11. Taylor Swift - Red
Okay now before I lose all credibility and you stop reading this list immediately, let me explain. This is definitely my guiltiest of guilty pleasures because when I’m listening to it privately with earphones and find myself giddily dancing along to lyrics like “Tonight we’re made of starlight” I certainly do feel humiliated and want to die. Having said that, and girly juvenile sentiments aside, Taylor Swift knows how to write great pop hooks. And that’s what Red is full of. This thing is mammoth in size (16 tracks!) and yet every melodic line is a stand-out. Yeah, the lyrics do kind of suck and are all about the same mawkish pains of relationships (“Everything Has Changed” being the exception), but you still can’t help but giddily sing along.
10. Schoolboy Q - Habits & Contradictions
Grimy, perverse, and disconcertingly dark. Habits lies waiting in the darkest corner of a dirty alleyway in some forgotten neighborhood. Whereas Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon (which he samples) was the soundtrack for that twilight period of 4am, full of restlessness and insomnia, H&C is the pitch black zone of midnight. Perhaps no track exemplifies this aesthetic more so than “Raymond 1969” which samples the sinister trip-hop beat from Portishead’s “Cowboys”. Yes, technical rhyme skills on full display; yes, dope beats that challenge the format while still making your head nod; but they’re all soaked in the darkness under your bed and the skeletons festering in your closet.
9. The Early November - In Currents
Ace Enders is a great songwriter who can pull out a great melody at will. But it’s always been the other ⅘ of The Early November that injected his songs with a surge of aggression, bringing otherwise personal acoustic numbers into the territory of loud rock club crowd surfing material. I think the temporary break-up was good for them because you can feel the renewed sense of vigor that seems to have recharged their chemistry, and it’s felt all throughout this record.
8. Grimes - Visions
How does one manage to sound both familiar and bizarre at the same time? Somehow, Claire Boucher reassembles once well-established and even hackneyed electronic sounds into something wholly original. At first, I thought, “Oh great, another 20-something twerp with a laptop and a microphone.” But once you hear that gossamer voice layered on top of itself, melting into the background and then reappearing in the foreground, all set to danceable rhythms and smart synths, you realize that this alien is actually from earth.
7. Sigur Rós - Valtari
After the rocking Takk... and the accessible Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, Sigur Rós pull back for their latest studio album, favoring languid soundscapes over drum-heavy tension builders with blasting climaxes. And it turns out to be one of those albums that washes over you, that accompanies a long train ride. I appreciate them switching back and forth album to album and though I prefer the explosive Sigur over the quiet, this one still had me in its entrancing grips.
6. Japandroids - Celebration Rock
Pure exuberance. Every track is dripping with its two members’ unmitigated enthusiasm and they give their all into every note, riff, and drum beat. It’s this generation’s punk rock that hearkens back to an older, much more raucous, and messy sound, while still venturing into the new decade. But it’s not about a revolution or rebellion or sticking it to the man. It’s music that prompts you to go sprinting down the street as fast as you can, yelling as loud as you can. It’s exalting, it’s exhilarating, and above all, with a title most befitting, it’s a Celebration.
5. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!
Two grand opuses and two abstract soundscapes. That’s it. And yet, when you finish listening to it, you’re a different person, you’ve gone from point A to point B, carried by some unrecognized vessel. What Godspeed do so well is make every song of theirs a journey. Because listening to their compositions isn’t just a passive experience—it’s an invitation to go somewhere, to migrate. And as long as they’re leading, I’ll go wherever they take me.
4. Flying Lotus - Until the Quiet Comes
FlyLo has become the definition of avant-garde hip-hop. Yeah, hip-hop’s been elevated to high levels of art by many artists and performers but to me, FlyLo’s work is more suitable for museums than radio stations. Not to say that this shit is not funky. He still keeps it moving and pulsing. What I appreciated about Quiet is that he took a minimalist approach, regarding silence as an element that was just as integral as any other sound. With that kind of attention to detail and careful structuring of what’s heard and not heard, you get the sense that he’s not just punching buttons into Reason or plinking some keys, but that he’s carving free the angel from the marble.
3. Further Seems Forever - Penny Black
Another welcome reunion that resulted in some excellent results. Listening to Chris Carraba beautifully caterwaul his way through these songs reminds you that FSF’s vocalist position was, and always will be, meant for Chris and Chris alone. With 12 tracks of soaring choruses, intricate guitar lines, complicated drum patterns, and all the other trappings that make FSF exactly who they are, I was done. They hadn’t conformed to the contemporary trends, they’d stuck to their guns, and it was a natural continuation of their music that couldn’t have been written in any other time than now. They open up with "So Cold" but their reunion left me anything but.
2. Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d. city
Okay, this was tough. With good kid being number 2, I think it should be obvious what the top choice is, right? I liken the difficulty of choosing between these two albums to that of the impossible decision of my favorite film in 2007, torn between There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men. On one hand, you had PTA’s epic of huge proportions, a dense masterpiece that refused to give easy answers but stood as an intimidating force of nature, let alone a work of art. On the other hand, you had the Coen brothers’ sharp and perfect execution of storytelling with all the fat cut off and not a single superfluous element to be found. Ultimately, I went with No Country as the best movie because I couldn’t deny the immediate visceral reaction to the story and the incredible thrill of the ride. Blood at the time was still being worked out in my mind, with its layers of meaning still being uncovered. Over the years, it has flipped. I now regard Blood to be the superior film in every aspect and it has aged very nicely in terms of its skill and subject matter.
Now, what the hell does this have to do with Kendrick Lamar? (Okay, getting to the point.)
I regard good kid, m.A.A.d. city to be this year’s No Country for Old Men. It is a masterpiece of visceral storytelling. I love the nonlinear narrative. I love the skits that are absolutely necessary and color in just the right amount of context for each song. I love the progression of events, the spiraling, and the eventual realization that K. Dot makes in escaping a life of crime and revealing the true rhyme and reason behind his music and why he does what he does. I love that every single rhyme, every beat, and even every guest appearance, only serves to add to this narrative. So much to love about this record. I’ve listened to it over and over, and with every listen, I receive pleasure both through the intellect of new insights from the story and through the gut of just dope ass beats and insane verbal acrobatics (which changes style effortlessly between every song and even sometimes within the same verse!). So many concept albums offer up a loose narrative that doesn’t follow through and is held up haphazardly by ambiguous lyrics that seemed to have been tweaked ever so slightly just to maintain the concept. But the amount of dedication and commitment Kendrick puts into telling this story is blatantly apparent. The script to this “short film”, as he subtitled it, is airtight. We don't have an up-and-coming rapper that is just skilled and charismatic, we have a natural born artist that has put work and extended care into his craft. Having said that...
1. Frank Ocean - channel ORANGE
...whereas K. Dot kept it clear and unequivocal, Frank Ocean spins his narrative abstractly, furtively, and with as many digressions as strict adherences. Obviously, Frank is this year’s Paul Thomas Anderson. What’s downright appalling about channel is the sheer volume of brilliant melodies that’s laced in this thing. There are no two ways about it, Frank Ocean is a musical genius. And he didn’t stop at writing a handful of great, memorable, beautiful songs. He infused one consistent theme with deft subtlety and told an incredibly vulnerable story. Though he outed himself in a screenshot of a Text Edit file on his Tumblr, he already pried himself open for the likes of a surgeon to inspect in the content of his songs.
To say that I prefer channel over good kid is really a disservice to Kendrick because they're both amazing records. But maybe it’s my acknowledgement of my changed mind of admiring Blood over No Country. It just feels like later on down the line, the album that will hold up with timeless power will be Frank Ocean, crooning in a naked falsetto, too delicate for words, too heavy for emotions.
Musical talent isn’t enough for Frank. Melodies can be gorgeous, but what sets him apart and brought him to number 1 for me is that he knows they’re meaningless if his soul’s not wrapped all over it.
