Operation Manatee Music Prize: Top Five Albums of 2015

Coming up with this list is always hard. You’ve seen how much good music makes it under my radar in a year. Paring it down to 5 means leaving out heaps of really good music. Alas, it must be done (actually, it doesn’t – I’m clearly doing this for fun).

Keeping in the spirit of the new Operation Manatee Music Prize, I’m again doing that thing everyone on the internet hates: changing something. Instead of reading from my number 1 pick, up, I’m doing a big, old-fashioned countdown.

Operation Manatee Music Prize 2015: The Long List

2015 has been a crazy good year for new music! So good, in fact, that I’ve decided to expand upon my annual Top 5 Albums posts (OpMan Archives: 2014, 2013, 2012), and do a sort of long-list/short-list Polaris rip-off something or other.

Below are all contenders for 2015’s Top 5 list. This is based on a handful of rigorous criteria, outlined below:
– Must be a full album (no EPs, singles, etc.)
– Must be released in 2015
– Must have been listened to by me
– Must actually be good (tons of stuff never made the cut, and some were cut as this was edited and updated)