The Year in Music - 2014

It turns out that there was more good music in 2014 than I thought, even though it still feels like a relatively down year compared to the last two or three bumper crops of what seemed a daunting amount of fantastic material from all parts of the spectrum in 2011, 2012 and 2013. But whereas I was easily able to pick a clear favorite in the past few years (particularly in any year when The National have a new album), this time around I found my attention spread fairly evenly over the course of the year without ever singling out one artist in particular as the hands-down winner. So this list isn’t necessarily in any strict order, with the possible exception of the first half-dozen or so, because they clearly stood out, if only by virtue of being played so very often that they got burned into my consciousness to the point that I started to inhale and exhale them as part of my normal breathing routine. That description applies particularly to the first three albums on this list.

There also wasn’t really a common denominator in terms of the gestalt of the year in music. I guess there might have been an overarching melancholy, not to say ennui, in the mood of the material, but that may have simply been in the eye of the beholder. It did also seem to be the year, somehow, of The Artist, of albums made quite self-consciously to demonstrate craft at work and in action, and that seems to be true of the first seven albums here, and really throughout. It did also seem to be a great year for bands I’d never heard of before, whether they were brand new (Posse, Tiny Ruins, FKA Twigs, for a start) or just new to me (Reigning Sound, Future Islands, Wild Beasts, Perfume Genius, to name just a few). And it also seemed to be a rather disappointing year for electronic music, whereas last year was so abundant in rich, satisfying and pioneering experimental “music without words” that it was always going to be hard to repeat. Having said that, though, the good electronic music was pretty fantastically great, and a lot of the ostensibly “mainstream” music begged borrowed and stole from electronica , so perhaps the experimental stuff is crossing over, and perhaps within its own realm quality just won out over quantity this year.

Are We There – Sharon Van Etten

The sustained keening of “Are We There” is an addictive form of melancholy. And yet Sharon Van Etten doesn’t seem quite defeated. There is something exhausted and yet also indefatigable about that voice and those lyrics. Sometimes I wonder if the whole album is just one long mourning note from Sharon’s thoroughly gorgeous voice. But then I remember that each song is beautifully crafted in its own right, and also that she is remarkably resilient. These are survivor songs, not victim songs, and the keening says that while she is in pain she is not down for the count. As she says on the blistering “Your Love Is Killing Me,” "Break my legs so I won't walk to you/Cut my tongue so I can't talk to you/Burn my skin so I can't feel you/Stab my eyes so I can't see.”To paraphrase the dearly departed Lou Reed, “despite all the amputations…it was alright.”

It's also important, for some reason (although I'm not entirely sure what that reason is yet) to point out that the title of the album conspicuously does not contain a question mark, even though the statement seems to suggest a question. I've been thinking about that anomaly for several months now and still haven't come up with a reasonable theory about what it might mean. Because I'm deep, but not that deep.

Lost in the Dream – The War on Drugs

“Lost in the Dream” sustains something rather different from the sadness of Sharon Van Etten, but there is a resonance and a poignancy to it still, and also a sense of survival, of not losing, even though defeat seems to be in the cards, just like (but also not quite like) we saw with the SVE album. Adam Granduciel rescues this album from the fate of a pure nostalgia trip/total downer by relocating all of its ostensible and much-discussed/maligned influences (Petty, Springsteen, Knopfler – do you feel ill yet?) in the context of some kind of alternative krautrock universe, and the results are also addictive. Mark Kozelek is wrong about TWOD, by the way, and he got himself on my naughty list because of his meanness toward this work, which was created on an epic canvas, with an attention to detail, and enough twists and turns that balance out the potential for the whole thing to get filed guiltily in the AOR section.  I just never wanted those extended jams to end, and I’m no hippy. I also suspended “Benji” from consideration here as punishment for all the mean things Kozelek said about Adam earlier this year. Otherwise, Benji would be near the top of this list.

Burn Your Fire For No Witness – Angel Olsen

These are torch songs from the collective, and Angel Olsen is carrying the mantle of a lot of people at once, including Bonnie Prince Billy and Leonard Cohen, among others. She’s worked with BPB as part of the Cairo Gang, so that makes sense, but “White Fire” feels like it comes directly out of Leonard’s workshop. One of the many great things about this tour de force album is that it doesn’t settle for or into any of its voices. Olsen shifts around restlessly from slow-burning 90s indie rock, to what feels more like pure folk music without having to change her essential and authentic identity. This is one of those albums that feels very satisfying as a whole album – the trajectory from “Unfucktheworld” to “Windows” is a joy to experience, and all points in between are a pleasure. When I first heard this album I thought that it might be an enjoyable minor diversion that would get me through the winter. But it outlasted Sun Kil Moon’s Benji quite easily and when I returned to it in the fall, it had matured and ripened into a genuinely deep and layered album, and it seems to keep growing with time. We should keep a close eye on Angel Olsen. She might be important.

LP1 – FKA Twigs

Speaking of important. You don’t really want to hurry to roll out the Kate Bush/Bjork/Tricky comparisons, but this album makes them hard to avoid, and it’s not even as if she’s trying to make you think that. The sheer scope, ambition, and originality of this debut album make it immediately apparent that you’re in the presence of someone who has a singular vision that goes beyond music. Anyone who, at the age of 26, has the presence of mind and the audacity to begin their first album by chanting (as if it were a mantra), “I love another, and thus I hate myself,” from Sir Thomas Wyatt’s 16th-century sonnet, “I Find No Peace,” is clearly coming at this whole music thing from a different place altogether from your run-of-the-mill person, and Tahlia Barnett is anything but run-of-the-mill. This is also an album that you can really play anywhere, and by anywhere I mean, at home, by yourself, in company, in the car, and you might even hear it while you’re out shopping and be glad that the culture is now open enough for this kind of thing to be in the mainstream. These songs are both eerie and, after a while, completely familiar. The sounds are spectral, but they also become old friends pretty quickly. And in a year when we didn’t get the Grimes album I was hoping for, Twigs stakes a serious claim on the sound frontier. I’m more obsessed with the album now than I was when I was most obsessed with it earlier in the year. This is the kind of record that needs to be huge for music to survive and, like the Angel Olsen album, it works as an entire album, from the opening “Preface” to the last song, “Kicks.”

Shattered – Reigning Sound

Whereas FKA Twigs is legitimately brand new on the scene, Reigning Sound, the brainchild and vehicle of Greg Cartwright, have been around for this whole millennium (not to mention his work with the Compulsive Gamblers and the Oblivians – the man is prolific), and it took – to my shame - me all of those years to notice them, but it was so very much worth the wait. Shattered is a masterclass in bar band hooks, and while this is a very “American” album, the strength and quality of the band recalls the heyday of Elvis Costello’s Attractions, still the high watermark for backing bands in any era. The organ that seeps through every song, the talking bass, the steady and raucous backbeat, along with Cartwright’s uncompromising but also pretty tasteful and discreet guitar work, all add up to an hermetically sealed roots-pop record, and proves that there are still plenty of unwritten songs out there that find as yet undiscovered melodies, albeit that at least three of the songs on this album recall Leiber and Stoller’s “Love Potion No. 9” in some way or another. Nothing wrong with that, though – it’s just a complimentary nod to another classic, and an acknowledgment of these new songs’ distinguished lineage.

They Want My Soul – Spoon

Spoon don’t get old. They just keep making their perfect sound, with Britt Daniel’s gnomic lyrics and their supreme gift for silence between the sounds, and every time they put out an album, you can just get lost in it. They Want My Soul is full of delicious grooves and slices of sound. I feel bad for pointing out that “Inside Out,” my favorite song from the album, recall’s Steve Miller’s “Fly Like An Eagle,” but I guess I just did it anyway. Try listening to it without thinking about “Time keeps on slipping slipping slipping…into the future.” I’ll wait right here.

St Vincent – St Vincent

I am occasionally willing to admit a mistake with regard to the earlier dismissal of an artist. It took me two years to admit that Belle & Sebastian were not, in fact, twee chancers, and after that we were off to the races on a love affair that continues unabated, almost 20 years later. On the other hand, I was an early adopter of Animal Collective, only to bail on them when I realized that they were a jamband in disguise. I may have to revisit and eat those words in due course, but I can’t be bothered yet. With regard to Annie Clark aka St Vincent, I tried to be in on the ground floor with her first two albums, but just couldn’t stomach what seemed to be the very deliberate “artiness” of the material. To say that the songs were “arch” does not begin to describe them.

And so I was very skeptical about this new, self-titled album, to the point where I dismissed it out of hand both before and after I had first heard it. But for some reason, I kept returning to it, time and again, secretly hoping that my initial opinion was correct, but also secretly beginning to enjoy the shit out of it, and then begrudgingly having to admit that it’s actually a really, really smart album, fully of virtuosity, both in terms of Clark’s sheer musical talent and in terms of her aptitude for wearing identities purely for the duration of a project. And there is, after all, an enduring sweetness to these songs, for all their surface tartness. This isn’t just “look-at-me” music, although it does compel you to do that too, but then it forces you to look again. And her SNL performances really sealed the deal for me. She blew the roof off of that thing.

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The rest of the entries are often conceived, for the most part, as groupings of similar sounds, perhaps to be thought of as playlists for an evening at home, alone or in the company of friends, family and loved ones.

After the End – Merchandise

Under Color of Official Right – Protomartyr

Here and Nowhere Else – Cloud Nothings

Forms – The Sound of Rescue

Seek Warmer Climes – LOWER

Typical System – Total Control

Post-punk/rock is alive and well, as evidenced by this cluster of albums. Gloom is their business, but they conduct it very well and find some lovely chords along the way. Even if you might not necessarily want to spend too much time with these fellows socially, you may enjoy their musical company on a day when the weather and the political climate are in just the right alignment. The Merchandise and Protomartyr albums are particularly affecting, with just the right balance of attack, melody and washes of sound. The Cloud Nothings album is the odd one out here, because it’s more of a straight up punk rock record, as is Dylan Baldi’s wont. But if you need to plan an evening of contemporary music when you want to feel like you’re both present and also that you haven’t aged a day in 20 (or 30) years based on your taste in music, you might do worse than to put these on their own sad and angry little playlist and hit shuffle. Your buzz will be enhanced and will thank you, I guarantee it.  Also, Merchandise’s “True Monument” is one of my favorite songs of the year.

Alvvays – Alvvays

Too True - Dum Dum Girls

Trouble – Hospitality  

Atlas - Real Estate

House of Spirits - Fresh and Onlys

Rips - Ex-Hex

Sand + Silence – Rosebuds

Melodic, exuberant, jingly-jangly guitar pop music is alive and well, kicking even. Almost every moment of every one of these albums is a pure and unadulterated joy. Don’t resist. There’s no point. Another cluster of albums that would make a great shuffled playlist. But you’d have to be in a better mood than the post-punk playlist I mentioned in the previous entry. This would be a different evening. Let’s say we’re feeling down and we play the gloomy shuffle on Friday night. Saturday is a new day, and we’re doing a lot better, so we bop around to Alvvays’ “Archie,” and The Rosebuds’ “In My Teeth” on Saturday night and we feel dizzy. Welcome to the Bipolar Music Club. Every weekend is a rollercoaster ride.

Cool Choices – S

Soft Opening  - Posse

I like to think that the ridiculous upbeat energy of Alvvays and the Rosebuds is nicely balanced out by the indie circumspection of S and Posse, but what do I know, really? This would be the nightcap to the party of the previous entry, as you wind your way down into Sunday morning, if you want it. Aren’t I helpful? I should be an event planner.

Singles – Future Islands

Present Tense - Wild Beasts

Too Bright – Perfume Genius

 

Synth pop never died. It just matured into a combination of dervish dad pants and angular camp. This trio of albums offers exquisite evidence refuting its demise. We probably all know about Future Islands now, thanks to the viral Letterman appearance and the truly, madly deeply weird amalgam of Samuel T. Herring’s weird sartorial presentation, his genuinely sweet voice (most of the time) and that other-worldly growl that he lets loose every now and then. This is pop music, but not quite as we know it, as is also the case with Wild Beasts’ “Wanderlust,” whose “Don’t confuse me with someone who gives a fuck” is offered under the very subversive guise of a gorgeous voice and melody, something that the entire album does on multiple occasions. And all of this sumptuous music offers up an interesting sexuality spectrum, culminating in the flamboyant and tantalizing glory of Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas, whose “Fool” just toys with us, with its “I tither and coo/Like a cartoon,” and its “I plume and I plume/Like a buffoon.” This playlist requires whirling, so make sure you have plenty of space, and don’t hurt yourself.

The junior partners of these albums are:

Everything Infinite - Wunder Wunder

Mr Twin Sister - Mr Twin Sister

Impressions – Music Go Music

 

Add these to your synth-y playlist if you want your evening to last longer, and if it looks like your house might need to make the shift into more of a nightclub setting. You’re welcome.

Our Love – Caribou

In a pinch, you could also add Caribou’s Our Love to the synth-y playlist above. It would add some more dancefloor backbone, even if that may not be strictly necessary.  I’ve never paid much attention to Caribou – I mean, I remember, back when they were still allowed to be called Manitoba, that Up in Flames made a big splash, but I just never kept up with them. That was clearly my loss, and Our Love made me go back and catch up on Dan Snaith’s oeuvre, especially 2010’s Swim. It also doesn’t hurt that Our Love contains a guest appearance (on the very lovely “Second Chance”) from Jessy Lanza, whose 2013 album Pull My Hair Back was one of my favorites. I guess this is dance music for white people, but it’s not the kind of music that you can’t actually dance to, for all that. And it’s also not music that you have to dance to either, if you don’t want to – it seems to contain multitudes, including both the rave and the chill-out, in one sitting. But whatever it is, it’s joyful and exuberant music, for the most part, and we need that if we’re going to endure. Perhaps that’s the theme of this year’s music after all – endurance.

Brightly Painted One – Tiny Ruins

Right from Real - Lydia Ainsworth

Rooms With Walls and Windows - Julie Byrne

Boy From The North - Monica Heldal

So if you’re looking for a folk vibe on any given evening, because you’re not happy and you’re not sad, as Stephen Patrick Morrissey famously intoned on “This Night Has Opened My Eyes,” you could do worse than to cue up some combination of these albums in a random order. This is pretty music that isn’t without substance or heft. For example, the timbre of Julie Byrne’s voice alone will give you the shivers and the chills. Lydia Ainsworth is a bit Bjork-y, but in a good way.

The Moon Rang Like A Bell – Hundred Waters

Sea When Absent - Sunny Day in Glasgow

Ruins - Grouper

And if you want to add an extra dimension of weirdness and texture to your folk playlist, you might consider adding these three quirky little gems. They’re not exactly folky, but they would thicken your listening experience, and the bridge from the folk vibe to the experimental music vibe would be Liz Harris’ Grouper project, if you need a rationale, which I’m sure you don’t. The other common denominator here is that at least two of these three artists appear to be barking mad.

Minutes of Sleep – Francis Harris

Workshop 19 – Kassem Mosse  

The Air Between Words – Martyn

Awake – Tycho

What Is This Heart? - How to Dress Well

You’re Dead! - Flying Lotus

AURORA - Ben Frost

Xen – Arca

And so we come to the electronic portion of the round-up. There’s no real common denominator here, except for genre and quality. Francis Harris does his work in a meditative mode, so you could meditate (or work) to it rather easily. This is in the realm of sound and noise, and it’s very mentally satisfying. Kassem Mosse is slightly more percussive, and with more tweets and beeps, but it serves a similar purpose. The Martyn and Tycho albums are more accessible, but equally atmospheric – they are also just lusher in their sound than the much sparer offering from Harris and Mosse. They also share the fate of being underwhelmingly (and unfairly) reviewed at the time of their respective releases. Don’t listen to the reviewers. Listen to the albums. They’re quite lovely.  

Speaking of lovely, it took me a while to open up to the new How to Dress Well album, but I knew I would eventually. This isn’t even really an “electronica” album as such – it’s more of a sui generis headphone album with some beautiful plaintive vocals, as has become Tom Krell’s calling card. This one will repay your patience and repeated listening with a soulful and spiritual experience, if you’re open to it.

I’m still not sure what to do with Flying Lotus. I loved Cosmogramma, and was then very disappointed with Until the Quiet Comes, so I was prepared to bail on You’re Dead! until I heard it and realized that Steven Ellison, who is the nephew of Alice Coltrane, is actually purveying some rather cutting edge jazz here, which helps to make a lot more sense of the entire project, and also helps you to listen to it with the right ears on.

And I’m still trying to figure out if I like Ben Frost’s A U R O R A, even though (or perhaps because) it was so favorably reviewed. I have a feeling that there may be something of the emperor’s new clothes about it, but I’m still trying to listen with open ears.  I may just need to listen to it very loud, very late, and perhaps very not sober, for it to make more sense. Time will tell. This album also seems like the counterpoint to the Francis Harris album mentioned earlier, in the sense that while it is certainly meditative, it’s by no means always a peaceful experience. In any event, it definitely goes well with Flying Lotus, and perhaps also with Arca.

Xen, by Arca (who was born Alejandro Ghersi in Venezuela, but who has come to prominence lately as a producer for Kanye West, and who also helped to create the remarkable soundscape of the FKA Twigs album LP1) might turn out to be the sleeping giant of this crop of electronica. I love this album, and I already know that there’s so much more to discover in it. This is a deep well of sounds, both liquid and solid. You could get lost in this album and not come out for a long time. Be careful with it. It may not let you go.  

I’m giving all of these albums short shrift. Each of them is fascinating and cerebral, and each of them deserves your complete attention. But if I don’t get on with it, this list won’t be done until next Christmas.

Master Mix: Red Hot + Arthur Russell – Various Artists

Arthur Russell was so far ahead of his time that this sounds like an album of brand new songs by the contemporary artists who are covering him in tribute on the latest in the Red Hot + AIDS series. So influential was he that not only do these sound like new songs, but artists like Jose Gonzalez and Sufjan Stevens go out of their way (or perhaps they don’t even have to do that, such is their natural affinity for the songs) to emulate Arthur’s tremulous, plaintive and reedy vocal sound. The truly remarkable thing about Arthur Russell was that he could write what were almost folk songs, lovelorn, bare, acoustic things, expressing naked emotion (like “This is How We Walk on the Moon,” covered here by Jose Gonzalez or “A Little Lost” covered by Sufjan Stevens), and that he could turn right around and give you a straight-up dancefloor killer like “Tell You (Today),” done by Robyn here, or “Go Bang,” the absolute classic most likely known by the most people, covered very competently here by Hot Chip. The great thing about this album is that it hangs together as a complete album, which tribute albums don’t usually manage to pull off.

The Future’s Void – EMA

I Never Learn - Lykke

Li Queen of the Clouds – Tove Lo

No Mythologies to Follow – MØ

I liked these albums. They seem to make sense when you listen to them together. One of them is not by a Scandinavian artist. You may not necessarily be able to tell which one. The Lykke Li album is the best of the four, and contains anthems to burn, including the majestic “No Rest For The Wicked.” I’m clearly running out of steam now.

Lateness of Dancers - Hiss Golden Messenger

If nothing else, this album contains what is probably my favorite song of the year, “Mahogany Dread.” It gets a bit Dylan-y elsewhere, but that song is just perfect. Enough to earn a spot on the list, and probably a pretty decent album in its own right anyway. But “Mahogany Dread” is an instant classic.

Conversations - Woman’s Hour

I loved this album in the same way I loved the Rhye and London Grammar albums from last year. That should give you a pretty good indication of what it sounds like.

City Wrecker EP – Moonface

Moonface has become my new obsession over the last year. This EP is really the companion piece to last year’s stunning Julia With Blue Jeans On. If you liked it, you’ll like this. If you didn’t, you won’t. It’s really as simple as that.

Pith - Courtship Ritual

This album isn’t like anything else, so it gets to stand by itself. That’s kind of how the Godmode label operates. It’s not like anything else and we need it for that reason alone.

Popular Problems - Leonard Cohen

I read a biography of Leonard Cohen this year and gained a new appreciation for his work, because I hadn’t previously grasped the single-mindedness with which he approached it. Popular Problems sounds at first like “just another Leonard Cohen album,” until you realize what lies beneath such a statement. There is never “just another Leonard Cohen album.” Each one is carefully considered, its puzzles and traps mischievously laid out for your own consideration, if you choose to consider them at all. You could just let the songs wash over you as polite and reserved dinner party music, which is fine. But if you engage with them, they become their own Zen-Jewish-Catholic worlds of meditative contemplation and political observation. And the man is fucking 80, for crying out loud. How is he still doing this?

Dean Wareham - Dean Wareham

Dean will always be Dean. Even when he seems like he’s mailing it in, if you pay enough attention, kind of like Leonard Cohen, you’ll see that, like a duck gliding across a pond, what looks effortless is actually the product of a lot of paddling under the surface. Dean continues to glide and paddle simultaneously (and still effectively) with his first officially solo album, even though he just announced that Luna are getting back together. “Holding Pattern” is particularly good, but he does no bad work.

Familiars – Antlers

I only put this on the list because I’m still waiting to stop being disappointed with it. I hope that changes eventually so that I can say it was on my 2014 list.

*Benji - Sun Kil Moon

*Penalized for Mark Kozelek being an arsehole – go to the end of the list