With so much going on in my personal life in 2014, I’ll be the first one to admit that I wasn’t nearly as focused on newer music over the entire year. 2014’s personal challenges caused quite a bit of introspection and thus a lot of time spent listening to older music. When I did listen to new releases, there were many exceptional releases to bring me out of my funk, these are just five of my favorites from the past year.
***Honorable Mentions: Ana Tijoux – Vengo (Nacional), Electric Wire Hustle – By & Bye (Okay Player), Zara McFarlane – If You Only Knew Her (Brownswood), Karol Conka – Batuk Freak (Mr. Bongo), Spain – Sargent Place (Glitterhouse), Allo Darlin’ – We Come From The Same Place (Slumberland), Willie West & the High Society Brothers – Lost Soul (Timmion)
5. BadBadNotGood – III – Innovative Leisure
As a long-time fan of Jazz music, I always love hearing new generations doing interesting new things with the genre. BadBadNotGood is in many ways as much a jazz ensemble as they are a Hip-Hop one (something that will be even clearer in 2015 when they back up Ghostface Killah), which is reflected in their music, music that retains the improvisatory character of one genre while being imminently pleasing to the ears of those raised on the other. Dark, funky, and definitely one of the best things I heard in 2014.
4. Sun Kil Moon – Benji – Caldo Verde
Sun Kil Moon – I Can’t Live Without My Mother’s Love
Mark Kozelek has found his way onto a few of these lists over the years, clearly I’m a big fan. 2014’s Benji might be the most personal album that he’s ever recorded. Every song connected to family members and experiences growing up. It’s a raw listening experience at times, as Kozelek details his earliest sexual experiences, a variety of tragedies, personal, professional and familial, or just the most honest and heartfelt love many of us have known, with “I Can’t Live Without My Mother’s Love.” Fascinating and beautiful.
3. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib – Piñata – Madlib Invazion
Freddie Gibbs & Madlib feat. Domo Genesis & Earl Sweatshirt – Robes
Madlib and Freddie Gibbs had been teasing us for damn near a couple of years with a track here, a track there from their collaboration. Finally in 2014 we got the album, and it was worth the wait. Gibbs lyricism, along with that of the many guests, rolls out as the aural equivalent of a gritty gangster drama, but as is often the case with everything he touches, it’s the production work by Madlib that elevates this album to one of the year’s best. If Dilla is recognized as Hip-Hop’s Hendrix, Madlib should be recognized as its Sun Ra, a true iconoclast, with a beat sensibility that is as original as the sources he uses to make these sonic masterpieces. “Robes” primarily uses Lenny White’s “Sweet Dreamer,” but where many would have just used simple loops, Madlib jumps around the rhythm, chops lyrics unexpectedly, shifts from early to late in the song. A masterpiece.
2. Perfect Pussy – Say Yes To Love – Captured Tracks
Not sure there was a band that made more noise in 2014, literally and metaphorically, than Perfect Pussy. The post-hardcore outfit out of Syracuse created major buzz and went places hardcore bands rarely go. So much of the appeal of Perfect Pussy relates to front-woman Meredith Graves. Though she’s been in music for several years with several different bands, at the head of this band, Graves has demanded and deserved attention for her lyrics, which by themselves would mark as a significant poetic voice, her style, stature and swagger on stage and off and perhaps most importantly for her fearlessness at being honest and open about her life and the issues that are most important to her. Say Yes To Love isn’t a record that everyone will love, the style of music isn’t meant to be for all ears. But for those of us who know these sounds and love these sounds, we know exactly what we have in Perfect Pussy. Hopefully their best years will still be ahead of them, but if they turn out to be a candle that burned too bright to last, they’ve created a remarkable fire.
1. Rodrigo Amarante – Cavalo – Easy Sound
Though he’s had a long career, in Brazil with Los Hermanos and others, and here in the states most notably with Little Joy, Rodrigo Amarante hadn’t released a record under solely his own name until 2014’s Cavalo. With a collaborative artist like Amarante it is difficult to know what you will get when they are finally on their own. How much of the sound you associate with them is truly their own or a result of the collaboration with others? Cavalo presents all of the sides of Amarante and he emerges as an artist clearly touched by his many associations, but able to stand on his own with a diverse sound, in many styles and many languages, while still retaining a unique sound. I’ve been on the record talking about my great affection for Amarante in the most simplest of settings just his voice and a guitar, and the songs that are closest to that are my favorite, but Cavalo as a whole is a rewarding listening experience, from start to finish and like all of the others on this list, it is a record that deserves to be heard in that manner. It’s in giving yourself over, fully, to this album, immersing yourself within it, that it’s great beauty reveals itself.