Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Top Ten Albums of 2015 Part 2

2015 is about to wrap! Over the last few days of the year Young Ears, Fresh Perspective is doing a Top Ten Albums of the Year series! Each day we will be discussing two albums that set themselves head and shoulders above everything else that was released this year. The albums are in no particular order though as it is too difficult and unnecessary to rank them.


8. The Hollywood Vampires, by The Hollywood Vampires

Alice Cooper this year put together an all-star line-up of musicians to pay tribute to the memory of the group of musicians/celebrities who died from rock n' roll excess in the 70's that would gather in the loft of the Rainbow Bar and Grille in LA. It is a primarily covers oriented album (with songs by the deceased club members) and features musicians like Paul McCartney, Robby Krieger, Orianthi, Dave Grohl, Slash, Brian Johnson, Joe Walsh, Perry Farrell, and Zak Starkey amongst others.

Overall it is a pretty fun album. You can hear all of these big name artists just jamming away and having a good time with music they love from dearly departed friends and idols. It's essentially a jam session on steroids, which in all honesty isn't a bad thing by any means. It's everything that rock n' roll is meant to be: fun.


7. Alone in the Universe, by Electric Light Orchestra

Alone in the Universe is Electric Light Orchrestra's first new album in 14 years. That said, it's pretty damn good. It has all of the soft melodic charm that you would hope to find in an ELO album. Jeff Lynne shows that once again he is a master song writer and has A grade musicians to help him bring his musical visions to life. Plus, it's also great that long time keyboardist Richard Tandy once again got behind the keys to help out.

While you can definitely tell the songs have some modern nuances to them, they still have many of the aspects you would have heard them bring out in their music in the 70's. To be honest, I think that is the best thing you can really ask for in a modern ELO album. You don't want them to abandon what made them good, but you also want them to expand and explore as well. This is definitely worth your while.

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