#dangsonbestof

[dangsonnn]

cdamm’s 2014 Top Five Albums 3. Rick Ross - Mastermind

I’m pretty sure this is going to be the only year-end list where you see a Rick Ross album on it this season. I mean technically, it’s not even really all that good. Rick Ross as a public figure concept is waning, his character schtick is getting tired and we’ve kind of heard it all from him before. M-M-M-M-M-Maybach music blah blah blah.

What is it about this album then that has me coming back to it over and over again? Call it a guilty pleasure if you will, but this album bangs like few major-label rap releases I’ve heard in a while. Maybe it’s that I’m just insanely late to the Rozay party (I couldn’t really even get in to Teflon Don) but this album just has too many jams to even count. The full-on swagger-braggadaccio of tracks like Sanctified or War Ready have hooks on hooks and yet don’t really ever get boring. Oh, and for a big-budget rap album to have only one real skit, and better yet it’s legitimately hilarious? This doesn’t happen very often.

I’ve read before that as we age, our brains slowly lose the ability to easily process new sounds and we repeatedly fall back on familiar music or new artists that fit what our brains pre-conceive a certain genre should sound like. I’d like to think that I’m not quite there yet, but there’s no denying to me that Mastermind sounds like a blueprint for billionaire flexing swagger rap. If that’s the type of genre I’m listening more and more to as I age, I think I’m doing ok.

[dangsonnn]

3. Jessy Lanza - Pull My Hair Back

If the Junior Boys were ever to make a full-fledged R&B record, this would be it.  Except it is, because Jessy Lanza was the back-up vocalist on 2011’s It’s All True and this entire debut was produced by Jeremy Greenspan, one half of the aforementioned Canadian group.  Just describing this via namedropping would be doing it a disservice though:  Pull My Hair Back is an incredible heavy, emotional and textured release all tied together by Lanza’s voice and range.  The opening three-song stanza (incl. Giddy, above) is gripping and the album closer Strange Emotion encapsulates the entire 37 minutes perfectly.  Is this even R&B?  Does it really matter?

[cdamm]

ALBUM OF THE YEAR 

1. Darkside - Psychic

Nicolas Jaar is 23 and still attends university.  He also has headed two labels and is making some of the most innovative and unique music today.  

2013 was an incredible year for music.  We saw a lot of old acts continue to trudge on, not necessarily for better or worse, and a lot of new artists pop up seemingly out of nowhere.  As whatever iteration of the Internet we're on continues to warp and change how we create and consume music, it's the latter group of new artists that I'm increasingly becoming interested in.  Genres will likely cease to exist eventually as we all end up listening to "Music" instead, when it just becomes too difficult to pigeon-hole a release in to this or that context.  That's fine; music should be about the enjoyment over any need to classify and label.

Psychic is an incredibly atmospheric album with lots of peaks and pauses littered throughout.  What I love the most about it however is the genuine feeling of newness it imparts.  I don't think I've ever heard anything quite like this before, and in a time period where the roots of anything can be wiki'd back to their origin, I find that really exciting.

[cdamm]

3. Jessy Lanza - Pull My Hair Back

If the Junior Boys were ever to make a full-fledged R&B record, this would be it.  Except it is, because Jessy Lanza was the back-up vocalist on 2011's It's All True and this entire debut was produced by Jeremy Greenspan, one half of the aforementioned Canadian group.  Just describing this via namedropping would be doing it a disservice though:  Pull My Hair Back is an incredible heavy, emotional and textured release all tied together by Lanza's voice and range.  The opening three-song stanza (incl. Giddy, above) is gripping and the album closer Strange Emotion encapsulates the entire 37 minutes perfectly.  Is this even R&B?  Does it really matter?

[cdamm]

4. Toro Y Moi - Anything In Return

Chaz Bundick released the original mp3 of Blessa in the halcyon summer of 2009 and despite multiple re-works, two albums and a couple EPs under different monikers, had yet to top that perfect song.  Until now, that is.  Toro Y Moi's previous releases had some gems but always had an underlying feeling that Chaz was still figuring things out, still finding his sound.  Anything in Return is his most focused album yet, featuring more live instrumentation than ever and a unique energy and pace his past albums lacked.  So Many Details (above) has been on endless replay for me since it was teased at the end of last year, and this album hasn't faded one bit since its release in January.  Toro Y Moi is here to stay. 

[cdamm]

5. Disclosure - Settle

It's crazy to think about how far dance music as a genre has come compared to even five or six years ago.  Once considered a niche style, electronic synthesizers and loud distorted bass are now considered at times on par with more traditional music like pop and R&B.  Electronic music, like any genre, has its division between what is considered "New/Hipster" and what is considered "Mainstream," and a few artists/albums always cross that divide and appeal to both camps.  I can tell you now you are going to see Disclosure on a lot of year-end lists for 2013 because Settle is absolutely one of those albums.  Despite being 14 tracks and over an hour long, Settle flies by thanks to a constant change-up of guests, styles and tempo.  Their singles last year hinted as much, but I would never have expected Disclosure's first album to be as cohesive as this.

[cdamm]

Album of the Year: Grimes - Oblivion

This album is really everything I loved about music this year.  Completely new and different sounds from someone I've always enjoyed but never thought they had something like this in them.  I've come back to this album again and again since it came out, and when the digital copy wore out its welcome the vinyl release (with a different tracklist) made it sound new all over again.  The rest of the world had 11 months to put out something better than this- no one could top it.  Without a doubt, my favourite album of 2012.

[cdamm]

2. Jessie Ware - Devotion

This album came out of nowhere.  R&B has been one of those genres that has taken a lifetime for me to even begin to appreciate; maybe blame a saturation on MuchMusic when my young pre-teen version thought R. Kelly was just for girls (the innocence of youth!).  But, like rap, eventually it was the production that drew me in.  What started with a random single by some unknown vocalist produced by Julio Bashmore has turned in to one of the select few albums this year I've left on repeat endlessly since it came out.  You could focus on the three-way of incredible production contributions (Bashmore, along with Dave Okumu and Kid Harpoon) but that would be doing Ware a disservice.  It's ultimately her voice that ties the contrasting beats together in to a near-perfect album of R&B and pop, one that still sounds as good as when it first came out.