![\"Sufjan_Stevens_-_Carrie_&_Lowell\"](\"https:\/\/imagejournal.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Sufjan_Stevens_-_Carrie__Lowell-300x300.jpg\")
At the end of each year, I compile a list of \u201csongs of the year\u201d that I email to my friends (and send to Image<\/em>) on December 31. These songs are probably not the best of the year, but I don\u2019t know how I would be able to figure those out anyway (Jessica Hopper has a piece on this in her 2015 book The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\nInstead, these songs are all songs that were released (and I heard and liked, for whatever reason) in 2015. A lot of times it was because they were among the only songs I heard\u20142015 was a busy year for me. I went to precisely one concert (an utterly stunning one, by Sufjan Stevens) and purchased about five albums. I still care about music, but I don\u2019t obsess over the surface details\u2014band members, release dates, guest lists, record labels\u2014like I used to. What can I say? I\u2019m a grown-up.<\/p>\n
I do think these songs are worth listening to, though. Here they are<\/a>, in four loosely arranged parts. I hope you find something new that you like.<\/p>\n Sad Songs (Let\u2019s Get This Over With)<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been listening to Bjork and Death Cab for about fifteen years apiece, and both made their best records in a decade this year. They\u2019re both divorce albums\u2014Bjork\u2019s is clear-eyed and visceral, Death Cab\u2019s subtle and understated. Stevens\u2019 is a record about his estranged mother\u2019s death, and this remix comes close to getting at the grandeur of the tour in which the acoustic songs of Carrie & Lowell<\/em> became shimmering, cascading bursts of transcendence.<\/p>\n Shouting at God (or, Faith)<\/p>\n I like the way this\u00a0group of three\u00a0songs works\u00a0together. mewithoutYou\u2019s Aaron Weiss wrestles with personal and theological demons; Refused does a crude, hot-blooded, post-hardcore\/metal indictment of all religious ideologies (including pop atheism); and\u00a0Emery\u2019s\u00a0\u201cThrash\u201d is a brutal track that depicts the stoning of Stephen, ending in a gospelly\u00a0beatific vision.<\/p>\n A Somewhat Confused and Surprisingly Long Dance Party<\/p>\n A cute love song by my favorite\u00a0neo-prog-pop duo, the theme song of a great podcast about the Internet, an R&B Radiohead cover, a trap gospel track, a reunion of one of the biggest Christian rock groups of the 90s, and a religiously-minded,\u00a0dancey, indie-rock group from British Columbia: I just DJed your next post-evangelical hipster dance party! You\u2019re welcome.<\/p>\n Faith (Part II)<\/p>\n These songs are commendable and their stories interesting, but somehow I feel like to \u201cexplain\u201d them in the conventional music journalist way would be to cheapen them. (I\u2019m slowly trying to write a book about the purpose of music criticism, so perhaps you\u2019ll see what I mean, eventually.) Instead, I will reproduce \u201cThe Bright Field,\u201d a poem by R. S. Thomas<\/a>, which is spoken in the final song, in its entirety below. I think this sums up these songs, and, in fact, a lot of songs.<\/p>\n I have seen the sun break through on to a receding future, nor hankering after\n
\n
\n
\n
\nto illuminate a small field
\nfor a while, and gone my way
\nand forgotten it. But that was the
\npearl of great price, the one field that had
\ntreasure in it. I realize now
\nthat I must give all that I have
\nto possess it. Life is not hurrying<\/em><\/p>\n
\nan imagined past. It is the turning
\naside like Moses to the miracle
\nof the lit bush, to a brightness
\nthat seemed as transitory as your youth
\nonce, but is the eternity that awaits you.<\/em><\/p>\n