September is a month of change; fall hits the air, kids go back to school, and bands’ full-length production reaches a premium. There was no shortage of great albums this month, from a wide array of conceptually strong artists who made us think about music in many lights. Whether political, sociological, or merely what we were rocking out to the most, The Best Music of September 2015 kept us pondering our own existence in an ever-changing world.
The Best Album of September 2015
PWR BTTM, Ugly Cherries
Ugly Cherries is the title of PWR BTTM’s CS/LP released early September via the combined efforts of Miscreant and Father/Daughter Records, but it’s also the title of the first self-reflecting song singer Ben Hopkins has written about himself. Which is ironic given how much of the duo’s identity is centered around, well, their identity. “It’s a confrontation: an attempt to unpack my own queerness with humor and self care,” Hopkins told Spin, “I just got so fucking tired of wishing I was different so I decided to scream, ‘She’s all right’ until I actually was.” As Spencer Davis noted, ultimately, that’s the message of Ugly Cherries: queer lives, irreducibly complex, sound like more than token political narratives. Sometimes, they even sound like catchy, riff-heavy pop-punk.
Here are the rest of our favorites for September 2015, in no particular order.
