Others who deserve mentions:

• Tobias Jesso Jr. released his début album, Goon, and wrote songs with Sia and Adele.
• BADBADNOTGOOD worked with Ghostface Killah to make Sour Soul.
• We got another great release from Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
• Siskiyou, Alessia Cara, and Jazz Cartier came to wider attention with great records.
• Alvvays dropped a fantastic album at the back end of 2014, and toured successfully in support of it. White Lung and Caribou also released albums late last year, making the Polaris Prize longlist very good indeed.
• Arcade Fire blessed the world by continuing to exist. The new tracks on the deluxe version of Reflektor were the cherry on the cake.

Sludgy, distorted guitar? Slow, quiet verses with loud, fast choruses? A punk-rock energy with heavy-metal virtuosity?

“You’re A Germ” has the intensity of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, and the story is a more insidious, universal retelling of “Polly”.

It’s weird, because people are talking about the bands that were over before we were born. Not that it’s a bad thing, but we’re not trying to emulate that.
- Joel Amey, speaking to Gigwise

The best example is probably the penultimate line.

We sang “Silent Night” in three parts which was fun
Til she said that she sounds just like Sarah Vaughan
I hate that soulful affectation white girls put on
Why don’t you move to the Delta?

Tillman lists “the few main things I hate about her”, hinting that there’s actually a long list, and merely “obliges” when she asks him to choke her during sex.

The album was released through Spacebomb Records, but it’s more helpful to think of Spacebomb as a musical collective – a lo-fi Odd Future, if you will.

The arrangers, producers, and session musicians are members of Spacebomb, and they work their magic on all the group’s releases. Natalie is lucky to have them – but not as lucky as they are to have her.

Carrie uses lots of affectionate, diminutive nicknames for Sufjan. These all form internal rhymes, which adds a nursery-rhyme feel to the song. Ordinarily, that would be frivolous – but here, it only serves to make the death seem more crushing by comparison. It’s like gallows humour.

Sufjan is the absolute master of this. He masks his most serious songs in short major melodies, and throws in a few lines about simple pleasures. When you realise what he’s actually singing about, it’s like having a rug pulled from under your feet. When you’re ice skating. Drunk.

Carrie’s poor parental instincts are one of the themes of Carrie and Lowell. Comforting Sufjan by telling him that everyone will die is her final faux-pas. She means that her death is not a monumental event. When Sufjan repeats her words back in the haunting outro, we realise that she’s said the opposite – everyone has a date with destiny coming for them. What should have been comforting is actually chilling.