The top 10 albums of 2014
Taylor Swift is notably excluded, even if she’s the rare artist still able to sell a million records
We music-critic types often use the term “transitional album” to describe a record from a normally trusted source that we don’t really get yet nevertheless recognize as a significant, “in-between” way station on the path to a grander artistic design not yet fully realized.
I kind of feel that way about 2014. This has been a “transitional” year. An in-between year. An all-overthe-place, everything-at-once sort of year. Nothing really stood out as a defining musical movement or trend except, perhaps, the increasingly grave difficulties musicians and record labels are having getting people to actually pay for music. Or maybe Taylor Swift. Everyone seems to agree on Taylor Swift.
Until Swift’s 1989 came along in late October, in fact, 2014 was notable for being a year in which not a single record had reached the traditional platinum sales mark of one million copies sold. That record wound up selling nearly1.3 million copies in its first week out, making it the fastest-selling release since Eminem’s The Eminem Showsold 1.322 million in one week back in 2002.
The only album to sell at a similarly torrid pace in recent years? Taylor Swift’s Red in 2012. Swift might be the only thing keeping the traditional music industry alive at this point, and Swift pulled off her sales accomplishments, in part, by keeping 1989 off streaming services such as Spotify and Rdio, the very services that were once supposed to save the music industry. It’s getting weird out there. Weird and desperate.
Music continues to be made, mercifully. Some of it, as the recordings below attest, is rather good. Here are the albums I found myself listening to the most in 2014. Alvvays, Alvvays (Polyvinyl). Alvvays is clearly no longer just a well-kept Toronto secret, as its sparklingly smart and tuneful debut LP is turning up on yearend “best of” lists all over the place. The transplanted Maritime quintet’s success is hardly a surprise, though; Alvvays is drowning in exquisite jangle-pop tunes that already feel like they’ve been around forever, and youthful frontwoman Molly Rankin has the silken voice and literate sass to go the rock-star distance.
It’s an utterly perfect debut album, one you just want to play over and over and over again. The jaw-dropping “Archie, Marry Me,” meanwhile, is the single of the year. Alvvays wins. Choice cut: “Archie, Marry Me.” Tanya Tagaq, Animism (Six Shooter). Translating the singular, scary/sexy thing that Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq does onstage into a listenable recording should, by rights, be impossible. Animism, made with the assistance of violinist/producer Jesse Zubot, electronic composer Michael Red and jazz drummer nonpareil Jean Martin, stands on its own as a peculiarly inviting pseudo-improv journey that brings Tagaq roaring to guttural life in your living room. There is absolutely nothing else out there that sounds like this, which is no doubt why the Polaris Music Prize jury saw fit to give it the award this year. Choice cut: “Caribou.”
Thus Owls, Turning Rocks (Secret City). Transatlantic couple Erika and Simon Angell (the talented former guitarist for the Patrick Watson band) step out of the cold and into the light on their third and best album as Thus Owls, eschewing some of the arty distance of their previous recordings for a warmer breed of baroque, earth-mother psychedelia pitched somewhere between PJ Harvey and Fleetwood Mac. Deserves to be heard by more people. Choice cut: “As Long As We Try A Little.” Doomsquad, Kalaboogie (Hand Drawn Dracula). A defiantly “album”-like album in an iPod era, Doomsquad’s full-length debut is a monument to bloodyminded strangeness: a free-flowing mélange of creepy chants, druggy drones and lockstep beats that only truly betrays its greatness when consumed in a single, enchanting sitting. I don’t know what goes on ’round siblings Allie, Jaclyn and Trevor Blumas’s place, but it’s probably not normal. Choice cut: “Waka Waka.” Warpaint, Warpaint (Rough Trade/ Beggars). A serious sophomore step up for these four spooky Los Angeles lasses, Warpaint is like visiting a 4AD night in a club run by a coven of witches. Hits all the right Goth-pop notes and, this time around, there are lingering hooks to shore up the sinewy, spellbinding trance-rock grooves, too. Choice cut: “Disco// Very.” Lowell, We Loved Her Dearly ( Arts & Crafts) versus Lights, Little Machines (Universal). Look out, Lorde. Toronto’s got two intelligent, young synth-pop starlets of its own nipping at your heels.
These records aren’t exactly similar — Lights’ third album is unrepentant candy for the ears, while Lowell’s first album proper is a bit more cluttered and capricious with her melodies — but they’re both forwardthinking testaments to the potential of the pop form when placed in the right hands. Hit after hit after hit. Choice cuts: Lowell, “The Bells” and Lights, “Portal.” SBTRKT, Wonder Where We Land (Young Turks/Beggars). Mysterious London downtempo producer Aaron Jerome’s second LP switches things up a little bit, trading the shadowy U.K. dubstep of 2011’s SBTRKT for a slightly more song-oriented approach that might have got him labelled “trip-hop” back in the day. An eclectic series of guest vocalists — Sampha, Jessie Ware, A$AP Ferg, Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig and Caroline Polachek of Chairlift among them — rise to the darkly soulful material. Choice cut: “Higher.” Aphex Twin, Syro (Warp/Maple Music) versus Plastikman, EX (Mute). Techno titans Richard D. James and Richie Hawtin revive their most (in) famous — and infamously mind-altering — production aliases after hiatuses of 13 and 11 years, respectively, and all is right with the world again. Some of the sharp edges of yore have been blunt- ed a little bit by age and fatherhood, perhaps, but legions of Aphex Twin and Plastikman fans are leaving 2014 satisfied. And praying we don’t have to wait a decade again for more new music. Choice cuts: Aphex Twin, “minipops 67 (120.2) (source field mix)” and Plastikman, “EX.” Cousins, The Halls of Wickwire (Hand Drawn Dracula). Aaron Mangle and Leigh Dotey are a freakin’ rock ’n’ roll machine onstage, and thanks to the capable presence of Holy F---’s Graham Walsh in the producer’s chair on The Halls of Wickwire, they now have a record in their arsenal that packs the same wallop. A boisterously catchy song cycle about death and dementia. Choice cut: “What’s Your Name?” Sia, 1000 Forms of Fear (RCA/Sony). The finest mainstream pop album of the year is also the saddest. Australian singer and songwriter-for-hire Sia Furler has been through the wringer of addiction and depression in recent years, and 1000 Forms of Fear doesn’t shy away from wrestling those demons out into the open and beating them back with operatic bravado.
Taylor Swift’s pop album 1989 was just OK, while Lazaretto by Jack White was boring and the most disappointing album
No self-pity here, just pure, naked catharsis that also happens to be ready for the radio. Choice cut: “Chandelier.” Honourable mentions: The Notwist, Close to the Glass (Sub Pop); Run the Jewels, Run the Jewels 2 (Fool’s Gold); Liars, Mess (Mute); Thurston Moore, The Best Day( Matador/Beggars); Charli XCX, Sucker (Atlantic/Warner); Toy, Join the Dots (Heavenly); PS I Love You, For Those Who Stay ( Paper Bag); The KVB, Out of Body (A Records); Operators, EP1 (Last Gang); Chad VanGaalen, Shrink Dust (Flemish Eye); Beck, Morning Phase (Universal); Bahamas, Bahamas is Afie (Universal); Jenn Grant, Compostela (Outside); Royal Blood, Royal Blood (Warner); Mo Kenney, In My Dreams (Pheromone); Dark Horses, Hail Lucid State (Last Gang); Jon McKiel, Jon McKiel ( Headless Owl). Most underrated album: Judas Priest, Redeemer of Souls. Turns out Rob Halford et al. had another good one in ’em, after all. As foolish and fearsomely heavy as ever. Most disappointing album: Jack White, Lazaretto. I’m not used to being bored by a Jack White album. This is a worrisome development. Most overrated: Taylor Swift, 1989. It’s just OK, people. Calm down. And I liked her better as a country gal.