Since I failed to even post one last year I feel the need to do so for posterity at least.

1) The War On Drugs - Lost In The Dream
2) Sturgill Simpson - Metamodern Sounds In Country Music
3) Lydia Loveless - Somewhere Else
4) Ex Hex - Rips
5) Hiss Golden Messenger - Lateness of Dancers
6) Ty Segall - Manipulator
7) Drive By Truckers - English Oceans
8) Parquet Courts - Sunbathing Animal
9) Angel Olsen - Burn Your Fire For No Witness
10) NQ Arbuckle - The Future Happens Anyway
11) King Tuff - Black Moon Spell
12) Grouper - Ruins
13) Cymbals Eat Guitars - Lose
14) David Kilgour & the Heavy Eights - End Times Undone
15) Beck - Morning Phase
16) Ryan Adams - Ryan Adams
17) Spoon - They Want My Soul
18) First Aid Kit - Stay Gold
19) Reigning Sound - Shattered
20) Mac DeMarco - Salad Days
21) Strand of Oaks - Heal
22) Temples - Sun Structures
23) The Rich Hands - Out of My Head
24) Sharon Van Etten - Are We There
25) Bobby Bare Jr - Undefeated


Looking at the list it doesn't feel like a particularly great year but I also have this weird feeling that some of these may end up being some of my all time faves. I missed a bunch of stuff over the year. Preggers wife, had a kid, etc. but that's the way it goes. These made the year worth digging for music though.

I've listened to War on Drugs before but they never resonated like they did with this album. Every time I put it on I just kept asking why I don't listen to this more. It's great. I kept finding different songs that I liked which should be the hallmark of any great album.

Similar experience with Parquet Courts. I listened to Sunbathing Animal a couple times early in the year and dismissed it as a sophomore slump but picked it up later in the year and it worked. Slightly different beast than Light Up Gold but that's a good thing.

Couple other random notes; Went to Europe last summer and I'll never forget riding the Bernina Express from Switzerland to north Italy and having Lydia Loveless in my headphones while looking out over the Alps. Or jamming to Reigning Sound's Shattered heading into Florence while blowing through a bottle of Chianti. Fucking music man.

Songs of the year for me: "Wine Lips"- Lydia Loveless, "Blue Moon" - Beck, "How You Got That Girl" - Ex Hex

That Grouper record is so good. As is that Cymbals Eat Guitars which I just heard this past weekend unfortunately.

Here is another list from someone who I trust that has that War On Drugs record at number 1. I feel like Cap in the Sleater Kinney thread...I feel like I must be missing something with that record as it may be my least favorite thing I heard all year.

That being said some other stuff on here I will have to check out for sure.

looks like we have a new leader in the overlap clubhouse - makes sense that the board's two BBs would have such similar tastes

well done!

Damn, even Derris beat me to it this year. Or did this happen last year, too? I need to just go ahead and post a list already.

I like that Grouper album a lot, too. Also very cool to see Cymbals Eat Guitars on your list. That album is one of my favorites, and "Laramie" is probably my favorite song of the year. I also didn't like Sunbathing Animal as much as Light Up Gold, but it has grown on me as well. (And I ended up liking Content Nausea more than I thought I would, too.) Angel Olsen is great. The Ty Segall album is solid.

I don't hate or actively dislike The War on Drugs, but the near universal love is a little mystifying to me. I guess it should make sense, at least in theory, that they would be so heavily favored as they are sort of like The National with better lyrics and vocals. And people sure do love The National. TWOD album is nice, and I do like it more than their last one which was also nice. I just can't seem to develop any attachment to it. Actually, it kinda reminds of a lot of stuff that was on the radio a lot in the '90s in the adult contemporary vein: Sting, Richard Marx, Bryan Adams, maybe a little Bruce Hornsby. Updated and made to sound acceptable in the 2010s, obviously, but still pulling at a vague sort of nostalgia. Not really the right kind of nostalgia for me, though.

Drink, I sort of worked up a loose Top 20 last year and looked up and it was March and just said screw it. I always want to post more detail about each album but I just don't have the time these days.



Thanks k. I'm pretty much a traditionalist at heart. I like big dumb rock, good songwriters, some twang here and there, and a sucker for pop hooks. That said, I always find your list interesting because, in general, it's stuff that I gravitate towards a few times a year, if not on a visceral level, then an intellectual one. I'm fascinated by the music but also the process of making more ambient and experimental records and how that sort of stuff finds an audience.

As for the War of Drugs, it's success is pretty interesting. I didn't necessarily think it was some huge leap forward for them but I've got friends who are casual music fans asking me about them now. Drinky is on to something with some of the artists he compared them to. There is a loose 80's production aesthetic to the whole thing that may be appealing to me in my subconscious since that's a time when I was a kid and listening to pop radio all the time.

But at the same time, I just find the songs so good. They way they build or pull back. Just when I think it could start to get monotonous he changes it up with tempo or a solo or even a saxophone (80's again). Like, I could easily see a song like "Suffering" being sung by Dylan in the 80's off of something like "Oh Mercy". There's also a sadness throughout the whole thing as well. I get the Springsteen comparisons to Born In The USA era in that much of the songs are upbeat and melodic but serious in nature. Like, if "I'm On Fire" had babies, the songs would be on this album.

But also, it's an inoffensive album. Lots of trance inducing longer songs with extended grooves. It leaves the listener the opportunity to put their interpretation or their experience onto the music. Could be why it's reached such a wide audience.

I also should've included "Red Eyes" as one of my songs of the year.

glad I'm not alone in this.

it's a mildly enjoyable listen, but for it to be basically the consensus best album of 2014 absolutely confounds me.

I like TWOD a lot (my #1) but am also mystified by the near universal love. After seeing so many year-end lists from magazines/blogs coupled with a lot of the user lists here it I almost felt guilty for putting it as my #1. I've been on board with them since Wagonwheel Blues, but it seems weird how widely they are liked now.

Although I guess I'm in the exact same situation with The National, which Drinky brought up. Different bands, but similar responses to their music.

That's the problem with it for me... it's completely inoffensive but also not very interesting sonically to me either. Its the sort of record that I'd forget is even playing soon after I put it on and then its over. I couldn't be much more ambivalent about it and them in general. I'm talking about the kind of ambivalence you have at the opthalmologist's office when he's really zeroed in on your prescription. Which lens is better? This one or this one, flipping back and forth over and over again waiting for a response. I can detect a difference between the record playing and complete silence if I'm paying attention but I don't really prefer one to the other.

I've always assumed that the lyrics are a huge part of their appeal but I can never get myself to pay enough attention to their music to confirm that they are worth of the praise they get as songwriters. Maybe its just a problem with how I process music. The lyrics are important to me but they are always the last thing I process. Its always first the melodies, rhythms, mood and sound with the voice just another instrument in the mix. I've always lost interest in TWOD long before I could get to the point of processing the lyrics.

Yeah TWOD was a snooze-fest for me. But in general I'm at the point in my life where I want immediate song satisfaction. No real interest in putting "work" into it.

Which I admit is pretty stupid. I gave Morning Phase a lot of listens even though it didn't strike a chord with me right away, and it ended up growing on me. But then again, that's Beck, he's one of my all-time favs.

I think the trancey-ness makes it a good album to listen to if you work at a computer all day (like a lot of us do, some more than others), but it also has the rock out that make it a good car listen as well. To wit, when that guitar solo hits in "Red Eyes" its just one of those joyous musical moments that makes you hit the accelerator a little harder or pump your fist or tune up the air guitar. Visceral shit, man.

Dude...that Sturgill Simpson is a pretty weird little record. These lyrics are killing me, smiled all the way to work listening to that one just now. Not something I will listen to a ton, but that is certainly a guy that I'd like to party with. (Did he really just say something about reptiles and aliens?)

Good stuff Maynard. We have a few that overlap.

I wish we still did a yearly obner poll so we'd see where TWOD, Stugill, Beck and Spoon would shake out.

I still haven't listened to TWOD.