Best Of The Rest Of 14: Synths & Who's New (To Me)

Synthesized But Not Synthetic

Thank god Matt Taibbi is back, because Rolling Stone had the worst Best Albums of the Year list of, well, the year. U2, Bruce Springsteen? Only Jan Wenner thought those albums were among the best of 2014. And Taylor Swift at #10? I heard Wenner broke his sacroiliac contorting himself to pander to so many audiences. But one big thing they did get right was putting Thom Yorke's Tomorrow's Modern Boxes on there. Much coverage focused on his method of releasing it as a BitTorrent file, but after you've downloaded the thing (you can also get it from Bandcamp) the music is what matters. And the music is very good, with Yorke's angelic tenor sounding better than ever over slightly off-kilter electronic grooves. Perhaps the only thing keeping TMB off my Top 20 was a slight sense of over-familiarity - as if this is pretty much the album we would expect him to make. But if Yorke is content to tread water, I'm happy to paddle next to him in his rarified ocean.

Fans of Washed Out and M83 should also delve into the soundscapes of Michael Hammond, composer, sound-designer, and singer, released under the name No Lands. An arty and ambient take on synth pop (think Talk Talk's Spirit Of Eden), debut album Negative Space is gorgeous and never ceases to be intriguing. 

Although some reviews seemed to expect dance music from Patten's Estoile Naiant, it was really a series of electronic collages that kept moving forward without resorting to cheap rhythmic techniques. Mouse On Mars is in his DNA, just as Kraftwerk and Neu are in the DNA of Finland's Siinai. Their album Supermarket was expertly executed and focused on telling the story of a trip to, yes, the supermarket. Delightful and eerie in equal measures. When I think of Siinai, I often think of Seekae (something about the vowels), who released two albums in 2014. The Worry, the more song-based of the two, finds him working out some personal stuff over moody and colorful backgrounds. I like his plainspoken voice better than James Blake's and find him less pretentious overall. Find Seekae.

It could be coincidence or it could be the ripple effect of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's Oscar-winning soundtrack to The Social Network, but either way three of the year's most striking electronic albums were also soundtracks. Mica Levi's score to sci-fi art film Under The Skin creates a chilling mental movie using very simple elements. I wouldn't have expected such bleak rigor from the leader of the irritating Micachu & The Shapes, and I hope her dark night of the soul continues. Cliff Martinez of Drive fame is always worth listening to and kudos to the producers of The Knick for going with his anachronistic electronics instead of a period score. As always, Martinez's work is as slippery as a murderous icicle and just as cold. Son Lux has long been a favorite of mine and a nice end-of-year surprise was having his Original Music From And Inspired By: The Disappearance Of Eleanor Rigby drop on Spotify. Beautiful stuff, on the more ethereal side for him but with that signature feeling of consequence throughout.

I was on the Twigs tip before she was FKA and eagerly awaited her first full-length. As much as I tried, however, I did not swoon for LP1, finding it static and over-thought, although I did like Video Girl. At first I thought part of the problem with her album was that Alejandro Ghersi, better known as Arca, didn't produce the whole thing. His &&&&& EP was so stunning, as was his work on FKA Twigs early EP2 (not to mention the stuff he did for Kanye West on Yeezus), that I thought he could have saved LP1. But then his own album, Xen, came out and it was just as stiff, seeming to wither on the vine while I listened to it. The one highlight was Thievery, which burst from the general torpor with a beat straight from the dancehall. Hopefully Arca and FKA Twigs will get over themselves and serve up something more tasty in the future - they've both got the talent to do it.

Feels Like The Very First Time

Here's a quick rundown of some folks I heard for the first time in 2014 and who I now consider in the club, so to speak. They weren't all new artists but they were new to me.

I loved Courtney Barnett's draggy sound, witty lyrics, dynamite guitar and pure rock'n'roll attitude, all of which suffused the catchy, heartfelt songs on The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas. After seeing her rip the Bowery Ballroom apart by turning all those qualities up to 11, I know she has an even better record in her. Can't wait.

Eddie Dixon's Bump Key, which I might have found on Bandcamp myself if he hadn't contacted me first, was full of fractured Americana. I've also been having a ball discovering his earlier albums.

I had a wonderful night in Nashville thanks to Wild Ponies and Catherine Ashby and I've really enjoyed reliving it through their recent releases, Things That Used To Shine and Tennessee Tracks. Both records are filled with great music and great potential.

I've long enjoyed Sylvie Simmons writing in Mojo Magazine and elsewhere - who knew that she was hiding her quirky light as a singer-songwriter under a bushel? Her debut album, Sylvie, was beyond charming.

Ian William Craig is an operatically-trained Canadian tenor who knows his way around the studio, seeming to construct the spooky, layered pieces that make up A Turn Of Breath out of scraps of half-remembered sound. Striking stuff.

Richard Dawson has one of the weirdest takes on British folk I've ever heard, torturing an out-of-tune guitar till it bleeds. It's hard to tell if he knows exactly what he's doing on Nothing Important but I can assure you it sounds like nothing else.

Ben Howard's cinematic folk is far more conventional, touching on Coldplay at times, but there is a passionate heart beating underneath it all, and the tracks on his second album, I Forget Where We Were, often build to a real intensity. 

When Nick Mulvey was a member of the Portico Quartet, they were nominated for a Mercury Prize. He was nominated again for his solo debut, First Mind, which draws on folk, jazz and latin rhythms some of the same nubby-sweater warmth of classic Cat Stevens. His voice is a reassuring burr and he packs a lot of incident, melody and intelligence into his well-arranged songs.

Lastly, TV Girl's French Exit was a fun trip on the lighter side. These guys know their sixties pop and their St. Etienne and put it all together into shiny, smart packages with a faint sense of amusement. Don't let them have all the fun - join in.

What new discoveries did you make this year?



Still to come: Classical & Composed and Out Of The Past.

P.S. Since Thom Yorke hates Spotify as much as Taylor Swift (although perhaps for different reasons (and they're both dead wrong)), he is not represented on the playlist above - don't let that stop you from hearing Tomorrow's Modern Boxes.

Best of the Rest of 12: Indie & Electro

In addition to the 20 albums counted down at the end of the year, there were a number of other pleasure-providing musical products from 2012 that deserve note. All this week, I'll be celebrating the Best of the Rest of 12, starting with Indie & Electro, featuring artists coming from the world of small labels and Bandcamp pages.


Package Deal
The Prism from Nicolas Jaar's Clown & Sunset label is a sleek little silver box filled with a sampling of terrific music, much of which features the man himself. It lends a sense of occasion to the listening experience, even when I'm using it at work, and that's certainly something we can use more of these days.


Gotcha Covered
The all-covers album is a stumbling block much of the time. Classic tracks are either bashed out or over-thought, carbon-copied or needlessly deconstructed. Two albums, both released in extremely small numbers, avoided many of the common issues.

Holly Miranda collected many of her various covers, called it Party Trick, and gave it away to some of the fans (like me) who joined her PledgeMusic campaign. Anyone who's heard her smoking rendition of the Etta James standard, I'd Rather Go Blind, knows that she has a way with interpretation. She also has eclectic taste, tackling material by everyone from David Byrne and The XX to Prince and Bon Iver. Highlights of the collection include a searing take on God Damn The Sun by Swans and a version of Forever Young by Alphaville that manages to impose a grandeur and sincerity on the trite song almost despite itself. My appetite is successfully whetted for her self-produced second album, due out soon.

Field Music Play..... gathers covers by the Brewis brothers from the last few years, including a magnificent Suzanne and a charmingly complex approach to Ringo's Don't Pass Me By. The care they lavish on Syd Barrett's Terrapin leads to a result more fully realized than his own recording. It's a short album, almost an EP, and two Pet Shop Boys songs are two too many, but it shows the range of Field Music's talents. They also released the fine album Plumb in 2012, which was nominated for a Mercury Prize. However, to these ears it was a holding action after 2010's incredible double album, Measure.

Back To The Bedsit
Ghost Carriage Phantoms is the joint project of songwriter Michael James Hall and producer Mark Estall (also the proprietor of the cleverly named Marketstall Records), and their debut record, The Boy Lives, is an absorbing trip through a witty and introverted lo-fi universe. Both Woody Allen and The Psychedelic Furs are name-checked - doesn't that just say it all?

Not Grimes
While I don't want to be snarky, the amount of attention paid to Grimes seems disproportionate to the quality of her music, which often runs out of ideas halfway through. Two more promising artists in a similar vein are Twigs and Py. The electronic instrumentals backing Twigs's soprano on her EP feel almost three-dimensional and lend necessary depth to her airy singing. Her melodies are consistently intriguing as she dissects her interpersonal relationships with a clipped precision. I'm eagerly awaiting more from her and Py, who is memorably in the mix of Two Years, a moody track from Breton's Other People's Problems. Get in on the ground floor with her Tripping on Wisdom mixtape.

Marsupial Madness
Fans of Black Moth Super Rainbow and Tame Impala might want to do a little digging and give a listen to Opossom. With better songs than the former and a less slavish sound than the latter, they bring some serious fun to the psych-pop realm on their album, Electric Hawaii. They literally move to the beat of a different drummer - Kody Nielson, who also writes, sings and produces - slices up time in some pretty interesting ways on the drum tracks. He also holds the drum chair in his brother's Unknown Mortal Orchestra, whose second album is out February 5th.