Albums of 2014

[Brett]

Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Ocrhestra's Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light on Everything is still easily my favorite album this year. For some reason I feel less qualified, or at least less confident about ranking everything else that I've liked this year, though. So I guess I'll just list a bunch of stuff that I've enjoyed.

Carla Bozulich - Boy
Avec le Soleil Sortant de sa Bouche - Zubberdust!
Drumheller - Sometimes Machine
Last Ex - Last Ex
Ought - More Than Any Other Day
Thom Yorke - Tomorrow's Modern Boxes
Deerhoof - La Isla Bonita
Le Révélateur - Extreme Events
North, My Love - North, My Love II
Hiss Tracts - Shortwave Nights
Inventions - Inventions
Sam Shalabi - Music for Arabs
Otto A Totland - Pino
Zammuto - Anchor
Timber Timbre - Hot Dreams
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra - Hang On To Each Other EP
Lewis - L'Amour
Lewis - Romantic Times
Elfin Saddle - Pinball Sessions EP
El Ten Eleven - For Emily EP
Sarah Neufeld - Black Ground EP
OSB (1-Speed Bike) - Robbery EP
Erik K Skodvin - Flame
Malayeen - Malayeen
Mono - Rays of Darkness
Mono - The Last Dawn
A Winged Victory for the Sullen - Atomos

And then there's several other things I feel like I've still got to give more time to before I decide how I feel about them.

[Alex]

Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Ocrhestra's Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light on Everyhting is still easily my favorite album this year. For some reason I feel less qualified, or at least less confident about ranking everything else that I've liked this year, though. So I guess I'll just list a bunch of stuff that I've enjoyed.

Carla Bozulich - Boy
Avec le Soleil Sortant de sa Bouche - Zubberdust!
Drumheller - Sometimes Machine
Last Ex - Last Ex
Ought - More Than Any Other Day
Thom Yorke - Tomorrow's Modern Boxes
Deerhoof - La Isla Bonita
Le Révélateur - Extreme Events
North, My Love - North, My Love II
Hiss Tracts - Shortwave Nights
Inventions - Inventions
Sam Shalabi - Music for Arabs
Otto A Totland - Pino
Zammuto - Anchor
Timber Timbre - Hot Dreams
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra - Hang On To Each Other EP
Lewis - L'Amour
Lewis - Romantic Times
Elfin Saddle - Pinball Sessions EP
El Ten Eleven - For Emily EP
Sarah Neufeld - Black Ground EP
OSB (1-Speed Bike) - Robbery EP
Erik K Skodvin - Flame
Malayeen - Malayeen
Mono - Rays of Darkness
Mono - The Last Dawn
A Winged Victory for the Sullen - Atomos

And then there's several other things I feel like I've still got to give more time to before I decide how I feel about them.

do you happen to own a blazer with elbowpads?

[nyquillyn]

Mono - Rays of Darkness
Mono - The Last Dawn

I need to check these out. I didn't really like For My Parents.

[Brett]

do you happen to own a blazer with elbowpads?

Nope

Mono - Rays of Darkness
Mono - The Last Dawn

I need to check these out. I didn't really like For My Parents.

These two are better.

[BurtReynolds]

stuff i enjoyed:

War on Drugs- Lost in a Dream
Brontide - Artery
Pixies - Indie Cindy
TVOTR - Seeds
Dance With The Dead - After Dark
Mogwai - Music Industry 3, Fitness Industry 1.
Perturbator - Dangerous Days
Animals As Leaders - The Joy of Motion

oh, speaking of broads: I forgot to add Courtney Barnett - the double ep a sea of split peas

[surfndestroy]

You guys make me feel so mundane.

1. Counting Crows - Somewhere Under Wonderland
2. Opeth - Pale Communion
3. Bastille - All This Bad Blood
4. Jack White - Lazaretto
5. Pink Floyd - Endless River
6. Bleachers - Strange Desires
7. The Tea Party - Ocean At The End
8. Accept - Blind Rage
9. Anathema - Distant Satellites
10. Angels & Airwaves - The Dream Walker

It was a great year for re-issues. The Smashing Pumpkins Adore is amazing. Led Zeppelin ! and Houses of the Holy were pretty awesome too.

[Rangi Guy]

Album of the year for me

Shihad - FVEY

[i got bugs]

I liked the pumpkins reissues, but I kinda don't see the point of the zep ones.. and I'm a huge zep fan.. The one with the live versions was cool but the 2 latest ones bonus tracks were 90% instrumentals

[Birds in Hell]

I liked the pumpkins reissues, but I kinda don't see the point of the zep ones.. and I'm a huge zep fan.. The one with the live versions was cool but the 2 latest ones bonus tracks were 90% instrumentals

I think the bonus tracks are less important with the Zeppelin reissues than the fact that the main catalogue sounds improved compared to the previous reissues from the 90s and is readily available on vinyl again.

[zeb]

I forgot to add Courtney Barnett - the double ep a sea of split peas

Probably the release I listened to most this year.

[surfndestroy]

I liked the pumpkins reissues, but I kinda don't see the point of the zep ones.. and I'm a huge zep fan.. The one with the live versions was cool but the 2 latest ones bonus tracks were 90% instrumentals

I think the bonus tracks are less important with the Zeppelin reissues than the fact that the main catalogue sounds improved compared to the previous reissues from the 90s and is readily available on vinyl again.

I felt like that at first but am really getting into the non-vocal tracks on Houses of the Holy. Hearing The Song Remains The Same and No Quarter without vocals has really let me focus in on the multiple layers of guitar and other instrumentation that I am loving.

[Kevin Davis]

There was a lot of music I really loved this year, in both the "old" and "new" categories -- a lot of decent catalog work by artists that are becoming legacy artists (Mogwai, The Roots, Jack White), and a lot of music that I got within the last couple weeks that will probably be on this list when I look back on it a year from now (TV on the Radio, Bill Frisell, Taylor Swift, Bonnie "Prince" Billy), but these would be my albums of the year and for the year, as it unfolded, in real time:

Spoiler: show

1. The War on Drugs -- "Lost in the Dream" -- sounds like Dire Straits, Springsteen, Petty, "beer commercial bullshit," whatever -- it's also a collection of quietly stunning songs that blossom in richness as you attend more frequently to them, evoking vague senses of nostalgia and loss which bear down on you in the form of one giant wall of melody and reverb. That lead guitar that landed them on Mark Kozelek's naughty list is not there to strut, but to ensure melodic and harmonic movement in between the vocal passages -- and melodic and harmonic movement is where the soul of this record is, the lead voice depending on it more than a few times to carry the weight of its dejected, lo-fi slur. It has very unassumingly become the soundtrack of my year.

2. Beck -- "Morning Phase" -- emotional, melancholic, downbeat -- but also stoic, learned, wise. With all the years of whimsy and humor behind it, his adult voice is a thing to behold -- note-perfect and intently delivered, syllable by syllable, line by line, pitched flawlessly to the emotional register of the material. Great, tasteful accompaniment, reminiscent of "Sea Change" but something altogether new regardless. His classiest record, and in my view his best since "Mutations."

3. Neil Cowley Trio -- "Touch and Flee" -- a shapeshifting jazz odyssey in 38 minutes or less for piano, bass, and drums, which zig and zag through snakelike melodic and rhythmic labyrinths at telepathic levels of interplay. A fantastic example of an album that's cerebral as can be but also catchy in the simplest terms. The ballad "Bryce" probably takes the award for my favorite individual track of the year.

4. Neil Young -- "A Letter Home" -- I listened to almost nothing but Neil for an entire month this summer, and took out a new lease on his minor works and spoof projects -- if you can cast quibbles over "authenticity" aside, a lot of his goofball-WTF albums have the capacity to win you over with the weight of their convictions, and songcraft that is ever-present even when obscured by horn sections or 92-piece orchestras or 70 year-old novelty recording techniques. And his heart is in this one -- you get the sense that he literally believes that Jack White's antique recording booth is some kind of portal to the past, that he really thinks he is singing these forgotten songs to his mother via some sort of supernatural sonic transmission that couldn't have been generated from a mere recording studio. It transforms this collection of otherwise rote cover versions into something intensely more personal -- something that actually ends up being a sort of window into Neil's soul, full of old songs distorted by grain and hiss and the browning edges of his decaying memory. His belief in these songs' capacity to communicate ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. A treasure in his discography.

5. St. Vincent -- "S/T" -- elegant and deeply vulnerable pop songcraft cordoned off by razor wire, booby traps, and fireworks, partly as theatrical devices but perhaps partly as defense mechanisms, all leading to the bare compositional brilliance of "Severed Crossed Fingers," revealing that beneath all that wild and violent showmanship is just another sensitive artist with a wounded heart. Her best? Still "Strange Mercy" probably. But this is definitely something outrageously colorful unto itself.

6. Angel Olsen -- " Burn Your Fire For No Witness" -- downcast, dimly-lit folk music, credibly channeling the drone of early Leonard Cohen, but with the feels and the mid-range of the modern chanteuse -- the Feists, the Cat Powers of the business. The songs float by light as the breeze at first, but there's beauty to be found in them -- the gentler ones more so than the relatively generic rock ones.

7. Sharon Van Etten -- "Are We There" -- songs of a natural beauty, songs that roll out of bed in the morning and grab a wrinkled flannel shirt from the dirty laundry and just glow, even as they then proceed to explain their intent to defecate in your bathroom. The register of her voice is again similar to a Feist or a Cat Power, but more elastic, and rougher around the edges -- it sways more hippie than chanteuse, but in service of the same vocal qualities. This achieves a level of consistency that "Tramp" doesn't, if it misses the highs. Overall, her best.

8. A Sunny Day in Glasgow -- "Sea When Absent" -- sugary, abstract noise-pop, not noisy in the sense of "loud" but noisy in the sense of "multiple disjunctive sounds competing for the same space" -- sometimes it feels like 3-4 different songs just being played at the same time, occasionally coalescing into something singularly lovely, occasionally making a hideous cacophony that you can't take your ears off of. Not an "everyday" type of record, but like nothing I've ever heard before.

9. Leonard Cohen -- "Popular Problems" -- a minor work that has a revealing sense of peace about it, it seems encouraging that Leonard produced so many works of despair and dread in his youth and middle age but is approaching his sunset years with a heart that seems forever light. I hope Lenny lives to make another 20 albums, but if not, he could do worse than to go out on "You Got Me Singing," a simple ballad about choosing hope in the face of hopelessness. But if he does get around to those 20 more records, I hope he ditches the Cohenettes for at least a couple of them.

10. Brad Mehldau and Mark Guiliana -- "Taming the Dragon" -- fusion for the post hip-hop era, dizzyingly virtuosic keyboard/drum duets undercut only by their total running time and a few shitty spoken word passages. Probably Brad's most jarring work to date -- would that every artist could say that at age 45.

Honorable mentions to a few definitive archival sets -- Bob Dylan's complete "Basement Tapes" set, a long overdue set that delivered and then some, and Miles Davis's "Live at the Fillmore" set, a 4CD beast that not only rocks on its own but also enjoys the perk of rectifying a previous release that marred some great music with some bad mixing and worse editing. REM's "Unplugged" set was a revelation as well, and got played at least once a week over the summer -- again, historical stuff that deserved release. And lastly, I have been relishing the (mostly) comprehensive Wilco and Soundgarden B-sides sets, both of which I got for Christmas -- Kim Thayil in the liner notes of the latter set basically echoes how I have long felt about these types of releases, essentially saying that they're the sort of thing every band should have for cataloging purposes, citing the Beatles' "Hey Jude" as an example of why these records need to exist, as that was one of his first favorite records as a kid and how, in his mind, since it was a record comprised of songs that otherwise weren't on an album elsewhere, there was no reason it didn't qualify as an "album" on its own terms. At first I thought Kim, when he came around with this Soundgarden reunion thing a few years ago, seemed kind of like a grumpy old nostalgia hound, but the more he talks, the more I get him. I sure am glad to have his B-sides, in any case. I have grown up with Soundgarden's commercial material since the 1990's, but it took me multiple attempts at digging deep into their catalog before finally "getting" the rest of it (the early stuff mainly), and it's pretty much exclusively because a number of RMfolk whose opinions I respect have dedicated multiple threads to singing its praises. So thanks RM.

[i got bugs]

I gotta listen to that war on drugs album more

[Strat]

I gotta listen to that war on drugs album more

It is really stunning and had a pretty significant and steady climb up my list of top albums ever. The album brings me to my knees every time.

I need to give the Beck album another shot I think.

sharon van etten record is pretty beautiful as well and will definitely make my list.

[i got bugs]

I liked the pumpkins reissues, but I kinda don't see the point of the zep ones.. and I'm a huge zep fan.. The one with the live versions was cool but the 2 latest ones bonus tracks were 90% instrumentals

I think the bonus tracks are less important with the Zeppelin reissues than the fact that the main catalogue sounds improved compared to the previous reissues from the 90s and is readily available on vinyl again.

I felt like that at first but am really getting into the non-vocal tracks on Houses of the Holy. Hearing The Song Remains The Same and No Quarter without vocals has really let me focus in on the multiple layers of guitar and other instrumentation that I am loving.

I get that but I was kinda hoping for something more.. like live versions, stripped down demos, or unreleased tracks..

I gotta listen to the regular album remasters tho I guess

[zeb]

And lastly, I have been relishing the (mostly) comprehensive Wilco and Soundgarden B-sides sets, both of which I got for Christmas -- Kim Thayil in the liner notes of the latter set basically echoes how I have long felt about these types of releases, essentially saying that they're the sort of thing every band should have for cataloging purposes, citing the Beatles' "Hey Jude" as an example of why these records need to exist, as that was one of his first favorite records as a kid and how, in his mind, since it was a record comprised of songs that otherwise weren't on an album elsewhere, there was no reason it didn't qualify as an "album" on its own terms. At first I thought Kim, when he came around with this Soundgarden reunion thing a few years ago, seemed kind of like a grumpy old nostalgia hound, but the more he talks, the more I get him. I sure am glad to have his B-sides, in any case. I have grown up with Soundgarden's commercial material since the 1990's, but it took me multiple attempts at digging deep into their catalog before finally "getting" the rest of it (the early stuff mainly), and it's pretty much exclusively because a number of RMfolk whose opinions I respect have dedicated multiple threads to singing its praises. So thanks RM. [/spoiler]

[surfndestroy]

I liked the pumpkins reissues, but I kinda don't see the point of the zep ones.. and I'm a huge zep fan.. The one with the live versions was cool but the 2 latest ones bonus tracks were 90% instrumentals

I think the bonus tracks are less important with the Zeppelin reissues than the fact that the main catalogue sounds improved compared to the previous reissues from the 90s and is readily available on vinyl again.

I felt like that at first but am really getting into the non-vocal tracks on Houses of the Holy. Hearing The Song Remains The Same and No Quarter without vocals has really let me focus in on the multiple layers of guitar and other instrumentation that I am loving.

I get that but I was kinda hoping for something more.. like live versions, stripped down demos, or unreleased tracks..

I gotta listen to the regular album remasters tho I guess

They could have been so much more. I would have loved each set to show how one or two songs got built up from a single guitar track. To hear how The Song Remains The Same was put together would have been amazing. I think Physical Graffiti will have some more of the stuff you're hoping for with some unreleased tracks but a shadow of what it could be. To hear Ten Years Gone being worked up from the acoustic guitar track would be nirvana for me.

[William Bloke]

This is another later 2014 release that I've only just discovered. Courtesy of the Kanye thread I've been going out of my way to check out a bit of hip hop stuff. This is great (and they do a good video too).

Clipping - Inside Out


Clipping - Summertime

[i got bugs]

New jeff the brotherhood