Their 3rd album, 3 years in the making, deviates substantially from both their fuzz-pop classic self-titled 2009 debut and 2011’s also excellent but very different Belong (an album that came off like a love letter to early ’90s shoegaze and ’90s alternative radio in general). Instead, what we have here is the most ornate, mannered, prettiest and perhaps even catchiest pop music they have ever made. They are also helped tremendously by the addition of vocalist Jen Goma, who shines spectacularly on several songs here.
Posts Tagged ‘Best albums of 2014’
The PAINS of BEING PURE AT HEART – ” Days Of Abandon ” Best Albums Of 2014
Posted: January 6, 2015 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSICTags: Best albums of 2014, Days of Abandon, Summer Of Dreams, The Pains Of Being Pure at Heart
0
SUN KIL MOON – ” Benji” Best Albums Of 2014
Posted: January 5, 2015 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSICTags: Benji, Best albums of 2014, Mark Kozelek, Music, Sun Kil Moon
“Benji” is the sixth studio album by American indie folk act Sun Kil Moon, released in February 2014 on Caldo Verde Records. Self-produced by primary recording artist Mark Kozelek, the album shares its name with the 1974 film Benji, and was recorded between March and August 2013 at Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco.
Kozelek’s songs match a mordant sensibility with a wry wit that remains unblunted by the passage of time. The sprawling ‘Among The Leaves’ from 2012 saw him playfully subverting the album format with a 17-track opus that included one song with an 18-word title. This time round, the humour is more subtle but the observations on life, and increasingly death, are no less keen. Kozelek has a novelist’s eye for detail, and right from languid opener ‘Carissa’ – a song about his second cousin – he paints a vivid world and invites you to see it through his eyes.
The ideas come so thick and fast that Kozelek has to speed up his delivery for songs like ‘Richard Ramirez Died Today Of Natural Causes’, a claustrophobic meditation on the death of the serial killer known as the Night Stalker that recalls Modest Mouse at their darkest.
The album features contributions from Owen Ashworth, Jen Wood, Will Oldham, and Sonic Youth‘s Steve Shelley. The album was recognized as one of The 100 Best Albums of the year by Rolling Stone,
FRANKIE COSMOS – ” Zentrophy ” Best Albums Of 2014
Posted: January 2, 2015 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSICTags: Best albums of 2014, Frankie Cosmos, Greta Kline, Zentrophy
Greta Kline’s studio debut as Frankie Cosmos steeps itself in a sort of surface level self-loathing. But despite song titles like “Sad 2” and lyrical assertions that she’s “the kind of girl buses splash with rain,” the true triumph of the album “Zentropy“ comes from a sense of wide-eyed innocence and optimism that runs through the record’s brief 17-minute runtime. Similar to the several decades of indie pop antecedents that populate the rosters of Slumberland and K Records, the guitars shimmer and sputter, drums clatter to life with a lighthearted crackle, and Kline’s apparently downcast lyrics turn tongue-in-cheek, offering ways of overcoming in the midst of post-millennial malaise. It’s a surprisingly mature sentiment from a songwriter who was only 19 years old at the time of the album’s release, especially in an era where void-gazing is popular, As she sings on “My I Love You”, sometimes you just have to “do what [you] have to do,” and Kline has uniquely figured out how to soundtrack that process in a sneakily buoyant way.
DEAD HORSE ONE – ” Without Love We Perish ” Best Albums of 2014
Posted: January 2, 2015 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSICTags: Best albums of 2014, Dead Horse One, Psychedelia, Without Love We Perish
DEAD HORSE ONE is a band founded by Olivier Debard, Luðóvík Naud, Jerome Simonian and Antoine Pinet in 2011. Their music spans multiple genres including Shoegaze and psychedelia.
Dead Horse One hit the ground running in 2012 with the phenomenal Heavenly Choir of Jet Engines EP, which leaned somewhat towards the dark and heavy and immediately established a highly realized sound for the band. The group has performed at the Liverpool psych fest 2013 and has shared the stage with The Telescopes, The Veldt, and French compatriots H-Burns and Sound Sweet Sound.
Dead Horse One’s debut full-length, “Without Love We Perish”, produced by Mark Gardener of Ride,
Hailing from southern France,the quintet released the superbly titled ‘Heavenly Choir of Jet Engines’ EP
Inspired by Ride, The Telescopes, Swervedriver and John Barry soundtracks, the group formed in the town of Valence and have won appreciation Stateside with The Austin Town Hall website praising the band’s “early shoegaze” guitar textures. Focusing on the poppier end of the psych spectrum away from thunderous grooves the five-piece create swooning psych pop gems.
‘Their avowed aim is to be a ”Heavenly choir of jet engines” filling the soundscape of the world with an endless extended note, wistful and melancholic….macabre and beautiful…from which will emerge pop songs…and they do.’ – Joe Foster – co-founder of CREATION RECORDS
AMEN DUNES – ” Love ” Best Albums Of 2014
Posted: December 20, 2014 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSICTags: Amen Dunes, Best albums of 2014, Damon McMahon, Los Angeles, Love
This is one of those albums that comes out of a songwriter meandering in lo-fi productions for years and finally writing “the album” where all the diamonds in the fuzzy rough from before come through.
While the previous Amen Dunes records have all been largely improvisational first-take affairs, recorded in a matter of weeks at most, this full-length album “Love” is the product of close to a year and a half of continuous work by Damon McMahon. Unlike McMahon’s earlier Amen Dunes recordings, which were almost always a solo affair, the music on Love was performed by a variety of musicians, including his longtime collaborators Jordi Wheeler on guitar and piano, and Parker Kindred on drums.
McMahon chose to hold the main recording sessions for “Love” in Montreal with Dave Bryant and Efrim Menuck of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. In addition to recording the sessions that McMahon produced, members of Godspeed also played on several of the songs. So did saxophonist Colin Stetson and Elias Bender-Ronnenfelt of Iceage, who duets with McMahon on two tracks.
This project has always seen McMahon guided by traditional song and sound, but Love is the first work in which this clearly shines through. The result is definitively the most substantial Amen Dunes record to date. These are elemental songs about time, love and memory, as much about the listener as they are about the writer: pure, open, and beautiful.
http://
FEAR OF MEN – ” Loom ” Best Albums Of 2014
Posted: December 20, 2014 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSICTags: Best albums of 2014, Fear Of Men, Jessica Weiss, Loom
This debut album by Fear of Men comes partly from projects completed in an English art school by frontwoman Jessica Weiss, but often seems to be driven by trans-Atlantic dreams with songs such as “America.” In an interview She Says the band claimed to listen to Simon & Garfunkel while writing and recording this album, and when they all first came to the United States they played Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” as their plane touched down. In recording, the band shook around amps until they broke and cut up a speaker to get a perfect roughing up of the generally clean guitar-driven songs. The ground covered with “Loom” may have been a bit too previously treaded, but the rough edges of these recordings really go a long way and what could have sounded safe or sugary, often plays as a legitimately fun, thumping and bouncing album instead.
Brighton, UK based Fear of Men, first introduced in the US via last year’s much praised singles compilation “Early Fragments,” Now their much anticipated debut album “Loom” was released end of April on Kanine Records.
The title of the album both alludes to the interweaving textures that run throughout the record and references the darkness that hovers above much of Fear of Men’s output. Rather than simply marrying a handful of influences, Fear of Men designs their music from an almost uncomfortably personal place. Weiss broadcasts crippling disconnection, boredom and sexual dread with all the dour verve of a young Morrissey. The band flit between dire philosophical observations and listless melancholia, riding melodies that sentiments come off more like lazy sighs. The songs owe as much to the writing of Anais Nin or Fassbinder’s films as they do to the cold sonic atmospheres of the Chills or Broadcast. Classical instrumentation appears throughout “Loom”, warped and distorted alongside musical saws and backwards guitars, giving a sense of the imperfect to the album’s pristine pop melodies.
ROBERT PLANT – ” Lullaby And The Ceaseless Roar ” Best Albums Of 2014
Posted: December 19, 2014 in MUSICTags: Best albums of 2014, Led Zeppelin, Lullaby and the Ceaseless Roar, Robert Plant
If you were still wondering why Robert Plant isn’t entertaining the idea of another Led Zeppelin reunion, this album provided a definitive answer. Plant’s too busy expanding on his own solo ventures. He took the nascent explorations on 2005’s deeply underrated ‘Mighty ReArranger’ even further here, combining the bedrock influences of folk and Delta blues with ever-more far-flung sounds. When it was over, ‘Lullaby and the Ceaseless Roar’ had outlined a muse without borders, gave no quarter to his oldest fans’ built-in expectations, and pushed with everything Plant could muster into places of remarkable scope and delicious intrigue.
QUILT – ” Held In Splendour ” Best Albums Of 2014
Posted: December 15, 2014 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSICTags: Best albums of 2014, Boston, Held In Splendour, Psych Folk, Quilt, Tie Up The Tides
Quilt – “Held in Splendor” released on the label Mexican Summer,
American folk music is often held as sacred, bound by hallowed traditions both acoustic and spiritual. So it seems almost too easy to name your ragtag, 21st-century folk band Quilt, but it’s difficult to describe this Boston-bred trio any other way, their cloth cut from equal parts the Byrds, Mazzy Star, and the Mamas and the Papas, though the stitches threading their follow up record together are far from linear. Alternating psych-pop textures, radiant Eastern rhythms, and acoustic licks, “Held in Splendor” defies what we typically talk about when we talk about “folk” music.
Maybe when Quilt named the album, they were describing its sound. More mature – and significantly better – that their self-titled debut, “Held in Splendor” is more ornate, more psych, more 1967 than 1966. Though the psych-folk tossback trend of the last few years leaves mixed results , Quilt has more firmly established their sound within the genre. Following thier 2011 self-titled debut on Mexican Summer, Its full of cascading harmonies and billowing textures, punchy rhythms and snarled guitars, wonderful depth and resplendent peaks. Mary Mountain takes hazy Summer of Love memories on a mid-summer road trip in a gleaming muscle car. Tired & Buttered invites Booker T over for an energy-addled jam in the garage. The Hollow twinkles like Fleetwood Mac and Galaxie 500, with sweet singing backed by the lap steel sighs of young acoustic guitar . Held in Splendor is an album of personal poetry , confessions and aspirations”really, these 13 tracks are their own playground, brimming with the sort of unapologetic energy and wonder that turns simple songs into absolute anthems. This has been one of my most played records this last year,
ALVVAYS – ” Adult Diversion ” Best Albums Of 2014
Posted: December 7, 2014 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSICTags: Adult Diversion, Alvvays, Best albums of 2014, Canadian. Toronto
Alvvays are a Canadian Band with one of 2014 best pop records, with its gorgeous sunny weather feel and jangle guitar, the eponymous debut album from Canadian indie band Alvvays (don’t be fooled, you just pronounce it as Always) is full of C86-sounding jangles and emotional hooks. a particularly poppy and energetic sound, they’re the perfect antidote to the miserable weather outside. There’s a real air of Camera Obscura and to some extent She & Him about Alvvays and there’s no doubt in my mind that these guys will soon emerge from the underground.”
The lenses in their glasses are real, they know who all the bands pictured on their Tumblr actually are, and they have made one of the most jangle-filled and impressive debut albums of 2014 so far. The band started as a solo project for Molly Rankin, the daughter of famous Celtic musician John Morris Rankin, who died in a road accident when Molly was just 12 years old. But Alvvays don’t focus on the morbid; instead they offer a diary-like insight into their lives. “Alcoholism, depression and parties and relationships seem to always exist in whatever I write,” Rankin said in a recent interview. After picking up Molly’s best friend, keys player and childhood neighbour Kerri Maclellan plus bandmates Alec O’Hanley, Brian Murphy and Phil MacIsaac along the way, the Toronto group worked on their debut album with Holy Fuck’s Graham Walsh and producer John Agnello as well as fellow Canadian Chad VanGaalen at his excellently named Yoko Eno studio in Calgary. Together they elicit the twinkly thrills of C86-era indie, The Magnetic Fields, Pavement or, if you prefer, Best Coast. The band Alvvays most often resemble, however, is 4AD’s Camera Obscura. ‘Archie, Marry Me’ is by far the best song on this album – a bona fide hit
It’s full of sun-bleached summer jams like ‘Adult Diversion’, a tale of obsessively following a loved one from afar, and the Phil Spector-esque ‘Party Police’. The spectral ‘Red Planet’ concludes the album with the sound of waves lapping against the shore, set against a woozy synthesizer as Rankin sings, “I waited out here for you, but that was just delusional.” It’s a stunning end to a great debut record laced with melancholy and beautiful moments.
HONEYBLOOD – ” Honeyblood ” Best Albums Of 2014
Posted: December 4, 2014 in MUSICTags: Best albums of 2014, Glasgow, Honeyblood, Indie, No Spare Key
Bullies, bastards and bullshitters beware, Glasgow’s Honeyblood have cooked up 40 minutes of sonic chemical castration and they’re coming for every lover and loser that’s ever fucked them over.It’s been a rather dramatic year for our favourite all-female Scottish two-piece, they’ve been on something of a meteoric rise to fame ever since signing to Fat Cat Records and releasing their self titled debut album. Just when things seemed to be going almost too well, half the band, in the form of drummer Shona McVicar, left mid-way through a tour, so full credit then to singing guitarist Stina, who not only decided to carry on the band but had a new drummer up and running just a matter of days later, evidence of the old cliché, the show must go on!
And thank heavens for that, because that debut was unquestionably one of the most intriguing albums of the year. A stunning middle ground of beautifully harmonious vocals and angry barbed lyrics, of gorgeous melodies and crushing walls of noise. They recalled the honey dripped harmonies of 60’s girl bands, and the raw power of grunge. The bands name Honeyblood really couldn’t be more apt.
From the playground chanting of Super Rat, to the Idlewild recalling opening track Fall Forever, and the almost country-grunge of Bud (a song that’s much more appealing than country-grunge makes it sound!) they created a varied and excellent debut album, one that surely surpassed what even their most ardent fan could have imagined.
Honeyblood and their eponymous, debut LP. Recorded at legendary producer Peter Katis Tarquin Studios (The National, Interpol) in just ten days last November, ”Honeyblood” is an accomplished and delightfully fierce record. “Peter was the perfect match for us,” singer/guitarist Stina Tweeddale said of the recording. “He perfectly managed to capture our live performance in the studio.” From the urgent guitar and dive-bomb drums of opener ”Fall Forever”, the album twists through the gutsy punk of ”Killer Bangs”, to reveal discordant anthems like ”SuperRat”. It has pared down alt pop gems in the likes of ”Biro” and ”No Spare Key”, but also more country/folk influenced moments like, ”(I”d Rather Be) Anywhere But Here”, ”Braid Burn Valley” and ”Bud”. The band started from humble DIY beginnings, organising their own guerrilla show at The Old Hairdressers in Glasgow to commemorate the release of a raucous two-track cassette entitled, ”Thrift Shop'”. Honeyblood quickly ingrained themselves into the bustling Glaswegian scene, fast becoming one of its most talked-about names and going on to play festivals everywhere from The Great Escape to their native T In The Park. But with their full-length debut ready to go, big name supports, and world tours locked, 2014 certainly looks to be the year with Honeyblood”s name written all over it.
The Fat Angel Sings 