The Best Albums of 2014

 

2024 is halfway over now, and I was tempted to write some sort of "halfstravaganza" list looking back on the best releases so far this year. For fear of repeating myself across multiple lists covering the same albums, though, I thought a look backward might be a bit more interesting so I dredged up a list I had previously posted elsewhere of the top records of 2014, which will all be celebrating their first decade of existing this year. There were a few minor additions and subtractions and some shuffling around based on how gracefully each of these has aged over the past ten years, but for the most part the albums comprising this list hold up remarkably well even today. The 10-year anniversary is always a great excuse to give something a revisit, and if there are any entries you might not have heard back in 2014 then, well, what are you waiting for?

- 30 -

Weaves - Weaves

Indie Rock / Noise Pop

Weaves' self-titled debut fulfills the purpose of an EP perfectly: it provides an accurate sampling of the band's prowess but is just brief enough to be over too soon, leaving the listener clamoring for more over the coming months until a full-length drops. The six short songs on Weaves give a taste of the uncontainable energy of these upstarts, with vocal outbursts and pummeling guitar and a hodgepodge of electronic effects and percussion that just won't let up. Make sure you can hold your breath for about eighteen minutes, because once Weaves get going they won't give you a pause to catch it.

- 29 -

Avey Tare's Slasher Flicks - Enter the Slasher House

Neo-Psychedelia / Psychedelic Rock

Retaining the same segmented polyrhythmic structures of 2012's Centipede Hz, Avey Tare's project with his other "rock band" Slasher Flicks eschews the cosmic conceits of that record to produce something a lot more grounded on our home planet. Enter The Slasher House's wormholes are those tunneled into the dirt by the creepy crawlies buried beneath our feet, and while the murky production sometimes clouds over the pummeling rock melodies with a thick dust, Tare's and collaborator Angel Deradoorian's intertwining vocals illuminate the Slasher House's cavernous walls with a naturally glowing energy.

- 28 -

Bear Hands - Distraction

Indie Rock / Post-Punk

Bear Hands' debut, Burning Bush Supper Club, was a jangly pop album of loosely psychedelic tunes that did MGMT better than Congratulations. Distraction, the follow-up, sounds more like if Yeasayer went post-punk, ushering the listener through its brief runtime with propulsive chord progressions and Dylan Rau's nasally, sing-speak vocal rhythms. Opening with one of 2014's best build payoffs in "Moment of Silence", the rest of Distraction is similarly explosive.

- 27 -

Leaf House - LLEEAAFFHHOOUUSSEE

Neo-Psychedelia / Indie Pop

Leaf House is another one of those bedroom pop projects that I primarily admire for its impeccable ability to recreate Animal Collective's distinctive sounds, and the practically shouted album title makes it abundantly clear that this comparison is right on the nose. Though "Leaf House" the song was the opening track on the more freak folk-leaning Sung Tongs, Leaf House the musician makes sample-heavy psychedelic electronica that only throws back as far as 2009's Merriweather Post Pavilion. While it does similarly incorporate a lot of the vocal tradeoffs and harmonies that made that album so euphoric, LLEEAAFFHHOOUUSSEE's unique strength comes from the zany song structures to which only the twisted, zigzagging tubes on the cover art can compare.

- 26 -

Owen Pallett - In Conflict

Art Pop / Chamber Pop / Electronic

It appears as though all of my favorite orchestral folk-pop musicians have finally gone full-blown electronic. Owen Pallett has been heading in this very direction ever since he dropped the Final Fantasy moniker on 2010's Heartland, but its follow-up replaces almost all of his signature acoustic strings and percussion with synth arpeggios and pulsing drum kits. Enlisting the legendary Brian Eno for both production and guest vocals, In Conflict's dark sparseness often calls to mind the more rock-oriented songs from Eno's Another Green World and Before and After Science, and though his crystalline compositions are now coated in a glossy sheen, Owen Pallett's songwriting has never been more direct and personal.

- 25 -

powerdove - Arrest

Freak Folk / Avant-Folk

powerdove’s melodies may be simple and repetitive, but their accompaniment, especially on the disarming Arrest, is the complete opposite. Reaching for anything from scraping percussive blasts to hypnotic accordion drones to stir up in their cauldron of freaky avant-pop, singer Annie Lewandowski’s trio of noisemakers warp and woof through a complexly textured series of striking miniature revelations.

- 24 -

Alvvays - Alvvays

Twee Pop / Jangle Pop / Dream Pop

Alvvays' jangly, dreamy surf rock sound is the sort of generic indie touchstone that never goes out of style, but few of their influences or contemporaries have such a knack for structuring the perfect pop song. Gently twee but with impressively sturdy hooks, their self-titled debut is an easy listen that somehow stands out from everything else in the rotation.

- 23 -

Future Islands - Singles

Synthpop / New Wave

Future Islands brought back the bangers on Singles, and judging by the album title it seems like this was all too intentional. On the Water, though an excellent follow-up worthy of its predecessor In Evening Air, showed a more pensive and restrained direction for the band that eschewed some of the grit that made their breakthrough so exciting, so you can imagine the smile on my face when I first heard Sam Herring and cohorts blast out of the gates with "Seasons (Waiting on You)" and preserve that momentum through the majority of the record. We can all joke about how a song chronicling the season fading into fall and having the winter wash away what's left ended up as Stereogum's "song of the summer", but there's no denying that "Seasons" and all of its Singles brethren are as powerful, dynamic, and loud as the jams that drew me and other fans toward Future Islands in the first place.

- 22 -

Panda Bear - Mr Noah

Neo-Psychedelia / Psychedelic Pop / Electronic

"Mr Noah" is the first taste of Panda Bear's Meets the Grim Reaper era, and its extended single collects three additional outtakes from the same sessions that produced the album. A return to the loop-based, sample-heavy style of Person Pitch after the more baroque Tomboy, what sets the songs on Mr Noah apart from Noah Lennox's prior work is that he composed most of the dub- and '90s hip-hop-inspired samples himself. Showcasing the more vibrantly "busy" sound touted in interviews supporting the album announcement, the songs on Mr Noah sound too good to be throwaway, and often outshine the ones relegated to the main album.

- 21 -

Warm Graves - Ships Will Come

Art Rock / Post-Rock

Warm Graves make extended post-rock jams out of dirt and haze, whipping up a dust cloud to obscure the meek, reverberated vocal presence of frontman Jonas Wehner to the point where you can't tell if it's one person singing or a choir of kid ghosts. Their full-length debut Ships Will Come is a purgatory constructed for those lost souls, a dark but hopeful space for them to linger in as they await salvation.

- 20 -

Eno & Hyde - High Life

Art Rock / Afrobeat / Ambient Pop

Legendary ambient producer Brian Eno joined forces with '90s basement techno autocrats Underworld's Karl Hyde for a rhythm-centric foray into, well, highlife, that calls to mind Eno's fruitful collaborations with David Byrne. Over the course of several epics such as standout "Lilac", the pair simply refuse to let up on their uniquely fast-paced, angular afro-beats.

- 19 -

Kevin Drew - Darlings

Indie Rock / Dream Pop

Kevin Drew has never been shy about his sexuality, penning songs such as "Lover's Spit" and "Me and My Hand" for his tenure with Broken Social Scene which respectively describe intense make-out and masturbation sessions. While his lyrics with that band might have been less noticeable thanks to the misty haze of the knotted, multi-instrumental compositions of his collaborators, Drew's solo material brings them to the foreground with only a minimal accompaniment of electric guitar with a soft-rock sheen. With songs like "Body Butter" and the almost too literal "Good Sex", Darlings is all about love, lust, and the universal human truths of each, and Drew's elegant delivery and smooth production only make that message more direct.

- 18 -

Zammuto - Anchor

Art Pop / Folktronica / Glitch Pop / Math Pop

It took longer than usual for me to warm up to the icy winds of Zammuto's latest, and it wasn't until I saw Nick & friends perform the songs live that I fully grasped its complex structures. More sophisticated than his prior approach of finding a cool sample and running with it for a whole track, many of the songs that make up Anchor exhibit slow builds into some kind of release, usually in the form of a bouncing synth arpeggio. The rollicking bangers leading up to the album's release such as the catapulting "IO" and the cascading outtake "Corduroys" didn't adequately prepare me for the level of sonic detail painstakingly applied to the less obvious tracks like "Electric Ant" and "Great Equator", and Anchor's exquisite production vindicates Nick Zammuto's claim that he poured as much time and energy into this new project as he did into any of his work with The Books.

- 17 -

Death Vessel - Island Intervals

Indie Folk / Art Pop / Dream Pop

I first heard about Mike Savage's Death Vessel project through the collaboration with Sigur Rós frontman Jónsi on "Ilsa Drown", the first single off of his third album, Island Intervals. Savage shares a common aesthetic in terms of the whisper-like quality of his delicately forlorn falsetto and patiently unfurling atmospheric folk-rock, though Death Vessel sounds more like the incarnation of Sigur Rós at Joffrey's wedding in Game of Thrones than it does the real band thanks to the medieval fantasy renaissance fair vibes that pervade his unique compositions.

- 16 -

Caddywhompus - Feathering a Nest

Noise Pop / Math Rock / Neo-Psychedelia

Does anyone remember Chris Rehm? He's the guy who spent the first few years of the new decade making noisy bedroom folk (or was it folksy bedroom noise?) that invited comparisons to Animal Collective's Here Comes the Indian with its subtle textures and visceral electronic effects. Well, I was recently surprised to learn that Chris Rehm is now fronting the math rock duo Caddywhompus, and if you do remember his work that may surprise you, too, as Caddywhompus sounds almost nothing like Rehm's solo project (except for his endearingly awestruck, balloon-shape vocals). Chris is definitely still a fan of noise and static as his rolling hills of guitar are blown out to the point of distortion, while drummer Sean Hart does his share to keep things in the red with his stomping gait, and together they join forces to excavate the rapid peaks and valleys of Feathering a Nest, Caddywhompus' sophomore effort that expands upon the sound of their debut in every way possible.

- 15 -

St. Vincent - St. Vincent

Art Pop / Art Rock / New Wave

Judging by the scuzzy punk of "Krokodil", the first Record Store Day single taster of St. Vincent's progression after her 2011 opus St. Vincent, I was concerned that the full-length follow-up was going to fully embrace the garage sound that's always been at the fringes of her work but never taken center stage. Thankfully, Annie Clark's self-titled fourth album chose to go in a different direction, opting instead for the whizzes and bangs that characterize her interpretation of electronic funk. Just as loud and exhilarating as its predecessor, St. Vincent reshuffles Clark's winning combination of thrashing guitar licks and circuitboard embellishments into a stacked deck of groovy glam-rock.

- 14 -

Circulatory System - Mosaics Within Mosaics

Neo-Psychedelia / Psychedelic Pop / Sound Collage

The title is apt, as Circulatory System's third installment of deconstructed retro-psychedelic pop and tape experiments is fragmented even further than on their self-titled debut or 2009's surprise comeback Signal Morning. Split across 31 snippets, the album's patchwork of sunshine pop and sound collage carries the same emotional heft as mastermind Will Cullen Hart's best material fronting this group or with the legendary The Olivia Tremor Control.

- 13 -

felicita - Frenemies

Bubblegum Bass / Deconstructed Club / Glitch Pop

Layering chopped vocal snippets of what sounds like a conversation between teenage valley girls over top of jittering, abstract, and rubbery synth soundscapes, felicita's Frenemies EP preemptively deconstructed the hyperpop and bubblegum bass genres spearheaded by PC Music before their signature sound had even fully coalesced.

- 12 -

Deerhoof - La Isla Bonita

Indie Rock / Noise Pop / Art Punk

Trading in Breakup Song's explosive energy for a more subdued record of shoegaze ambience and post-rock rhythms, Deerhoof sidestepped expectations yet again with another notoriously brief album of avant-pop ditties. Built around tickling staccato guitar stabs and plucky bass notes, the jams on Isla Bonita are some of the headiest Deerhoof have ever made, and Satomi's signature tongue-in-cheek squeals and yelps bumble through increasingly surreal lyrics to match. Drummer Greg Saunier, meanwhile, increases the presence of his oddball, angelic pipes with respect to the bizarre playground of noir-infused tropicalia that makes for Deerhoof's twelfth mini-masterpiece in nearly as many years.

- 11 -

A Sunny Day in Glasgow - Sea When Absent

Shoegaze / Dream Pop / Noise Pop / Neo-Psychedelia

Philadelphia shoegazers A Sunny Day in Glasgow's blend of multi-tracked vocal melodies and noisy production is somewhat unique within the genre, often coming across like a tornado that's sucked up a bunch of random detritus as it blunders back and forth across an urban landscape, and Sea When Absent drives a nail into the elusive sound they've been grasping for since 2007's demure debut, Scribble Mural Comic Journal. After a brief foray into shimmering, blissed-out neo-psychedelia with the sophomore Ashes Grammar, the group's fourth proper record hits harder and with a darker sound, as evoked by the imagery of the faded palm blustering in the wind that adorns its cover.

- 10 -

Sisyphus - Sisyphus

Glitch Pop / Abstract Hip Hop / Art Pop

Rebranding their collaborative project to the more Googleable Sisyphus, Sufjan Stevens, Son Lux, and Serengeti expanded their s / s / s avant-electro-pop fusion into a full-length debut. Though more focused and less spastic than Beak & Claw, which incidentally was my favorite EP of 2012 for those very reasons, the self-titled still embodies the same mushrooming bombast with its bubbling, fantasy-colored backing tracks for Serengeti's pulsing poetry and Stevens' autotune sighs.

- 9 -

Wye Oak - Shriek

Indie Rock / Synthpop / Dream Pop

There was a trend in 2014 of bands who normally focus on more typical indie rock fare becoming increasingly electronic, and Wye Oak are no exception. But it's not the studio trickery of the synthetic soundscapes that makes Shriek so exciting, it's the sharpening of the duo's superb songwriting abilities that stand out with even starker contrast against a backdrop of sine waves than they do when buried in a mix of wall-of-sound guitars and drums. Jenn Wasner's deep, sultry vocals belt it out across soaring anthems ("Glory", "The Logic of Color") and more gentle balladry ("I Know the Law", the title track) alike, and the patient, steadfast production carries her forward with a sense of momentum the likes of which has never before been so evident in Wye Oak's music.

- 8 -

Names for Sounds - Billow Green

Indie Folk / Ambient Pop / Electronic

Just like I'd hoped after hearing Names for Sounds' first three fantastic EPs from the year, Brian Barth gifted us with a debut full-length of the same gorgeously heartbreaking folktronica that rose to meet my ridiculously high expectations for the project. Also produced by Nick Zammuto, the cherry on top of Billow Green's atmospheric acoustics and angular rhythms is the stunning collage of its concluding track, "A Collision", which gives The Books' most spine-tingling emotional peaks a run for their money.

- 7 -

Kemialliset Ystävät - Rattoisaa Virtaa

Folktronica / Neo-Psychedelia / Glitch Pop / Sound Collage

The Finnish psychonaut supergroup upped the ante from their noisy freak-folk beginnings with Alas Rattoisaa Virtaa, a collection of improvised and euphoric electronics that skitters, stutters, squeaks, and purrs seemingly haphazardly. Small miracles occur multiple times per track when the performers stumble on a propulsive beat or liquid groove and keep it together for just long enough to grab the listener's attention and carry it through to the next moment of catharsis.

- 6 -

JJ - V

Indie Pop / Dream Pop / Electronic

JJ's latest feels like their biggest statement to date, and not just because it's the first time they've used uppercase letters for their band name and the roman numeral that adorns their fifth official release, V. While most of the duo's numbered output thus far has operated in the realm of gently unassuming balearic pop, their most exciting offerings have always been the mixes and mashups that demonstrate their obsession with American hip-hop and all of its flair. V is the first collection of songs that incorporates the grandiosity of rap's big egos and epic arrangements into JJ's original material, resulting in an amorphous ether of ascending strings, heavenly melodies, and cinematic production that shimmers with the newfound confidence of a pair of musicians finally coming into their own.

- 5 -

Vacationer - Relief

Indie Pop / Nu-Hula

Vacationer improved and enriched their breezy, nu-hula sound in almost every way imaginable on their second album, Relief, resulting in a bright collection of summery pop songs with enough heart to keep yours warm long after the season is gone. The soaring sing-alongs of the aptly-titled "Heavenly" or "The Wild Life" are enough to bring a smile to the face of even the coldest curmudgeon, and the rest of Relief keeps in step with its bushy-tailed charm and tropical grace.

- 4 -

Korallreven - Second Comin'

Dream Pop / Electronic

Though I thought Korallreven's debut, An Album by Korallreven, was decent all-around, it wasn't until Elite Gymnastics remixed its first single "Sa Sa Samoa" that I really started to pay attention. Its application of ecstasy-fueled rave rhythms to their feathery brand of dreamy, balearic electronica was a stroke of genius, and the brains behind the project, Daniel Tjäder, definitely took notice. Second Comin' incorporates the same liquid energy poured into that remix, only in addition to festival synths it also adds eclectic samples of harmonica, flutes, and more. Notable collaborators abound, including the reclusive Cornelius and I Break Horses, and Tjäder's masterful incorporation of their distinctive contributions makes for a blissfully euphoric dance album that's an easy pill to swallow.

- 3 -

Perfume Genius - Too Bright

Art Pop / Chamber Pop / Synthpop

Mike Hadreas' Perfume Genius project had thus far been about devastating tales told from a creaking piano bench with a hushed falsetto and haunted strings, and while 2012's Put Your Back n 2 It threw more instruments and effects into the mix, the tone was still one of ethereal isolation. Though there is a traceable lineage with its predecessors, Too Bright is a reinvention of that sound that is paradoxically both more glam and a lot more sinister. Channeling disparate influences ranging from Elvis Presley's rockabilly vocal contortions to former roommate Jamie Stewart's twisted shrieks, Perfume Genius has crafted an aggressively eclectic album of avant-pop where moments of silence hold just as much weight as the notes that shape them.

- 2 -

Kishi Bashi - Lighght

Art Pop / Chamber Pop / Psychedelic Pop

You know an album is good when you can't help but listen to one of its outtakes on repeat for several hours at a time. As was the case for me with "Brandenberg Stomp", the Bollywood-inspired medieval jam that closes out the pair of bonus tracks on the deluxe edition of Lighght, Kishi Bashi's sophomore effort named after Aram Saroyan's one-word poem. The rest of the album had been similarly looping in my headphones for months before the deluxe version arrived, whether it soundtracked my walk home from work or a road trip into the great outdoors of the Pacific northwest, as K Ishibashi's diverse ear candy productions ranging from the fluttering synth wings of "Hahaha Pt. 1" to the Final Fantasy crystal theme of "In Fantasia" to the layered cosmic swirls of "Bittersweet Genesis for Him AND Her" proved to be even more infectious and awe-inspiring than anything on his debut, 151a, could ever have predicted.

- 1 -

Adult Jazz - Gist Is

Art Rock / Ambient Pop / Post-Rock

Every once in awhile an album comes around that's so ferociously original and uncompromising in its elegant delivery that you can't help but take notice. I could use this blurb to discuss how Leeds band Adult Jazz fit into the experimental indie scene defined by Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, and Bon Iver, but it wouldn't even begin to do justice to this beast of an album to compare it to what came before. 

Comprising a set of nine impeccable melodies of heart-wrenching abstract folk, Gist Is is adult "jazz" in the sense of the loose, improvisational quality of its rhythms and textures that emerge from the tumbling array of sounds hanging in the space between tone and silence. Harry Burgess' syncopated, soulful croon seems to be constantly eyeing up its prey; peering around the corners of the convoluted, maze-like structures crafted by this feral quartet. Though often masked with pitch-shifting and warbled effects, his tender heart bleeds through and into the visceral outpouring of flesh and bone that makes for not only the best album of 2014 but also one of the most striking debuts of the entire decade.