The music critics of The New York Times share their picks for the best pop and jazz albums of the year.
Clockwise from top: Simon Laessoee/Scanpix Denmark, via Reuters, Chad Batka for The New York Times, Robert Altman for The New York Times, Sascha Steinbach/Getty Images, Damon Winter/The New York Times and Chad Batka for The New York Times
1. Kendrick Lamar “To Pimp a Butterfly” (Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope) Monumentally ambitious and just as ambivalent, Kendrick Lamar shoulders a spokesman’s burdens on “To Pimp a Butterfly,” an album-length immersion in all the choices and contradictions facing a rapper with a conscience. Race, poverty, fame, lust, cultural heritage, the direction of America and the trajectory of his career are all on his mind. Ideas and atmosphere govern the tracks, not immediate catchiness. But it’s an immensely musical album: a dense caldron of funk, jazz and soul that draws hope and determination from the past, confronting problems that past eras have left unsolved. (Read the Critic’s Notebook | Listen to the Podcast)
2. Joanna Newsom “Divers” (Drag City) The melodies on Joanna Newsom’s “Divers”have a foundation of vintage American simplicity: Appalachian tunes, waltzes, ragtime, parlor songs, lullabies. She sings them in her high, guileless but determined voice, accompanied by her harp. But things get more intricate from there. Edifices of counterpoint materialize around her; verses stretch and detour toward incantations. The lyrics ponder time, mortality, love, war, nature, cities and the elusive joy of life — often cryptic and allusive, sometimes utterly transparent. The songs add up to a cycle, illuminating one another’s mysteries. (Read the review | Listen to the Popcast)
3. Grimes “Art Angels” (4AD) “Art Angels” is a solo tour de force. Everything on it, except for selected guest vocals, is by Claire Boucher, a.k.a. Grimes. As songwriter, singer, instrumentalist, producer and engineer (not to mention illustrator and video director), Grimes has reverse-engineered the high-gloss, short-attention-span mechanisms of current pop to give it her own spin — a matter of bravado, feminism, taunts, questions, eccentricities, hurdles overcome, “commodifying all the pain” and, every few seconds, another musical zinger. (Listen to the Podcast)
read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/arts/music/best-albums-of-2015.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0
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