A year in musical confusion !
My ears in 2014 were a bit lazier than usual, waiting for random surprises to drop by, rather than hunting for hidden gems. It surprisingly felt like a homework at times to catch up on new music. The reward was still similar to other years though: a lot of happy late night listening, drenched in all kind of beauties and pearls, my life at the office also allowing more passivity and sharing towards all kinds of genre, including some wonderful oldies ('Let England Shake' is still a strong and safe bet, all the time, everywhere). If I could also come back on last year's list, Valerie June would certainly climb to the top 5-10 positions, still being on constant listens this year.
I would passionately try to find a trend in this year's crop, but there is no obviousness at all, a bit of status quo too, in both my taste and in the landscape of what should make this year more special. I'm craving for timelessness, and it is not happening. Exit last year's obvious trend of slow, minimalist RnB à la 'Autre ne Veut' or 'James Blake'. It had a bad effect for me with FKA Twigs, highly anticipated, but which left me with a feeling of discomfort (sadly, she's even a bit annoying). I simply (not passionately) loved a lot of albums from some older indie favorites. Alt-J, Beck, Interpol, Lana del Rey, Liars, Metronomy, Spoon, all released very well crafted albums. Foster the People, Broken Bells and Bombay Bicycle Club all share one spot here, giving me enough to dance to and feel hopeful about simple efficient pop music.
U2 failed miserably, and drown in their ill advised self-entitlement (assumed U2hater). Chris Martin got his heart broken, leaving him with the same lyrical prowess of an 8 years old teenage girl who learned about love on the Disney Channel and Hannah Montana.
But the pleasant surprises (one especially) came in the last quarter, and it redeemed my will for doing this list in the first place. I really love this.
See also the Best Songs of the Year
The best Electronic/Ambient/Experimental music of 2014
_____________________________________
60 - WOMAN'S HOUR - Conversations
I like that, a lot of potential, but discovered too late.
59 - OUGHT - More Than Any Other Day
I like that, a lot of potential, but discovered too late.
58 - CYMBALS EAT GUITARS - Lose
I like that, a lot of potential, but discovered too late.
57 - COLDPLAY - Ghost Stories
Yeah, I still listened to it too many times, masochistically. But I always get caught in their populist trap, always. "Oceans" is a beautiful song that could have make the cut on Parachutes. "Magic" is the easiest love/hate catchy trap, and "Midnight" is good, even if it fails at trying anything (new?) at all. The biggest problem, as always with this band, is the fucking stupid lyrics that makes you want to punch an 8 years old version of Chris Martin in the nuts.
A special mention to "A Sky Full Of Stars": This song literally made-my-jaw-drop. It is so bad that it made me angry for over a week. Even worst than “Fix You” and “Whisper”. Ouch!
Seldom are the times where I’ll share music on social networks to revel in hate and disdain. I did it, trolling the pre-pubescent lyricism about stars/hope/love, completely baffled to see that this Avicii collaboration got a lot of fervent praise. It became an inside joke with friends, lampooning our friday afternoon with loud nonsense like this one, next to “Friday” from Rebecca Black. I ended up playing it quite often this year, an attention a mess like this certainly does not deserve. :-D
56 - BRETON - War Room Stories
55 - FINK - Hard Believer
54 - THE RURAL ALBERTA ADVANTAGE - Mended With Gold
53 - RÖYKSOPP & ROBYN - Do It Again
We've heard Röyksopp and Robyn collaborations before, so this whole EP came full of promises. It seems to me that only "Monument" reaches this promised (swedish) cohesion, with slow icy paces elating your brain, all out in space, only to downpull the warmth of the song with midsong bluesy horns, efficiently grounding the song's palpability. The song is a Monument: big (long), expansive, reverential and well crafted. It is also full of restraint and finesse, one of the trio's best.
52 - JONATHAN BOULET - Gubba
51 - KLAXONS - Love Frequency
49 - TV ON THE RADIO - Seeds
48 - ANGEL OLSEN - Burn Your Fire For No Witness
47 - THE ANTLERS - Familiars
45 - KING CREOSOTE - From Scotland With Love
44 - tUnE yArDs - Nikki Nack
42 - SUN KIL MOON - Benji
Sorry Mr. Kozelek, this album is very good, and honest, and heartfelt, and straightforward, but you lost your stupid war against The War on Drugs.
41 - ANDREW BIRD - Things Are Really Great Here, Sort Of...
39 - LA ROUX - Trouble in Paradise
37 - CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH - Only Run
35 - JAMIE T - Carry On the Grudge
34 - BLONDE REDHEAD - Barragán
I've lost touch with Blonde Redhead two albums ago (I only listened twice to the awfully diluted 'Penny Sparkle'). I thought "Dripping", when it came out as an early single, would announce a well needed 'return to basic' (it is in the 'Melody Of Certain Damaged Lemon' territories). But it is an isolated gem of hazy groove, dreamy bass, and hoarse vocals. It is cleverly paced, closing on enough sonic distortion to sustain Makino's sensuality and the Pace brothers uncanny hums.
33 - ELBOW - The Take Off and Landing of Everything
32 - DAMON ALBARN - Everyday Robots
30 - A SUNNY DAY IN GLASGOW - Sea When Absent
29 - RÖYKSOPP - The Inevitable End
28 - DAMIEN JURADO - Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son
27 - LYKKE LI - I Never Learn
This album is both so so good, and so so repetitive, it makes be both happy and annoyed. It would have get a much higher ranking if I did this list a few months back, but its legacy already faded drastically in my opinion.
26 - HOORAY FOR EARTH - Racy
25 - CYMBALS - The Age of Fracture
24 - MOONFACE - City Wrecker
22 - ST. VINCENT - St. Vincent
21 - PLANNINGTOROCK - All Love's Legal
20 - SHARON VAN ETTEN - Are We There
19 - FUTURE ISLANDS - Singles
There isn't much to say here. To me (and everybody I guess), it started with a live performance on David Letterman, where Samuel Herring had a once in a lifetime dance triumph, making Letterman exhilaratingly speechless. We all had one thought in mind: dude dances like an overexcited uncle drunk on christmas punch, dressed in black, his pants too short and an unkept receding hairline. But uncle Sam grooved it hell intensely, goddamn serious (no hipsterish second degree irony), with classic rock band power energy, rasping thick voice: the best normcore outfit on earth to sport the best pop/rock song of the year: "Seasons (Waiting On You)"
17 - BROKEN BELLS - After the Disco
17 - BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB - So Long, See You Tomorrow
17 - FOSTER THE PEOPLE - Supermodel
These come together as a bundle that brought me proper pop enjoyment over the year, with a lot of listens and numb-struck passive appreciation, with Supermodel being the most adventurous (and listened to), and After the Disco being the most easy-going.
16 - LANA DEL REY - Ultraviolence
Lana trades her pop for what has always been at the core of her theatrical persona: a guitar-lead nostalgia for sex, drug and rock n roll.
15 - METRONOMY - Love Letters
I failed to see "The English Riviera" as Metronomy's transitional album, shifting from a proper electro-rock experimental outfit, to a more soft, melodious wonky pop band. I longed for more "Black Eye_Burnt Thumb" (still my favorite Metronomy song), but they rather chose to build on songs like "The Look", with its essential doo-wop beach attitude. I now embrace it completely, and "The Upsetter" shines as this gorgeous, dark pop moment (I've got it bad / And now this heart beats black / So black / Oh yeah). The song brings us back to the "riviera", first with acoustic guitars begging for love's attention, then with the electric guitars warbling for heartbreak's melancholia, and as she is "really giving him a hard time", we are gifted with simple voyeuristic pleasures. This is all sumptuous and brilliant.
14 - OWEN PALLETT - In Conflict
13 - BECK - Morning Phase
This is one of the folk-singer-songwriter-bluegrass-contemplative Beck album (not the like shapeshifter experimental ones). This is 'Sea Change 2014', and it sounds very very refreshing still.
I did not know what happened to Beck in the last few years (where he's at?), and his new album seems like a confession that he did not know either. These are hymns to desolation, solitude and old ruins; the solitary withdrawal after the party in the city. "iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisolation", he laments airily in the final section of the pristine "Wave" (a favorite). "I'm so tired of being alone" he sings, gloomily resigned, on the first notes of Blue Moon, further begging "Don’t leave me on my own". It pains to hear, when even his most soulful ballads of the past seemed tinted by a sea-shine California optimism. But Beck is sad, and he tells us (and makes us sad too). This is especially true on the beautiful, top-folk, S&Garfunkel-infused "Turn Away": "Turn turn away / From the sound of your own voice / Calling no one / just a silence". Did he voluntarily doubled or layered his vocals, so at least it seems like he's singing with himself? Here the agony is deep, and empathy is grand. But the pain seems serene, composed and reverential. The fingerpicking is pristine and stabbing. Oh the beauty of one's sorrow.
12 - WILD BEASTS - Present Tense
11 - INTERPOL - El Pintor
Ah ! Interpol ! I'm fated to like you even when you crawl low. But this is not the miserable Interpol, longing to find success and identity after the cursing monument they built at the turn of the millenium. Here they don't try too hard, flying forward without the determining touch of Carlos Dengler, and it serves them well. Like always, they sound so Interpol (the misty, ambiance-heavy Interpol), and jeeeeez do I like it. The piercing, echoing guitars of Kiesler are racing around pleasingly. The instruments swell together atmospherically, something they've been doing since 'Our Love to Admire', rather than fighting at angles, mathematically as on their first two post-punk records (I know, it will always be such a shame).
"All the Rage Back Home" is a grower, a mighty single with momentum, and so is "Ancient Ways" (with its bonus, welcomed falsetto trick). "Anywhere" is the most TOTBL they've sounded in years. "New Town, Same Story" is gorgeous, with looping hammered guitars, and vocals a bit too close to Banks' solo-efforts. I've grown fond of "Breaker 1"'s obscurity. It rocks big and dark (with stupid lyrics), swirling in unpredictable directions, showing the potential of three musicians fusing glamorously into one big wall of sound (also on Ancient Ways). My head bangs, and that's what I want here now. "My Desire" bears all the success of these atmospheric modes. Again, the guitars are so bright aloft, but their loops and echoes build such a dark fog of sound, and precisely this tension is a trademark I've proceeded to embrace, ever after, for better or worse.
10 - GAZELLE TWIN - Unflesh
SEE THE YEAR'S BEST ELECTRONIC/AMBIENT ALBUMS HERE.
"Matching supermarket bleeps and blinking surveillance cameras with disquieting carnal imagery and a low-slung, half-whispered crawl, this is a paranoid glance over the shoulder in music video form. It churns away as mechanically as a barcode scanner, but feels as instinctive as breath on the back of your neck."¹
This is an artist who fixates on daily socio-alienations to engulf her art, dragging her whole body-mind discomforts in the mix. The music is of genuine violence, with remarks on public/private schizophrenia, pulsing with carnal estrangements in the realm of technology, the horror of having to fix your own bodily existence in the world. In these themes she explores paranoid identities (she performs with her face hidden) and alienated embodiments (the album is titled Unflesh, with an album highlight titled "Anti-Body"). But despite these broad global commentaries, these are songs that really look inward, inside Elizabeth Bernholz's guts: bowelism, belly, maggots, meat, I feel blood, miscarriage, and her own Body Dysmorphic Disorders. I haven't seen such convulsions being portrayed so vividly since the gorgeous, otherworldly Upstream Colors (Shane Carruth, 2013). The lyrics are sharp and concise:
I can feel the eyes
Looking over me
Following my skin
Cannot cease to be
she signs on "Anti-Body", on a nervous backdrop of electro bleeps (weirdly very danceable). "It's coming at me / it's coming at me" she warned desperately on the opener title track. Quite suitably, the music will leave a mark in your flesh, with no immediate redemption, eating raw your own ability to sleep and forget.
09 - THE WAR ON DRUGS - Lost in the Dream
The hype machine, in their review of 2014, hailed The War on Drugs' Lost in the Dreams as the best album of the year in their own category of "getting into classic rock without actually having to listen to classic rock". It might explain why it took me good listening time to 'get' the hype (I did listen to 2011's Slave Ambient, which I liked a lot). But at first I thought it was some kind of second-degree retro wet dream, the same twist that distances me from acts such as Kurt Vile or Parquet Courts (ok, I loved Destroyers' Kaputt precisely for these reasons). I felt it sounded like a long lost Bryan Adams album, or late Bob Dylan (on "Eyes to the Wind"). Even Rod Stewart ("In Reverse") ?? Yes, Adam Granduciel is a conservative purist. And this unfashionable aura ended up being a genuine quality for me. It's a precise form of universal rock-music, which transforms the american land and red-neck revelries into vernacular traditions. It is so beautifully delivered, classic with nuance and refinement, forthright and sincere. I read that it stemmed from a depressed, heartbroken state of mind (yep: "I'm just bit run down here at the moment / Yeah, I'm all alone here / Living in darkness"), and that "Haunting Idle" instrumental track in the middle follows painfully the album's visceral themes: a landscape of exile, the displacements of a rootless body and soul, re-opening on the redemptive "Burning", where he seems to be giving himself a chance: "Cross the rich derivative of pain / Crush the burning in your heart / Wide awake / To redefine the way you listen in the dark / Dreaming, starting / Like a stranded kid in a doorway / Just burning"). This song is one of the strongest here, just like "Under the Pressure" and "Red Eyes", which kick off the album with such grip, rock-dancin', road trippin'! Hey, The War on Drugs, no need to pain yourself so good: you got me at "Whoooo".
08 - PERFUME GENIUS - Too Bright
This is another example of an indie act which I snubbed in the past, clinging to this new specific album for no other reasons other than the obvious: This music is of such high quality production, a coherent whole of passionate vulnerability, raw doubts and autobiographical chunks. I have to admit I often skip the first song, "I decline", even if it's a thing of honest beauty (a bit too slow?). But it's the long break of frail laments on "Fool" that caught my guts at first. Then it's the variety of sonic approaches: mostly piano power-pain-ballads ("No Good", "Don't Let Them In", and "Too Bright"), frightening haunting chants ("My Body" and "Grid" with its horrifying tortured gospel back vocals), but also a new blend of gutsy, in your face, synth-pop pleasures (the obvious favorite "Queen", and "Longpig"). Then, darkness reaches a very sad low on "I'm a Mother", where Mike Hadreas' crippled breaths sing Fever Ray-ishly of his shame not to procreate in a natural way. It's hard to say why this album does not make me want to revisit his back catalog (the 2 first albums), but maybe it's because of how I perceive this one in my musical adventure: an unexpected bubble of haunting, pristine and very 2014 music. Or, to put it in his words, I feel it as "just be a lump, or a mist of smoke with eyes, (...) just an energy, moving around"¹.
07 - SPOON - They Want My Soul
Spoon released a pretty fit album, adding to their strong anthology of trusty, concise and humble art-rock. It's ever clearer now: they make albums, not singles. It's not about reinventing the wheel, but about knowing damn well what they do best, and re-shaking their own indie pioneerism. Still, "Do You" ranks in their own top ten singles. "Inside Out" is bald and bare, while "Outlier" is trippy à la Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung. "Let Me Be Mine" is a very personal favorite here, as I hear in it the insurgent qualities of the album as a whole: Daniel wishing to own his art, not by rendering it obscure, but by asserting it in a defiant morality, expressing the elusive choice of creating without being eaten alive. This song is an idealistic "chunk" off his will to feel "untouched".
On first listen, Goat sounds like they make the kind of 'World Music' (the title of their first album) that would play on the Carré D'Youville stage of the Festival d'Été de Québec (playing "The Light Within" most accurately). Then, there is the gimmick of their costumes, which I still don't know what it announces in therms of sound and style. Voodoo, cannibal, psychedelic, conjuring abracadabras? Like a sacrifice offering to some kind of devout devilry? African tribe music? (they are from Sweden!)
Yes, there are bits of all that, the music truly being in the psychedelic realm: "Goatchild" could be a set performed by The Doors, if they ever chose to play Woodstock 69. And I sense some kind of spiritual-funk-force emanating from the beautiful "To Travel the Path Unknown" (a clear favorite of mine) and the final section of the trippy "Hide From the Sun", like ritual music offered to whatever gods are responsible for casting solar eclipses (hiding you from the sun). The album opens on some kind of shrine bells after all, on a song titled "Talk to God". But despite the costumes, its rendered in no kind of artifice or con pretenses. There are amazing skills involved, a sense of grand space creation, lofty guitar reverbs performed for intricate desert wastelands (Woah! Those solos on "Hide From the Sun"!!), and the final product is not exactly hippy-like, but closer to a strong artistic manifesto from a band in complete control of its means.
05 - ALT-J - This Is All Yours
This album is a grower. It is less randomly scattered than its predecessor, but for some reasons it also sounded less interesting at first. But goddamn, did they manage to cram a lot of beautiful sections in less than one hour. The first half is sequenced cleverly, with what could be seen as three delicate, lofty 'intros'. These will tell you quickly wether this album is for you or not: a lot of air input, breathing music, either inhaled easily or giving you gastric reflux. These intros than announce "Every Other Freckle", the "Tesselate"-ish piece of 'This is All Yours', followed by the "Breezeblocks" equivalent, "Left Hand Free". This progression worked before, and it does even better here with proper songs rather than clumsy interludes. "Hunger Of The Pine" is genuinely one of the most achieved piece by the band, brilliantly paced, putting forward Newman's peculiar trademark vocals (still, with the music video being as senseless as most of the lyrics). The album could have been 15 minutes shorter, but "Intro" surprised me as one of their most adventurous/original piece to date, with sampled, canonic church-like vocals structured on raw drums and beautiful guitare loops (are these steel drums? a synthesized organ?). Another very good album (not brilliant), from a very compelling and refreshing band (not yet brilliant either).
04 - TIMBER TIMBRE - Hot Dreams
I won't pretend like I know this band well. All I know is that I was never hooked immediately on previous albums, and I was instantly with this one. It's an honest love affair for its retro-moods and well balanced country/landscapes imageries, similar feelings I found in 2011's Danger Mouse's Rome album. I hear a simple soundtrack for desert rides, or in its sharpest moments, for 50's (Californian?) suburban bliss. Parts of it could be taken from an efficient spaghetti western voiced by Roy Orbison (!?), other bits from Portishead's Third album. It is precisely this time-lapse tension that twisted my guts and took me elsewhere, in a voyage of great characters and atmospheres. It made me wish I took my gal to the prom in 1955 and dance lavishly to the sax of the title track "Hot Dreams", fled the crooks cruisin' in a Holiday 98 Oldsmobile on "Curtains!?", campfired drunkely on (and in) "Grand Canyon", and drowned in theatrical despair, making love to my mistress on "Run from Me". Yep, this is music for operatic mental images, and I clinch to these sonic intoxications quite poetically.
"Brats" was for me the best track of 2012's WIXIW. It was a bold move towards electronic, especially for fans who loved their most introverted garage terror-ballads (Drum's Not Dead is still my all time favorite Liars album, and how I got to know the band). I myself even felt a bit guilty for loving this dancy trip, because I used to love Liars for very different reasons and styles. But Hey! Liars have been consistent in releasing each album in impervious, tight, new sharp turns, and this new album picks-up where "Brats" left us two years ago. 'Mess' truly is Liars' dance album (if anything they release could be called 'dance' music), while it keeps their trademark inclinations for horror-filled, unsettling and panicked flows of music. So it's not like it has any kind of consideration for you moving your ass - it is hermetic and claustrophobic still - but it's filled with synths, electro-pulses and icy growls. And I found myself embracing it completely.
If you play the album's first track and the last one back to back, you might get a sense of what voyage this album will take you on, and get a reminder (with the final track mostly) how much of a Liars album this is. The first half is filled with ample synth marches, almost demonic in moods, of loud and heavy vigor, culminating in "Pro Anti Anti", banging politically with such violence and impact. The last four songs, from "Boyzone" to "Left Speaker Blown", hover more typically on Angus Andrew's trademark frightening voice, howling low like his soul finally surrendered completely to the inner chaos of the music: "Time it speeds into itself, I've known it all along / I'm so old, I am old / Endless monotony dulls all alternatives / Life is long, way too long". On what could be called Liars' most upbeat album, the last notes of the album are truly sad, drenched in despair and dementia.
Jungle afro-beats! Jungle Funk! Electro-Soul! I couldn't care less if the vintage gloss of Jungle's debut album is all too evident, drenched in a pre-written recipe for easy hyped success (bring that kid to dance, and you've got the Youtube hits). Experimentation is mostly withdrawn in the name of witless catchiness, and I'll take all the numb-headed dance on earth. This album is trippy, it is discotheque ready, multicolored and kaleidoscopic. It's all beats and basslines, resolutely contemporary even if it is digested in retro-heat and passé swag (maybe à la Prince). The album appears seamless, stable as the moon, cohesive, not really as a complete whole, but because it is packed with 12 highlights, single-ready material. This all makes for a very very swaggering, yet strong debut album for the London twosome.
Opener "The Heat" shines with darker funk and urban commotions. "Busy Earnin'" should be patented as a de facto 'happy-go-lucky' anthem. "Time" is climactic in scale and is ready for break-dance battles. "Drops" is a darker companion too, for late night strolls, with an almost Bon Iveresque tear-jerking melancholia. I pick this as a favorite as it has all the groove in the world, but shines in restrained experimentation, maybe one of the most intricately simple moments on the album, trading fanfares and trumpets for textured laments. It is simply gorgeous.
01 - ADULT JAZZ - Gist is
I can't seem to remember how I first heard of Adult Jazz. I indeed know jackshit about the band, where they're from, how they (progressively or suddenly) reached such mastery of sound. The album lifts you with sonic summersaults, sharp turns, uturns even, all with minimal melodies, interlocked and meshed savvily. The style is composite: melodious deviations and mood shifts, something Alt-J have been trying to experiment with (rather successfully, yet with clumsy interludes), for the sake of emotional turbulences. Adult Jazz are better visionnaires, recreating these volte-faces inside the same song's progression, sometimes even in the same 4/4 ten seconds. This is true for the uncertain voice patterns, and it is true for the the dislocated melodies.
They aptly titled the album's opener "Hum", with austere croons on top of stretched textures, the rest of the album more garage-percussive, music and texts often built on a single layer of original percussions. The moods are balanced successfully with "Spook", a wistful/painful centerpiece. For me, "Spingful" achieves all of this in five sections: only the first one halts in a breath, the other four building gorgeously on what was layed before, fusing the styles and lyrical games of the previous sections. Then start the grooves, and yes, it's all dancy nifty fancy. Mid-song, It attains a first minimal but sheer beauty (still relatively muted), fusing hints of the song's previous inflections ("Still a lover / but for sugar / In my vein"), then it shifts to an hopeful agression of (steel?) drum-jams, (So let us join up and be Springful / Your prevision is more than a mouthful) and closes with coalesced musical accordance, all artistry and refinement, similar lyrics expanded with layered textures. What was first a pleasure in dissonance, becomes a thrilling, reconciled sublimity. Man is this exciting music!
