With Thanksgiving leftovers still rotting in the fridge, the season for year-end lists and arguments over what records were the best is off and running – there’s no escaping it. It was a hell of a strange calendar run for album releases, where guaranteed winners were big-box polarizers, icons ruined their legacy with uninvited iTunes invasions and a hardcore band of white boys from California made a phenomenal mariachi record. Needless to say, our speakers got quite a workout this year – now we’re taking a look back at the best of the best.
Christmas Bonus: Grieves ‘Bloody Poetry’ Goes Star Wars
Filtering down the best albums of the year is always an exercise in the teeth-shattering pressure of indecision, sonic conflict and deeply violated deadlines. But we have finally cleared the rubble and wreckage to bring you the definitive list of the 20 Best Albums of 2014. Let the debates – but, more importantly, the replays – begin.
100 Kickass Songs Under 2 Minutes Long
Best Albums of 2014
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20. Death Grips: Niggas On The Moon
Death Grips unleashed half of a new double album earlier this year, and the first installment/disc, niggas on the moon, features Björk on all eight tracks. It’s an unexpected inclusion for the Dukes of Dissonance, and somehow along the way made for a successful formula. It’s not as if you hear her actually singing - her contribution is more of a minimalist vocal Pollock painting. MC Ride can barely be heard rapping throughout, opting instead to establish a presence of grunts and animalistic sounds. When the mood for violently abstract with a side of awesome comes calling, you know who to send to the door.
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19. Spoon: They Want My Soul
The most stylistically open and eclectic record of Spoon’s existence has arrived, as the band have expanded to a five-piece with Alex Fischel, guitarist/keyboardist from Daniel’s side project Divine Fits. They don’t defy their own sound, they don’t dabble in EDM or any other false gimmick; They Want Our Soul is the sound of a band on a slow and steady pace to perfect their own sound. And just when you think they can’t hone the gift any further, they take you even further. While nodding to post-punk and art pop, they never quite commit, content to remain within their own ever-widening spectrum of appeal.
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18. Flying Lotus: You're Dead!
Steven Ellison has a way of making a spiritual connection through music, even when flexing wildly abstract and even goofball muscles. On the L.A. artist's fifth Flying Lotus set, he is joined by Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Kamasi Washington, ex-Mars Volta drummer Deantoni Parks and Metalocalypse guitarist Brendon Small, among others. In the process, Ellison all but created a new definition of the hip-hop-laptop era as he coaxed superstars to rap about astral planes, out-of-body experiences and meditations on death. His goal was to make a jazz record that would’ve fucked Miles Davis’ head right up. We’d say he succeeded.
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17. RX Bandits: Gemini, Her Majesty
Southern California’s beloved revitalized rockers RX Bandits return with their first album in five years, Gemini, Her Majesty, after reuniting last year for a covers EP and ten year anniversary tour for their Resignation album. The time-shifting, genre-splicing collective found a new kinetic passion for their sound nearly two decades in. The follow-up to 2009′s masterpiece Mandala was produced by Jason Cupp (Maps & Atlases, The Elected) at Prairie Sun Recording Studios in Sonoma County, CA, and holds every ounce of promise and power that its celebrated predecessor did.
Gemini, Her Majesty was fueled by a successful fundraising campaign on PledgeMusic, crushing RXB’s original goal and illustrating an overwhelming enthusiasm for the return of RXB’s kaleidoscopic hybridization of reggae, ska, prog-rock and beyond. Check out their exclusive CraveOnstage performance as Crave's Band Of The Month earlier this year.
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16. Banks: Goddess
A bit like a grown-up Lorde, Banks delivers a sense of radiating confidence while laying bare her heart and passion. As she croons over Lil Silva, Shlohmo and Sohn’s world of synths and soft-psych basslines, we’re taken into darker & more brooding waters than one might expect from someone with such goosebump-inflicting charm to her delicate vocality.
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15. Interpol: El Pintor
Interpol’s 5th record is a slight departure of sound for the gloomy New York guitar-rock outfit, sporting a synth-heavy blizzard of reverb and a notable departure of founding bassist Carlos Dengler making the quartet a trio. But the guitars remain, albeit without the tiresome meandering the band sent us off with nearly five years ago, and frontman Paul Banks has taken over studio bass duties. What results is an expansion of Interpol’s beloved hybrid of indie rock and post-punk doomishness, one that actually borders on optimism.
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14. First Aid Kit: Stay Gold
The Swedish duo’s third album is a captivating haze of sunny harmonies and country-tinged folksiness, a Goldilocks zone of gorgeous sound riding down a dirt road with a pretty girl on a breezy Summer afternoon. The Söderberg sisters struck gold in Omaha with Mike Mogis, who helped bring a songwriter evolution out of the girls that’s both lush, expansive and bittersweet. We don’t want the moment to end.
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13. Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways
Dave Grohl’s catching a lot of shit these days, in part because he’s inescapably everywhere at the moment. But a chief complaint is that Sonic Highways, the Foo Fighters’ eighth album, which also sports a namesake HBO show documenting the making of the record across eight music-landmark cities and their accompanying stories, is an eight-serving dose of stadium rock that blends into the rest of the Foos catalogue like an algorithm of the band’s creative design.
Are they/we wrong in this assessment? No. At one point in the show, Grohl pointedly implores his bandmates to avoid absorbing too much of the local sound. They oblige, and led by his own boyish ebullience, completely Foo down the influence. It doesn’t peel back the skin and stroke the nerves, and rarely penetrates the heart. But it’s certainly not a failure, as the FF energy works within an airtight focused circuit, with an obvious go-team mindset evidenced through the docu-series. Some of the songs, like the passionate bite of “Outside” or the heart-anthemics of “I Am a River,” are the kind of Foo jams we never tire of. When you pull individual landmarks and iconic buildings from various cities and make a composite cityscape of it all, as seen on Sonic Highways’ front cover, the result is a mashup metropolis without individual culture or a discernible identity of its own. This is the home Grohl and friends have made for their eight album. It can be a great place to visit, and the guided tour is a must, but it’s not necessarily a town you’d want to live in.
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12. Johnny Cash: Out Among The Stars
Out Among The Stars offers a unique glimpse of a forgotten era in Johnny Cash’s career, a frozen moment between Cash as the slick country crooner, and the older, wiser, songwriter. He was still the Man In Black, but his star was dimming as the eighties gave way to a more pop-sensible ambition in country music. These songs, remarkable but alien against the tide of trend, were recorded and shelved for years, lost among Cash’s extensive library. They are lost no longer, and we’re given one more dance with one of the greatest musical gifts of our time.
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11. Ume: Monuments
At home in their juxtaposition, Ume deliver a muscular, passionate rock record rich in gentle melody and rife with killer riffs in a remarkably tight sonic design. The follow-up to 2011’s debut Phantoms was recorded with producer Adam Kasper (QOTSA, Nirvana, Foo Fighters), who pulled a live-fury sound from the band that’s impossibly appealing. The sweet-fire that is Lauren Larson sidesteps the cheap headline grabs that generally accompany a powerful frontwoman, allowing us to see Ume (pronounced ooh-may) as a single unit of versatile, stomping indie-rock potency. If you’re not convinced after hearing “Chase It Down” and “Barricade,” you’re wearing the wrong ears.
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10. The Black Keys: Turn Blue
Growth demands a catalyst. It took them eight records to do it, but with Turn Blue, The Black Keys have finally broken free of sexing up color-by-numbers blues jams, a formula that’s led to staggering success and arena status for the Akron duo. Surprisingly little of the fuzzed-out classic rock flare of 2011’s El Camino exists here, in its place a welcome shift, a psychedelic lace on meditative exploration of love’s disillusion.
“I went from San Berd’oo to Kalamazoo, just to get away from you,” Auerbach teases on the track, over a tambourine and a sunshine-glow organ run alongside a Stones-esque riff. It’s an easy favorite among less travel-eager fans, a necessary coda on an album that dabbles in conservative alienation on its way to being the most inventive, experimental and rewarding Black Keys record thus far.
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9. Alain Johannes: Fragments & Wholes, Vol 1
Alain Johannes‘ sophomore solo effort Fragments & Wholes, Vol. 1, the multi-instrumentalist songwriter and producer further blossoms as a cigarbox-guitar slinging independent artist with an inimitable culture of sound all his own. Possessing a depth of haunting warmth and classical flare that’s become an audible signature of the man, his independent excellence was first evidenced in the stunningly gorgeous solo album Spark. Now Alain brings his unique blend of gifts to his sophomore release, a more expansive sonic design that creeps into rock with an ominous potency of soul. What began as improvised sketches on Instagram have been fleshed out in full form, with fantastically spirited results.
Check out his Artist of The Month exclusive CraveOnstage performance.
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8. Run The Jewels: Run The Jewels 2
In an era when their genre is saturated by egregious bullshit, a couple of grown-ass fire-spitters decided to team up for a record completely against the trend grain, and hit one out of the park just as the national consciousness got deadly serious. As rap’s disconnected teenagers and twentysomethings walk around showing everyone their asshole while they continue down the same tired path of fake-boasting and flesh conquest, two men on the verge of 40 stomped all over their entire party with a record that gives respect to the art form while breaking into sociopolitical lyrical design that runs circles around the sandbox bullshit the radio rappers play in.
El-P’s production is maniacally inventive, while the social observations arrive at a furious pace with a deadly potency. And any album that can pull a verse out of the legendary Zack De La Rocha is definitely getting an upgrade in review. You want a time capsule of true street culture in 2014? Run The Jewels 2 is darker, bolder and - most dangerous of all - more honest than anything else to hit this year.
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7. Caribou: Our Love
Dan Snaith has a remarkable ability to connect sonic appreciations found through psychedelic exploration with those of a more grounded appeal. In shifting from his Daphni project moniker to Caribou, Snaith both hints at history through a flourish of analog samples, 90s house and pop structure through a lens of delicate, intricate beats that envelop the listener in a transformatively meditative experience. The chill-music album of the year is a beautiful journey, no matter which trip you’re on.
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6. Mastodon: Once More Round The Sun
Mastodon had a tall order to fill on their latest, given the depth of epic contained in their discography. They rose to the challenge and smashed through the ceiling of expectation with a crushingly good, hook-heavy record that showcases an evolved vocal triple-threat: Troy Sanders, Brent Hinds and Brann Dailor lace each vocal line with power and passion. Styles and sounds in constant collision, a foreboding & polarizing thematic shift and a refusal to pander to expectations are pillar points on an album we had a damn hard time putting down in 2014.
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5. Grieves: Winter & The Wolves
Believe it or not, there’s a white-boy rapper from Seattle who’s four albums deep in the habit of killing it, and his name isn’t Macklemore. Rhymesayers’ prodigal Pacific Northwesterner Grieves‘ latest offering Winter & The Wolves blossoms widely beyond his poetically lush 2011 Rhymesayers debut Together/Apart, and defies the current industry rush to recreate Mack’s smash-success pop-rap sylings. By exploring a production framework outside the creative design of longtime partner Budo and adapting a more direct influence of flow from soul godfather Brother Ali, Mr. Benjamin Laub kicks his potential wide open.
The central formula of introspective blogginess and relationship grievances are well-tread paths cut by the likes of Louis Logic and Godfather Slug in years past, but Grieves continues to carve a lyrical identity that doesn’t aspire to a greater philosophical pulpit. He’s content in painting his own picture in empathetic colors, persevering through the storms with a subtle strut and a smirk. Hell, we liked it so much we made Grieves our featured Artist of The Month earlier this year. Check out his exclusive studio performance of "Shreds" right here.
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4. Royal Blood: Royal Blood
Rock needs to drop its silly-ass inferiority complex and realize that Dave Grohl isn’t the only one holding the paint can at the wall of modern music history. Chopping riffs, purposeful passion and potent sneer shape this Brighton bass-and-drum duo’s sound as much as their explosively infectious choruses, and the distinct lack of bullshit makes it perfectly sensible that these cats are the most breathlessly deified new UK rock outfit we’ve seen in a decade.
Frontman Mike Kerr stomps on fault lines, solos like he doesn’t give a fuck and rides a percussive rhythm like a thrashing live wire of intensity. He splits the signal from his bass, channelling it through chorus and harmonic effects to create additional octaves and create a much larger sound than anyone should expect from two cats in a room.
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3. Mariachi El Bronx: Mariachi El Bronx III
On the heels of their crushingly awesome fourth LP, Los Angeles hardcore champions The Bronx have once again donned the sombreros and taken a leap down the mariachi-infused rabbit hole, making enormous evolutionary leaps in style and sombrero-sporting substance. El Bronx isn’t a sonic shower of punk nihilism, however; it’s a flamboyant step outside the box of what anyone might expect from one of the hardest-hitting hardcore punk bands to ever come out of Los Angeles.
The dark-pop gravity of “Wildfires” is ample evidence of MEB III’s magnetic sound. Lyrically, it’s their darkest album to date, while the instrumentation is a further evolution of refinement within the mariachi style.
“Mariachi is every bit as much of a soundtrack to southern California as punk,” explains frontman Matt Caughthran, and he’s right. El Bronx taps into an educated celebration of the many facets of mariachi music, the most well-known being Norteno as well as Jorocho, Wasteka, Bolero and Corridos. You don’t need a Gringo’s Guide To Mariachi to simply enjoy the music, however. This record kicks every bit as much ass as their lava-veins roaring jetfighter-rock alter egos do.
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2. The Decemberists: What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World
The bearded bards of the Pacific Northwest have returned with a remarkably strong collection of observations, introspections and reflections far more rooted in reality than their past offerings. An album title inspired by the chaotic aftermath of the Newtown school shootings, a deeply personal songwriting approach departing from the literary narrative of the past, and a strong sense of purpose within the heart makes The Decemberists’ latest a unique new path through the woods of the Portland collective. A far more self-examining design frames Colin Meloy’s familiar hopeful-melancholy this time around, and as evidenced in the starkness of the stripped “Carolina Low,” it’s a previously-hidden muscle of alarming strength. Yeah, yeah, it comes out in early 2015, but it leaked in November. It's out there, alive and kicking. Fair game.
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1. Jack White: Lazaretto
Forget the mad-scientist vinyl bells & whistles. Forget the smashed sales records. The music itself is a homemade kaleidoscope by a man completely untethered from modern trend, buoyed by timelessness, crackling with an honest urgency of heart and sidestepping a formulaic design that would enable us to see where he’s going next.
What exactly has Jack evolved into? A blues demon vinyl wizard? A hybrid of Willy Wonka and Orson Welles? A country evangelist dragging rock’s collective awareness kicking and screaming into the barn dance? Yes. All of it, yes. His latest collection is a complex and rich musical milestone in the life of the entrepreneurial kaleidoscope who emerged from that cracked and beloved peppermint candy.
By Lazaretto’s conclusion, it becomes clear that we’re holding merely a piece of a larger mechanism within Jack’s architecture; we’re supposed to see more Rorschach than mural. That mischievous charm we first dialed into, the untethered shredding blues maestro with a kindergarden heart is still there, yet only an arrow in Lazaretto’s quiver. This will spark dissatisfaction among casual listeners looking for an hour’s worth of squealing-freakout dirty blues anthems, but Jack has a much larger legacy in mind.
