The consensus on 2014 was that it has been a banner year for music, one boasting a broader and deeper selection of standout performances across genres and generations than many a year in recent memory. Or Not. Music can be messy. There’s too much, too many genres, too many ideas, for anyone to make sense out of all of it – or even to hear all of it. There’s not one genre or aesthetic or feeling that dominates the whole thing. Instead, I’ve got a list that zig zags wildly between explosive joy and wizened self-aware depression and staring-out-windows indolence and feverish all-consuming rage.
Run The Jewels ‘RTJ2’
The story of Run The Jewels coming together was already a feel-good epic before ‘RTJ2’: two underground rap veterans from vastly different scenes coming together, finding common ground, discovering a shared ferocity that jolted both of their careers to a different level, becoming best friends in the process. These two had chemistry from the first moment, and a year and a half on a shared tour bus has only deepened it. ‘RTJ2’ opens with Mike in full-blown profane motivational-ranter mode – “I’m finna bang this bitch the EFF out.” It ends with a clangorous, expressive piano solo from a dead man. In between, we get about 40 minutes of frantic, chaotic, merciless, gloriously fun hip hop music. Lyrically, both of them are having even more fun on ‘RTJ2’, coming up with convoluted and extreme ways to say “eff you,” sounding like they’re doing whatever they can to impress each other in the studio. But there’s more pathos and feeling in what they’re doing, too: Mike recounting a nightmare arrest on “Early” and lamenting the consequences of his actions on “Crown,” El grinding his noise-synths onto mournful melody on “All My Life” and “Angel Duster.” They’re operating at the tops of their games here, Mike and El sound more like each other. Mike’s delivery is more knifelike, more apt to cut against the flow of the track. El has concentrated his once-cluttered flow into pointed bursts of on-beat double-time. His beats are slower, thicker, more composed – If anything, it’s a loving homage to the Bomb Squad’s soundscape circa 1989. ‘RTJ2’ never lets up, and yet there are so many ideas and feelings and moods within that storm. It kicks you in the head, and it leaves you with plenty to think about. The soundtrack for the shame of Ferguson.
St Vincent ‘St Vincent’
Any artist who can insert the mundane nature of masturbating into a song without batting an eyelid must be special. Sometimes self-titling a record several LPs into a discography is meant to signal a new phase of old things, a mid-career back-to-basics. Other times, it’s something like St. Vincent’s newest offering: an announcement, an arrival. Though ‘St. Vincent’ wasn’t as shocking a step forward as Strange Mercy had been from Actor, it still feels like a destination toward which each of Annie Clark’s albums had been incrementally building. We couldn’t see it with the sinisterly sweet ‘Actor’ or even with the sweetly sinister ‘Strange Mercy,’ but this version of St. Vincent was always what was meant to be – this version, of colorless hair and sci-fi aesthetics and guitar and synth layers ranging from melted to glassy but always, always remaining sterile and ethereally chilly. Clark had steadily been on her way to becoming one of the luminaries of this era of indie, and this album – with mutated grooves like “Digital Witness” or reflections as moving as “I Prefer Your Love” – feels like the official coronation. A heady combination of perfect songwriting, performance and production. As immediately thrilling on the first listen as it remains on the 50th. More than just album of the year, this is one of the albums of the decade.
Budos Band ‘Burnt Offering’
The first way I ever heard the music of The Budos Band described was “the Dap-Kings meets Black Sabbath.” I would only add “70’s car chase soundtrack through a dingy underground club” to that and it’d be pretty spot-on. Everything about this instrumental group reeks of mysterious, ethereal radness. The Budos Band are a nine-piece instrumental group from Staten Island, who’ve previously released three albums’ worth of hard-hitting afro-funk party music, dense with horns and congas. Their last album started to see a bit of B-movie darkness creep into their sound, the funk increasingly mired in nocturnal gloom. But ‘Burnt Offering’ is something else again, the strident, urgent blast of trumpet and sax now pitted against scabrous, grinding guitar in a fight to the death. The Budos Band are the real deal, and ‘Burnt Offering’ is quite a ride. For connoisseurs of heavy sounds, I can’t recommend this highly enough. The 10 tracks on Burnt Offering will pump you up for a battle against Five Armies or chill you out for a couch battle against Five Guys.
Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings ‘Give The People What They Want’
Written and recorded prior to her diagnosis, ‘Give the People What They Want’ has nothing to do with Jones’ battle or any of the adversity she suffered over the past year. But, its songs are confident and spirited, the songs of someone who could grapple with cancer and emerge victorious. On opener “Retreat!”, she’s downright vicious about it: “Play with me and you play with fire/ I can make you pay/ I burn you up/ This is my desire.” This first track makes it immediately apparent that the Dap-Kings are still one of the best backing bands in the business. Bosco Mann’s production treats the horns, backing vocals, and acoustic rock instruments like a small orchestra, fiddling with every tone so that each stands out behind Jones’ powerful voice. Each instrument can be picked out of the stereo field, concentrated on, and the pure musicianship at work absorbed. We are SPOILED to have recorded music this good.
Sylvan Esso ‘Sylvan Esso’
You can glean a lot about Sylvan Esso’s auspicious debut from its opening cut “Hey Mami.” It is, in case you didn’t know, about girls getting cat-called (guys, don’t do it) and begins with the sound of the streets wafting through an open window. Amelia Meath’s vocals are stacked and stacked again to provide a nursery rhyme melodicism, and then—BAM!—there’s a drop and a beat you can bust a what to. This isn’t Feist gone folk, this is something else: a collision of clarion-call crisp tones and fuzzed-up synths, each song a surprise to unwrap. Like all the best records, the highlights are too numerous to list here, but the hypnotic sway of “Could I Be,” the peaks and troughs of “Play It Right,” and breakout song “Coffee,” compelling even in its moments of whispered hush, are just a few. This is record to get lost in.
Honorable Mention(s): Black Milk ‘If There’s A Hell Below’, Madlib & Freddie Gibbs ‘Pinata’ & Damon Albarn ‘Everyday Robots’
When it comes to video games, it feels like everything BUT the good ones was headline news in 2014. IMO, it was the worst year for games in recorded history. I don’t think there’s been a more polarizing time for video games and those who play them in, errrr, ever. Busted, hunk-of-scrap big-budget releases are raining from the sky as though we’re standing in the aftermath of some quality-obliterating explosion, portions of gaming culture are at war with each other, and even wildly innovative games are finding it harder and harder to stand out. But amongst all that, triple-A games and indies alike are tapping into a rich vein of interesting ideas, people are doing incredibly fascinating things in the games they play, and more strange, quirky, undeniably heartfelt games are appearing out of nowhere than ever.
Telltale Games (The Wolf Among Us, Tales From The Borderlands, Game Of Thrones, The Walking Dead)
I came into the Telltale fold thanks to The Walking Dead’s melodramatic stylings, but Telltale actually has a long history of comedy. With Tales From The Borderlands,a game I really wasn’t expecting much from, they made a fine return to form. I laughed a bunch and found myself really liking multiple characters. TOTB was crammed with intriguing puzzles and difficult moral conundrums. fine examples of emotional, taut, interactive storytelling.
Telltale is red hot right now. Between The Walking Dead Season 2 and The Wolf Among Us, Telltale Games has had an excellent 2014. Add in the above mentioned, Tales From the Borderlands and the first episode of Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series was nothing short of excellent. Telltale’s new dialogue-driven adventure game based on George R. R. Martin’s pop culture fantasy phenomenon almost perfectly channels the dark, shock-laden brand of storytelling found in HBO’s hit TV show. We are in for an amazing Season finishing up in 2015. Oh and Mojang has teamed up with Telltale Games for the development of a Story Mode for the massively popular Minecraft construction game.
Dragon Age: Inquisition
I’m still trying to find the time to finish up November’s “Inquisition.” However, I’ve played enough that I can pretty safely say it’s one of my favorite games of the year. The third entry in Bioware’s fantasy series has more than enough missions to complete, lore to thumb and companions to woo to overwhelm even the most ambitious marathon player. The story and characters represent BioWare in top form, and the world is massive. It’s an audaciously big and unwieldy game, but so much fun to get lost in. BioWare’s role-playing epic has everything you could expect to want in a fantasy saga: war, magic, exploration, romance and, yes, dragons. I’m sure I could spend hours upon hours in its lush, frightening world. I’m sure I will.
Five Nights At Freddy’s
Five Nights at Freddy’s is the most distilled expression of fear in gaming form I can think of. It is unbelievably simple and effective, almost devoid of anything but gameplay. The dread that accompanies the act of clicking through a variety of security cameras throughout Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza is inimitable. It is easily one of the most purely frightening games I have ever taken up, not to mention that robotic, anthropomorphic woodland creatures are innately horrifying, and at $5 full-price, it is a no-brainer. And check this, some online theorists propose that “Five Night’s At Freddy’s” is a living nightmare of Nathan Dunlap, the man arrested for the Chuck E. Cheese murders. The nightmare is that Dunlap is forced to work at the restaurant in which arguably the worst event of his life occurred and be continually haunted by the employees he once worked with. That is some scary ISHT.
Honorable mention(s): Alien: Isolation (PlayStation 3 and 4, Xbox 360 and One, Windows) & Dark Souls II (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows)
What are your favorites that didn’t make my list? Let me know.
-Dagobot
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