Exclaim!'s Top 27 Albums of 2015 So Far

Published Jul 08, 2015

With 2015's midway point (ever so slightly) in the rearview, we've decided to take a look back at what already feels like a banner year for music: two Afro-Cuban twins from Paris wove their traditional music through modern hip-hop and electronic sounds; a solemn UK indie kid waxed gorgeously nostalgic about a golden age of rave he didn't even live through; Southern blues rock got a much-needed injection of Sound & Color; every song on a surprise album (mixtape?) charted on the Billboard Hot 100.

It was all too much for us to boil 2015 down to 25 of the best albums so far, so we cut it where we could reasonably afford to, at 27. And so, without further ado: Exclaim!'s Top 27 Albums of 2015 So Far.

Click next to read through the albums one by one, or use the list below to skip ahead to your favourites.

Exclaim!'s Top 27 Albums of 2015 So Far:

1. Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly
2. Jamie xx - In Colour
3. Father John Misty - I Love You, Honeybear
4. Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell
5. Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit
6. Drake - If You're Reading This It's Too Late
7. D'Angelo & the Vanguard - Black Messiah
8. Björk - Vulnicura
9. Viet Cong - Viet Cong
10. Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experience - Surf
11. A$AP Rocky - AT.LONG.LAST.A$AP
12. Natalie Prass - Natalie Prass
13. Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color
14. The Weather Station - Loyalty
15. Sleater-Kinney - No Cities to Love
16. Napalm Death - Apex Predator – Easy Meat
17. Tobias Jesso Jr. - Goon
18. Blur - The Magic Whip
19. Jessica Pratt - On Your Own Love Again
20. Young Fathers - White Men Are Black Men Too
21. Shamir - Ratchet
22. Michael Rault - Living Daylight
23. Paradise Lost - The Plague Within
24. METZ - II
25. Buffy Saint-Marie - Power in the Blood
26. Torche - Restarter
27. Ibeyi - Ibeyi