Best music of 2015...so far

We're six months into 2015, and it is already shaping up to be one of the best.years. ever. for music. Classic albums in almost every genre are being released on the regular, and even the quiet weeks present some great music for our pleasure.

There have been so many solid releases in just half-a-year, I don't know how the second half can match it, but there are already signs that it could happen – Kanye! Frank Ocean! Tame Impala! Titus Andronicus! Carly Rae Jepsen! Disclosure!

I didn't think it would be this difficult to narrow down my list of the best albums thus far to 25, but that's a great reflection of the year we've had. Here's hoping the rest of the year keeps the streak alive.

Best albums so far (arranged alphabetically)

1. At.Long.Last.A$AP – A$AP Rocky

Rocky gets woozy and weird, and even sings to great effect on "L$D."

2. Coming Home – Leon Bridges

Click here to read my full review. 

3. Kintsugi – Death Cab for Cutie

Click here to read my full review. 

4. What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World – The Decemberists

Click here to read my full review. 

5. Surf – Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment

Click here to read my full review. 

6. If You're Reading This It's Too Late – Drake

Click here to read my full review. 

7. I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside – Earl Sweatshirt

Easily my favorite album name of the year, if not ever. A lonely, dark and engaging listen. 

8. I Love You, Honeybear – Father John Misty

Click here to read my full review. 

9. Tetsuo & Youth – Lupe Fiasco

Lupe's best album in a long while, it shows his lyrical dexterity and sonic risk-taking. 

10. Goon – Tobias Jesso Jr. 

Click here to read my full review. 

11. To Pimp A Butterfly – Kendrick Lamar

Click here to read my full review. 

12. Strange Trails – Lord Huron

Absolutely lovely apocalyptic folk music, with a serious undercurrent of early rock. 

13. Dreams Worth More than Money – Meek Mill

The most cinematic and escapist hip-hop album of 2015 so far. It also benefits greatly from being buckets of fun.  

14. Wildheart – Miguel

Miguel injects psychedelia into his baby-making soul, and comes up with his most adventurous album yet.  

15. Pageant Material – Kacey Musgraves

Musgraves' second album is quieter than her debut, but no less stellar. Probably the loveliest album of the year. 

16. The Waterfall – My Morning Jacket

Click here to read my full review. 

17. QUARTERBACKS – QUARTERBACKS

Twee-punk done right. An album about love that gets under your skin in 22 minutes flat.

18. Uptown Special – Mark Ronson

My favorite album of the year for night driving. Sounds great with city lights flying by the window. 

19. Ratchet – Shamir

Click here to read my full review. 

20. Summertime '06 – Vince Staples

Click here to read my full review. 

21. Traveler – Chris Stapleton

Could well be the best country album of the year. This guy has a voice that'll just rock you back. 

22. The Epic – Kamasi Washington

The best jazz album I've heard in years. A three-disc monster that fully lives up to the name. 

23. Ivy Tripp – Waxahatchee

Click here to read my full review. 

24. In Colour – Jamie xx

Click here to read my full review. 

25. Second Hand Heart – Dwight Yoakam

Click here to read my full review.

Album of the Week: Shamir Ratchet

Las Vegas has long been a musical focal point for a weird amalgamation of artists. It had the lounge singers in the vein of the Rat Pack who really put the place on the map, then it went through a sort-of rock phase thanks to Elvis, and in the decades since it has become a residence for pop stars who want to spend months at a time performing for tourists (I'm looking at you Celine and Britney). Vegas has always been a town almost entirely driven by its nightlife (it seems to me anyway, a guy who has been there once when he was a kid) – the famous lights, the crowds on the strip, and the smoke-filled clubs with a lone crooner singing to guys down on their luck.

Earlier this year, Mark Ronson released Uptown Special, a perfect soundtrack for a Vegas night, chock-full of songs to get you on your feet and moving. It's an album with an undeniable anthem ("UptownFunk"), but quieter numbers like "Crack in the Pearl" shine for going a little under the sheen. Still, it's an album for the crowds – the people clogging up the tourist traps and causing the bathroom lines to stretch outside the club. Shamir Bailey's debut album Ratchet is something else entirely – it's an album to get you on your feet and moving as well, but it's for the natives of Vegas, for the travelers in the night. The people who see the tourist shit every day of their lives and have no interest in the glitz – they want something real. They go to all the places the rest of us will never know about, with people we'll never meet. They all know, as Shamir tells us, that Vegas is really only okay at night.

The first thing that stands about Shamir is his voice – a quicksilver, androgynous instrument that he is capable of brandishing with a cocksure wit, or quietly deploy to damn near break your heart. It's a once-in-a-generation voice, and I'm so pleased we live in a musical point in time where he can share it with us.

The uniqueness of Shamir's voice might be the marquee feature of his music, but that should in no way overshadow how skilled he is at taking electronic, pop and disco and tossing them into his bubbling creativity cauldron to create his own sound. His music is going to remind everyone of someone (depending on your musical tastes) but it's never in a ripped-off way. There are very few artists who could create a sound this specific to them as Shamir does on Ratchet. The group this album most reminds me of is the best electronic group of this century (full stop), LCD Soundsystem, particularly given Shamir's ability to build an extraordinarily catchy-beat out of simple tools, with just the perfect build-up of flourishes. We haven't heard this kind of skill out of the gate since James Murphy and Co.'s debut a decade ago.

Take songs like "Make A Scene" and "On the Regular," which manage to captures Shamir's knack for building a beat in the most infectious way possible. Both songs hearken back to LCD's "Drunk Girls" or "Pow Pow," not only in their sonics, but in Shamir's lyrics, which are brimming over with a jester's wisdom and barbed sense of humor. When he advises "Just can't make a thought a wife,/no more basic or ratchet guys./Listen up, I'm saving you/from all the hell that you'll go through" at the end of "Call It Off," it's with the exasperated smile of someone who knows.

If there's any justice in the world, "In For the Kill" will become a contender for song of the summer, in addition to becoming a club mainstay. It features an undeniably brilliant use of a horn riff, and just gets catchier from there. I bet it is dynamite live.

As great as Shamir is at getting you on your feet, his hardest hitting songs are the ones where he slows down. "Demon" is a wonderful number about being stuck in a relationship that hurts both parties, yet seems inescapable. It might just be Rachet's "Someone Great," as Shamir's voice glides over a lovely organ-driven beat, and his voice takes on a hint of despair as he delivers some of his prettiest lyrics.

The real stunner here is "Darker," which manages to sound like – I kid you not – a sunrise over the Vegas skyline. It is simply gorgeous, seeped in the night's atmosphere, and Shamir's voice is the beams of the sun – light, airy and utterly piercing. "You know it doesn't get darker/Unless you expected to," he calls out with the wisdom of one who has watched his fair share of sunrises banish the night, and it's utterly sublime.

Album closer "Head in the Clouds," is a personal motto, album thesis and fuck you to anyone trying to stop him all rolled into one, and ably shows there is nowhere Shamir can't go. "Got nothing left to lose,/Just want to make my next move," he sings. Bet on Shamir - he can't lose.

Ratchet is out on XL Recordings.