Here goes. I was thinking of posting some random Amazon reviews, but ultimately I decided to write my own.
1. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Push the Sky Away (15 points)
Venture into the U2-specific parts of this forum, and you’re bound to see several comments about how one should not expect anything new of Bono, Edge, and co. How could you when they have already explored so much territory over their thirty-odd years as a band? Mr. Nick Cave is here to demonstrate how patently absurd that excuse is. Every bit the industry veteran as U2, Cave has been even more dynamic and creatively restless throughout his career, dealing in everything from bittersweet piano balladeering to depraved post-punk rampages. And yet with Push the Sky Away, over three decades into his career, he has put out his most accomplished and moving album to date. In fact, to find an album this fully-realized, this well-executed, this self-assured, one has to go all the way back to 1994 and Portishead’s Dummy. Simply put, Cave has made the finest album of the last twenty years.
The trick lies in how Push the Sky Away sustains its frayed, trembling mood without ever losing its momentum or inspiration. Multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis is arguably the MVP in this regard, his violin flourishes adding depth and warmth to songs where otherwise Cave’s baritone vocals might mire them in total darkness – see especially ‘We Real Cool” in this sense. The sequencing too keeps the listener in anticipation: tracks like “We No Who U R” and “Water’s Edge” feel at first like they are being restrained, but the resulting tension is such that when album highlight “Jubilee Street” moves into high gear, the catharsis is enough to kick your goddamned head in. A similar dynamic is at play in “Higgs Boson Blues”: a hypnotic riff and stream-of-consciousness vocals evoke an opiated haze until a sudden burst of energy toward the seven-minute mark rouses both Cave and the listener from their torpor.
In his review, LemonMelon mentioned the impressionistic quality of the lyrics; I would echo that observation. “Higgs Boson Blues” is again illustrative in this regard. Detached observations from a man who has seen and done it all flit in and out of the picture: a dimly-lit European road, a crossroads in Mississippi, Miley Cyrus on safari. “Finishing Jubilee Street” takes the theme one step further, recounting in lurid detail a dream Cave had immediately after completing the track in question. It’s one of the most inventive tracks of the year and indicative of a man who remains as vital a force in music as he has ever been: explorative, uncensored, and, as “Jubilee Street” would have it, beyond recrimination.
2. The National: Trouble Will Find Me (13 points)
“Hey Joe, sorry I hurt you, but they say love is a virtue, don’t they?” “Sea of Love,” like Trouble Will Find Me as a whole, sees the saga of Matt Berninger continue. After breaking into the professional world on Alligator and coming to grips with adult responsibilities on Boxer and High Violet, he’s now accepting his choices – and mistakes – on the surface but in reality fighting mightily to live with them. This fundamental tension between a stable exterior and a unraveling interior is what drives Trouble – perhaps a familiar theme for Matt, but now his bandmates have created a musical landscape that encapsulates it in more subtlety and beauty than any entry in the band’s catalogue. As always, the Devendorf brothers ground the songs in lockstep rhythms, allowing the Dessners free range to experiment with textures and flourishes. “This Is the Last Time,” for example, moves effortlessly into a brooding outro accented with a lovely vocal from Annie Clark, while “I Need My Girl” uses impeccably-placed synth lines to accentuate the gentle guitar line at the heart of the song. “Pink Rabbits” adds another change of pace, following the lead of recent piano ballads like “You Were a Kindness” but distinguishing itself through a just slightly off-kilter lead riff and a soaring hook in the outro that will stick in your head for days.
Ultimately, though, Matt is front-and-center, again delivering a set of alternately self-deprecating and heartbreaking lyrics about the disappointments and frustrations embedded in daily life. It’s the rare vocalist who can take a line as simple as “I can’t blame you for losing your mind for a little while – so did I” and make it sound like a manifesto about the inevitability of growing apart. It’s “Don’t the Swallow the Cap,” though, that might best encapsulate Matt as a lyricist and vocalist: putting forward the image of self-assurance but never quite feeling comfortable in his own skin; wanting to reach out to certain people in his life but never quite feeling confident enough to do so. To be sure, it’s not a happy message, but it is comforting in the sense of a band making honest music with total conviction and no signs of slowing down.
3. Tim Hecker: Virgins (12 points)
Tim Hecker’s music is strongly associated with place for me. Though I admired the first album I heard from him – 2011’s Ravedeath, 1972 – on the first few spins, I didn’t completely absorb it until I gave it a careful listen while staring at the winter ocean out the window of a plane. So it was as well with Virgins, an album that seemed perfectly suited to a frantic taxi ride through New York City on an overcast, rainy December afternoon. Virgins takes the same basic approach as its predecessor – acoustic instrumentation surrounded by heavily-processed soundscapes – but where Ravedeath felt expansive, Virgins is claustrophobic, merging the live and processed instrumentation in confrontation rather than harmony. “Stab Variation,” for example, is an appropriate song title given the slashing pianos that compete with increasingly insistent drones; the two “Virginal” tracks follow suit, while “Stigmata” turns up the distortion such that it suffocates the keys at the foundation of the track.
Hecker has always had an ear for balance; after the unrelenting intensity of side one, he wisely opens side two with a pair of understated ambient pieces that incorporate a variety of acoustic instruments: the flutes on “Amps, Drugs, Harmonium,” for instance, go a long way toward lifting the mood, but there’s enough of an ominous quality on it and “Incense at Abu Ghraib” to keep the listener in anticipation of the sonic deluge to follow. The dexterity with which he moves between these different soundscapes is second to none – I’d call this the finest electronica album of the year, but what Hecker is doing here stands apart from that genre or anything else I’ve heard. Perhaps it’s not for everyone, but in the right environment it will not fail to move you.
4. James Blake: Overgrown (10 points)
Not only is “Retrograde” one of the finest songs of the year, but it also encapsulates the growth James Blake has made between his eponymous debut and this year’s Overgrown. Whereas the debut relied almost entirely on open space as a backdrop for his soulful vocals, Overgrown orchestrates textures and sounds to accompany that voice. The hummed melody that introduces “Retrograde” gives way to an understated vocal before exploding into a wall of synths, a type of crescendo nowhere to be found on the debut. When Blake gets this formula right, as on “Digital Lion,” “Voyeur,” and the aforementioned “Retrograde,” the results are spellbinding: lush arrangements that develop fluidly and pitch-perfect vocals that emphasize his range without being showy. He still has that knack for sparse, spacious arrangements as well, but he is more willing now to throw twists into them, as on the guest verse from RZA on “Take a Fall for Me.” The sum of these parts is an album that retains the strengths of its predecessor while adding vital elements to the mix – no sophomore slump to be found here.
5. Janelle Monáe: The Electric Lady (10 points)
Janelle Monáe had a formidable task in following up on one of the most eclectic and dazzling debut LPs in years, 2010’s The ArchAndroid. On The Electric Lady, however, the dauntless Monáe delivers on all counts. The highs, like “Primetime” and “Electric Lady,” are higher, the genre exercises, like “Look into My Eyes,” have more personality, and the guest spots, like Prince on “Givin’ Em What They Love,” burn brighter. Monáe herself is in tremendous voice, showing raw power when necessary but also dialing it back to work in harmony with her collaborators – again, “Primetime” serves as an example. And though I can’t claim fully to understand the main concept – she’s a fugitive robot with a radio show, I gather? – the whole thing is presented with such gusto that it works. Between Monáe and Jessie Ware, R&B now has two innovative women with star power to spare who look poised to bring the genre the critical respect it has been lacking in recent years.
6. My Bloody Valentine: mbv (8 points)
Despite it’s twenty-two year gestation period, mbv in many respects feels like it could have been released a year after Loveless. Opener “She Found Now,” with its fuzzed-out guitars and sedate, billowing vocals, is in many respects a direct extension of Loveless, as are “Only Tomorrow” and “Who Sees You.” The next track is where things get tricky. “Is This & Yes” breaks up the haze with sparkling textures and, dare I say it, clarity in the arrangement. It’s a clever gambit from Kevin Shields and co. to give the listener something familiar and immediately fulfilling before changing the dynamic a bit and letting the rest of the album move in new directions. The end result is something that will both remind the listener of My Bloody Valentine’s titanic legacy and serve as a new benchmark for bands who seek to imitate them.
7. Cut Copy: Free Your Mind (7 points)
“Are you ready to dance?!” asked Cut Copy frontman Dan Whitford when I saw them in November. When the band is about to launch into something as propulsive and invigorating as “Let Me Show You Love,” the only appropriate answer to that question is “fuck yes.” I’m not one to gravitate toward joyous music, but Free Your Mind is just too insistent on people having fun for me not to give in to its incurable optimism. The dark currents that ran under the surface on albums past have gone in favor of bright piano lines and ebullient backing vocals, but the beats and hooks are still there in excess: “We Are Explorers” has a lead synth line that will stay with you for days on end, while “In Memory Capsule” floats along effortlessly before introducing a subtle but no less infectious keyboard riff into the bridge and chorus. Free Your Mind might not add anything particularly new to the Cut Copy formula, but it executes that formula so well that, while the record is spinning, you won’t want them to try anything else.
8. Deerhunter: Monomania (5 points)
There is something I find endearing about artists that do whatever the hell they want. Deerhunter certainly fit that bill. Even considering these are the guys who once played an hour-long, spontaneous rendition of “My Sharona” at a concert, who would have guessed that the follow-up to an album as immaculately-produced and multi-layered as Halcyon Digest would be the visceral, almost animalistic assault of distorted guitars and detached vocals that is Monomania? There is a theme somewhere in these songs – tracks like “Dream Captain” and “Pensacola,” for example, seem to be aiming for some kind of acid-soaked Beach Boys vibe – but in general the songs work because the commitment to the vision is so complete: a couple of guys with a bunch of amps playing their own frenetic brand of garage rock. It’s vibrant, it’s energetic, and, above all else, it’s raw. Such albums need to come around more often.
9. Haim: Days Are Gone (5 points)
As Don Draper informs us at the end of season one of Mad Men, nostalgia means “the pain from an old wound.” But, he continues, that pain brings with it a sense of vitality. So it is with Days Are Gone. It plays like the best “favorites of the 80s” radio station you’ll ever hear, yet underneath that sugary, hook-laden exterior are songs shot through with longing and regret. Highlights “Falling” and “If I Could Change Your Mind” could get along on the strength of their melodies alone, but instead they use the interplay between the sisters’ voices to great effect in mimicking the way desires and frustrations can reverberate in your mind. That might sound like over-intellectualizing these songs, but I think at its core this is intelligent music both in craft and concept. While that quality might lead to laughable tags like “post-Haim world,” it’s also refreshing to hear pop music this confident and well-conceptualized.
10. Julianna Barwick: Nepenthe (5 points)
The voice is clearly at the forefront of Nepenthe, on most tracks mutli-tracked and overlaid so as to create the effect of a full-on choir. And what a voice it is: subtle but powerful, inviting but ethereal. The most immediate comparison might be Cocteau Twins, as both involve barely-intelligible vocals that function primarily as impressions rather than direct statements. Also as with Cocteau Twins, though, it’s the gentle instrumental flourishes around the voice that really give Nepenthe its power. The holistic quality of “Harbinger,” for example, disguises how much mileage the track covers over its five-minute runtime, incorporating everything from windchimes to pianos. Another standout track, “Pyrrhic,” similarly builds in intensity through meticulously constructed layers in both voice and instrumentation. So while on first listen the album might come across as merely pretty, repeated spins give way to more and more discoveries, eventually uncovering an album of considerable depth and ambition.
11. The Flaming Lips: The Terror (3 points)
After not being particularly taken with their most lauded albums like The Soft Bulletin, The Lips now have entries on my best-of lists in two straight years. The Terror offers more of the freak-psychedelia side of these guys that I really love, full of pulsating rhythms and heavily-treated vocals. Bonus points as well for what I take to be a shout-out to Pink Floyd’s More on the album cover.
12. Savages: Silence Yourself (2 points)
Post-punk lives again. Savages are nothing if not fully committed to raucous but detached songs of indignation. The guitar riff that cuts “Strife” in half is everything you need to know about this album: abrasive, unapologetic passion.
13. Rhye: Woman (2 points)
Woman is probably the most distinctive album of the year in terms of both the androgynous vocals of singer Milosh and the silky character of the grooves and production. Ultimately, though, the songs are at the core of the album’s quality, with “The Fall” and “Last Dance” counting among the year’s best.
14. Disclosure: Settle (2 points)
Disclosure managed one of the finest albums of the year despite leaving their best song, “Apollo,” off the album. These are two prodigiously talented blokes whose ear for a danceable beat and ability to pair guest vocalists impeccably with their songs should establish a standard for this particular brand of dance music for years to come.
15. John Grant: Pale Green Ghosts (1 point)
This is a late-year listen that thoroughly impressed me. The singer-songwriter vocal approach melds surprisingly well with the electro foundations to many of the songs, and the wry character of the lyrics, as on “I Hate This Fucking Town,” create an atmosphere at once dour and alluring.
Honorable Mention:
Arcade Fire, Reflektor
Julia Holter, Loud City Song
Kanye West, Yeezus
The Knife, Shaking the Habitual
Los Campesinos!: No Blues
Superlatives:
Best album cover: Flaming Lips, The Terror
Worst album cover: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Mosquito
Most average album: Phoenix, Bankrupt!
Worst album: N/A (I didn't hear anything truly awful this year)
Most overrated album: Deafheaven, Sunbather
Most overlooked album: Patty Griffin, American Kid
Most pleasant surprise: Paul McCartney, New
Best EP: Grizzly Bear, Shields B-Sides
Best compilation: After Dark 2
Best reissue: Velvet Underground, White Light / White Heat
Best track of the year: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Jubilee Street
Worst track of the year: Zedd & Foxes, Clarity
Guitar track of the year: Kurt Vile, Wakin' on a Pretty Day
Vocal track of the year: James Blake, Retrograde
Most danceable track of the year: Disclosure, Apollo
Best guest spot: David Bowie for Arcade Fire, Reflektor
Best line of the year: Kanye West, "Hurry up with my damn croissants"
Best thing from the past I discovered this year: Bob Dylan, Time out of Mind
for putting If I Had a Tail in there. The Bonobo track is quality too. I wonder why I still haven't listened to his latest album. The same can be said for Kurt Vile. It seems to be getting lots of praise.
