ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2014

they got it right this time tho

wait they literally have a menu item called "hen of the woods"?

WOD is what people who don't listen to Wilco think Wilco sound like? Tom Petty, Dire Straits, Springsteen, yes. Wilco, no.

as someone who's been on board with wod since the beginning i'm still mystified that this record is getting the attention it is, since it's more or less the third time they've made the same record

Third time's the charm apparently!

"Hen of the woods" is a kind of mushroom, and I have hot takes for miles but I'm too shy to post them, I wrote two paragraphs on Kiesza's reverb settings, who wants to read that? nobody.

i can tell this YG album is great but it's so clearly not for me

fgti relax you beat them

I don't mind hearing some WoD now and then, just like I don't mind a bit of early Dire Straits once in a while. But I think a lot of us are at a loss as to why it's rated so high (top 10 here, #3 Pazz n Jop).

The opening four or five tracks here are just fire, you just have to sit up and take notice.

Voted this. Love this.

32 votes, damn

Couldn't get into this for some reason

I mean 'Bicken Back Being Bool'!!

such a great album

my favourite non-obvious track from this was one of the bonus tracks! "459" is so so amazing, natasha mosley with a pretty haunting hook there

i was one of the #1 votes :)

I've only ever heard WoD when a friend takes me out to a restaurant that has single squiggly filament bare bulbs and giant oak tables and "hen of the woods" on the menu. They play the entire album one repeat. I've heard it three times in that environment and it is virtually indistinguishable to my ears from the Wilco that I used to hear in that environment. There's a cool song that sounds like a Silver Apples rip and I sing Silver Apples along to it. The rest of it sounds like Tom Petty and like all generic indie it seems extremely inoffensive and super-functional, I mean, it does go well with "hen of the woods". But with all generic indie it seems that the metric in which it is measured is 'competence' instead of 'genius', like, "no no this is in fact the Most Competent album by The New Pronographers" but I cannot fathom anybody getting either super-excited or super-pissed off about it, both sides of the fence are alien to me. Sounds good when a friend is buying you a hangar steak, that's pretty much how I break WoD down to an extent.

this is mostly accurate, but there's enough of a place for music like that in my life that this album did end up somewhere in the lower spots on my ballot.

Like I don't get super excited about WoD but end up listening to it a bunch because it just fits well in many situations.

I voted for it somewhere in the lower parts of my ballot.

kinda surprised YG didnt make the top 5, it is indeed incredible

i have all the time in the world for fgti reverb discussion.

I wrote two paragraphs on Kiesza's reverb settings, who wants to read that? nobody.

i'd sincerely like to hear your thoughts on this tbh

xpost

^srsly

Could I get anything out of YG? Would revulsion overcome literary merit?

I wrote two paragraphs on Kiesza's reverb settings, who wants to read that? nobody.

lol girl I trippin, p sure most ppl wd want to read this

Ban imago from rap records

got burnt out on this album but i'm prime to revisit it

idk imago what are your thoughts on "My dick work girl, I don't need no mic check, no panties on I can see your pussy through that white dress."

elaborate dissections of oft-overlooked minutiae are a crucial and beloved component of yr discernible posting style imo

hot or not?

no

xp Glad there's a place for it, it drives my friends crazy

Cmon, explain why this is good!

Oh, his penis works, and so do his eyes. That's nice.

i mean, dnftt

It's trolls feeding trolls from where I stand

trolls all the way down

enjoying this YG album so far, production is great. reminds me of classic gangsta rap albums like 'doggystyle'

Let's all just be smug about how much more liberal and progressive we are than black people who grew up in deprived circumstances.

ouch

lol matt dc that's the trolliest thing posted yet

uh oh

ooook I'll be checking back in after the countdown is through

lol matt dc that's the trolliest thing posted yet

still accurate

Do we have these conversations every year when rap albums place or is this year special? Because y'all are acting like dummies.

(Matt's comment, I mean)

really be / 1 am / sorry momma / bicken back are all A+ tracks

think its time to bow out here

just a great combination of YG's massive personality coupled to a producer at the top of his game. perfect storm really

i don't think it's a particularly rare occurrence - i mean, there's still the owen pallett and st vincent albums to come in this poll for instance

― why you gotta be so rmde (NickB), Thursday, January 29, 2015 12:59 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hmm idk i guess those are 2 exceptions. i haven't listened to st v so i don't know how skilled the playing on it is, what i've heard of hers was just quirky indie pop tho. indie is not really a sick chops genre though, it grew out of the jangly halfassed post-punk tradition & even if some acts have shed that attitude and make slick music it doesn't necessarily mean their playing is at such a high level. the twin sis album sounds extra studio-skilled because of the style they play, though

matt dc otm

flopson, StV is a legitimately talented guitarist--must see her live to appreciate her chops

personally speaking i don't feel smug towards YG. i think he's obv a force of nature in terms of his personality + charisma and his songs are brilliant. but bc of my rarified hoity-toity cultural background i can't really play any of the songs off this album in front of ppl w/out offending delicate upper class sensibilities so i don't really get to enjoy it very much. fwiw i do think that white dress line is kinda hot idk. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If I stay too long in Canada, I'll hear something like Bobby Schmurda and feel like I can't turn off my moral compass, lib feelings like "I understand that it's impossible to fully extract gun culture from all of American art but this is too much for me #Ferguson". But then I come back to the States and it's maybe on the second or third rest stop in rural upstate New York that I hear a white gas station attendant grumbling about the "n****r work" she's doing as she's mopping up spilled coffee and I basically shut my mind off, forget that I'm a faggot and press play on all rap

i've seen st. v live at least twice, it ain't for everyone

have read and loved plenty of books containing unconscionable shit, on a par with or worse than some of rap's more objectionable perspectives