ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2014

I was regretful that I left Mr Twin Sister out of the tail end of my ballot but I'm glad to see it didn't need my help.

"I am a woman / But inside I'm a man / And I want to be as gay as I can" before exploding into a storm of synths was one of the year's more thrilling pop moments.

The use of the world "functional" in fgti's description is, I think, key. No one gets too sneerily dismissive about purely functional dance music. Everyone accepts Music for Airports. But the suggestion that this year's sacrifical indie album is simply a noise interval well-crafted to suit certain environments is supposed to arrive as a knockout punch. A great deal more music is functionally ambient than is often supposed, and ambient music is as worthy as any other sort, imo. It seems that The War on Drugs construct a sonic environment that many find especially appealing, welcoming, chill or whatever. Wanted to say something similar in response to Lex's earlier suggestion that Mirel Lambert does Grouper better than Liz Harris. I disagree. Mirel Lambert is a traditional singer-songwriter working in a rather understated and atmospheric mode. Liz Harris is an ambient artist using what might seem to be a singer-songwriter's tools. At least that's how I hear and appreciate her music. It doesn't suffer at all by comparison by someone who might reasonably be described as a "better songwriter".

― A Severus of Snapes (contenderizer), Thursday, January 29, 2015 5:03 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Agreed. I have the same problem with lumping radio pop together with its own generic setting since I'm not a fan of that style.

I liked flopson's response and liked contendo's addendum. Ftr I'm not being dismissive about generic indie in saying it's measured by competence, I like a lot of super-competent generic indie (Sloan, the first A.C. Newman record)!

@ Craigo make an effort to listen to the words in "Clearing", "Alien Observer" and "Come Softly" (esp. "Alien Observer") she is quietly a devastatingly good lyricist

OK, I only have one question for each and every one of you.

Why did you not tell me about Mr. Twin Sister?

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

― Stig of the sanctimonious uncontextualized linkdump (Michael B), Thursday, January 29, 2015 1:36 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this

I've had more critics and normal people say they "finally " "get" Swift with this album.

the whole 1989 rollout has been a masterclass in (re)branding - from her pointed genre shift to her new hyper-stylish single lady in nyc image to her savvy use of social media - and i think ppl's perception of tswift has changed more than their reaction to her music. i don't know whether they actually "get" her more or they just prefer that she's no longer a teenage girl singing overtly feminine country songs about ex-boyfriends. + i've noticed the fact that she writes the songs herself seems to have become a big bonus point in her favour to regular ppl. her banging on about it for 8 years (and tacking those voice memo bonus tracks onto the album) and making it the focal part of her appeal has really paid off.

i'm surprised 1989 has got the highest enthusiam score in the top 77 though tbh!

xxp when I saw it in the rotation at my radio station I assumed it was some horrible cutesy thing w/ukeleles, sorry

Yeah 'Alien Observer' is pretty clear and damn beautifully emotional tbh

@ rev: Mr Twin Sister

Thanks JF!

I've had more critics and normal people say they "finally " "get" Swift with this album.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, January 29, 2015 4:53 PM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't understand how they didn't already with RED, which is way way better and more revealing of her aesthetic/personality/insecurities etc, imo, but i guess i can see that

happy abt d'angelo

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

― Indexed, Thursday, January 29, 2015 1:44 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hoping for the covers album Cold Shot: StV Does SRV

RED was definitely my "in" for Swifty, and I had big hopes for 1989 (and they initially seemed to be fulfilled), but it wasn't long before I stopped listening to it at all.

don't understand how they didn't already with RED, which is way way better and more revealing of her aesthetic/personality/insecurities etc, imo, but i guess i can see that

― indie fuxxor albums i have secretly spotified (slothroprhymes

I prefer 1989 like most of the boards knows, but I suspect Swift's reached such popular mass that the former skeptics have started to soften -- like people who hate rock finally getting the Beatles in '65 after realizing they weren't going away.

and gay marriage

xxp same here, more or less. i listen to certain songs on 1989 regularly (style, out of the woods, blank space, new romantics) but since the week it came out i've listened all the way through like...twice.

red coincided with the absolute worst time for her public image - the whole gyllenhaal/styles relationship drama and "we are never getting back together" (although self-parody) fed into the worst perceptions of her being a clingy maneater. "i knew you were trouble" felt just as big as any of the recent singles but it felt a lot harder to sell tswift credibly to ppl than it does it now.

(the most impressive thing about 1989 is she's sold a fairly standard break-up album as being a 1980s influenced soundtrack to being single in nyc).

read that as "being single in NSync."

So basically it's Girls: the album? Yikes.

it's more looking

Eyvind Kang - Alastor: The Book Of Angels vol.21
Tinariwen - Emmaar
Head High - Megatrap
Terrence Parker - Life On The Back 9
Jennifer Castle - Pink City
Gangsta Boo & Beatking - Underground Cassette Tape Music
Chris Forsyth and the Solar Motel Band - Intensity Ghost
Curren$y - The Drive In Theatre
Edward - Into A Better Future

My expectations are always way off on this poll, but I thought at least one of these would place or maybe even a few! Gangsta Boo would have been a shoe in if not for her 2 strong releases. Although I thought most of them were massively odds against to place after 60.

The use of the world "functional" in fgti's description is, I think, key. No one gets too sneerily dismissive about purely functional dance music. Everyone accepts Music for Airports. But the suggestion that this year's sacrifical indie album is simply a noise interval well-crafted to suit certain environments is supposed to arrive as a knockout punch. A great deal more music is functionally ambient than is often supposed, and ambient music is as worthy as any other sort, imo. It seems that The War on Drugs construct a sonic environment that many find especially appealing, welcoming, chill or whatever.

Agree with this, but the caveat might be that indie's trend towards pure functionalism is in many senses self-denying - it is part of indie's narrative that it is never purely functional, it's always (to use nabisco's formulation) a twisting or making-strange of available archetypes. And I think that if an album of "purely functional dance music" was considered album of the year by music critic consensus a lot of people would be very sneerily dismissive (albeit more on RYM than on ILM), most people would conclude that such an album does not deserve to be album of the year without something more going on.

So I think that in a lot of ways the consensus support for The War On Drugs is actually the best demonstration of the kind of critical double-standard that still remains in the wider world of music crit and fandom: we don't ask for demonstrations of something beyond competence from indie because the assumption of that "something more" is already built into our understanding of the genre as a whole.

Here's the imgur album with all the covers, btw: http://imgur.com/a/rU6gz#0

Depends whether Fisher Price version of Eddie and the Cruisers is supposed to be (a) competent (b) something more

johnny fever you still planning to do a 2000-2014 tracks/albums poll in the summer?

Yeah, penciling it in for August/September-ish.

Tim I like that, and I would submit that the "something more" or twisting/making-strange quality of "indie" has slowly disappeared, not just from the music itself (see Alfred's comment about "boring roots rock" above), but from the genre/concept as a whole - it's no longer oppositional, it's the norm, so what used to be a funhouse mirror reflection of the dominant culture now comes across as navel-gazing or water-treading as opposed to twisted or strange.

lets do it now xp

just start reveling the results itt

obv we will all have competing definitions of what is just competent/functional and what is the ~twist~ and I'm not denying that TWOD are distinctive, more that at a very broad social dialogue about music level an album of equivalent "something more"-ness in any almost other genre would really struggle to build that level of consensus support (Rolling Stone love of U2 etc. aside).

The use of the world "functional" in fgti's description is, I think, key. No one gets too sneerily dismissive about purely functional dance music. Everyone accepts Music for Airports. But the suggestion that this year's sacrifical indie album is simply a noise interval well-crafted to suit certain environments is supposed to arrive as a knockout punch. A great deal more music is functionally ambient than is often supposed, and ambient music is as worthy as any other sort, imo. It seems that The War on Drugs construct a sonic environment that many find especially appealing, welcoming, chill or whatever.

Agree with this, but the caveat might be that indie's trend towards pure functionalism is in many senses self-denying - it is part of indie's narrative that it is never purely functional, it's always (to use nabisco's formulation) a twisting or making-strange of available archetypes. And I think that if an album of "purely functional dance music" was considered album of the year by music critic consensus a lot of people would be very sneerily dismissive (albeit more on RYM than on ILM), most people would conclude that such an album does not deserve to be album of the year without something more going on.

So I think that in a lot of ways the consensus support for The War On Drugs is actually the best demonstration of the kind of critical double-standard that still remains in the wider world of music crit and fandom: we don't ask for demonstrations of something beyond competence from indie because the assumption of that "something more" is already built into our understanding of the genre as a whole.

― Tim F, Thursday, January 29, 2015 4:55 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

once again glad it's not my job to care about this kind of stuff
record is nice imo

and honestly i think it is unique in its own way (vile being a close comparison obviously but they are so interconnected it's hard to separate, i personally rate vile higher), it's weird to me as someone who engages in a lot of rock music to hear people writing this off as "generic" indie because i don't consider this trad indie at all, and honestly i put it more in the classic rock zone than indie anyway

definitely

Depends whether Fisher Price version of Eddie and the Cruisers is supposed to be (a) competent (b) something more

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, January 29, 2015 4:57 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i disagree, there's no elements of rock 'n roll (in the 50s sense) in this as there are in eddie in the cruisers, it has elements of springsteen but not the elements that connected springsteen to the 50s or spector

haha it's great how we're arguing about conventional the purported influences can be

*about HOW

I guess the point I was trying to make is that what was once considered "indie" is now almost literally classic rock

WOD being exhibit A in this transformation

everywhere ya go
kids wanna rock

yep

A+ display name btw

ty :)

i wonder to what extent availability on spotify played into the results? it seems like a very high % of these albums were easily accessible (obv taylor swift a big exception)

In the 80s/90s "indie" to me meant the self-denial of the guitar-bass-drums lineup, only they couldn't get on the redio.

^ er radio. The biggest distinguishing mark was cheap production and guy-next-door vocals.

+ i've noticed the fact that she writes the songs herself seems to have become a big bonus point in her favour to regular ppl.

Except that the fact that she shares writing credits on most of 1989's tracks is a reason for people like Sady Doyle to keep dismissing her.

(Actually, this tweet prob more relevant to that point.)

i wonder to what extent availability on spotify played into the results? it seems like a very high % of these albums were easily accessible (obv taylor swift a big exception)

If people had to PAY for an album they sure as hell were gonna vote for it!

I pay for access to about a gazillion albums each month

1989 def would have made my top gazillion

How much of the Taylor narrative is really based around "writes all her own songs"? She hasn't exactly been reclusive about the fact that she did this album with Martin and Antonoff. I also recall reading a very lengthy and frank post from Imogen Heap as to how they came up with "Clean".

there's a weird "one drop" rule when pop stars' songwriting ability is being questioned where if any collaborator did anything, they did everything.

one weird drop rule to determine songwriting credits