At the end of each year, I compile a list of “songs of the year” that I email to my friends (and send to Image) on December 31. These songs are probably not the best of the year, but I don’t 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).

Instead, 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—2015 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’t obsess over the surface details—band members, release dates, guest lists, record labels—like I used to. What can I say? I’m a grown-up.

I do think these songs are worth listening to, though. Here they are, in four loosely arranged parts. I hope you find something new that you like.

Sad Songs (Let’s Get This Over With)

1. Bjork: “Stonemilker”
2. Death Cab: “No Room in Frame”
3. Sufjan Stevens: “Blue Bucket of Gold” (Remix)

I’ve been listening to Bjork and Death Cab for about fifteen years apiece, and both made their best records in a decade this year. They’re both divorce albums—Bjork’s is clear-eyed and visceral, Death Cab’s subtle and understated. Stevens’ is a record about his estranged mother’s death, and this remix comes close to getting at the grandeur of the tour in which the acoustic songs of Carrie & Lowell became shimmering, cascading bursts of transcendence.

Shouting at God (or, Faith)

4. mewithoutYou: “D-Minor”
5. Refused: “Dawkins Christ”
6. Emery: “Thrash”

I like the way this group of three songs works together. mewithoutYou’s 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 Emery’s “Thrash” is a brutal track that depicts the stoning of Stephen, ending in a gospelly beatific vision.

A Somewhat Confused and Surprisingly Long Dance Party

7. Mates of State: “Staring Contest”
8. Breakmaster Cylinder: “Reply All Theme”
9. Roman GianArthur feat. Janelle Monae: “No Surprises”
10. Erica Campbell: “I Luh God”
11. DC Talk: “Love Feels Like”
12. We Are the City: “Keep on Dancing”

A cute love song by my favorite neo-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, dancey, indie-rock group from British Columbia: I just DJed your next post-evangelical hipster dance party! You’re welcome.

Faith (Part II)

13. Torres: “Sprinter”
14. Lauryn Hill: “Feeling Good”
15. Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus: “The Bright Field”

These songs are commendable and their stories interesting, but somehow I feel like to “explain” them in the conventional music journalist way would be to cheapen them. (I’m slowly trying to write a book about the purpose of music criticism, so perhaps you’ll see what I mean, eventually.) Instead, I will reproduce “The Bright Field,” a poem by R. S. Thomas, 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.

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

To Illuminate a Small Field: 15 Songs for 2015 from jthh on 8tracks Radio.