My Favourite Songs of 2015 (So Far)

We have now entered the second half of 2015. In recognition of that fact, this entire week will be dedicated to The Album Wall's 2015 Halftime Report - later in the week, I'll be selecting some of my favourite albums of the year so far, as well as highlighting some forthcoming releases that will hopefully be rocking my world between now and New Year's Eve.

Today, though, is all about the songs. Here - in no particular order, are 15 of my favourite tracks from the first 182 days of 2015.

Disclaimer #1 - Not included in this list are songs from albums that have not yet been released, e.g. Dimed Out by Titus Andronicus. That song will undoubtedly prove to be one of the year's best, but as The Most Lamentable Tragedy isn't out until late July, it's not eligible for this halftime list.

Disclaimer #2 - I'm only one person, and while I do get sent a few albums here and there, I do buy most of the music I listen to myself. This does rather limit the number of CDs I'm capable of taking in; if your favourite song doesn't feature in the list below, it may well be because I haven't heard its parent album yet. Feel free to recommend anything I might have missed!

Foreign Object - The Mountain Goats

(from Beat the Champ)

One of the most straightforward songs on both this list and Beat the Champ itself, but that simplicity is very much an asset for Foreign Object, a tight little horn-led thing that's sung from the POV of a wrestler who doesn't care about winning as long as he can "make 'em bleed like pigs".

February Playlist: Pray for the Rain

As I mentioned on Wednesday, I've had a bit of an odd month, musically speaking. Here, for illustrative purposes, is a ten-track digest of what I've been listening to this February...

Click here for January's playlist.

1. A Song for the Dead - Queens of the Stone Age
(from Songs for the Deaf)
If you actually decide to play the Songs for the Deaf drinking game that I devised last week, this is probably the song that will kill you. Kind of appropriate, given the title.

Water, Earth, Fire, Air

So I've been watching Avatar (the TV show with the bald child, not the movie with the blue people) a lot recently, and...well, if you've never seen it, here's a quick primer:

Another thing I've been addicted to recently is Okkervil River's second album, Down the River of Golden Dreams (you may remember it as 'that album that took fricking ages to show up'). I could show you another YouTube video at this point, but instead, here's an excerpt from Okkervil River mainman Will Sheff's account of making the album:

"By the end of our stay in that city [San Francisco] from which so many long-haul travelers first cast out onto the water, I felt like nothing so much as a sailor. The last week of mixing I had even slept every night in the back of our 150 Ford, throwing open the back doors every morning to gaze on a deep, wide pool of water left by a week-long series of torrential downpours. 

"I guess that’s part of the reason we decided to call the record Down the River of Golden Dreams. It’s the title of the piece Seth’s octogenarian great aunt Nila plays at the beginning of the record, but it’s also because - to be appropriately California - I think that, if Don’t Fall in Love with Everyone You See [Okkervil River's first album] was an earth record, this is a water record. Sailing away never to return, washing clean to start over, fishing and swimming and drowning and all that stuff is floating around in there somewhere.

"At least, that’s what I hear when I hear these songs."