Top 5 Releases

2014 has very easily been the best year for music, at least since The White Stripes were still active. Spoon, Ryan Adams, TV On The Radio, Aphex Twin and Interpol all returned with strong releases after a few quiet years. Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Pink Floyd all added to their legendary discographies. But, more than anything it was a phenomenal year for women making music.

   R&B’s hypnotism launched further into space with the work from FKA Twigs, SZA, Jhene Aiko and Azealia Banks. Warpaint, Dum Dum Girls, Marissa Nadler and St. Vincent all made stunningly next-level records, while White Lung, Priests and Perfect Pussy chimed in with quick-burning records fronted by spit-fire, acid-tongued leading ladies. Everyone experimented and stepped just to the left of their sound. It was a year of wild transcendence for many musicians. Music was rich in 2014. Here are my Top 5 of 2014. Taken from: Independent Music Promotion’s annual list of the Top Releases of 2014.

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#5

El Pintor by Interpol

The black-clad doom-groovers of New York City returned with their fifth album, El Pintor, this year. Interpol parted ways with bassist Carlos Dengler at the finalization of their 2010 self-titled album. Paul Banks and company rebounded without bothering to fill in Dengler’s place. Banks took over duties on bass for the recording and the group soldiered on to create an album as good as their debut, Turn On The Bright Lights, released over a decade ago. “Breaker 1,” “Anywhere” and “Everything Is Wrong” charge ahead with the rhythm section’s angry brood. Banks’ voice coils around the looping guitar crescendos with anguish and disappointment. “All The Rage Back Home,” “My Blue Supreme,” and “Same Town New Story” are three of Interpol’s greatest songs, each built with tunneling song structures where, at any turn, the fragments of one’s heart might scrape off and disappear. El Pintor is the soundtrack of every empty skyscraper in New York City tonight. [Full review]

#4

Ryan Adams by Ryan Adams

Ryan Adams’ fourteenth, self-titled solo album is an album of stark, minimalist, pure-hearted rock’n’roll. The guitars are lean, stripped bare and fall in line with the rhythm section. The melodies are catchy and each song follows a basic verse-chorus-verse structure. Adams wades into territory just slightly left of his usual countrified sound. Gone is the country twang from his work with the Cardinals. His voice is more subdued, mushier. On “Kim” Adams deals with the sight of an old flame moving on with somebody else. The guitars latch onto the constant pounding of a snare and each line is bittersweet. Other times he sounds dejected and spiteful. “I don’t love you anymore,” he sings on “Am I Safe, “I just want to sit here and watch you burn.” “My Wrecking Ball” is the quiet folk tune Adams perfected on Heartbreaker and Gold over a decade ago. Ryan Adams is Adams’ best since 2005’s 29. [Full review]

#3

Deep Fantasy by White Lung

Deep Fantasy, by punk-Canadians White Lung, starts with a blaring ring like the oncoming warning of a missile as it enters enemy airspace. Vocalist Mish Way’s shrieks bleat against the punk crush and wailing sonic blast on opener “Drown With The Monster.” Way is powered by the onslaught from Kenneth William’s guitar, Anne-Marie Vassiliou’s drums and Hether Fortune’s bass as they go on to pulverize ten songs for 22 minutes. Deep Fantasy is the band’s third album. The carnage of White Lung is real. When they play live the band’s sound explodes from shitty amplifiers and Way releases the tension of the record with the ecstatic gymnastics of a front woman in charge of her aspirations. Press play then find cover. [Full review]

#2

Z by SZA

Z is technically an EP–SZA’s third–but it stretches out over ten songs and for forty minutes your mind is given all the fuel it needs to power each song for days after. The stoned songbird yawns, meditates then levitates in her colorful R&B prism, singing about headless Barbie dolls, Street Fighter and bumpin’ that Jadakiss. She’s concocted a sugary sweet sound with the all trappings of neo-soul and hip-hop, but with the foggiest of guidelines. SZA has kept her musical palette open, safeguarding her from ever being pigeonholed. Chance The Rapper slithers in a melancholic verse on the watery “Child’s Play,” while Kendrick Lamar punctures holes through “Babylon.” For the hypnotically lush “Sweet November” SZA twists Marvin Gaye’s “Mandota.” Her proper, debut album, A, is due for a release in 2015. If SZA’s first three EP’s were merely creative flicks of the wrist, I can’t wait to hear a whole hip thrust.

#1

St. Vincent by St. Vincent

There is no album that more succinctly wraps up the emotions of our digital existence than St. Vincent’s fourth, self-titled album. Annie Clark, the brains behind the music, vows to never settle for going straight. One of the greatest guitarists currently making music, she has progressed her sound by leaps and bounds since 2011’s Strange Mercy. Clark loves to throw a song into total disarray only to pick it back up like she does with “Bring Me Your Loves.” She can also write a straight-forward ballad straight from her pumping heart as evidenced by “I Prefer Your Love.” Nearly everything on the album is enveloped in the light fuzz of distortion and it pinches the back of the neck until the drool flows.

   Clark is joyfully weird on St. Vincent. Her confidence allows her voice to breach levels of ecstasy and devilment. Her penchant for experimenting with metallic textures and psychotic song structures gives her music an urgency, like it’s trying to constantly fake you out. She pushes the limits of what’s expected in a song and for that her name deserves to roll off the same tongue as Bjork, PJ Harvey, Erykah Badu, Laurie Anderson–the beautifully supernatural women of rock. The earth should be so lucky. [Full review] [Live review]

The Honorables: July by Marissa Nadler / Syro by Aphex Twin / LP1 by FKA Twigs / The Best Day by Thurston Moore / Amphetamine Ballads by The Amazing Snakeheads