 reviews
Like all Newsom’s albums, it is full of beautiful music and lyrics that initially appear enigmatic but are in fact simply dense, but it’s the first one to embed within itself, on various levels, the necessity to continue mining its depths.

7.

January 20, 2015
Critic Score
89
46 reviews

No Cities to Love is both a return to their familiar riot grrl roots and an unabashed demand to be heard again, to be idolized and adored and feared as rock icons.

6.

November 6, 2015
Critic Score
84
36 reviews

5.

June 1, 2015
Critic Score
83
45 reviews
The record finds a perfect balance between being a statement on rave culture itself and reveling in sincere, in-the-moment exhilaration and emotion.

4.

February 10, 2015
Critic Score
87
42 reviews

Tillman becomes one of the great diarists of our generation in Honeybear, possessing a keen, merciless intelligence within a sophisticated melodic sensibility.

3.

March 24, 2015
Critic Score
84
44 reviews

Although Sometimes I Sit and Think is musically straightforward, Barnett doesn’t need anything more to tell great stories.

2.

March 31, 2015
Critic Score
91
47 reviews

Stevens invites us to peer into a cathartic moment in his life without any trace of irony, bound by his faith, the geniality of his compositions often belying the grief that hides beneath the surface.

1.

March 15, 2015
Critic Score
95
45 reviews

That To Pimp A Butterfly forces difficult questions both sociopolitical and aesthetic is testament to its brilliance. It is an album that can be, even deserves to be annotated song-by-song, line-by-line.

Original Source: http://www.noripcord.com/features/top-albums-2015
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