Best Album for a 2am Walk and Other Badass Music from 2014
Gazing back at the sounds of the year and, intermittently, down at my navel
Best album to just, like, put on whenever, ya know?
Ex Hex — Rips
Best three-song sequence.
Taylor Swift: “Blank Space” -> “Style” -> “Out of the Woods”
I like riding my bike to work. I find that the constant threat of death-by-auto-crash really puts all my senses on notice, and I arrive at work feeling awake and sharp (and alive). Maybe it’s some latent neuroticism in my otherwise cooool Californian outlook, but biking to work is less a workout than a daily dip into survival mode. Which is why sometimes it’s nice to walk instead! Walking for longer than ten minutes ends up checking a lot of the same boxes as a good vacation: I find myself looking up and around, exploring a bit, trying different routes, drinking different coffee, seeing people I haven’t seen before, even taking photos that don’t have me in the center of them. Walking is one of the only repeatable, economical daily experiences that leaves room for prolonged contemplation.
It’s also the best way to listen to new music. Breathing and stepping in time with the rhythms, it’s your own secret dance that looks like normal walking to everyone else on the street. Maybe they think you’re swinging your arms higher than necessary, or wondering why the stupid grin, but they are probably not thinking “that guy right there just hit the third straight perfect song on the new Taylor Swift album.”
It’s toward the end of the second song in the sequence — “Style” — that I learned an important lesson from Ms. Swift. The lesson being: it’s always, always a good idea to throw in a part where you sing “Just take me hooooome” — even if it doesn’t have much at all to do with the rest of the song, and even if the feeling doesn’t match the words. That happens sometimes. “Home” can mean the whole wide world if you say it right.
Btw, are we in the clear yet are we in the clear yet in the clear yet? GOOD!
Best straight-up punk album that maybe you don’t get what’s so great about at first because it’s just straight-up punk music then you realize you’re being difficult for no reason and should celebrate a great straight-up punk album.
White Lung — Deep Fantasy
Best album of the year.
Sturgill Simpson — Metamodern Sounds in Country MusicThat old man upstairs, he wears a crooked smile
Staring down at the chaos he created
Said son if you ain’t having fun just wait a little while
Momma’s gonna wash it all away
And she thinks Mercy’s overrated
It feels like every stanza of every song flows like the one above (from “Living the Dream”)—full of religion and darkness and poetry and skewed humor. This album is 35 perfect minutes of Sturgill Simpson and his badass band asking, and answering, questions about the universe.
This is an album about love. And it’s an album about all the junk that goes with being human. And it’s an album about the connections between those two things.
Metamodern Sounds in Country Music is my album of the year because of the songwriting, the sound, the sequencing, the production, and the playing. It’s my album of the year because it came from out of nowhere and nobody else could’ve made it. It’s my album of the year because I couldn’t ask for more from a record, and I play it front-to-back every time.
Album with the most best songs.
The War on Drugs — Lost in the Dream
Hey, what if we just went ahead and made you a delicious smoothie out of Tom Petty, “Born in the U.S.A.”-era Springsteen, the drums from “The Boys of Summer,” Dire Straits, and a little Kurt Vile? I’d like that smoothie very much! I’d drink it in the car, on my bike, on my feet, in the sun and rain, first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I’d tell people about that smoothie, maybe even send them a map to where they could find one. I’d go listen to that smoothie play live whenever it was in town, and find myself getting swept up in the moment, with a fist in the air and my eyes closed, yelling out a “Woo” as the smoothie drops to its knees onstage to rip a solo that bounces off the ceiling and back walls and comes dancing back to those of us lucky enough to be in the house to watch this smoothie completely fulfilling the promise it showed on earlier servings. I’d write about the smoothie and wait until the last sentence for the big reveal that the smoothie I’m talking about isn’t really a smoothie but a band called The War on Drugs.
Best album full of power ballads.
Lykke Li — I Never Learn
Why did nobody think of doing this until now? Not one power ballad, or two, but *all* power ballads. Lykke with a heart of steel, Lykke never learning, Lykke standing in the rain, Lykke comparing love to gun shots she can’t take back… Every one of these songs could be righteously covered by Warrant if the singer hadn’t died alone in a motel room a few years ago. Lykke, in the extraordinarily unlikely instance that you are reading this, please cover “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn” immediately.
Best 70s rock moment.
Ty Segall “Feel”
Starting at 2:18 it goes: Neil Young-style staccato one-note fuck-you solo into double-down on the gnarly shred into bongo breakdown into yelling “Feel” 14 times over the main riff as he gradually ascends into falsetto. Hoo-ray for that!
Best 90s alternative rock album.
Gerard Way — Hesitant Alien
Full of sound and fuzzy, signifying… something.
Best reason to get a 90's SUV (like maybe a Blazer or a Jimmy?), put bigass subwoofers in the back, and proceed to rattle the fuck out of everything.
YG — My Krazy Life
The Frank Zappa award for getting “The Blow Job” the right way.
Steve Gunn — Way Out Weather
Excerpt from Zappa on Zappa:
So, yeah. Steve Gunn is an extraordinarily stylish guitar virtuoso who actually bothers writing well-constructed songs that are more than just excuses for him to show off. This is dreamy, non-blow-jobby guitar music.
Best mixtape for head-bobbing and unconsciously twisting your face into a smiling snarl, thus creating the Smarl face.
Gangsta Boo and Beatking — Underground Cassette Tape Music
Best song that you could say sounds like Pavement covering a lost Bob Dylan gem but that wouldn’t do justice to Parquet Courts who are very much their own thing so let’s drop the references and just revel in how lucky we are to still have some top-notch rock & roll bands making top-notch albums.
Parquet Courts “Instant Disassembly”
Best Andrew WK album for wusses:
Best audible chest thumping AND best example of a human spirit animal.
Future Islands on Letterman
“I’ll take all of that you’ve got.” — David Letterman
You can will something into being. Not all the time, of course, because then this would be a more just world. And it’s not that. But sometimes it’s closer than others. And for a few minutes, this was one of those sometimes.
Best new Prince song that’s actually a Martika song from 1991.
“Love… Thy Will Be Done”
Sexiest performance of a Nirvana song.
St. Vincent “Lithium”
St. Vincent’s self-titled album is one of the best of the year. It’s packed with hooky art-pop chops, inventive guitar playing, and lines like “I prefer your love to Jesus.” And man, her Rock n Roll Hall of Fame performance with Nirvana gave me the naughties.
Best unexpectedly tender song about Doing It so hard you’re worried the house is gonna fall down.
Eric Church “Like a Wrecking Ball”
Aside from “Like a Wrecking Ball” The Outsiders also has an action-hero set-piece that references Warren G and ends with a prog outro, a song called “Cold One” where the titular cold one refers to both about the woman leaving him and the beer she took out of his fridge on her way out, and the stunning “Give Me Back My Hometown” which is all big drums + wordless chorus + bitter catharsis. Thanks for all that, Mr. Church.
Best worst album cover.
This fucking guy
Hey music industry, you let Lenny Kravitz put out an album this year? You let him call it… Strut? You approved this cover? You put it on billboards in public places where people with eyes are nearby?
Hey music industry, maybe you deserved to die?
Speaking of Lenny Kravitz and death, at least he died in the Hunger Games. Keep this clown away from Katniss, man.
Best song I shouldn’t be surprised is so good because it’s Faith No More but it’s been 17 years since the last one and look how much the Pixies are embarrassing themselves these days so yeah this is pretty impressive.
Faith No More “Motherfucker”
Best non-rhyming rhymes of the year AND most slept-on summer jam AND best Andre 3000 verse(s).
Future feat. Andre 3000 “Benz Friendz”
We drive these cars on the regular / This life that I live is incredible.
Best albums I couldn’t think of specific categories for other than damn these are great albums so here is a list.
Run the Jewels — RTJ2
Miranda Lambert — Platinum
Protomartyr — Under Color of Official Right
Ben Frost — A U R O R A
Lana del Rey — Ultraviolence
Pallbearer — Foundations of Burden
Flying Lotus — You’re Dead!
Best music video
Cloud Nothings “I’m Not Part of Me”
Best album for a 2am walk along the Hudson River on Yom Kippur for extra-dramatic atonement and reflection that feels appropriately biblical.
Swans — To Be Kind
When I was a freshmen in high school I asked my rabbi how literally we’re supposed to take atonement. Like how bad are you really supposed to feel? What if you can’t remember everything you did wrong? And even if your list of transgressions is short enough to atone in itemized fashion, what does that checklist of sorries really get you? And if you feel better after spending just a single day atoning after spending the other 364 fucking up, doesn’t that cheapen your sweet new clean slate ?
He suggested a simpler tack: think of Yom Kippur as a good marker to reflect and try to be a better person on this day next year. Every year.
So that’s what I was trying to figure out on Yom Kippur this year, staring out at Jersey across the Hudson in the middle of one of those crisp autumn nights in New York that seem custom-built by natural forces for walks like this one. I was listening to the brutal, immense, furious, and fearless album To Be Kind by Swans, lost in the primal swirl of 30-minute epic “Bring the Sun,” trying to figure out if I was a better person this year.
I’m pretty sure I was.
Worst iTunes purchase.
Peter Gabriel — So
Toward the beginning of the year, I woke up one morning to find I’d drunkenly purchased a Peter Gabriel album the night before. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how it happened. No matter how faded I was, my heart and mind couldn’t have lost track of the fact that I simply do not care for this dude.
I looked at my missed calls and voicemails and there was no evidence Peter Gabriel had called me in the middle of the night, pleading for me to pay ten dollars for a thirty year old album full of songs I don’t like. I looked at my Netflix history and there had not been a late-night blacked-out dip into Genesis documentaries. So, according to Occam’s Razor: I’d been over-served by the bartender again.
But, you know, we’re all capable of change. We really are. I haven’t accidentally bought a fucking Peter Gabriel album in 9 months and counting, among other things.
Best song for driving while you’re in a great headspace with miles of open road ahead and the feeling that you’re ready to meet those miles as what could reasonably be called your best self, feeling super about the literal and figurative hills you climbed, the times you had, the friends you hugged, the air you breathed, the love you loved, and how holy shit you’re kind of a whole new dude and this song you’re listening to is called exactly that.
William Tyler — “Whole New Dude”
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