What a year to be a music fan. It seemed like almost every week of 2014 had two or three records that I wanted to spend time with and then zoom, another pile of intriguing and notable releases tumbled forth. And then another heap and another.
Compiling this list, and revisiting the year's best records, I was struck by just how many good collections of songs and exceptional bodies of work were released in 2014. More so than any other year, we could easily have run an extended selection of several hundred albums that the average DiS reader might appreciate. Finding records that have been loved by our readers or championed by many members of our community throughout 2014 wasn't hard, and putting them in order felt a little more arbitrary than most years, as essentially there were 100 albums in joint 21st place.
You could randomize almost all of our choices and put them in a different order and many people would concur whilst others would scream that their number choice was at 101. We hear you! And we are - pre-emptively - sorry.
However, for us, the point of these lists is to make sense of what we - the editors, our team of critics and community members alike - loved this year and to give you a list of records to explore, featuring a few special releases that you might have missed. There's a playlist further down so that you can work your way through the list, so perhaps do that, rather than focus on whether the top of the pile cohered with your own ordering.
If you're interested, our list compiling method is explained is here.
Let's get on with it...
50) Owls - II
49) Thom Yorke - Tomorrow's Modern Boxes
48) Aphex Twin - Syro
47) Joyce Manor - Never Hungover Again
46) ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead - IX
45) Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross - Gone Girl OST
44) The Bug - Angels & Devils
43) Raveonettes - Pe’ahi
42) Young Fathers - DEAD
41) Spoon - They Want My Soul
40) Inventions - Inventions
39) The Phantom Band - Strange Friend
38) The Antlers - Familiars
37) Perfume Genius - Too Bright
36) Liars - Mess
35) Ben Frost - Aurora
34) Manic Street Preachers - Futurology
33) Kiasmos - Kiasmos
32) Wild Beasts - Present Tense
31) Owen Pallett - In Conflict
30) Pulled Apart by Horses - Blood
29) Eels - The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett
28) I Break Horses - Chiaroscuro
27) Prince - Art Official Age / Plectrumelectrum
26) Blood Red Shoes - Blood Red Shoes
25) Vessel - Punish, Honey
24) Grouper - Ruins
23) Lykke Li - I Never Learn
22) Todd Terje - It's Album Time
21) Future Islands - Singles
EMA
The Future’s Void (Matador / City Slang)
Alexander Tudor wrote: Production-wise, EMA has said she wanted the album to sound like Nine Inch Nails demos and - fair enough - this is what we hoped How to Destroy Angels would be, or what Zola Jesus might do next. The drums clatter as before, guitars clang and scrape, synths blast white noise or saw-tooth waveforms impossible before computers… but all of this is contained, compressed, mixed down, and suborned to arrangements that define the music as a machine for delivering emotion. The raw, chaotic, noise-collages of her former band, Gowns, seem a long way away – but these elements are suspended to make humanity seem all the more precious. The music operates less as an end in itself and more as a counterpoint to the keening, whispering, screeching, gasping voice-as-expression-of-humanity: within the silicon maze, she suggests, there’s a ghost trying to get out.
Related Read: EMA aka Erika M. Anderson's digital magazine exploring more of the themes on the album.
Factoid: Her debut album Past Life Martyred Saints was at number 15 in our 2011 albums of the year list.
East India Youth
Total Strife Forever (Stolen Recordings)
Tom Fenwick wrote: EIY (aka William Doyle) debut album takes influence from shoegaze and ambiance to acid breaks and electro-classicism, binding them together across 11 wildly varied but thoroughly magnificent tracks. From the crisp and hypnotic arpeggiated synths of opener 'Glitter Recession', to 'Midnight Koto' where tender harmonics disperse across a landscape of juddering static drone. Or there's the blissful sound-bomb that is 'Hinterland', a heart-stopping opus of rapid-fire acid-house percussion, techno glitches and undulating crescendos.
Undoubtedly its peaks are reached across the album's four most experimental tracks, 'Total Strife Forever' (I - IV respectively). The quartet combining all that is good about electronic composition, both past and present and future into a tumultuous cluster of reverb-soaked vibrations, where crunching noise and spectral ambiance collide in savage wonder. Elevating Doyle's sound to an upper echelon of ambient electronica and beyond, hinting toward the work of Steve Reich and Philip Glass.
Related Read: Don't Touch That Doyle: Interview
Factoid: This album was voted January's album of the month by the DiS community.
Hookworms
The Hum (Weird World/Domino)
Jamie Prisk wrote: 2013's Pearl Mystic mercilessly battered you around the head in a haze of guitars and largely indecipherable, piercing vocals. Though indisputably a part of the psych revival of recent years, Hookworms occupy their very own niche, combining elements of shoegaze and noise with the DIY elements of hardcore and garage rock. The Hum, whilst sounding very different, is very much a continuation of Pearl Mystic, and absolutely does not disappoint.
Related Read: Hookworms interview Eagulls.
Factoid: Hookworms' debut album topped our 2013 list.
A Winged Victory for the Sullen
Atomos (Erased Tapes)
Sam Cleeve wrote: Adam Wiltzie and Dustin O’Halloran’s follow-up to their DiS-lauded debut album didn't disappoint either. Strings, piano, and droning ambience are still the order of the day, and for all intents and purposes, the rules of the game remain the same: if you are the type of person who likes their music exclusively rigid, beat-driven and quantised, then I can see very well how A Winged Victory for the Sullen might just sound to you like Ludovico Einaudi accompanied by a lightsaber in desperate need of a fresh pair of Duracells. But then this music isn't really for you.
Related Read: DiS meets A Winged Victory For The Sullen.
Factoid: Atomos was commissioned by choreographer Wayne McGregor, who is in, it would seem, absolutely every experimentally inclined, ambient-leaning soundtracker’s phonebook (see also: FAR with Ben Frost, Sum and Infra with Max Richter, Dyad 1909 with Ólafur Arnalds, Entity with Jon Hopkins. The man has a cracking taste in music. Evidently he’s even done a couple of videos with John York).
Keaton Henson
Romantic Works (Self-Release)
Sean Adams writes: This record has become the soundtrack of late nights at DiS HQ and busy afternoons. And on quiet mornings too, come to think of it. Much like A Winged Victory for the Sullen's candlelit Atomos, this is a gentle orchestral album which was originally composed for a ballet too. Keaton, who usually makes what could lazily be pigeonholed as 'sombre troubadour music', describes this record as "bedroom classical" - mybe he lives in St Paul's Cathedral as the scale and scope of this record is far-far grander than the detritus-of-life strewn desks, piles of clothes and bins that need emptying that comes to mind when we think of British bedrooms.
Related Read: Without Words: Keaton Henson's Favourite Classical Music.
Factoid: This album was Beyonce'd online, premiering over on the Guardian on the day of release.
FKA twigs
LP1 (Young Turks)
J.R. Moores wrote: Kylie Minogue’s instructions to “slow down and dance with me, yeah, slow”come to mind, yet despite rocking mounds of rich, deep, funky, booming grooves,LP1’s music is too slow to dance to really. Try slo-mo boogying to this and you’ll risk looking like an aqua aerobics class that lost its swimming pool. Its disorientating, unsettling and claustrophobic ambience would be better suited to soundtracking a Netflix reboot of Nineties yuppie drama This Life. But don’t let that put you off. It may be slow but Twigs’ music is constantly swerving, shifting and splicing. While its glitchy beats, swathes of bass and woozy synths may soothe, they never bore. Its production is slick, professional and precise, but fortunately LP1 remains too out-there to put on at a dreaded dinner party (unless, perhaps, it’s one of those mythically kinky dinner parties where you all put your car keys in a bowl and then make ((excruciatingly slow)) love to someone else’s hubby).
Related Read: FKA Twigs: Beyond the hateful hype and Prince, Aaliyah and Kate Bush comparison.
Factoid: FKA twigs' real name is Tahliah Barnett, and she's from Tewkesbury.
Sun Kil Moon
Benji (Caldo Verde Records)
Matthew Slaughter wrote: On Benji, the confessional comedy of Among The Leaves is abandoned in favour of sober detail. It’s a record about death, dying and the resistance to and acceptance of both. It’s about the long gone past and the lessons history has for us about the future. It’s a Philip Roth novel made song, a Herzog movie on a flamenco guitar detailed by John Hughes and delivered in slow, sweet monotone monologue.
Related Read: Sun Kil Moon Yells At Cloud: "War On Drugs: Suck My Cock" and the Language of Male Violence by Meredith Graves from Perfect Pussy for Pitchfork.
Factoid: The War on Drugs record is higher up on our list...
Interpol
El Pintor (Matador)
Dom Gourlay wrote: Bold in intention and quiet in confidence, they've gone back to basics here and for the most part, the results are sublime. Opener 'All The Rage Back Home' has already established itself as a live favourite since the band first played it back in March and it is easy to see why. Simplistic yet assured, it represents arguably their most accessible four minutes since 'The Heinrich Maneuvre' launched third album Our Love To Admire. Kessler's guitar hooks rage with a bite comparable to those on early records Turn On The Bright Lights and Antics, and it sets a high standard for the rest of El Pintor to live up to. Which it does, effortlessly.
Related Read: DiS meets Daniel Kessler and then a few weeks later we caught up with Paul Banks.
Factoid: Interpol launched the album with a show at New York's Metropolitan Museum.
Mogwai
Rave Tapes (Rock Action)
Christian Cottingham wrote: Rave Tapes is possibly Mogwai’s strongest collection - Les Revenants notwithstanding - since Mr Beast, and an extremely solid distillation of their enduring appeal. 'Hexon Bogon' snarls with characteristic sociopathy, all pealing riffs and squalls of distortion, whilst 'Deesh' does epic and grandiose, Martin Bulloch’s drums pounding militaristically behind like the accompaniment to slow-motion propaganda, all sweat and vigour and desperate final push. 'No Medicine for Regret' does pathos as only Mogwai really do, driving melancholic piano through a maelstrom of reverb and distortion, a calm within the storm, whilst 'Repelish' returns the band’s idiosyncratic humour, welding interview audio from a guy troubled by Led Zeppelin’s backward-masked Satanic messages to a magnificent assemblage of bubbling electronica and sliding, interweaving riffs - marrying the most accessible track on here to the vocal 'You’ve Got to Live for Satan'.
Related Read: DiS chats Rave Tapes with Mogwai.
Factoid: Barry from Mogwai runs a bar in Berlin but he doesn't like gentrification all that much.
Cloud Nothings
Here And Nowhere Else (Carpark)
Dom Gourlay wrote: Like a modern day Evan Dando for disaffected post-millennial adolescents, he manages to pour out his thoughts vividly over the course of eight mostly vitriolic slices of guttural punk-pop. For all its radiance and attention to detail, Here And Nowhere Else only just breaks the 30-minute-mark, yet in that half an hour exudes more emotions than a counsellor's waiting room. This time they've employed the services of John Congleton, whose production skills have already graced records by Angel Olsen, Xiu Xiu and St Vincent so far this year. As Baldi said in an interview on these very pages, Congleton wanted to recreate Cloud Nothings' live sound on record - his ideal of recording as few takes as possible using different microphones across assorted rooms appears to have paid dividends.
Related Read: Interview with Cloud Nothings.
Factoid: This record did well in our half-year review too.
Swans
To Be Kind (Mute)
Benjamin Bland wrote: To Be Kind is the thirteenth Swans studio record, and their third double set. It's a two-hour odyssey of similar proportions to The Seer, that emphasises rather than establishes Swans' reconfirmed position at the top of the experimental rock tree, but that doesn't make it any less of a thrill. The ten tracks collected here, ranging from five to 34 minutes in length, demonstrate everything that Swans have ever been over their career, but it is their bloody mindedness that continues to stand out. Few bands get this far into their career without making compromises and, with the possible exception of 1989’s The Burning World, that is something that Swans have never done.
Related Read: When DiS met Michael Gira....
Factoid: If you listen to this album backwards, it sounds a lot like the Scott Walker & SunnO))) album.
The War On Drugs
Lost in the Dream (Secretly Canadian)
Christian Cottingham wrote: Lost In The Dream is an instant salve to the shittiness of modern life, an album that would sound as though it could have been made anytime in the last five decades were it not so immaculately produced, recalling Dylan and Springsteen and pretty much all of Almost Famous without ever descending into pastiche or mere homage. Guitar breaks soar and harmonicas wail and lyrics tell of "setting my eyes to the wind", but somehow the cliches don’t seem worn and tired but utterly authentic, as though we’re encountering them for the first time in that first great flush of musical exposure before the cynicism and the rot kicks in and we start reading Vice.
Related Read: Back in 2008, we do 'DiScover' interview with TWOD.
Factoid: Go back 5 spaces...
Ought
More Than Any Other Day (Constellation)
In his fantastic 9/10 review Jazz Monroe perfectly described this record as "a righteous kind of party music." Then continued: "more than stubborn renegades they’re actually arch humanists with a soft shining centre, masters of a social commentary that, while imperfect (the metaphor of narcotic experience as spiritual release feels slightly overplayed, eg) is especially rare in indie rock, for it stems not from guilt or disgust but hope. Too witty for punk, too industrial for art-rock, the album’s masterstroke is to open an escape hatch from postmodern recursion and illuminate a long road home paved with social awareness, rigorous self-doubt, redemptive communal empowerment and - today, together - an explosion of spiritual exultation, heard and felt en masse." It's this duality that makes them one of the most exciting bands in the world right now.
Related Read: "We were all going through this weird period of really unsettled thinking" DiS meets Ought.
Factoid: This record featured in five of our Staff member's top three LPs of the year lists.
Eagulls
Eagulls (Partisan)
Dom Gourlay wrote: Throughout its ten pieces, Eagulls delivers in every conceivable way. Opening proceedings with that single ('Nerve Endings'), the standard is set from the album's opening bars. 'Hollow Visions' and 'Yellow Eyes' follow suit in rip-roaring fashion, the former's scattergun assault clearing the way for the latter's cautionary build up that evolves into a widescreen cavalcade of effects laden guitars not that dissimilar to the one punctuating The Horrors' last two records. "I can't see it, can't feel it, can't her it..." cries Mitchell in life dependant fashion. Which sums up Eagulls to a large degree in that everything they do and say is believable. Which in turn gives us, the listeners, something worth believing in.
Related Read: DiS meets Eagulls.
Factoid: Their performance on Letterman was nearly as talked about as Future Islands'.
Alvvays
Alvvays (Transgressive / Polyvinyl)
Christopher McBride wrote: At its heart Alvvays is as indie-pop as it comes. ‘Archie, Marrie Me’ owes more than a fair amount of inspiration from Teenage Fanclub’s ‘Neil Jung’, whilst other songs like the wonderful opener ‘Adult Diversion’ and ‘Atop a Cake’ are very much in the guitar-pop mould, with their guitars set straight to fuzzy/jangly, and with dreamy vocals courtesy of their lead singer Molly Rankin.
Yet what sets Alvvays apart from their peers is the sense of darkness and melancholy that hides behind the somewhat sprightly tunes on offer. This is seen on tracks such as the budget Beach House-like ‘Dives’, the yearnings on ‘The Agency Group’, and ‘Next of Kin’, which is surely a contender for the jauntiest, most infectious song of 2014 about a riverside drowning. In a genre which has a reputation, whether fairly or otherwise, for being relatively fluffy and innocent, it is nice to see an album that isn’t afraid to tackle the less pleasant aspects of life head on.
Related Read: Alvvays made our staff's favourite song of the year, so the band shared their songs of the year with DiS.
Factoid: 'Archie, Marrie Me' was not a marriage proposal.
†††
Crosses (Sumerian)
Sean Adams wrote: ††† (or Crosses) have made my album of the year. Featuring the vocals of Deftones' Chino Moreno, who could probably sing the entire Russian phonebook and it be a deeply sexual experience, Crosses conjures a wall of mythical beasts writhing in the corner of your mind's eye. The LP is kind of a collection of EPs but don't let that put you off one iota, as it takes everything foreboding about Deftones' classic baby-maker White Pony and bedazzles it with M83's glittering giganatronica.
Related Read: DiScover: The best debut albums of 2014.
Factoid: ††† is the highest placed debut album on this year's list.
Marissa Nadler
July (Bella Union / Sacred Bones)
Andrzej Lukowski wrote: I try to be as cold-eyedly unsentimental about music and musicians as physically possible, but nonetheless I was a bit discomfited by the fact that Marissa Nadler's last, self-titled album didn't do a lot for me, despite the self-funded blood sweat and tears she put into it. July was a monumental follow up, though, regaining the mystique without losing the maturity.
Related Read: DiS' Derek Robertson had a lengthy chat with Marissa when she was in Europe earlier this year.
Factoid: Despite her sparse and gentle seeming music, Marissa is good friends with SunnO))), Earth and all that crowd. The album was produced by Randall Dunn who's worked with those acts as well as Boris and Wolves In the Thrown Room.
Taylor Swift
1989 (Big Machine)
Rob Leedham wrote: If there's one thing you should know about Taylor Swift, it's that she's perfect. An all-American girl with the songwriting flair to write every millennial's favourite 'Love Story' at 17 years old, she’s cultivated an aura where even her flaws are a source of enduring popularity. When I publicly celebrate my inadequacies with booze and ex-girlfriends, this usually leads to a ‘final warning’ email. When Taylor makes light of her 24/7 party lifestyle and inability to keep a man, she’s rewarded with her second US Number 1 single.
Much has been made of the ‘Fearless’ singer's switch from country to pop by buddying up with producers like Max Martin a.k.a. the bloke behind '...Baby One More Time'. What's really more significant is her enduring positivity in the face of adulthood. The proud defiance of 'Welcome To New York' and 'Bad Blood' remind me of several iconic hardcore bands you've probably never heard of. There's that same 'stay positive' philosophy, and a fair few shouty bits. Best of all is 'Style', which celebrates Swift's fling with 1D's Harry Styles (geddit?) as though being young and reckless is all a part of growing up. This is something anyone can relate to, whether they've made a string of poor romantic choices or 'done a whitey' on the weekend gone by.
Related Read: Why has the world fallen under Taylor Swift's spell?.
Factoid: 'Shake It Off' is the first song in the history of DiS to get a Radiohead-style group review by our team.
Sharon Van Etten
Are We There (Jagjaguwar)
Matthew Slaughter wrote: A record that I’ve been unable to resist playing on a daily basis since first being handed it for review earlier in the year. Heartbreaking, glorious, poetic, anthemic – everything you could ask for from perhaps the most talented songwriter of a generation. I’m now feeling my 9/10 was a little low.
Related Read: DiS meets Sharon Van Etten: "It's the same piano that was played on Patti Smith's Horses.".
Factoid: SVE's Tramp topped our albums of the year list in 2012.
The Twilight Sad
Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave
(FatCat)
One of DiS' long-time favourite (and annoyingly under-rated) bands make DiS' album of the year, not-really-a-shock-if-you've-been-following-the-site SHOCKER!
In his 10/10 review, Dan Lucas wrote: The Twilight Sad gave birth to one of the greatest British debut albums in living memory. That was in 2007 and just seven years later they’ve given us an indication that they could attain greatness on a par with MBV or The Jesus and Mary Chain. Hell, carry on like this and we’ll be comparing them with The Cure. If there’s a theme to the album, it's one of tired melancholy, but it’s not until you assemble the whole thing, that the jaw-dropping brilliance of the album reveals itself.
Related Read: Twilight Sad site takeover and archive of coverage championing the band over the years.
Factoid: This album is best experienced on headphones, at reasonably high volumes, in a somewhat bad mood.
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THE LIST
Our 50 Favourite Albums of 2014
1) The Twilight Sad - Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave
2) Sharon Van Etten - Are We There
3) Taylor Swift - 1989
4) Marissa Nadler - July
5) ††† - Crosses
6) Alvvays - Alvvays
7) Eagulls - Eagulls
8) Ought - More Than Any Other Day
9) The War On Drugs - Lost in the Dream
10) Swans - To Be Kind
11) Cloud Nothings - Here And Nowhere Else
12) Mogwai - Rave Tapes
13) Interpol - El Pintor
14) Sun Kil Moon - Benji
15) FKA twigs - LP1
16) Keaton Henson - Romantic Works
17) A Winged Victory for the Sullen - Atomos
18) Hookworms - The Hum
19) East India Youth - Total Strife Forever
20) EMA - The Future’s Void
21) Future Islands - Singles
22) Todd Terje - It's Album Time
23) Lykke Li - I Never Learn
24) Grouper - Ruins
25) Vessel - Punish, Honey
26) Blood Red Shoes - Blood Red Shoes
27) Prince - Art Official Age / Plectrumelectrum
28) I Break Horses - Chiaroscuro
29) Eels - The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett
30) Pulled Apart by Horses - Blood
31) Owen Pallett - In Conflict
32) Wild Beasts - Present Tense
33) Kiasmos - Kiasmos
34) Manic Street Preachers - Futurology
35) Ben Frost - Aurora
36) Liars - Mess
37) Perfume Genius - Too Bright
38) The Antlers - Familiars
39) The Phantom Band - Strange Friend
40) Inventions - Inventions
41) Spoon - They Want My Soul
42) Young Fathers - DEAD
43) Raveonettes - Pe’ahi
44) The Bug - Angels & Devils
45) Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross - Gone Girl OST
46) ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead - IX
47) Joyce Manor - Never Hungover Again
48) Aphex Twin - Syro
49) Thom Yorke - Tomorrow's Modern Boxes
50) Owls - II
D'you want more? Here's 51-100.
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1) Our year-end coverage including songs of the year, gigs of the year and more - compiled
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