Top Albums and Songs of 2014

Top Albums:

10. Real Estate - Atlas
9. This Will Destroy You - Another Language
8. Cloud Nothings - Here and Nowhere Else
7. Grouper - Ruins
6. Explosions in the Sky - Lone Survivor OST
5. White Lung - Deep Fantasy
4. Knuckle Puck - EPs
3. The War on Drugs - Lost in the Dream
2. The Antlers - Familiars 
1. Joyce Manor - Never Hungover Again

Top Songs:

And here's two-and-a-half hours worth of music to hold you over, with some words below:

Joyce Manor - "Catalina Fight Song": Yes, a one-minute song is my favorite of the year. I've been playing "Catalina Fight Song" nonstop -- and often on loop, something I almost never do -- and it still sounds as fresh and compelling as when I first heard it. Recalling Guided by Voices, Joyce Manor craft songs that are catchy, passionate, and, most of all, succinct. Listen to the guitar that sears through the drums midway through "Catalina." A typical band would've let that guitar play out and cut the opening verse neatly in two, but Joyce Manor refuse to waste a second here, so the vocals keep flowing, their rising intensity matching the amplifying noise.  "Catalina" becomes a minute-long crescendo without all the build-up preceding it, though the song really explodes in the last ten seconds and then abruptly concludes. After such a climactic minute, I feel stunned when the music suddenly ceases.  Somehow, though, I muster the strength to click my radio dial to the left...and then the song repeats.

Knuckle Puck - "Gold Rush": When you hear great pop-punk, it sounds so damn easy -- it really is a formulaic genre -- but few bands truly get the music right.  Often the vocals are too whiny, or the guitars are too distorted, or the hooks simply aren't catchy enough.  But when all a song's pieces do come together, you can recognize a classic instantly.  That's how I felt with Knuckle Puck's "Gold Rush," a song that begins with an urgent exclamation: "If I don't start sleeping on the floor again I'll be testing out my patience,"  This intensity is sustained the whole song through, but what's most remarkable about the track is its fluctuating dynamics: it is not three minutes of pleas, which would quickly grow irritating. Instead,  the vocals are always moving at different speeds and volumes that it's surprising how much you can hear in less than three minutes. (They buy into another pop-punk maxim: brevity is key.)  The group foregrounds the emoish vocals during the verses and bridge, where the band maximizes the poignancy of its universally relatable lines like "I swore I wouldn't feel this way anymore." Then there's the noisier chorus with jolting guitars and staggering drums, not to mention an addictive chorus which I always catch myself involuntarily singing around the house.  Nearing the song's end, the band uses a vocal effect so that the singer's voice swells up, making "Gold Rush" feel gigantic, epically important, which is part of the point: pop-punk magnifies our basic emotions (happiness, sadness, jealousy, anger), which to some seems melodramatic but to others feels like the whole damn universe condensed into a song. Knuckle Puck convince me that whatever they're feeling really matters, and for the three minutes I hear "Gold Rush," I'm totally lost in their world of emotions.

Flying Lotus, ft. Kendrick Lamar - "Never Catch Me": Best hip-hop song of the year.  Few rappers could keep up with Flying Lotus's spazzy beats, but Kendrick accelerates his vocals to blazing speeds, faster than anything heard on his impeccable good kid, m.A.A.d city.  Also check out the stunning video, which shows two young children rise from their coffins and dance through their funeral procession.

The Antlers - "Palace": After releasing Hospice, a devastating concept album acclaimed by critics, I feared that The Antlers might've peaked too early.  But the group's followup, Burst Apart, revealed a band eager to experiment sonically and starting to cultivate a distinct sound.  Following an underrated EP (Undersea), these guys have released the most beautiful and unique work to date: Familiars.  The album is ironically named: this music sounds totally dissimilar to other experimental/stoner indie/alternative music.  In fact, it's even a departure from previous Antlers albums.  Yet this is also a distinct Antlers record, one that no other group could have made.  Listen to how that inimitably angelic falsetto is paired with the ethereal soundscapes we heard on Burst Apart, in addition to warm, brassy horns, which simultaneously cut against the lofty sounds (bringing more earthy tones to the spacey keys) and increase the ambiance.  It's easy to get lost in these warm and oozy sounds until the vocals demand your attention midway through the song during the climactic exclamation.  Listen for individual parts, listen for the whole, listen closely or zone out. This song proves incredibly rewarding and durable.  Seems like they didn't peak too soon, after all.

The War on Drugs - "Under the Pressure":  It's so easy to get lost in the lush soundscapes of this gorgeous record.  We get more of the gauzy shoegaze that we've heard on previous War on Drugs albums, but here the melodies are richer and the songs flow more freely.  Take the album's opener, which ebbs and flows for nine minutes of carefully orchestrated guitars, keys, and muted horns.  It feels otherworldly and transcendent, but the Dylan-esque vocals always keep the song grounded enough that it doesn't loft away into ethereal nowhereland--the foreboding vocals shade these dreamy sounds with dreariness.  We witness this mixture of dreaminess and dread when singer Adam Granduciel admits that he's "trying not to crack under the pressure," and then the song briefly ruptures, all of its pent-up tension suddenly released.  As beautiful as this moment is, it's also the song and singer cracking.  Beautiful moments that capture Granduciel's lowest points.

Real Estate - "Had to Hear":  I liked this group's past album, Days, better than its newest, but this opener epitomizes everything people adore about Real Estate: laid-back vocals, catchy (and deceivingly intricate) guitars, and subtle but moving lyrics.  I just love the line "I don't need the horizon to tell me where the sky is/ It's a subtle landscape where I come from."  Gets me every time, even if I can't pinpoint why.  Maybe it's just a North Jersey thing (these guys are from a town about 15 minutes from me).

The Notwist - "Kong": A lot of publications vaunt Future Islands's "Seasons" as the indie pop song of the year.  I like the song (it made the cut), but give me "Kong" every time, a track that plays like a poppier version of Built to Spill, with the instrumental prowess of a Tokyo Police Club.  This one needs high volume -- let it be the (somewhat morose, but hey it's indie!) jam to your future summers.

Cloud Nothings - "I'm Not a Part of Me":  I still think CN's last album was better, but this song--and the performance of the whole album at the Bowery earlier this year--is superb.  It's no "Stay Useless," but it rocks hard and closes the record with a bang.

Explosions in the Sky - "Waking Up":  By now EITS have mastered the whole soundtrack thing.  And the whole making absolutely gorgeous, wordless music that conjures every bittersweet moment of your life, eliciting near-paralytic states of awe and introspection.  Yeah, that too.  This song brings lightness to a dark film (Lone Survivor) and a largely dark soundtrack, and it offers the chimey guitars and loud/soft dynamics one expects of an Explosions song.  What makes this one special is that the "explosive" crescendo is gentler, and dare I say prettier, than most EITS songs.  And the band operates under time constrains that their albums lack, pulling off an emotionally gripping, wordless song in under five minutes.  This track isn't to be missed by any EITS fan.

August Mixtape

Highlighting the songs I've discovered, rediscovered, or repeatedly played each month. The order reflects an attempt to create a cohesive mixtape, not to rank the songs in any way.

1. Guided By Voices - "Gold Star for Robot Boy."  Until this month, I had never listened to Guided By Voices, which seems like heresy given their huge reputation in lo-fi and indie circles.  After giving Bee Thousand a Spotify spin, I quickly saw why these guys are so hyped.  "Gold Star" especially stood out, a song that epitomizes lo-fi with its staticky guitars and barely audible bass. The track's poor quality brings an earnest urgency to the song -- the feeling that the music could cut out at any second and all the fun will be over.  Fittingly, "Gold Star" doesn't waste any time, though it doesn't linger either, clocking in at a mere minute and 39 seconds.  This seems surprisingly quick for a song that seems so full, but therein lies the band's brilliance: like their descendants The Strokes and Tokyo Police Club, GBV know how to pack big hooks into short pieces, making songs feel complete despite their brief run-time.

2. Kendrick Lamar - "m.A.A.d city."  This might be the most shockingly evocative rap song I've ever heard. Right away, Lamar warns his listeners "Brace yourself, I'll take you on a trip down memory lane" and then describes the horrors of living in one of America's most violent cities: "Seen a light-skinned nigga with his brains blown out / At the same burger stand where Crips hang out. / Now this is not a tape recorded saying that [his friend] did it, / But ever since that day, I was looking at him different."  Lamar continues with his brutal anecdotes until the violence seems too much to compute for the listener; the first verse is an emotional assault, heightened by the swelling, chaotic synths and jabbing drums, which evoke the "madness" he's describing.  For Lamar, Compton is like "Pakistan on every porch": there's "a wall of bullets coming from AK's, AR's"; gangs "pack[ing] a van with four guns at a time"; and kids as young as nine "packing nines."  Like his unrelenting city, Lamar offers no respite from the violence; once he concludes the first verse, he imagines, in a woeful combination of futility and fatalism, that "if Pirus [Bloods] and Crips all got along / They'd probably gun me down by the end of this song. / Seems like the whole city go against me: / Every time I'm in the street I hear *imitation of gun noises*."

For a second, Lamar creates the hope that this first verse was just a horrible nightmare, as static cuts off the violent hook and a new speaker commands Kendrick to "Wake yo punk ass up!"  But as the hook declares, there's no escaping Compton's horrors, so Lamar--now, incredibly, sounding like a different rapper--then tells a new story over an even more hellish beat (sampling Ice Cube's "A Bird in the Hand").  Here Lamar discusses smoking laced marijuana and staging a robbery at his job.  Later he asks, "If I told you I killed a nigga at 16, would you believe me?"  After this verse, I'm at a loss for answers.

The song culminates with Lamar poignantly describing the youths who've shared, and share, his plight:

[Kids] with dreams of being a lawyer or doctor
Instead of boy with a chopper that hold the cul-de-sac hostage
Kill them all if they gossip, the Children of the Corn
They vandalizing, the option of living a lie, drown their body with toxins
Constantly drinking and drive, hit the powder then watch this flame
That arrive in his eye; this a coward, the concept is aim and
They bang it and slide out that bitch with deposits
And the price on his head, the tithes probably go to the projects
I live inside the belly of the rough
Compton, U.S.A. made Me an Angel on Angel Dust.

Thank God this album ends with a message of hope because this song is absolutely crushing.

3. Beach Fossils (feat. Wild Nothing) - "Out in the Way."  Just a bit of a 180 from Kendrick: shoegazey gauze combined with twangy guitar plucking and ethereal vocals.  Sounds right up my alley.  Can it get better?  Yes, when you have a line as beautifully wistful as "In the darkness passing through / Tell me is it really you? / You don't look the same as when I was dreaming." Beach Fossils do shoegaze so well on this EP that they're almost their own worst enemies, as the pretty and ambient noises lull me into some blissful, semi-conscious state where I'm unable to concentrate on the song itself.  The music is a means towards an altered state, not exactly an end in itself.  That's why such powerful lyrics are so essential: they keep the listener grounded--focused on unpacking the singer's brooding thoughts and discovering the emotional impetus behind the track's lush soundscapes.

 

4. Built to Spill - "Out of Site."  When it comes to structuring a multidimensional rock song, I really believe that few bands could ever outdo what Built to Spill did on Perfect from Now On and Keep It Like a Secret.  I've written about this several times before, but I'm constantly amazed and inspired by the technical skill of these guys.  And they strike such an incredible balance between craftsmanship and raw emotion.  Just listen to the buildup of this song, how it climaxes to Martsch's nasally outburst: "Who gave you the right?  Who took mine away?"  This song might mark the climax of an aurally incredible album, though the gorgeous "Velvet Waltz" could also take that title.  Regardless, this is an intense listen, replete with billowing strings and various guitar noises (wails, watery echoes, screeches).  And Martsch's final vocals, where he repeats "on and on," sound like Nirvana gone orchestral, which sounds horrible--I know--but seriously, it works.  Just listen.

Pet Sounds-era Wilson

5. The Beach Boys - "Surf's Up."  I got a chance to read Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson this summer, and it offered fascinating insights into Brian Wilson's troubled life and, especially, his infamous Smile! project.  Who knows what the album would've been like if he finished it in the late 60's (Wilson eventually returned to and produced the album in 2004), but if it were released with songs anywhere near "Good Vibrations" and "Surf's Up," then, man, I don't know if the Beatles would still be the conventional pick as the gods of 60's rock-n-roll.  "Surf's Up" is such a stunningly complex song, where Wilson somehow blends disparate movements into a cohesive, transcendent whole.  It begins with pianos, which are eventually embellished with strings, twangy guitars, and other studio eccentricities. Then there's a pause at about 2:15, after which Brian begins his next piano movement featuring, amongst Van Dyke Parks notoriously esoteric lyrics, the revealing lines: "A choke of grief heart hardened, I, / Beyond belief, a broken man too tough to cry."  From a man who's had to cope with the bitter pangs of rejection (from his father, brothers, cousins, record companies, and so on), this is an incredibly poignant admission. Even more powerful,  though, are the earthshattering lyrics that follow: "Surf's up, / Aboard a tidal wave," Wilson declares. In this revolutionary line, Wilson marks the end of the Beach Boys's extremely popular (and lucrative) odes to surfing and the California beach life, announcing a more complex approach.  Unfortunately Wilson cracked under the pressure of reinventing the Beach Boys's sound.  But whereas Wilson could never complete Smile!, he did finish "Surf's Up," which carries on after this bold proclamation.  We get to hear what Brian calls "a children's song," which sounds like a euphonic mini-choir of angelic voices.  On a song where Brian hits almost inconceivable high notes, this gorgeous melody is the appropriate conclusion to an incredible song.

6. Joni Mitchell - "My Old Man." I've been obsessed with Joni Mitchell's Blue: its devastating, heart-on-sleeve emotionalism, frigid album cover, diverse arrangements, beautiful and historically illuminating poetry... I could go on.  But I don't have the time.  So I'll leave a lyric for each; hopefully they'll stun someone else like they have me: "But when he's gone, me and them lonesome blues collide. / The bed's too big, the frying pan's too wide."

7. Joni Mitchell - "Little Green."  "Just a little green, like the nights when the Northern lights perform. /
There'll be icicles and birthday clothes, and sometimes there'll be sorrow."

December Mixtape

Highlighting the songs I've discovered, rediscovered, or repeatedly played each month. The order reflects an attempt to create a cohesive mixtape, not to rank the songs in any way.

The final edition of the 2012 mixtapes.  Writing these has been a really illuminating and fun experience.  I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I did writing them.  Maybe there will be more to come in 2013--

1. Tame Impala - "Be Above It."  I don't know what created my aversion to Tame Impala; I guess it's that I can't overlook the glaring similarities between them and the Beatles (specifically John Lennon).  But since when do I only listen to 'original' bands?  Ultimately my reservations faded, and I kept going back to this song: it's a light, floaty, psychedelic trip, which actually combines my favorite aspects of the Beatles' music: their easy-listening pop roots and eventual avant-garde experimentation.  The mixture of the two elements actually avoids the pitfalls of pop and psychedelic music--over-simplification or excessive obfuscation, respectively--of which the Beatles were definitely occasional culprits. 

I've actually had this experience of loving a band I initially hated: I once thought the Blood Brothers' music was pointless, incomprehensible screaming, but something kept bringing me back to "Trash Flavored Trash," the first song I heard from them, which bizarrely combines poppy song structures with hardcore.  Then they became one of my favorite bands for several years.  Moral: I guess I need to start listening to music I initially hate as much as the stuff I initially love.

Top Albums of 2012, 2-1 + Honorable Mentions

2. mewithoutYou - Ten Stories.  Anyone that's a fan knows the story: mewithoutYou began as a post-hardcore band with spoken- and shouted-vocals and heavy instrumentals but gradually became less heavy and more experimental with each album.  The band's last record, It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's All Right, completely deviated from the group's hardcore foundations for a more melodic, singalong aesthetic.  Moreover, whereas earlier albums focused on Weiss' personal struggles, Crazy! centers around fables concerning anthropromorphic animals and vegetables.  So when mewithoutYou announced that their fifth album would be released in 2012, it was anyone's guess where the guys would take their sound.

I don't know anything about truth, but I know falsehood when I see it, and it looks like this whole world you've made.

To my relief, the first song I heard was the thunderous "Fox's Dream of the Log Flume," which features one of Weiss's strongest deliveries ever, as he shouts his last-gasp vocals for two and a half minutes.  Weiss also leads the equally relentless instrumentals, as the rattling guitars, thumping drums, and grooving bass follow his volatile vocals up and down the windy track.  The song is a part of a larger narrative about a circus train's crash in 19th century Montana, and here we listen to the conversation between the escaped Fox and Bear.  But this is not a simple allegory; it's a densely-packed discussion of truth, existence, God, love, and death.  We have brilliant one-liners like, "some with certainty insist 'no certainty exists,'" and there's even some comedy, as the bear recollects: "I asked her, 'do you ever have that recurring fantasy / where you push little kids from the tops of the rides?' She shook her head no and I said 'Oh, neither do I.'" But while culling Weiss's lyrics is often inspiring, it's not always illuminating to the song's grander message: the Fox had once "mistook signs for signified" (or mistook words for something real or concrete) and thereafter tried to find Truth separate from language ("tied my word-ropes in anchor bends").  But the Bear questions whether the Fox can certainly deny all certainty in language and directs some blame at the Fox for their aimless travels: as the Fox withdraws from the world's illusions of truth ("all the bearing points we thought we knew") they move "waywardly on . . . it's still dark on the deck of our boats / haphazardly blown, broken bows."  Between language and silence, certainty and doubt, the Bear announces: "I think it's pretty obvious that there's no God / and there's definitely a God."  Then, during the song's climax, the fox imagines their death in the album's boardwalk/carnival-themed imagery: " I charged at the waves with a glass in my hand / and was tossed like a ball at the bottle stand / and landed beside your remains on the stones / where your cold fingers wrapped round my ankle bone / while maybe ten feet away was a star / thousands of times the size of our sun / exploding like tiny balloons you'd throw darts at." 

This mock trial can no more determine my lot than can driftwood determine the ocean's waves.

The song is a stunning commentary on religion and post-structuralism: if language creates illusions that block Truth, how do we seek and communicate Truth outside of language?  The Fox claims certainty exists, but the Bear is skeptical, finding contradictions in seemingly oppositional binaries: certainty/uncertainty, existence/nonexistence, Truth/Falseness.  The song invokes numerous questions: Why must animals discuss these very human issues?  What does each animal represent?  What does it mean to sing a song renouncing language?  We never receive answers, though we do see the Bear and Fox again in the album's penultimate song, where the weary Bear envisions St. Agnes and jumps off a cliff: "We'll fly in straight lines as from carronades / we'll crash like tidal waves, decimate the islands / as our hollowed lumber falls like water, ends where I start."

Did you come knocking on my door?  Or did I come to yours?  Whose ship came washed up on whose shore?

As if the lyrics were not rich enough, the box set I purchased comes with a twelve-inch lyric booklet with interpretive drawings of each song, providing an interactive and extremely rewarding aesthetic experience to accompany the music. The album is a gift that keeps giving: Weiss's lyrics are difficult but certainly not impenetrable; it simply takes time and experience to unlock his messages.  But it's not just the lyrics that are profound; the music on Ten Stories is wonderfully varied, from the big electric guitars, heavy bass, and wild drums on opener "February, 1878" to the deceptively heavy melodies of "Grist for the Malady Mill."  mewithoutYou also find new ground on songs like "Cardiff Giant," which contrasts bright, jangly guitars with Weiss's heavy screams, and "Fiji Memory," which features wailing guitars over acoustic strums.  

I saw how far I've traveled down the solipsistic road. I climbed out to ask for directions. . . .  [They] asked about the passage from the Bible on my wrists, but I couldn't catch my breath enough to answer.

I know I sound like a fanboy when I describe this album, but Ten Stories is the most engrossing record I've heard all year; each song has layers of meaning that need unpacking to adequately convey its brilliance, and frankly I'm still digging into many of them.  Like mwY's other albums, I imagine I will be listening to Ten Stories for a long time, and it will grow with me over the years.  Overall, Ten Stories represents the intersection of the band's heavier roots with its more experimental, melodic ambitions -- a kind of Hegelian synthesis, which is fitting, since the album ends by quoting Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit:

all circles presuppose they'll end where they begin, but only in their leaving can they come back round.

1. JAPANDROIDS - Celebration Rock.  I had a hard time deciding between mewithoutYou's sacred "stories" and Japandroids's secular "celebrations," but the reason I ultimately gave Celebration Rock the nod is a simple one: it's the record that made me happiest this year.  Celebration Rock is a fantastic album, an enormous leap forward from the occasionally amazing but mostly uneven Post-Nothing.  I blasted this album in my car all summer, screaming along with Brian King as he shouts, "OH YEAH! ALL RIGHT! Hearts from hell collide on fire's highway tonight."  The duo said that they anticipated their fans' live reactions to their new songs while recording their fittingly-titled album, and they shouted and screamed to their songs as if they were their own fans.  It's a pretty cool recording philosophy, and it shows.  Plus, it worked.