The year's top albums according to us and why we think they topped the class in 2014.
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[/one_half][one_half_last]Porter Robinson’s next move was always going to be interesting. After rising to prominence as an EDM artist, he’d decided to turn his back and head for a sound that amalgamated video games, japanese pop music and fictional worlds into electronica. The most satisfying thing about Worlds is the knowledge that Robinson achieved everything he set out to do. It’s expansive, emotional and innovative. Sad Machine manages to make a robotic voice sound teary while Sea Of Voices feels like we’re being exposed to a new world for the first time. It’s no longer Porter Robinson the DJ or the producer, it’s Porter Robinson, the artist.
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[one_half_last]Pop was hella weird in 2014. It seemed as if all the rules were thrown out and a new crop of artists were drowning out the old queens of pop (cc: Britney’s last album). Charli XCX was one of those artists who benefitted from mainstream media's willingness to accept something new. Of course, her guest spot on Fancy kicked it off but she expertly followed it up with the sugary-sweet, Boom Clap, and the punk-inspired, Break The Rules. Sucker is like Josie and The Pussycats meshed with The Sex Pistols and high school antics. The whole thing is outrageously catchy and the best part is, it never sounds like she’s polished things up to appeal.
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[/one_half][one_half_last]From one Iggy Azalea collaborator to another, Danish pop singer MØ had a stellar 2014 and it was all because of No Mythologies To Follow. It’s common knowledge that the Scandinavians do pop better than any other by MØ gave us something more. It wasn’t sweet, it was dark, traversing hip-hop, Diplo-electronica and mainstream pop. MØ’s voice flies all over the place with a deep broodiness as she moves from disco queen (Slow Love) to hip-hop hook vocalist (Red In The Grey). Time will tell whether she enjoys the same fate as Charli XCX, but we reckon this album has plenty of tracks to get her to that stage.
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[/one_half][one_half_last]RnB was back in a big way in 2014. No longer was it just indie, Soundcloud stars appropriating the genre, but it had also reached the mainstream. Two years ago Tinashe’s album would have received almost no attention, despite how strong it is. In 2014, Aquarius, sounds completely on-trend with minimalist beats and slinky vocals. Aquarius doesn’t hit you with hooks, rather it swims over you with slowly grooving melodies and subtly personal lyrics. Moments like Dev Hynes guitar solo on Bet make this so much more than just another urban album.
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[/one_half][one_half_last]Every year there are a small handful of electronica records that win over everybody. Last year Disclosure’s Settle was the obvious one and this year it seems to be ODESZA’s In Return.The American duo have an acute ear for sunshine-flavoured melodies and expansive, layered soundscapes. On In Return when they’re not serving up pop-inspired goodies (Say My Name, All We Need), they’re building sunset instrumentals coated with warmth. It’s an effortless listen but not a forgettable one, which is a much harder win than it sounds.
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[one_half_last]The media’s turn of opinion on Lana Del Rey this year has been somewhat of a miracle. The songstress was labelled everything from fake to overrated after her debut Born To Die, but it seems she gave zero fucks. Instead of coming back with a glitzy effort, aimed at commercial audiences, she delivered Ultraviolence, a gritty, sepia-toned opus. All of her best work is on Ultraviolence. Brooklyn Baby is nostalgic and melodically surprising while Money Power Glory features her most soaring chorus. Only Lana Del Rey could call herself a “bitch” and admit she fucked her way up to the top and while her interviews this year have been trainwrecks, Ultraviolence sounds honest and most importantly, believable.
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[one_half_last]Speaking of negative media attention, Azealia Banks has seen her fair share. It seemed unlikely that we’d get Banks’ long delayed Broke With Expensive Taste this year, but without much fanfare at all she dropped it and seemingly let the strength of the record speak for itself. The New York rapper created an album that materialised the cities diverse music scene. She moves from Spanish flavours (Idle Delilah) to deep house (Soda) to indie rock-pop (Nude Beach A Go Go). Somehow she ties it all together and packages it as a fierce collection which doesn’t represent her as a victim. She says it best when she raps, “my attitude is bitch, but y’all already knew that”. Maybe we did need Azealia Banks after all.
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[one_half_last]Kimbra could’ve easily played it safe in 2014. She had a world wide audience off the back of that song and they would’ve eaten up a friendly ballad penned by Diane Warren or the like. If she’d done that, we doubt the album would’ve ended up on our list. The reason The Golden Echo is such a thrilling listen is because it’s daring. Choruses fly at you from out of nowhere (Teen Heat), melodies takes their own cosmic explorations (Watlz Me To The Grave) and the instrumentals are big and bold (Goldmine). She had a host of superstar guests on board but in the end it didn’t matter- The Golden Echo put Kimbra front and centre.
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[one_half_last]I Never Learn was always going to be a dark record. In between Wounded Rhymes, Lykke Li went through a breakup and seemingly disappeared apart from the odd email talking about her mental situation with scarce detail. Every song on I Never Learn is a ballad and rarely do we ever hear any sunlight, but it’s undeniably a Lykke Li record through and through and that’s what makes it so profound. The opening title tracks, swells with hearty orchestration while No Rest For The Wicked hits us with a big brooding chorus. In fact, nearly every chorus on the record gives off an ‘80s power ballad, soaring with Li’s heavy heart. This is not an album that will float over you. When she sings, “Can I get used to/ Can I forget you/ Will I get used to sleeping alone” on the closing track, every word prods at you. Melodramatic, yes, but my goodness doesn’t she do that mode well?
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[one_half_last]Like Lykke Li’s record, Sharon Van Etten’s Are We There is a break up record. But while Li talks of herself as the victim Van Etten accepts much of the blame for what went wrong. “I’m better than I know/ There’s room to grow” she sings on the stunning I Love You But I’m Lost- a mantra which seems to carry across the whole album. It’s these admissions that make Are We There such an honest listen. The brilliant single, Everytime The Sun Comes Up also deals with this with candidly open lyrics like “I washed your dishes but I shitted in your bathroom”. The album cover suggests there’s more to the album than self-blame though. It’s a beautifully freeing image that translates in the opening two songs. “I can’t wait til we’re afraid of nothing”, she sings on the opener. It’s statements like this coupled with admissions of fault that make Van Etten such a prime songwriter.
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[one_half_last]It’s hard to label Glasgow Trio, Young Fathers’ Dead as any genre. At times it serves up abrasive hip-hop while at other times it’s dazzling with warm RnB or taking a detour into electronica. It’s all tied together by one thing and that’s energy. For the whole record Dead meets us with ferocity, whether it be by in-your-face vocals or crunching back-beats. Get Up commands a party revolution while War uses an almost non-existent instrumental to make lyrics like “Wanna get to heaven, you’re flying the wrong way” more profound. It’s avant-garde nature means it’s never an easy listen, but it’s always captivating. And that’s all that really matters.
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[one_half_last]Essentially, Taylor Swift has been making pop records since the beginning of her career. Yeah, they’ve been coated in country twangs and banjos but at the heart of each song was a pop banger waiting to break-out. She made her first obvious move toward the pop world on Red, but 1989 is her first all-in pop record and she absolutely nails it. The melodies are on point, the ‘80s-borrowed aesthetic goes down like a fine wine and best of all she’s learnt to poke fun at herself. A song like Blank Space sees her play the Taylor Swift that the internet has created with lyrics like “darling, I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream”. Maybe it’s come from her involvement in online meme communities, but she seems to know every criticism that could be thrown at her and covers it expertly. Also, it must be said that rarely does a pop album entertain for 13 tracks. Katy Perry’s Prism barely held us to track 6 while 1989 has us yearning for 27 bonus tracks.
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[one_half_last]Travis Cook and Marcus Whale (aka. Collarbones) have been steadily growing their fan base in Sydney for a while now, reaching a milestone with their brilliant second album, Die Young. Return takes on the same aesthetic of dim-lit electronica that Die Young did but it sees them embrace more accessible pop melodies. First single, Turning, is the best track they’ve produced to date- a thumping, gyrating, left-of-centre pop song while the Oscar Key Sung-featuring mid-tempo is a soulful, smouldering piece of excellence. It’s these moments that make Return their easiest album to latch onto yet. It’s still interesting, layered and innovative yet it’s far easier to track where they are going melodically. They’re so successful in doing so that Emoticon is the type of track Usher would kill for.
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[one_half_last]We were ready to write SBTRKT off after he offered up Temporary View as the first taster from Wonder Where We Land. It was almost a carbon-copy of his debut and made it seem as if the British producer had no other cards to play. How wrong we were. SBTRKT’s sophomore record is perhaps one of the strangest of the year. From its genre-traversing centrepiece, New Dorp. New York to its detour into hip-hop on Higher, it’s a wildly unpredictable move. So much so that straight-up cuts that would have shone on his debut like The Light sound pedestrian among far more exciting numbers like the creepy, Caroline Polacheck-featuring, Look Away. In 2014, when so many genres meet each other in the middle of the musical venn diagram, it was refreshing to see an album that amalgamated them all successfully. And that cover is beautiful. Just beautiful.
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[one_half_last]Mac Demarco’s records are so effortless that it feels like he creates them in his sleep. And maybe he does in some kind of weed-filled daze. Salad Days follows a similar format to his past two records but here he’s taking things a little more seriously. For the first time we see a Demarco that’s interested in more than just Viceroy cigarettes and food. On Let Me Baby stay he’s pleading for his girlfriend to be able to stay in the country (she had visa issues) and on Brother he;s actually contemplating life’s modes singing “you’re better off dead, when your mind’s been set from nine until five”. Now with lyrical sense as one of his strengths Demarco has the potential to be one of the greats of this era. His melodies roll-out like butter and his personality sits front and centre of all his songs with ease. Salad Days is without a doubt his breakthrough.
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[one_half_last]Wild Beasts’ Present Tense sees the band go for a fuller sound. Their last album, Smother, was a beautiful lesson in intimate minimalism, but Present Tense experiments with a larger sound and succeeds. The drums shudder a little harder, the vocals reach a bit further and the synths make more of a profound appearance. It’s all handed to us straight-up on the grand opener Wanderlust and once again on the second track, Nature Boy but instead of going grand it goes for a smokey, broodiness. That’s not to say the intimacy has disappeared. Mecca is a beautifully subtle, forthright song and Pregnant Pause is the closest thing to a ballad they’ve done. Present Tense is like the same Wild Beasts that we know but now in colour. They’re musical palette is far wider now and it makes for a much fuller record.
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[one_half_last]Run The Jewels’ debut was the most hefty and affecting record of 2013 and it seemed impossible that they’d be able to improve on that. But on Run The Jewels, they have. So much so that they became the most important rap act of 2014. This is hip-hop that just flies out of the gates like a bull and never rests. Their first record started with Run The Jewels which should be their anthem but Count Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck) takes that title, opening with a throbbing vocal commanding “Run them jewels fast, run them, run them, jewels fast”. Run The Jewels 2 succeeds because it has all the ingredients of a classic record: anger, politics, banter and egos. El-P and Killer Mike go back and forth, with healthy competition meaning the energy on this record never dies. When we get to the throbbing closer, Angel Duster it feels like we’ve been assaulted. And they know it too. Killer Mike raps “Defeated the odds, went to war with the gods”.
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[one_half_last]“Right on time/ Back by the beach/ Still gon’ bring the heat”, opens Jungle’s debut self-titled record. From that moment it’s as if they switch on a heater, turn up their collars and begin to strut with an undeniable swag that lasts for the duration of the record. Jungle taps into that funk/disco sound that’s becoming the sound-of-the-moment but they strip it back to its bones. The whole album has this consistent, steady beat that ties all the songs together, leaving it up to the melodies to create a point of difference. Jungle had the potential to make a record that delivered up the more epic songs like Time and Busy Earnin’ time and time again but instead they showed great restraint. Drops is expertly minimal and dims the light of the record for a few minutes while Crumbler relies purely on its undeniable vocal groove. Jungle may have been ridiculously hyped but it’s hard to argue that they didn’t deliver on what they promised. Their debut is one of the most consistently reliable record of the year.
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[one_half_last]It’s been a while since straight-up dancehall made any lasting impact on the type of audiences that listen to Caribou and St. Vincent (aka. us). However, this year Jamaican artist Popcaan made an album that was so full of heart and joyous groove, it was impossible to ignore. Where We Come From is the type of record that brings people together. It’s not one designed to listen to by yourself or dance on your own. It’s one that thrives off body heat and collective vibes. He puts the political (Hold On) alongside the sexy (Number One Freak), making Where We Come From an album about freedom and the many different notions that surround the concept of being free. It’s hard to come across an album this year that purely trades in one thing: joy. Whether it’s the melodic yearning of Waiting So Long or the dusky warmth of Everything Nice, the album makes you want to dance and laugh, whether or not you know anything about dancehall.
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[one_half_last]Perfume Genius’ last two albums felt like sketches. Many of the songs featured sounded unfinished and rarely did songs ever really breach the two minute mark. If those albums were sketches, then Too Bright is the masterpiece. Too Bright is a bold, profound record with weighty statements and instruments that drive straight into the soul. “Don’t you know you’re queen/ whipped/ heaving”, he sings on the first single, Queen- a demonstration of the type of assured lyrics that carry on through the record. Along with those statements come a new wave of experimentation that he’s never dabbled in before. My Body descends into a reverb-soaked detour while Grid introduces strobing synths. Speaking to us earlier this year he said “It’s a little nerve-wracking because it’s not just me singing behind a piano anymore”. You can’t hear the nerves on Too Bright though. He sounds like the kind of artist that could genuinely affect people.
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[one_half_last]“We’re here to change the Australian rap-game”, Remi raps on the opening track of Raw x Infinity. Australian hip-hop is going through somewhat of a revolution now and Remi seems to be at the front of that. He’s delivering a sound that is far more internationally palatable revealing an artist who’s aware of what’s going on in the hip-hop world at large. Raw x Infinity is a record brimming with energy, confidence and an effortless cool delivered by a youthful, excitable MC. When Remi performs live he stalks the stage with an undeniable personality and that comes through on the record. Partying, growing-up and ego seem to be the big themes of the record and he touches on them with an unfiltered honesty. Instrumentally we move from funk-influenced beats (XTC Party // H.O.B) to classic hip-hop beats (Ode To Ignorance). This is so much more than an Aussie hip-hop record, it’s an international hip-hop record.
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[one_half_last]When your first single features the lyrics “Take out the garbage, masturbate”, there’s really nothing left to hide and that’s the attitude that permeates Annie Clarke’s self-titled record. Her last album, Strange Mercy showed a loosening St. Vincent but St. Vincent goes all out, packaging itself as a dark party record to match her uninhibited live shows. She flirts with brass for much of it, also calling upon crunching guitars and flickering synths each song as unpredictable as the next. While the album is wacky, Clarke gives us a balance. For every “watch me jump right off the London bridge” lyrics (Digital Witness) there’s a “Well you stole the heart right out of my chest” lyric (Severed Cross Fingers). St. Vincent is anxious, sweet, violent and intelligent taking you through all the motions of her interesting mind. The record is constantly revealing itself and that’s its greatest achievement. One minute you’ll be dancing, the next crying, all within three minutes.
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[one_half_last]People liked The War On Drugs before this year, but in 2014 people grew to love The War On Drugs and it’s all because of this record, Lost In A Dream. Lost In A Dream is a rock record at heart but it’s an intricate one, with many beautiful, nuanced moments that break down the emotional barrier. It’s a story of sleepless nights and broken relationships delivered through intimate, careful songs and big, blistering anthems that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Bruce Springsteen album. Quite oddly, it’s a solemn, lonely album that ends up sounding triumphant. While Adam Granduciel sings “How can I be free?” a valiant beat chugs alongside as if he’s singing I’m On Fire. The album’s finest moment comes when the lyrics match the instrumental aesthetic on Burning. “Cross the rich derivative of pain/ Crush the burning in your heart”, he sings backed by the most epic instrumental of the album. It may be an album embroiled in darkness but it’s those short, sharp flickers of light that make it as expertly brilliant as it is.
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[one_half_last]We were always going to gravitate towards any album that started with a voice saying, “It’s album time!” over and over again. Todd Terje’s It’s Album Time is one of the most, if not the most, joyous album of the year. It’s a silly and colourful album but one that is cohesive and entertaining from start to finish. For the entirety of the album, we’re pulled from where we are and placed in a tropical paradise built by kitschy keys and elevator melodies. Strandbar commands everybody to grab a partner and take them to the floor without explicitly saying it while Inspector Norse is the type of song that could take you so far out of your head that you could easily find yourself daydreaming. We’re only pulled from this mood of elation once, in a cover of Robert Palmer’s Johnny And Mary sung by Bryan Ferry. It sounds out of place on It’s Album Time, but by juxtaposing the highs with the lows, Terje makes the rest of the songs even more joyous.
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[one_half_last]Five years after the debut, Elly Jackson re-emerged as La Roux without her partner Ben Langmaid and a new sound that edged further towards David Bowie’s Let’s Dance than the glossy synth-pop of the debut. For the most part, Trouble In Paradise is upbeat but it seems that there’s heartbreak at the disco. Throughout the whole album, she’s tempted by desire, whether it be unfaithfulness on Kiss and Not Tell or a make-believe lover on Cruel Sexuality. There a dark undertones to Trouble In Paradise that make it more than just a straight-forward pop record. Even on the most delectable song, Sexotheque, the man wants to play around while the woman wants commitment. She dances around the main subject for much of the album until we reach Let Me Down Gently, the most personal song on the record. She sings “Let me in for a minute/ You’re not my life but I want you in it”. These kind of records with a falsely sunny disposition, reveal themselves in layers. Any pop album where you can dig deeper than the surface is one worth staying with.
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[one_half_last]Jessie Ware got married earlier this year and her sophomore record, Tough Love, honestly reveals just about every emotion leading up to the wedding. She’s madly in love, broken-hearted and oblivious throughout the whole of Tough Love, giving an intimate and intricate perspective of her relationship. It may be a far more straight-up record than Devotion but that’s what was necessary here. What she has to say and her lyrics are the most important thing on Tough Love. Tough Love is without a doubt our most listened to album of 2014 and that’s because it’s so easily relatable. The imagery throughout is stunning. While the whole thing is monochromatic, she works in warm and cold tones with lyrics like “Lights still shining in the room/ You left me here” on Want Your Feeling or perky synths a la Keep On Lying. Ending on the loved-up one-two punch of Champagne Kisses and Desire helps us sleep at night in the knowledge that Ware is happy now.
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[one_half_last]It’s almost unheard of to have a full-length album of the kind of music that DJ Dodger Stadium make. The whole thing is repetitive and bounded by thudding beats made for after-dark, out-of-mind dances. But there’s something about Friend Of Mine that’s finds its way into your head. It’s warped. Whether it’s the off-kilter horns of Memory Lane or the grating vocal sample of Never Win, it seeps into your brain and eventually begins to affect you. It’s the type of record that you want to be listening to at 4am, hands-in-the-air, standing next to your most-loved. And that’s mostly because along with being a warped, distorted record, it’s also an elated one. The layering of Love Songs ascends into total ecstasy while the warm, gospel vocal sample of Friend Of Mine makes you giddy inside. Friend Of Mine was the only record in 2014 that made us wholly excited about four-to-the-floor dance music. A modern classic for the genre.
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[one_half_last]A few months ago we sat around a table listening to What Is This Heart? for the first time. We’d done this with a number of records, rarely ever making it to the second verse before chatting but for What Is This Heart? we sat silent moving back and forth with the beat as if we were in a car cruising down a highway. The silence can only be explained by the fact that What Is This Heart? is a deeply emotional listen that marries melancholic instrumentals with a voice that teeters on the edge at many points. It’s an album that’s unclassifiable, working with a mood rather than a genre. As such, it traverses RnB, folk, pop and indie-pop as it calls on beats, string arrangements and guitar to swell emotionally and then withdraw back into its shell. Just like a beating heart. There are so many moments on What Is This Heart? that grab you. From the climatic strings of Pour Cyril to the twinkling keys of A Power, it’s hard not to be silent when listening to the album. Tom Krell aka. How To Dress Well may not have the answers but he certainly poses plenty of worthwhile questions.
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[one_half_last]FKA Twigs is the most important artist of 2014 and that’s because she stepped so far out of the box that nobody even attempted to copy what she was doing. LP1 is a record of motion. Each song commands a certain kind of movement, through gently undulating beats and sharp, climatic synths. When she wants to be sexy, she makes you move that way (Two Weeks) and when she wants to be aggressive, she’ll make you tense up (Video Girl). It’s like FKA Twigs herself is a puppet, with her music the puppet master. For a private person, Twigs gets intimately personal on her debut. The album delves into sexual attraction powerfully but never does she sound crass. On Two Weeks when she sings “My thighs are apart for when you’re ready to breathe in”, it sounds like pent up angst rather than seduction and even on Lights On when she remarks “When I trust you we can do it with the lights on”, it sounds more sweet than sexual. LP1 is an album of melodic twists and turns, intimately personal lyrics and industrial beats. She perhaps sums the album up best on Closer when she taunts, “closer, I’m here to be closer”.
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[one_half_last]Nearly every album touches on love in one way or another but none of them do it with the heart of warmth that Caribou does. In a wonderful interview with The Guardian earlier this year, Dan Snaith aka. Caribou said “You know, dance music isn’t just escapism; at best it’s always been about including the difficulties and challenges of life rather than just being this utopian, bacchanalian zone.” That’s exactly what Our Love is. It’s a record that acknowledges the highs and lows of a relationship with a deeply emotional connection. The dancefloor has always been the best place to feel heightened emotion whether it be intense love or heartbreak and it feels like Our Love uses the dancefloor as its vessel. On Can’t Do Without You it uses a sharply layered, dense finish to magnify the intensity of the feeling while on All I Need he works with a sparse, icy beat to say “the way you treat me wrong, it’s not right”. Snaith said of this album, that in the past he felt like he was singing just words whereas on Our Love they’ve been considered. His music has always been emotive but here its given an extra level of richness thanks to that lyrical connection. A song like Silver reads as a narrative about an ex-lover kissing another guy. At the end of Our Love, we’re graced with Your Love Will Set You Free. After all the issues we’re presented with we’re finally dealt the kind of elation that the dancefloor was made for. A statement like “Your love will set you free” is one that can be taken many ways and while the song is somewhat melancholic, it’s a euphoric, freeing end to the album. Our Love is Dan Snaith’s best work because he hones in on situations that are not only his own and has layed them out here alongside rich melodies, intricately layered soundscapes and emotive vocals. Caribou’s Our Love had the biggest heart of 2014.
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