So we reach the pinnacle of our writer’s albums of 2014 poll, ten albums that reflect, differing strands of taste and sound from the last twelve months. Perhaps surprising winners are those Scottish post – rock perennials Mogwai, who sit atop of our list for this year with an album of enveloping subtle instrumentals, and they are pretty pleased about it as you can see. Thanks for reading and listening this year!
1 Mogwai – Rave Tapes
“GIITTV’s Album of 2014 is the very definition of a “grower”, a set of subtle, insidious, slow-burning instrumentals that take their time to seep into your consciousness. But when they do, they never leave. There’s no “Rano Pano” or “Glasgow Mega-Snake” here; the band are more interested in capturing hearts and minds than melting faces. A beautiful companion piece to their Les Revenants soundtrack that moves their sound forward whilst remaining identifiably Mogwai.” (Tim Russell)
2 St Vincent – St Vincent
“Annie Clark is a petite lady with a big talent. Better known as St Vincent, she was previously in The Polyphonic Spree and this year released her fourth solo studio album. If you ignore the dubious collaboration with David Byrne, her output has been progressively impressive, so this latest offering is her best yet in my book. It’s both quirky and moody, often very complex and with some cutting lyrics all wrapped up in exquisite musical arrangements, yet retaining a true pop sensibility throughout. One of the year’s best albums so far for me.”(Trevor Clark)
3 Beck – Morning Phase (Capitol)
“With song titles like ‘Say Goodbye’, ‘Blue Moon’ and ‘Unforgiven’ you might be forgiven for assuming that this album – billed as his acoustic album – would be a relentless sad and difficult listen. It’s not. Sure, it’s melancholic – but it’s a lushly orchestrated and beautifully constructed melancholy at the same time. Considering it’s his twelfth album, this may well be the best album he has ever made, and that’s in a career that has seen a number of great albums.
It’s almost deceptively simple and straightforward – it’s not delivered to us as a heartbreaking meditation on life, and the orchestration is decorative, rather than overpowering. Somehow it arrives, pretty well fully-formed, and revealing a little more of its magic on each successive listen. Once you’ve heard the opening ‘Cycle’ and ‘Morning’ you’ll want to stay the whole way for the 47 minute ride.”(Ed Jupp)
4 Aphex Twin – Syro (Warp)
“James has always worked in so many fields of dance. He’s more than dipped his toe into ambient, but also experimented with acid house, techno and drum’n’bass. What makes Syro such an exciting listen is the way that he takes on board what appears to be almost forty years of dance, often working in a pretty leftfield milieu – yet at the same time , for the most part, a balanced mix of sunsettling and listenable. Hell, I’m sure there’s even a hint of disco at times.
And yet, album closer evokes Drukqs‘ ‘Avril 14′ with its Satie meets Eno soundscape. It’s a sign that one of the few things we can expect from him is the unexpected. While this album may not be as much of a OhmyGodwhatthebloodyfuckwasthat as Drukqs was, it’s still a welcome return and for those who have not encountered his work before (tut tut), perhaps a good place to start.”(Edd Jupp)
5 Perfume Genius – Too Bright (Matador)
“Too Bright, whilst being by far the most developed and exotic Perfume Genius album to date, does not forsake pure, primordial emotion. Infact the album’s highlight, and you could even go as far as saying the highlight of the Perfume Genius catalogue to date, is when he combines these two elements. ‘Fool’ begins with finger-clicks and a bouncing synth riff, evocating the sexuality and ambiance of Prince or Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie, but at the point that you expect it to launch into a thumping chorus in the same manner as the preceding ‘Queen’ it instead wilts to a striking, untamed reverb-soaked falsetto, the kind that My Morning Jacket’s Jim James used to break hearts with until his ego got the better of him, before it builds back up again.
Further highlights can be found at both ends of the album’s sonic spectrum. ‘Grid’ is all tribal percussion and howls, Mike’s fastest and most aggressive track to date and one of a handful on which he hands vocal duties to a third party, bringing to mind tUnE-yArD’s W H O K I L L S album at its darkest. Contrasting this in the final third of the album is the stunning ‘I’m A Mother’, an over-bearing death march that kneels at the mid-point between Sigur Rós’ ‘Avalon’ and the first three tracks on their landmark ( ) album. Pitch-shifted vocals, their meaning for the most part incalculable, choke to be heard below an impenetrable organ riff, and it sounds like sorrow and fear and uncertainty and throat cancer.In the end for all the dressing placed upon Too Bright, that naked heart still beats and its rhythm is still as hypnotic as ever.”
(Jordan Dowling)
6 Manic Street Preachers – Futurology(Sony)
“So 2014 was the year the Manic Street Preachers finally made good on their mission to totally reinvent their sound, yet trace it back to what made them so good in the first place. Futurology embraces the past whilst looking to the future: a Euro-centric tour de force of high quality diverse tunes all inimitably Manics whilst being refreshingly different at the same time…
The title track would have sat well on any of their post Richey albums, but after this red herring the album truly takes flight, highlights abound at regular intervals and the guest vocalists add another dimension still.
The much discussed Simple Minds reference points are there but I also hear China Crisis, even early Talking Heads in some of the more unbridled moments (Lets Go To War, Mayakovsky). Futurology has just grown in stature throughout the year and deserves a high placing in the end of year polls for being a brave, brilliant open minded album of fierce magnificence and frenetic majesty, without ever being formulaic or overly complicated for the sake of it. Long may their third wind continue.” (Nickolai Rainbow)
7 FKA twigs – LP1
“We all feel exposed at times. For some it’s a terrifying nightmare of vertigo, embarrassment, and nausea, while for others it’s thrilling, exhilarating, and liberating. A similar dichotomy occurs for feelings of constriction. All of these feelings play a part in intimate relationships, and it is how they do so that twigs explores throughout LP1. The funny thing about this album is that it leaves an over-arching feeling of exposure through its lyrics. That’s been picked over extensively, in any number of reviews, interviews, and thought pieces, at this point. What’s often missed is the other ways in which it so completely succeeds in being an intimate, and constricting, listen.
Perhaps it’s the overall lascivious nature of LP1 that does it; the kind you just can’t pull your eyes and ears away from. Or perhaps it’s the beats, the likes of which haven’t come with such a biological resonance – all breathless sighing and skittering heartbeats – since Massive Attack’s Mezzanine. It’s really not clear. This is a study in temptation that teases as much as it sates appetites that were unknown until twigs’ brings them to light.
Right from the off, as twigs’ harmonises like a team of Gregorian monks, there are stabs and slashes of sound to keep you from floating away with her voice. Yet there on ‘Video Girl’ her voice, assured and direct, grips the attention with white knuckles, as synth lines creep around the back like unknown faces with their phones out, vying for a better view. It’s all rather beguiling, and highlights the way LP1 plays switch; never settling long enough to feel comfortable, always completely in control whichever way twigs plays it.
This is an album that pushes buttons rarely pushed; a genuinely interesting consideration of love, lust, and intimacy, as well as a style that’s utterly fascinating yet still playing second fiddle to the substance. LP1 is a wonderfully composed album that manages to entice on a casual listen, present a sensitive mystique when considered more closely, and remain alluring after repeat listens. It genuinely belongs in every end of year list this year.(Michael Mcdonald)
8 East India Youth – Total Strife Forever(Stolen Recordings)
“William Doyle has crafted a record that is rightly picking up great reviews across the board. Don’t let the fact that the album in a pun on a Foals album or that he has been compared to James Blake put you off. Mr. Doyle understands about many of those various sounds that come under the heading of ‘dance/electronica’ and he’s managed to produce an album – and a début album at that – which combines so many of them.
Though his vocals do crop up from time to time, it’s the instrumental stuff on here that is truly special. Whether it’s the Harold Budd meets Burial sound of the four part title track, distributed across the record, or the made for the dancefloor ‘Hinterland’ it all flows together as an album yet with parts that really stand out. The aforementioned EP gave us our first taste of ‘Heaven, How Long’ but here it reappears in all its dancefloor meets soundtrack meets Krautrock glory.”(Edd Jupp)
9 Sharon Van Etten – Are We There
“I’d been impressed by Sharon van Etten’s last record, Tramp, loved the two or three tracks that I heard ahead of this release. The lead-off songs ‘Every Time The Sun Comes Up’ and ‘Taking Chances’ managed not only to show how different the album would be, but show how it adds up to one very impressive whole.
It’s a beautiful record, banishing away the suspicion of singer-songwriters I often have, of both sexes. Her smoky-blues voice is brilliant, the songs fantastic and hopefully this record will be a commercial success, because it so deserves to be. It’s a record to appreciate from start to finish and one I want to play again as soon as it’s finished. One of the strongest records of the year…”(Ed Jupp)
10 Lana Del Rey – Ultraviolence(Interscope)
Such was the whiff of artifice around her previous album Born to Die, the sense of someone trying way, way too hard that, the wonderful ‘Video Games’ notwithstanding, I found it rather painful to listen to. But on Ultraviolence she swaps the irritating vocal affectations and tics for a Sharon Van Etten/Hope Sandoval-esque drawl, for which Black Keys man Dan Auerbach’s lush, sultry, Mazzy Star-esque desert rock is the ideal foil.
A cursory glance at the song titles – ‘Cruel World’, ‘Pretty When You Cry’, ‘Ultraviolence’, ‘Fucked My Way Up to the Top’ – tell you all you need to know. This is an album concerned with the dark side of fame, the emotional and physical violence of manipulative celebrity relationships. How authentic it is – and Del Rey has been accused of vicariously exploiting the very real misery of others to boost her cred – is irrelevant when the music and lyrics are this good. So what if she’s in character throughout – it never harmed Nick Cave or Tom Waits.
“Shared my body & my mind with you, that’s all over now/Did what I had to do…” are the first words on the album, an acknowledgement of the trade-offs we all make for fame, fortune, or simply to get through the day, and that seems to be a running theme throughout – the power games between the artist and the industry, the employee and the company, the dance we all have to do to get by and the emptiness it leaves behind. It’s quite unusual; where most female artists vehemently claim full creative control over their careers, Del Rey is practically confessing to being manipulated, and to loving it – “I’m your jazz singer, and you’re my cult leader/I love you forever”; “Being a mistress on the side, it might not appeal to fools like you”; “But if you send for me you know I’ll come/And if you call for me you know I’ll run.” It’s extraordinary stuff, never less than compelling and often deeply uncomfortable.
The hipster-baiting ‘Brooklyn Baby’ – “Well, my boyfriend’s in the band, he plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed/I’ve got feathers in my hair, I get down to Beat poetry, and my jazz collection’s rare” – and the steamy ‘West Coast’, which switches from slinky funk to lush, Julee Cruise/Snowbird chorus, are sly, subversive pop songs and are almost fun. But it doesn’t last, and the album closes with a highly appropriate cover of Nina Simone’s ‘The Other Woman’, Del Rey casting herself once more as the mistress, enjoying the temporary wealth, fame and attention whilst remaining fully aware that it won’t last – “The other woman will never have his love to keep/And as the years go by the other woman will spend her life alone, alone…alone.” And so it ends.
By no means a cheerful listen then, but a stunningly performed and arranged one.(Tim Russell)
Read about our writers albums 50-25 and albums 25-10 here.
