Top Albums 2014 Part IV 20 - 11

20. Taylor Swift – 1989

When thinking about today’s pop-sensations, there isn´t too much to look up to or be proud of. In general, our pop singers are still not self-reliant figures and formulas exercised by songwriters and producers. The music of the likes of Rihanna, Beyonce or Miley Cyrus are conglomerates of others conveying an image befitting the person present, more pressing than expressing. The songstresses for the most part are promoters, looking pretty and/or creating some buzz. That´s it, search for content all you want, but you will only find the lack-thereof. To be clear, Taylor Swift isn´t the realest pop-star ever to walk the earth or do her skills as songwriter stand alone and uninterpreted by others. But if one thing, you can sense that Swift still cares about the message her music gives to the listeners and is even self-conscious of what she represents. Therefore releasing “Shake It Off” and “Blank Space” as singles for 1989 were well thought-out choices. Not only did these songs declare the album as Swift going pop and letting the acoustic guitar rest for the most part, but it showed her giving a statement about all the mocking of her “whiteness” and relationships. 1989 shows Swift making use of the outward image built around her and following her route of success through poppier production. And still, it remains likable and doesn´t fall into the recent trends. While the retro portrayed in 1989 might come off weaker than many other artists venturing into the 70/80´s of music, Swift doesn´t need to go into the dub-steppy club shit and certainly doesn´t to be put on a bunch of remixes to sell her music. The record is musical fun, mostly synth driven eschewing the notion of a singer-songwriter being confined to his acoustic guitar. The songs are heartfelt when talking about relationships, commentary on the biography of Swift and work well in respects to being listen as a whole or on the radio. For all the hate the songstress takes for being famous, I can only hope that the other stars will go down while she remains up there.

19. Lily & Madeleine – Fumes

Lily & Madeleine are harmony made flesh in the form of two sisters. As they describe themselves it is this “blood harmony” that makes their vocally centered folk pop unique. With their sophomore release Fumes they built on that sound and intensify their entwinement. While they still do rely on a wider array of instruments, this time around they knew that the focus should be one the voices only. Just as the self-titled opener starts with each sister singing a verse and then being greeted by her counterpart for the chorus, you get the sense of a built, an easing in to the sheer beauty of their voices. Lyrically they have also involved to use heavier wordage and make use of pretty dark and cryptic metaphors. For instance lead single “The Wolf Is Free” sees the singers being chased by a wolf and apparently getting ready to fight him. For all these fairytale reference, also found in upbeat “Rabbit”, the words can be used for almost every purpose and most of all remain poetic in nature. If you are looking for delicate vocal melodies, lucid folk instrumentation that captures nature perfectly and above all want to live a dream through aural experience, Fumes (sounds like advertising a drug now) is the one album to listen to.

  
18. A Winged Victory For The Sullen – Atomos

I won´t waste many words on this album. If you should pick one of these fifty for a listen, choose Atomos. Not because this is the best album for me and the rest of the list is just fucking around, but because there is great appeal in AWVFTS´s music. Rooted in ambient and neo-classical, the duo incorporates dub music, drones and a huge cinematic tone into their music. There is no genre, no certain kind of lyricism or mindset involved, just emotive music.

A Winged Victory for the Sullen Boiler Room... von brtvofficial

  
17. Woman´s Hour – Conversations

Woman´s Hour are the best band in the world of indie / dream-pop to emerge from the Internet in a long while. There have been others, but they just seemed to be another version of the greats already in the eye of the public. But this band from Kendal, UK emerged into the public once only to submerge themselves again to do some soul searching and figuring out. In 2013 then, they had built their confidence and vision and showed themselves in the blooming monochrome of black, white and gray. This color palette is the perfect fit for their hushed electronics and honeyed voice of Fiona Burgess. Woman´s Hour know who they are and how to portray their vision. Therefore it is no surprise that they take cues from art projects and performances into their own music videos. For all their stripped down tendencies, no song on Conversations feels rushed or as if the band was thinking on their feed to come up with a melody or lyrics for that matter. You can find this in the distant guitar glares of “Our Love Has No Rhythm” or the chopped up synth bubble of opener “Unbroken Sequence”. Conversations is music for anyone who is tired of bands thinking they have to provide indie-rock with a dance qualities or up-tempo beats for that matter. Woman´s Hour are the deceleration of a whole genre and will hopefully continue to do so in the future.

16. Mogwai – Rave Tapes

This is Mogwai´s eight studio album and more or less their eleventh when taking their scoring work into account. With so much work done, every album is a further risk in repeating oneself. And yet, Mogwai have never come close to doing so in the span of their career. Sure, the changes are minute and their overall sound can be seen a constant progression towards kraut- and math rock over their recent records, but still Rave Tapes captures everything the band has done thus far with an excitement and vigor a debut album could have. Therefore this record can also be named in the lanes of Rock Action and Mr. Beast as collection of songs ranging from psychedelic tunes, walls of noise, ghostly blues and even auto-tunes crooning. From the xylophone on “Heard About You Last Night”, which could have been a cut from the Les Revenants sessions, to the synth exercise on “Remurdered”, the introspective yearning on “Blues Hour” to the auto-tuned extravaganza on closer “This Lord Is Out Of Control” Mogwai showcase their refinement and maturity without going overtly complex or constructed. If anywhere, their tendencies as post-rock just flow out of them naturally as does they seldom need for lyrics. The fear or repetition is non-existent for Mogwai, only the fear of Satan might never wane.

  
15. Kevin Gates – By Any Means

What is it that makes Kevin Gates stand out? The same thing that makes him the only rapper aside from Chance and Isaiah Rashad who deserves his place as soon to break XXL Freshman: Not his wording or high and mighty message. Rather his style of rapping paired with his voice. One can´t really say that his content is unheard of. There are those introspective songs as "Can´t Make This Up" or "Movie", which are great, but mostly don´t elevate anything. Even more this can be said about his hustle and grind songs, all playing with the same ideas a rap fan knows. But here it is were Gates voice and to some extent his choice for beats come in. He has a kind of sing songy style of delivery that makes even the dumbest songs like "Amnesia" highly enjoyable. And when he really tries singing in "Movie" every high class musician might have a heart attack but the slur remains congenial and just sticks to your ear. All this paired with key driven trap beats makes for a perfect mixture of banging rap and unique display of personality. While for many songs I can´t say that I´m really listening to what Gates has to say, I can´t stop listening to the color of his voice and way he uses his word. By Any Means might be a little weaker than last year’s Luca Brasi Story, but promises good things from his first album to come.

Kevin Gates just released his new Mixtape Luca Brasi 2 a few days ago, get it here.

14. Pallbearer – Foundations Of Burden

“Darkened heart /enlightened mind /Whole world apart /Remain entwined” – with this lyrical portion from the opener “Worlds Apart” you can approach Foundations Of Burden. As their name and album title suggest, this is pretty dark metal music, the kind that isn´t really suitable for the pop friendly and excitement seeking portion of the world. What Pallbearer carry in their music is the divisions in essence of life. Life and Death, Light and Dark, Happiness and Sorrow, to name a few. While Foundations Of Burden doesn´t really venture to far into the categories of light and hope, these aspects can´t be totally dismissed in the songs. While the wall of sound build by the guitars and bass is massive, there are moments like on “Foundations” where the all-encompassing sound level opens up, lifts you to a simple strummed chord, almost saying “it´s ok to cry now”. It´s the hints of piano, few seconds of humming bells or slight hopefulness of some guitars leads that Pallbearer show that there is far more than eternal doom in life. Even the ambient song “Ashes” gives the idea of ascension only through the diminishing of the physical in form of ashes; not the most uplifting thing to say, but still the thought of afterlife, and peace in a way. In short, for all the heaviness Pallbearer deliver, Foundations Of Burden might uplift through sheer gravity. This kind of metal music calls to be taken in slowly and without interruption and if done so, it will bloom like an ashen rose.

  
13. Fatima Al Qadiri – Asiatisch

If you like Oneohtrix Point Never´s R Plus Seven, you will definitely love this on. Fatima Al Qadiri is many things, first and foremost a visual artists I would say. Venturing into the realm of music she brings much of her qualities of symbolism, irony and conceptual agenda with her. Asiatisch is her take on the consumerist culture of today, an epic tinkering with the idea of the real and the fake. She found inspiration for this record during her work for the Shanzhai Biennial, as reflected on the opener of this album. Shanzhai apart from becoming a place for an art show remains one of China´s hot spots when it comes to bootlegs, be it music, clothes or other things desired by your everyday consumer. Taking this notion of the Chinese flipping the western culture of goods, Qadiri captures the faux image the west asserts on the east: The spiritual, the oriental and taking into account the growing fears, the futuristic and new capitalist. All this is mingled, arranged through the best and worst sounds resembling “Asian” and pasted into Asiatisch. Sino Grime Qadiri tags her own music, and this fits the bill very well. You get the cold and fast moving, crass basslines and distant synths. The occasional Chinese gibberish that is thrown into the mix is as catchy as it is haunting. It is as if Qadiri took Wong-Kar Wai´s movie 2046 and made the most pejorative statement of it imaginable. As Asian is a catch phrase for everything that is non-western almost, her account of the East Asian plays as well as her previous work Desert Strike touching on the Persian side of the term. There only remain the high expectation I have for her Future Brown project in 2015.

12. La Dispute – Rooms Of The House

As the great wisdom of Mogwai once told us “Travel Is Dangerous”. But the greater peril, loss, hatred, disillusion also lie in the house. The entity you build, form with furniture and memorabilia to fit you purpose in life, to convey your message and to find happiness. Thinking of this, it comes as no surprise that La Dispute choose “Hudsonville, MI 1956” as the introduction to Rooms Of The House. Here the band recalls the great storm of 1956 and the story of a family separated by coincidence, not knowing of the fate of the other, waiting in their basements. “There Are Moments of Collapse” Dreyer states and with this sets the theme of this record: the fragility of the home, as a place that creates and dissolves you. Most of the time La Dispute follow their usual formula, changing from spoken word to shouting while telling a narrative revolving around the house, backed by delicately strummed guitars and drums or the full extent of a band rooted in the hardcore genre. As the band takes the most intimate place in human existence, the haven for most and creates their account of hurt lying everywhere, they reach a new depth and intimacy within the listener. There is a plot running through the whole of the record. The songs themselves recreating rooms of a house and every object in them bearing a storyworld in itself. In the closer “Objects In Space” we find Dreyer packing up the patina imbued things, setting up to leave the house a this ferocious narrative spun by one of the greatest bands of the recent years.

  
11. Gem Club – In Roses

Reading my blog (if anyone does) you might know of my infatuation with the symbols of vanitas art. They create my thinking as much as words do and I find associations with these forms of expression almost everywhere. In that In Roses conveys the symbol of the soap bubble and the idea of the Japanese Mono No Aware in almost every way. The soap bubble as displayed in some still-life paintings conveys the notion of transience in every aspect: It is a fragile entity, formed through air, broken when touched and translucent. Still, as the music by Gem Club, it finds the most natural in a circle, conveys a clarity and change in perception through its short lived breaking of light. In Roses feels like the collection of eleven bubbles created, swaying and spiraling in the wind with the inevitable effect of either bursting mid-air or when reaching the ground. The songs take you in, let you trace your own emotional besetment by the voices of Christopher Barnes and Ieva Berberian and leave you tearful when ringing out. Gem Club for this are representative of Mono No Aware, the concept of the “transience or sigh-ness of everything”. Every situation the bands puts you in, every sustained string note evokes crumbling sadness, grief of pure perceptiveness of the ways of human nature. In that it is hard to say if there is resolve to be found in Gem Club, they leave me staring into the distance and feeling flushed out. Cathartic tears taste different, but the gaze of meeting the dying of time must bring you closer to what it means to be alive.