Year-End Critics' Polls 2014

ultimate classic rock webzine are still to play their hand fyi xp

u2 ought to put their album back into everyone's itunes all over again, just to remind all the voters they're still out there

Robert Plant's album is very good. I like Bryan Ferry's as well but that's basically just another Bryan Ferry album. The Pink Floyd album was never meant to be a comeback.

I got curious about how many uncontested critic/Top 40 unifiers there have been in the past 10 years, ie Top 3 Billboard and Top 3 Pazz & Jop, and it's not as many as I thought: Gold Digger, Since U Been Gone, Umbrella, What You Know, Single Ladies, Empire State of Mind, Fuck You, Rolling in the Deep, Call Me Maybe, Get Lucky and Royals.

The Judas Priest album was well-received as well.

Sonic (Sweden)

1. The War On Drugs - Lost In The Dream
2. Lykke Li - I Never Learn
3. FKA Twigs - LP1
4. Caribou - Our Love
5. First Aid Kit - Stay Gold
6. Kindness - Otherness
7. Sturgill Simpson - Metamodern Sounds In Country Music
8. Damon Albarn - Everyday Robots
9. Flying Lotus - You're Dead!
10. Sharon Van Etten - Are We There
11. Sun Kil Moon - Benji
12. Aphex Twin - Syro
13. Run The Jewels - Run The Jewels 2
14. Ison & Fille - Länge leve vi
15. Hollie Cook - Twice
16. Lorentz - Kärlekslåtar
17. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib - Pinata
18. Mac DeMarco - Salad Days
19. Hurray For The Riff Raff - Small Town Heroes
20. Jessie Ware - Tough Love
21. Angel Olsen - Burn Your Fire For No Witness
22. Kevin Gates - By Any Means
23. Rosanne Cash - The River & The Thread
24. Tinashe - Aquarius
25. Doug Paisley - Strong Feelings

That War On Drugs album had better sound like chocolate ice cream...

More like flat Michelob.

war on drugs is like a scene in an 80s teen movie where a half-size springsteen-bot goes out of control on the dancefloor and vigorously starts dry humping everyone's legs

your 80s was markedly different from mine

I'm not sure about the whole War on Drugs album but Red Eyes is one the songs of the year no doubt. I guess a lot of people are desperately craving non-shitty anthemic rock.

Yeah I love it and its one of my favourites of the year but it does hit several comfort-food bases at once. Given how little rock music I have time for these days that's probably the main reason.

the sum total of my knowledge about war on drugs (and sun kil moon) is that absolutely laughably pathetic diss track. rock is dead, i don't care

FWIW i really like the Benji album, despite never having knowingly heard anything else by Kozelek

the sum total of my knowledge about war on drugs (and sun kil moon) is that absolutely laughably pathetic diss track. rock is dead, i don't care

― lex pretend, Tuesday, November 25, 2014 4:15 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The diss track was by SKM wasn't it? Unless did WoD do a response song? Anyway, lol at saying 'rock is dead' based on a single phoned-in joke song by an egomaniac with a bee in his bonnet about stage sound issues.

has FACT mag released any lists yet? those tend to be worthwhile imo.

― I dunno. (amateurist), Monday, November 24, 2014 10:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they got ahead of everyone and did their best Albums/Tracks of the decade so far a couple of weeks ago

wut won

ha

There was so much parochial bullshit in that Fact list.

less institutional but certainly veteran artists who "still have it"

they're not Cohen or Judas Priest, but I think the new Old 97s album falls into this category. I loved their output from '96-'01, didn't care for anything after that. but their new one sounds like it could be a lost record from their heyday. i can't even believe how good it is; it's truly shocking. if shuffling Texas roots-rock songs about becoming a creepy old man with a thing for recreational drug use is your thing, then "Most Messed Up" is your thing.

lol it's so sad that fact followed p4k's lead on that one ;_;

I feel like I'm actually gonna have to listen to at least some of that War on Drugs album now, even though I don't give a shit about it at all.

And why has everyone seemed to have forgotten about Against Me!?

The first of Lex's EOTY "I know nothing about this but I know it's awful" posts is like the first window on an advent calendar.

The War on Drugs album isn't terrible, but half the songs go on extended tangential outros for whatever the fucking reason and it ruins it for me. Chop the tails off those songs and the whole album would be better for it.

i bet i'll prob end up loving bloody War on Drugs now if I listen to it.

The first of Lex's EOTY "I know nothing about this but I know it's awful" posts is like the first window on an advent calendar.

I feel like that about every record on here

war on drugs album is good - but it is also p overrated and most of the criticisms against it thus far (sounds too much like boomer/80s rock, various songs are overlong) are completely understandable.

The Fact half-decade list was at least interesting

The War on Drugs seems to be a very big deal with all of these publications. I wouldn't have thought it would be likely to top P&J but now I'm beginning to wonder

huh War on Drugs doesn't sound anything like I thought it would

I guess ppl in 2014 really missed David Gray?

that is theeeee weirdest comparison i've heard so far! the biggest ref point/complaint seems to be like, dire straits & shit of that nature

yeah i don't really care what the #1 slot is or if some of the choices are a little challopsy. i just like to have some decent recommendations and i can sort it out myself.

xpost

I mostly going off of the dude's voice

referring to FACT mag list

xpost

decent recommendations = not the same shit that everybody puts in their lists/stuff everyone has already heard

DJP sort of nailed it there with the David Gray voice comparison.

xp Yeah, FACT's contrarianism can be comical but it leads me to new things in a way that a more conventional list wouldn't.

Relistening to this TWoD album again for the first time in a while, I find it's a very timid record. They're scared to go the full Don Henley or the full Dire Straits or the full Daniel Lanois or whatever other styles they're trying to bite and in the end it just sounds like a little bit of each of those things but in a bad way.

Not a *bad way, but an *unsatisfying way.

tbh i have less and less interest each passing year in what albums might be "best"/"better" and i've always been skeptical of critics' attempts to render coherent narratives of the chaos of a year's worth of music. those narratives can be important but the first drafts are not usually very compelling (i.e. we probably need some distance before we can make sense of it all). i'm happy just to kind of dip my toe in the stream and find some things that appeal to me.

It's probably because they're mixing all that with the ambient/spacerock/droney elements which prevent them going full on AOR, but I've gone into this on their own thread.

, FACT's contrarianism can be comical but it leads me to new things in a way that a more conventional list wouldn't.

what makes it contrarian or non-conventional? its not really my thing, but it just seems like a list of the records they feature on their site as far as i can tell

what makes it contrarian

"I Miss You" being the Beyonce pick

that's a great song tho

every time I see "Dire Straits" as a referent in the same sentence as War on Drugs I wonder if the writer means "the synthy parts of late eighties Cure + Billy Idol echo"

no, there's a definite twangy thing going on, but obviously it's at a bit of a lower skill level

I tended to hear it as much in the wheedling of dude's 'Why can't I be Dylan' voice.

^^^otm - dylan vocal bites, where would indie duderock be without them

where would indie duderock be without them

where it is now: dead, like all rock music.

I tended to hear it as much in the wheedling of dude's 'Why can't I be Dylan' voice.

you're so folksy, I'd do anything
ape you from the scoops to where the pitch begins
you're so precious, you're so right as rain
you make me make me revisit the highway again

War of Drugs > Bob Dylan

:mic drop:

xxpost thought it was p clear that was not a serious statement or one meant to laud indie duderock