Category Archives: Albums of the Year

Albums of the Year, Music

The Best Albums of 2014: #6 Flying Lotus – You’re Dead!

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Miles Davis would “literally be mad” at what jazz has become. Steven Ellison (Flying Lotus) said in an interview in Salon. In that interview, he goes on to talk about how he operates under the mentality that Miles Davis could come back to life at any moment, so he wants his music to be presentable to Miles and “make him chin stroke a bit” when the time comes.

This is a lofty idea to apply to one’s music and it’s a testament to how carefully Ellison has crafted You’re Dead! It’s a nu-jazz masterpiece, a revivalist record, a free-jazz exploration and a futuristic journey through jazz and hip-hop all-in-one. This is the most ambitious concept album of the year and breaks new ground into a fusion of sounds we’ve never heard before.

To be honest, it’s not even my favorite Flying Lotus record (Until the Quiet Comes doesn’t get the credit it deserves as being far and away Ellison’s best work), but You’re Dead! is the product of yet another creative vision of Ellison’s, a concept he’s thought about since he started making music and he’s pined over crafting this record to come across just right for the last 2 years.

Ellison brought in collaborators from jazz great Herbie Hancock and best buddy Thundercat to Snoop Dogg and even Kendrick Lamar. Working with Lamar was something Ellison has wanted to do since GKMC. He’s even described his disappointment in not being a part of Kendricks album in this fantastic piece in The Fader by Andy Beta. He made sure that when he finally got a chance to work with him on his own album, that he made the most of the opportunity. The result, is perhaps the best track of the year, in “Never Catch Me.” Ellison starts with vibrant keys and a rattling snare, the bass drops in with Kendrick’s flow and the rest is history (or at least will be). A marvel of time signatures, clap-snares, a stand-up bass and guitar all functioning perfectly into a song about tip-toeing around death and the after-life.

As he always does, Flying Lotus introduces a visual element to his music which adds more depth to his song and in this case, ties in the central theme of this magnum opus. Watch the video for “Never Catch Me”:

It’s masterful, and it’s the album’s apex coming early before spiraling into sonic musings on the nature of death, staring it in the face and pondering one’s existence. On “Turtles,” we feel like Ellison is walking through a dark cemetery, with the ominous tribal drums as the cryptic overhead soundtrack. On “Ready err Not,” he’s become a vermin and is weaving through bodies as their lives flash before him. There’s more visual cues on the graphic video and it’s clear that Ellison’s interest is piqued by death. It’s an existential concern for him and it’s sparked his curiosity, his creativity and his art.

This is a dark, dark album from Flying Lotus, but it’s exactly as he wanted it to end up. You’re Dead! is a manifestation of the inner-workings of the most actualizing creator in music today. He’s one of the most incredible modern producers and no one has traversed hip-hop, electronica and now jazz as fluently and with such complexity as he. He is an explorer of sounds, who has innovation in his genes and oughta make multiple generations proud with how he continues to tell the story of a seismic shift in prevalent musical styles.

Albums of the Year, Music

The Best Albums of 2014: #7 Sun Kil Moon – Benji

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Benji

Let’s put aside what an asshole Mark Kozelek has made himself out to be this year, and focus instead on the most intricate lyrical production I’ve ever heard, Benji. 

I’ll admit, I’d never listened to Sun Kil Moon until Benji and my process with this one was as such: Pitchfork gives album high marks >>> I listen once >>>>I ignore it for 4-6 weeks >>> I listen again and read lyrics to “Richard Ramiez Died Today of Natural Causes” >>> Am blown away and dive deeper.

Kozelek ignores all conventional lyric formats and doesn’t feel the need to rhyme anything. It’s just one long strewn story and his excellent layered acoustic guitar plucking builds the tension in the story he’s telling like the score of a movie. The stories on Benji make you move closer to the edge of your seat as it progresses. Here, listen:

It’s a gripping tale of an 80’s-era mass murderer in the Bay area, who died in 2013 while on death row at San Quentin. It calls memories of Sufjan Stevens’ opus, “John Wayne Gacy Jr.” But Kozelek also shines for his guitar work. He’s a savant to say the least. His methods shift from classical to Spanish and beyond, as he weave within chords and tracks as intricately as his lyrics.

He sings about his Mother and Father with such love and adoration. “I Love My Dad” is the type of song that makes you want to call your old man just to see how he’s doing. “I Can’t Live Without My Mother’s Love” will warrant an “I love you” midnight text to Mom. She won’t know what hit her. Check these bars from “I Love My Dad”:

When I was a kid my dad brought home a guitar he got from Sears
I took lessons from a neighbor lady but it wasn’t going anywhere
He went and got me a good teacher
And in no time at all I was getting better
I can play just fine
I still practice a lot but not as much as Nels Cline

Love the Nels Cline/Wilco reference here. He’s kinda awkward, but his stories paint such a vivid picture of his breed of Americana; from his time in the Bay and his time on the East coast. It often feels tongue-in-cheek, but its wonderful smart and inventive songwriting.

The album closes with “Ben’s My Friend,” (which according to my Spotify Year in Music, I listened to more than any other track this year) a story about a day in San Francisco that leads to meeting frontman Ben Gibbard at a Postal Service show at the Greek theater in Berkeley.  It’s seriously one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. Here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMuo7GFXa0k

I can’t get over his lyrics like “We ate at Perry’s and we ordered crab cakes……blue crab cakes…..blue crab cakes” It makes me smile and appreciate the little things in life, like fucking crab cakes at a cafe near the Embarcadero. There’s a beautiful saxophone that comes in midway through the track as Kozelek plucks away at the guitar. He waxes on what it feels like to be a forty-something at a concert and layers the vocal track on top of itself and opens the final verse with:

There’s a fine line between a middle-aged guy with a backstage pass
And a guy with a gut hanging around like a jackass

It’s such a witty observation, but it’s so real and the song is packed with words that describe the day and the events in detail. This album makes me smile at life’s mundane moments and it makes me incredibly emotional when thinking about family. But above all, it makes me feel, because Kozelek speaks from the heart.

 

Albums of the Year, Music

The Best Albums of 2014: #8 The War on Drugs – Lost In The Dream

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LostInTheDream

I was in a dark place. Less than a year after moving to New York, I had cut ties with the job I had moved out there for. My life sorta came crashing down. Agoraphobia was setting in for the first few days since…I was holed up in my room, my body was still in shock and I wasn’t sleeping well. I had tickets to see The War on Drugs later that week and for the first time in days, I decided to get out of my room and headed to Bowery Ballroom for the show with my buddy Dave. I realize that this is a personal story that I haven’t really opened up to too many people about, but that night, life was breathed back in to me at that show. The music filled me with purpose and gave me the kick-in-the-pants I needed to start figuring out what comes next. And for that, I love this record.

Lost In The Dream is a call-back to classic American rock and roll. On their 3rd full-length LP, Adam Granduciel’s band channels their inner Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan. They’ve followed up on the spectacular Wagonwheel Blues and Slave Ambient with perhaps their best work to-date and easily the most critically acclaimed. Everything about Lost screams America. The album’s opening track “Under The Pressure” is about a struggle…the struggle to be, the struggle to move on and the struggle to cope. The single “Red Eyes”shows-off Granduciel’s polished song structuring with improvised guitars, vocals and a steady drum loop guiding the track.

It’s this newfound fluidity in song-structuring with room for studio spontaneity that affected me the most with this album. Like that fateful night in March at the show. One minute I was in the zone to the verses and then next thing I know, a sick guitar bridge leads into a lengthy chorus punctuation and I was letting energy coarse through my desolate mind-state and body that hadn’t been there for days. But the album doesn’t stop there in addressing and adjusting the soul’s broken condition. On tracks like “Suffering” and “Disappearing” the atmospheric high guitar notes, Granduciel’s re-verb vocals and the ominous drum sequence, harness the emotional center of gravity and make it feel like one is indeed, in The Dream.

I like the lengthy guitar outros on tracks like “An Ocean Between the Waves”…It reminds me of Springsteen more than anything. You can say what you want about Mark Kozelek’s critiques of The War on Drugs having “beer commercial guitar riffs,” (I laugh), but Kozelek is an old school guy and this is a new school production. One that captured the senses of many broken spirits around the country this year and slid into the souls of those who were already centered. For me, it led me to “ride the key wherever it goes” as Granduciel says on “Red Eyes.” I’m thankful for music like this and this record in particular, is a part of the journey I’m on now.

Albums of the Year, Music

Best Albums of 2014: #9 Sylvan Esso – Sylvan Esso

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The term “lightning in a bottle” is reserved for situations like this. When two folk musicians come out of nowhere to produce the most deliciously addicting electro-pop album of the year. For real though, Nick Sanborn and Amelia Meath’s previous bands (Megafaun and Mountain Man, respectively) play crunchy-as-fuck-hippied-out mountain folk jams. Sanborn was a bass player and Meath sang in a 3-woman damn-near-a-capella group. Yet somehow, we were gifted this incredible debut?! Again, lightning in a bottle.

Sylvan Esso came to me in the form of a moment I described in this feature for Paste Magazine’s Song of the Year, the album’s opening track “Hey Mami.” What I didn’t expand on in that article was what a dancing fool I was listening to just about that whole damn album in the car on my road trip. With nobody in the car besides me, I let out every ounce of energy I had in my body, mind and soul when I listened to this album. It was truly the soundtrack to my cross-country road trip and “Coffee” was the song I played every morning when I started the day’s drive.

Sanborn’s beats are so bass-forward. I feel like this sound was sitting there for someone to explore it for so long and it just now happened. Meath’s voice is perfectly atmospheric and she articulates with soul and a hint of elegant bass that compliments the production. Whether it’s the multiple movements on “Could I Be”, or how “Dress” and “Dreamy Bruises” make me want to pop-lock and do the robot (badly) or how “Coffee” still transports me back to my rented Dodge Avenger, mashin’ on the motorway across the nation’s highways, this album will forever be an integral part of my soundtrack to 2014. One love.

Albums of the Year, Music

Best Albums of 2014: #10 Courtney Barnett – The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas

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While The Double EP, was first released in 2013, it was finally given it’s official US release in April of 2014 on Mom+Pop Records. Oh yeah, it’s fucking great and that’s why we’re ranking it as the #10 Album of 2014 🙂 Courtney is a wonderful musician, one of my favorite discoveries of the year and it’s a sheer pleasure to watch her absolutely shred on stage. She’s just so damn unique and cool.

Coincidentally enough, I wrote a short capsule about this Album for Paste Magazine’s Top 50 Albums of 2014, where it was also ranked at #10. With that, the capsule is below and check out Paste’s list too. I had a good time making the albums and a bunch of other year end lists with 35 other writers there and it’s a solid compilation, albeit different from Everything Ecstatic’s. And now, back to Courtney:

#10 Courtney Barnett – The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas – When it comes to storytelling, Courtney Barnett is as clever they come. The Australian singer/songwriter garners her share of giggles and smirks with songs that tackle situations from hilariously unsuccessful amateur gardening (aptly titled “Avant Gardener”) to drunken dreams where artists “made their paint using acid wash and lemonade” (in “History Eraser”). For every whimsically stoney lyric onThe Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas, there are equally as many moments of sheer shred-ability from Barnett’s left-handed tail-spins on the guitar that often feel like she’s channeling Kurt Cobain.

The album itself is a collection of two older EPs, which despite getting released in Australia as far back as 2011, only saw their official US release gain widespread distribution in 2014, as this 12-track collection on Mom+Pop Records. Barnett’s musings are catchy and endearing. She finds ways to loop guitar solos into poppy verses, yet she avoids extremes. On “Are You Looking After Yourself” she opens with a twangy guitar into her isolated vocals that then lead to a full-on-folk implosion that’s utterly danceable. She repeats the pattern as it intensifies with the existential proclamation of “I don’t need to 9-to-5, telling me that I’m alive!” Lines and song structures like these render Barnett incredibly likable. There’s a confidence in place that make her American debut one of the most flat-out-fun records of the year.

Albums of the Year, Music

The Best Albums of 2014: #11 Damon Albarn – Everyday Robots

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Can we just go ahead and give Damon Albarn the credit he deserves for being one of the most accomplished songwriters of the last 20 years? The man behind Blur, The Gorillaz and now this deeply introspective solo album, has a grasp on pop culture that few can claim. On Everyday Robots, Albarn has put the globally-recognized pop appeal of The Gorillaz to the side for a moment, to reflect on personal themes, technological apathy and an over-arching treatise on tying our emotions to technology. The result is the best loner album of the year.

The aptly titled single, “Lonely Press Play” is the yin to St. Vincent’s “Digital Witness” yang. It’s a take on how we deal with boredom and depressive loneliness by turning on our digital devices:

Arrhythmia
Accepting that you live with uncertainty
If you’re lonely, press play
Can I get any closer? (Can I get closer?)
What antidote can I bring to you?
When I’m lonely, I press play

It sets the tone for a theme Albarn dissects throughout the album. On the album’s titular track, he’s more straight-forward in his critique:

We are everyday robots on our phones
In the process of getting home

The irony of the man behind the world’s first “digital band” (The Gorillaz) taking shots at the digital age is pretty wonderful in this context. Because this is Albarn’s detachment from his projects as an artist and an exploration of who he is and what goes on in the brain of Damon Albarn the person.

He even delves into memorable experiences from his travels, like on “Mr. Tembo,” a song he flippantly wrote to an orphaned baby elephant he encountered while travelling Tanzania. How he turns this song from a lullaby to a pachyderm into a Paul Simon circa Graceland jam featuring the Leytonstone Mission City Choir, (in contrast to Simon’s collaborations with Ladysmith Black Mambazo) is a memorable moment and shows Albarn humbly flexing his influence to include the East London choir.

But “Mr. Tembo” is merely an anecdote to describe Albarn’s benevolent process and human approach. The most wonderful moment on Everyday Robots comes on the nod to the eponymous Oscar Wilde classic, “The Selfish Giant.” I have to admit, I was sitting alone at a taqueria at 11pm on a Tuesday night (late work night…I told you it’s a loner album) when this song came on my headphones and I damn near broke down focusing on Albarn’s lyrics:

I had a dream that you were leaving
Where every atom falling in the universe
Is passing through our lives

And this was when when I moved this album further up on the year-end-list. To hear Albarn describe emotions and life-affirming musings with such poetry just made me want to crumble in existential bliss. Because artists like Damon Albarn who transcend the expected an can re-invent and create so masterfully, make you cower in respect.  Everyday Robots marks the moment when I stopped thinking of Damn Albarn as “the guy from Blur,” or “the dude behind the Gorillaz,” but rather as one of the most significant modern artists who has a rare ability to create music that’s truly a sign of the times.

Albums of the Year, Music

The Best Albums of 2014: #12 Chet Faker – Built On Glass

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Pardon the delay on this entry, but I’ve been a real weekend warrior. At any rate, here’s the #12 entry and make sure to follow Everything Ecstatic on Twitter first:

ChetFakerBuiltOnGlass

When Built On Glass came out in mid-April, I didn’t want to listen to anything else. It motivated me. It lifted me up. It was the kind of soulful synth-R&B I had been yearning for. I was introduced to Chet Faker through KCRW’s excellent Morning Becomes Eclectic radio show (hosted by the incomparable Jason Bentley, this is my go to weekday morning listen) and was intrigued by the Aussie from the start.

Chet Faker (real name Nicholas James Murphy, but we’ll keep calling him Chet Faker) infuses jazzy vocals in his tunes like no other. He sports a trademark bushy beard and his lyrics are super emotional; exactly what you’d want out of a jazz singer; he looks and sings the part. He twinkles the keys and let’s it all hang out. My sister (who lives in Brazil) sent me this video of a live performance of “Talk Is Cheap” and I love it not just for the song and the performance, but also how Faker’s sound is resonating in Brazil:

His hooks are poppy and that likely lends to his global appeal, but it’s the production that distinguishes him from other sultry-voiced male singers. Take the horn-samples on “Talk is Cheap” and “Lesson in Patience,” or the kraut-synth of “1998.” He finds a way to balance different sonic elements and yield a sound that’s nothing short of infectious. He’s at his velvety-iest on “Cigarettes & Loneliness,” which layers a simple guitar riff over a punchy bass line. Faker coos to a woman who’s left him tongue-tied and weak in the knees: “Love what you’ve done to my tongue?/I open my mouth, but you hear me wrong.”

Built on Glass is a series of laments. We feel Faker’s emotions, because he presents them so passionately. Where he’s had success in the electronic realm in working with fellow Aussie Flume in the past, he embarks on a solo tour de force on this album that cements his presence in the synth-R&B scene. He wears his heart on his sleeve and that resonates with me big time. Waxing on the ups and downs of love, you can just feel how much pain he’s letting go of through these songs. His authenticity is exactly that and this is a go-to album for a range of emotional fluctuations. Make your heartbreak easier to stomach by listening to Chet Faker rationalize it for you on Built on Glass, our #12 Album of 2014. Cheers.

Albums of the Year, Art, Music

The Best Albums of 2014: #13 FKA Twigs – LP1

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This is the sexiest album of the year. Straight up. LP1 is memorable for not just the haunting production from the likes of Arca, Emile Haynie, Paul Epworth and even Sampha, on top of stoically deep and dark lyrics by Twigs, but it’s also for the visual atmosphere that FKA Twigs builds within her music. Essentially, you can’t listen to LP1 without thinking about her movements, her dancing, her look. It’s synesthesia of the highest order, which we went in depth about in this April post. 

There was a lot at stake for LP1. Twigs had built up steam on EP2, largely on the massively popular song and video for “Water Me” (produced by Arca, video by frequent collaborator Jesse Kanda). I remember seeing her play at Glasslands in Brooklyn, which will go down as my last time visiting the soon-to-be defunct venue and it being the hardest concert ticket to get in all of New York. There was so much mystique around Twigs, who was a prolific music video back-up dancer for the likes of Kylie Minogue and Jessie J, before launching into her solo career, that everyone wanted to see her. It was a cryptic evening: the red lights were low, the smoke machine was on and she left us all jaw-dropped. She was one of the alpha girls for the electro-R&B movement alongside Banks and on a greater scale, Grimes. But where Banks fizzled on her debut LP into a clear product/pawn of the industry (shade, i know), FKA Twigs is in a class by herself.

This is artistic expression. There are maybe one or two other artists on this list (yet to be announced) that can pull off this type of art. She’s stunning. Case in point, the video for “Two Weeks”:

She performed this song, in similar fashion to the video on Jimmy Fallon and as the set ended, Fallon couldn’t contain himself: “Wow! I have NEVER seen anything like that!” It was genuine and a moment that resonated with me for sure, when I think about how affectatious FKA Twigs’ music is.

Paul Epworth’s lone production credit on LP1, is on “Pendulum,” and it’s a finely crafted work, with the meandering beat and Twigs coursing through it’s vibrations. On “Video Girl,” Haynie and Twigs weave a memoir of sorts, from her time as a music video dancer. It’s an honest journey into the brain of her 19-year old self, who she was and who she wated to be:

The camera loves you, ain’t that enough?
You’re craving for the whole universe
So nothing’s gonna get in your way
You’re gonna get yourself broke one day

It’s a window into the mind of a budding star. She was the best at her craft, but she yearned for more out of life and out of art. And like every track on this album, it has a distinct and powerful degree of sensuality. On “Lights On,” she’s a fierce lioness and shrieks:

When I trust you we can do it with the lights on
When I trust you we can do it with the lights on
When I trust you we’ll make love until the morning
Let me tell you all my secrets in a whisper ‘til the day’s done

Fuck. This is sexy stuff and it renders us uncontrollably drawn to her. Calm and demure, standing on stage, provocatively clad in leather and fishnet undergarments, moving erratically, yet in sheer fluidity. And I can’t get these visions out of my head when I listen to her music. It’s more than just an aural experience; it’s a full-on sensory exploration and sometimes it feels like she taps into 6th and 7th senses that I didn’t even know existed. She crashes wildly in and out of lyrical bars and I’m left speechless and in awe. Every time.

Albums of the Year, Music

Best Albums of 2014: #14 ODESZA – In Return

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“Tasteful electronic.”  That’s what ODESZA’s Clay Knight half-jokingly called their sound when I spoke with them for Paste Magazine earlier this year. And while some people might think that sounds kinda snobby, I totally get it. It’s tasteful because ODESZA manages to have their finger on the pulse of modern electronica, but they’re not trying to replicate this dub-step, deep house sound that’s gotten so popular. In Return is an album I turned to when I needed to focus, when I needed a pick me up, when I’m getting ready to go out AND when I’m lounging with friends; it’s an all-encompassing experience.

This record represents a major accomplishment of the internet age. ODESZA themselves came up in the soundcloud/hype machine/youtube buzz world and this album is a credit to hard work in a modern landscape. The album’s first single and my song of the summer is “Say My Name” featuring Zyra. ODESZA first got connected with Zyra when she was singing hooks over their tracks and posting them on youtube. I can never get over how cool this story is: They dug her takes on their output, reached out and they worked on the track together via internet exchange. This kind of story is so common in today’s musical landscape that it might as well be the norm. Like when RJD2 and Aceyalone made an entire album via snail mail recordings (Magnificient City), or how Phonte and Nicolay collaborated via e-mail on the first album for aptly titled The Foreign Exchange (2004’s Connected.) Electronic music has increasingly adopted this model of creativity, but seldom does it sound as divine and just flat-out-right, as it does with ODESZA, Zyra and other vocalists that appear on the record.

Zyra is also featured on “It’s Only” and where “Say My Name” has a distinct high level of energy that makes it the most dance-floor-conducive track on the album, “It’s Only” is a more mellow and emotional track with the influence of Asian sounds and effects. On “Sun Models” with Madelyn Grant, ODESZA brings back the kind of epic vocals that made their first two releases resonate with a wide audience. It’s a really accessible sound for an electronic group and this is what sets ODESZA apart. In fact, they’re so accessible that UNICEF used “Sun Models” for a riveting video that was released on and themed around #WorldAIDSday:

This was one of my favorite purely electronic efforts of the year. The Seattle-production duo has a totally altruistic view on making music, in that they want to further up and coming artists in the same way that they were co-signed and supported coming up. There’s a lot to like about this group and here’s hoping they spawn other acts of the same spirit.

 

Albums of the Year, Music

The Best Albums of 2014: #15 The Antlers – Familiars

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Peter Silberman is one of my favorite songwriters. If you’ve never heard of the Brooklyn band, I highly recommend spending time with their discography. Silberman and Co. have a way of crafting an indie rock sonata of sorts from album to album. The Antlers’ 3rd LP, 2009’s Hospice, is a landmark indie record that tells the story of a dysfunctional relationship through the eyes of a terminally ill patient and a hospice-worker. Their 2012 EP Drift Dive, was a marvelous companion to 2011’s introspective and deconstructing Burst Apart and it was the last breath we’d heard from the band. It left me chomping at the bit for the release of Familiars. You know that feeling when you listen to a band non-stop and you acclimate yourself with the story of their music and then say to yourself “Then what happens?” This is Familiars.

This is a gift of a record. It’s when a band that moves you with every note, drops the next piece of the puzzle and it’s just as magnificent as the others. Familiars opens with the gripping piano and an atmospheric whirring trumpet on the single “Palace.” Silberman’s lyrics are nothing short of poetically perfect, with lines like “The day we wake inside a secret place that everyone can see” and then on “Revisited,” my favorite lyric on the record:

Can you see the secret exit? The false wall in obsession?
You’ll only fit through the doorway when you relinquish your possessions

It’s a line I’ve pondered more than once since I first heard it and shaped my outlook on material things. How such a simple line can affect a listener deeply. Lyrics seem to come so naturally for Silberman. He’s a master of cryptic story-telling. He can seemingly weave any idea into any group of gorgeous words he chooses. But the ultimate charm of Familiars is truly in it’s arrangements. It’s like a small jazz orchestra is leading the journey through all of the songs. The trumpet played by long-time collaborator Darby Cicci is king and it’s an integral part of the movements of the album. Much like yesterday’s entry lends itself to a good companion on a rainy day, Familiars is no different. With it’s lengthy guitar outros, soft snares and subtle synths, it’s both an ambient and orchestral essay in melancholy.

The Antlers are a fantastic band. One of the best from where I’m standing and Familiars is the next logical step in their upward trajectory and easily one of the best albums of 2014. Enjoy.