*** Reaper's Favorite Albums of 2014 ***

[Reaper16]

I'm really late with the list this year guys. Sorry about that. I've had a massive cold and I've been unable to concentrate on things, so writing these lil write-ups was much more difficult than normal. If anything here doesn't make sense you can blame it on the illness.

As always, this is a list of my personal favorite albums of the year. It's not meant to be an objective "best-of" list, because while I listen to hundreds of new albums each year I still fall far short of listening to enough to feel comfortable making an objective claim. As always, my general preferences for hip-hop & heavy metal mean that you probably won't see your favorite punk album or twee indie rock album. Probably. Hopefully you'll find some albums you will come to dig through this list.

I'll be posting the write-ups & youtube embeds throughout the evening. The main list will be updated here in the OP.

30. Flying Lotus – You’re Dead!
29. Jason Feathers – De Oro
28. Mike Mictlan - Hella Frreal
27. Glass Animals – Zaba
26. Robert Plant (& the Sensational Space Shifters) – Lullaby…and the Ceaseless Roar
25. Ne Obliviscaris - Citadel
24. Mr. Twin Sister – Mr. Twin Sister
23. Ces Cru – Codename: Ego Stripper
22. D’Angelo (and the Vanguard) – Black Messiah
21. Angeleena Presley – American Middle Class
20. Panopticon – Roads to the North
19. Taake – Stridens Hus
18. Devin Townsend – Sky Blue (Z2 disc 1)
17. Alcest – Shelter
16. tUnE-yArDs – Nikki Nack
15. Todd Terje – It’s Album Time
14. TV on the Radio – Seeds
13. Agalloch – The Serpent & the Sphere
12. Behemoth – The Satanist
11. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – Hypnotic Eye
10. Freddie Gibs & Madlib – Pinata
09. Opeth – Pale Communion
08. G-Side – GzIIGodz
07. Death Grips – the powers that b, pt. 1: ****as on the Moon
06. Sturgill Simpson – Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
05. Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires – Dereconstruction
04. Killer Mike & El-P – Run the Jewels 2
03. St. Vincent – St. Vincent
02. Sun Kil Moon – Benji
01. Swans – To Be Kind

[Reaper16]

16. tUnE-yArDs – Nikki Nack


I dunno, I liked the previous tune-yard’s album – especially its use of sound loops and African rhythms – but I was also turned off by its inane lyrics and a sense of Dirty Projectors worship running throughout the album. With Nikki Nack however, I think Merril Garbus has truly found HER sound. Killer pop songs like “Find a New Way” and “Water Fountain” take danceable rhythm structures and layer ever-expressive vocal lines on top in a way that evokes a pan-African sensibility but sounds individualized enough to avoid pesky appropriation concerns. The lyrics aren’t nonsense here either: there’s some sadness here and some anger at superficiality in her life. “Real Thing” gains some muscle for how personal Garbus’ vocal delivery is. These tracks can run together a little but because of how thoroughly each one is built off of pan-African percussion, but that’s a minor quibble. Go revel in this pop album’s strangeness. Go revel in the strangeness of the insane music video for “Water Fountain” that I linked to.

[Reaper16]

15. Todd Terje – It’s Album Time


Speaking of pop, it was a down year for pop music, at least for me, at least for albums. There were a couple of Taylor Swift songs that I dug and the Robyn/Royksopp EP was pretty nice, but very few catchy-music projects made me press the repeat button time & time again. This album did. I listened to this out of total ignorance of who Todd Terje is and today I still barely know anything about him. Look at that cover art! I expected some ironic lounge singing record or something but what I got was some of the catchiest & most satisfying synth-pop in recent years. Only one track has vocals on it, so when I say that there’s a narrative of a down-on-his-luck lounge singer that’s only implied by mood. Every track here pulls its own weight, from the way that “Delorean Dynamite” sounds like you’re doing 90 on the interstate right through a Buick commercial filmed in the 80’s, to “Alfonso Muskedunder”’s vibes of Roger Moore’s James Bond chasing down the Pink Panther on some island somewhere.

[Reaper16]

14. TV on the Radio – Seeds


This is not the TVotR that any of us were expecting. I was expecting sad or brooding, considering the death of bassist Gerard Smith. At the very least I was expecting that trademark brass & bounce funk from America’s best rock band. Instead, and this isn’t a bad thing, we’ve got a pop-rock album that sees the band trying out simpler song structures & relatively simple electronic music techniques. This album is really catchy & demonstrates once again that TV on the Radio are masters of songcraft. I say this because these tracks are somewhat subtly complex. Take “Could You” for example: this song sounds like a long-lost Beatles track but the band slowly adds more & more fuzz and horns and backing vocal tracks ‘til the song transcends its simple skeleton. The track “Careful You” is one of my absolute favorite songs the band has ever done, throbbing & pulsating & amplifying. I’ve heard criticism that this album’s use of electronic instrumentation is amateur-level stuff, and I agree to some extent. There is little innovation to speak of here. But what made it connect with me was listening to the track “Lazerray,” which is the best Ramones song that the Ramones never recorded. That track’s punk simplicity made me think of, well, punk simplicity – how punk bands have never let a lack of virtuosity stop them from making music. Lead single “Happy Idiot” is so so catchy because of one of these “punk simple” moments of electronic instrumentation: a little staggered sample of a small crowd cheering prods up the chorus. That sample, just a sound, is the real hook of the song somehow. “Careful You” utilizes a simple synth swell on the chorus that they shift the pitch of sometimes – literally them just pressing one button but that one button affects the entire feel of the chorus. There are a few tracks on this album that don’t land with me, but the ones that do – Quartz, Careful You, Could You, Happy Idiot, Ride, Lazerray, Seeds – are some of my very favorite tracks this year. TVotR haven’t lost a step, they’re just growing.

[Reaper16]

13. Agalloch – The Serpent & the Sphere


It’s strange when your 13th favorite album of the year is also one of your most disappointing albums of the year. See, Agalloch is my favorite band in the world. Their last three albums – in 2002, 2006, & 2012 – were each my #1 favorite albums of those years. This album, while certainly a strong metal release, doesn’t live up to that standard. Whereas in their previous albums Agalloch focused on one aspect of their complicated sound to emphasize (blackened Doom metal or the intersection of folk & post-rock or straight-up post-rock or black metal), this album sees the band trying to fully synthesize all those focal points into one cohesive vision. The problem is that in doing so the band sounds a tiny bit derivative of their earlier work. The song structures here are familiar. It’s a complacent-sounding album from the band. Now, with all that negativity said, here’s why you can ignore all that and enjoy this frequently-breathtaking album for what it is: the album’s structure is elliptical, which mirrors the lyrical concepts; it has a smart, patient pace; “The Astral Dialogue” and “Dark Matter Gods” are ferocious songs & new Agalloch live staples; “Pleateau of the Ages,” the album’s soaring climax, is one of the best Agalloch songs ever (its only flaw being that it literally hits some of the same notes as the climax of their previous album, Marrow of the Spirit). This album is probably better than my disappointment is allowing myself to see. If you haven’t spent time with Agalloch before then you’ll probably be blown away.

[Reaper16]

12. Behemoth – The Satanist


Often when people have near-death experiences or when they successfully fight off a potentially fatal disease, they come out of the experience with a renewed or newfound faith. They attribute a spiritual reason for their recovery. Nergal, the frontman of blackened death metal stalwarts Behemoth, had one of those experiences. He nearly died from leukemia recently. So it’s very, very telling that the first Behemoth album since that experience is titled The Satanist. It’s a bombastic blasphemy; a proud rejection of Christianity or any kind of positive spiritual belief system outside of Satanism. And because Satanism is just a provocative, trolling humanism, Behemoth’s message with this album is a defiant “**** you” to any “God has a plan” thinking. Believe in yourself and your ability to change the world or believe in nothing at all. I’m not endorsing that belief system, necessarily; I’m not saying I agree with Nergal. I’m saying that that defiance permeates these tracks. It amplifies all of the darkness. It infuses into the crushing guitar tone. It reverberates around the surprising symphonic sections. This album sounds like WAR. And it might just be the most confident, singular vision that Behemoth has ever put out.

[Reaper16]

11. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – Hypnotic Eye


This is actually one of the Heartbreakers’ strongest albums. We don’t often like to think of bands who qualify for AARP status as putting out important work that measures up to their early careers, but Petty & Co. are doing so here. Hypnotic Eye takes the blues lessons they learned from their previous album, marries them to a 60’s rock sensibility, and turns up the snarl. This is an angry album. It’s cynical, but in an older-and-wiser way as opposed to the youthful cynicism of Petty’s first two albums. But that snarled delivery of Petty’s is satisfying no matter the cause. “American Dream Plan B” says what most all Millennial are thinking as they fill out a job application they know is going to lead to nowhere. “Power Drunk” & “Burnt Out Town” cast shade on government abuse big & small. But it’s not all angry – “Red River” is some Florida swamp, True Detective mystic shit, and “Fault Lines” is the most dynamic Petty songs in terms of rhythm section I’ve ever heard. This album is consistently strong top to bottom, arguably his best album since “Into the Great Wide Open,” and is a deserving choice for Petty’s first Billboard #1 album (seriously, THIS one is only his first #1 album).

[Reaper16]

10. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib – Pinata


I’ve always appreciated Freddie Gibbs, but his beats haven’t been super interesting in the past. And then came his collaboration with Madlib. Gibbs thrives over Madlib’s warm samples here. This album is track after track of Gibbs sitting in the pocket and riding these beats like a champion show horse. You never knew how versatile Gibbs’ flows were, how effortlessly he can glide over anything. Listen to Gibbs live inside of the snare drum in “Shitsville” or pull out double-time on “High” or ape ST 2 Lettaz flow a bit on “Harold’s” or etc. This is straight-up excellent narrative hip-hop. Some highest order rapping right here.

[Reaper16]

09. Opeth – Pale Communion


This is the album that Heritage, Opeth’s previous release, wanted to be. Like that album, Pale Communion is a thoroughgoing 70’s prog rock project. Unlike that album, Opeth figured out here how to compensate in their song structures for the lack of death metal instrumentation. This is a heavy album, insofar as you can consider organ sounds to be brooding & dark. The only negative thing I have to say about this album is that it is straight 70’s prog that’s perhaps too reliant on winking, nudge-nudge, “did you catch that?” homage cleverness. It offers nothing new at all. But if you like 70s prog rock & more modern guitar sounds, then you’ll like this. Mikael Akerfeldt gives the strongest clean singing performance of his career with strong, catchy vocal lines. The rhythm section is classic Opeth genius. The keyboards & organs are gorgeous. And the song structures are pretty tight.

[Reaper16]

08. G-Side – GzIIGodz

(the Youtube embed here is a music video for every track on the album. It's cool. Skip around if you want to)

G-Side BACK. This perpetually underrated Alabama rap duo split up a couple of years ago after frustration with the larger hip-hop industry not paying enough attention to them. Or rather, not giving them their share of success while also biting their style. I’ve written a lot about this duo’s greatness in my 2011 list. I was very excited about this album and it didn’t disappoint, though it did surprise. The Block Beattaz production feels like a throwback on this album rather than the years-ahead-of-its-time feel of iSLAND. Not that it is looking backward, but that it is using the past as a tool. Like on “1 Thing”, which sounds early 90s like something that would play on the set of In Living Color or something. Or “2004”, which plays with the idea of a Kanye-style soul music sample (without the pitch-shifted vocal sample). ST 2 Lettaz is predictably great, and Picasso Finessin (formerly Yung Clova) hasn’t lost a step from 2011. Lyrically, the duo is still rapping about the common man but this is an album with less optimism than before; there’s more talk of having to go back to the trap because following their artistic dreams has been risky financially. That’s real shit. This album is real shit, from the best producers in hip-hop. If you like rap you can’t miss this album. I have a feeling this album might sound ahead of its time even a couple years from now.

[Reaper16]

07. Death Grips – the powers that b, pt. 1: ****as on the Moon


I’m cheating a bit by counting this as an album; it’s supposed to be the first half of a double album which the now-maybe-split-up band hasn’t given us the 2nd half of yet. But I’m counting it because I think this is the 2nd best release of a band whose every album has landed on a year-end list of mine. It’s Death Grips’ catchiest release since The Money Store while also returning to some of the colder, harsher, more frenetic electronic sounds of ex-Military. The signature instrumental aspect of this album is that every single song is built around vocal samples of Bjork. The album sounds like a depressing trip to a very cheerful Japanese shopping mall. Look, at this point you either get Death Grips or you don’t. This album isn’t going to change your mind about a band as weird as Death Grips, because this is perhaps Death Grips at their weirdest. The songs shift violently & abruptly & most have a spine built on a repeated vocal sample (everyone loves Run the Jewels’ “Close Your Eyes and Count to ****” for its Zach de la Rocha vocal sample-based beat…well this album is like a whole bunch of that track). This album will sound like trolling to some of you. To me, I see worthwhile experimentation into the limits of hip-hop instrumentation.

[Reaper16]

06. Sturgill Simpson – Metamodern Sounds in Country Music


Sturgill Simpson brings a level-headed, drug-addled approach to everyday life that someone like Jamey Johnson might if the Nashville machine would let him on this modern country classic. Look at breakout track “Turtles All the Way Down,” an extended bad drug trip filtered through Merle Haggard that ends up being a stoner’s meditation on the cosmological problem of infinite regress. Yes, this album sort of lives up to its pretentious title. It’s Simpson’s lyrical ingenuity that makes songs like “Voices” or “Living the Dream” feel like new country music standards rather than derivative works. Simpson works within the tradition on this album while somehow managing to make the whole genre sound fresh to ears that have become jaded by the atrocious modern country radio format. It’s an album that feels real because it can’t decide between the casual pessimism of those two aforementioned tracks or the belief in love as expressed by “Turtles All the Way Down” or “The Promise,” whose huge last chorus is the triumphant vocal climax of the album.

[Reaper16]

05. Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires – Dereconstructed


I really liked the songs on the Glory Fires’ last album, A Bomb in Gilead, but that album didn’t make my year-end favorites list because I hated the production. It sounded too clean. It stripped the noise and fury away from Lee Bains’ live set. And oh what noise & fury that is; Bains III & the Glory Fires are unequivocally one of the best live acts in rock music today. Part of what makes Dereconstructed so great is that it sounds like a Glory Fires show. It’s loud, full of energy & reverb & distortion. It’s the dirty south, sludging out of a Gibson SG after last call on the Strip in Tuscaloosa. This is their first release on Sub Pop records, and it is a must listen if the words “as mush country as it is punk” titillate you in any way. The other part of what makes this album so great is its lyrical focus. I’d refer you to a wonderful article on the album (http://bittersoutherner.com/lee-bain...reconstructed/) but to me what this album speaks of is the experience of living & growing up in the modern South: how to still be proud of it while owning up to its failures. It’s an important vision for a left-wing American South. It sounds & feels like the good people that I spent my time with living in Alabama for 4 years: the people making their communities a better place every day, the people rejecting old politics of systemic oppression, the people who band together to make a home a home. THIS is southern rock, mother****er.

[Reaper16]

04. Killer Mike & El-P – Run the Jewels 2


This album, the sequel to my 5th favorite album of last year, has been tabbed by many publications as THE best album of 2014. I’m not quite that moved, but I get it: no other hip-hop album this year is this topical while also showcasing this level of technical rap ability. To recap: Run the Jewels is the duo of Killer Mike & El-P. Their first effort as RTJ was about bombastic rap ability. The album was a largely cartoonish collection of hyperboasts & megaflows. I loved it. There was a small moment on that album that suggested that RTJ could be something even more – a bit of outward-looking social consciousness on the track “DDFH.” On RTJ2, Killer Mike & El-P take that moment & make it their focus. This album, while not quite the technical showcase as its predecessor, feels like it is taking to task every bullshit politician, police chief, prosecutor, President, Pope, and god out there for the systems of violence & oppression that people face. The track “Early” stands out in the Mike Brown, et al. era for addressing the quotidian fear of police violence felt by many in the black community, and not shying away from the white community’s reaction to that violence. “Love Again” drips with raunch, and stands out for acknowledging, with a Gangsta Boo verse, that women have a right to be at the dirty rap table just as much as men do. This album feels very “now” and if for some reason you’ve managed to avoid it so far you should remedy that.

[Reaper16]

03. St. Vincent – St. Vincent


A fittingly self-titled album, as Annie Clark synthesizes many aspects of her St. Vincent sound here. Strange melodies like choral music from another planet jut up against her trademark weird as Hell guitar licks. She can totally shred, but her playing sounds effortless & composed rather than most guitar virtuosos with their strained solo faces and vibes of extemporaneous effort. Like the main lick anchoring the heavy “Bring Me Your Loves” – it’s some fretboard & whammy bar wizardry that she plays like a robot who has mastered the instrument. Maybe she IS; I dunno. That song also demonstrates this album’s central catchiness. There’s a pop vein running though this whole album. Whereas some of the song’s on her previous album, Strange Mercy, kept you at a distance with their structures, Clark embraces more traditional structures here while not losing any weirdness in the instrumentation. Her recent collaborative work with David Byrne is evident in this kind of pop sensibility, perhaps most in lead single “Birth In Reverse,” which is an oddball, horn-driven earworm about social media dissatisfaction. By the time final track “Severed Crossed Fingers,” a song that vintage David Bowie could be proud of, ends you are ready to play the album again immediately. It’s instantly accessible and contains enough nuance to hold up over a whole lot of repeated listens.

[Reaper16]

02. Sun Kil Moon – Benji


I’m not usually one for rock music whose primary draw is its lyrics. It takes something pretty incredible for me to not be bored by a lyrics-driven album with simple, rote song structures. Benji is that something pretty incredible. Sun Kil Moon, or rather Mark Kozelek, has achieved something here that I’ve never before heard in music: he’s set an essay collection to music. Before I can really explain I need you to listen to the album’s first track, the soul-pummeling “Carissa.” The song is about Kozelek flying home to Ohio to attend the funeral of a distant cousin who died in an accident when a aerosol can blew up while she was burning trash, and how he only met her once or twice but he’s really affected by this death, and how he knows he can use his songwriting talents to memorialize her. None of that sounds on-the-nose because, I mean you’ll see when you click the Youtube link, this is not verse-chorus-verse stuff here. There is a chorus, presented twice over 7 minutes. The rest of the song is a first-person narrative of feelings & thoughts. Kozelek doesn’t care about making the narrative tight; he’s just expressing himself through selfish thoughts and small details. Kozelk’s lyrics are like this on every track of the album. Forget about rhyming or consistent meter. The only reason these tracks are proper songs & not literature read over acoustic guitar is because Kozelek sings his words with juuuuuuuuuuust enough attention to repetitive melody that the barest suggestion of a song structure forms in our minds. Most reviewers mention that these songs have a “diary” feel to them, but they only say that because that don’t know what a proper essay is; these are essays through & through: from the experience of going with his dad to visit a family friend who is about to go to prison for the rest of his life because he mercy killed his hospitalized wife & his pistol jammed when he went to kill himself (“Jim Wise”), to an essay about the nature of melancholy and why he’s been inclined towards it since childhood (“I Watched the Film ‘The Song Remains the Same’”), to an album closing braided essay about how middle age is affecting his art, the minutiae of eating crab cakes in a bar with “sports bar shit” all over the walls, and the thin line between professional respect & jealousy (“Ben’s My Friend”). I haven’t been emotionally affected by a lyrics-driven album like this in I don’t know how long. This is raw, open, sincere, selfish, grasping, hopeful, universal music like all the best personal essays are.