ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2014

2014 was the best albums-I-like year I've experienced in a long while, so I was kind of glad the albums poll fell to me this year in the rotation. Hoping 2015 is awesome for individual tracks/singles again, because it's back to the tracks poll for me next time.

Not enough straight edge music in the poll

sXe
True Til Death

not enough bike horn music imo

not enough from the Camden Lurch scene on here imo

still waiting for some skiffle revival LPs to show up

oh man i want a psychedelic doom cave/listening lair
― Mordy

The cave as it was.

damn looks cozy

btw it also boasts the best recent Neil Young cover.

ingenious sequencing folds a neil young song i was sort of sick of into the rich narrative of the record! the lee ann womack record everyone!

maybe you should edge out on a brit synth pop thread instead of complaining here

― languagelessness (mattresslessness), Wednesday, January 28, 2015 12:00 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Fixed.

Just saw that Avi Buffalo split - wonder if anyone but me threw a vote to At Best Cuckold. (The other worthwhile indie-pop record, which I forgot about for a bit just now.) Really hit the spot for jangly self-loathing.

i think the first half of the womack is the better half! not that it tails off but the opening run until "same kind of different" is just flawless

― lex pretend, Tuesday, 27 January 2015 23:47 (Yesterday) Permalink

Suffice it to say there isn't a bad song on the album, it's more about pacing to me--the second half has a few more uptempo songs that just make it a really pleasurable listen.

I said this in the Rolling Country thread, but will add a bit more color: there were more imaginative, ambitious, and innovative country albums released this year to be sure; Sturgill Simpson and Miranda Lambert come to mind. But this was the best made by a long shot. The song choices are perfect with a cast of writers (including Natalie Hemby, Bruce Robison, Julie Miller, and yes, Neil Young) and players (among them Matt Chamberlain, Glenn Worf, and legendary steel guitarist Paul Franklin) to rival any country album in recent memory. And that just speaks to the continued success of Womack's husband/producer Frank Liddell, who imo has been behind as many quality country albums as anyone in the last decade-plus: all of Miranda Lambert's, both Pistol Annies records, the last two from Kellie Pickler, and some strong work with Eli Young Band and David Nail, to name a few.

thanks for mentioning Lidell, who's been producer of the year imo for three years.

Reverend is in charge of any use of the word "ineffable" and we mistakenly tried to describe Ronika that way once. We received a cease and desist.

― Johnny Fever, Tuesday, January 27, 2015 11:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

feel like i've been written out of history ;_;

Aw, Tim. I actually don't know the legacy of that word as it relates to ilm, so if I left you out it was a mistake. I was just going by what happened in the Ronika thread.

ILX first mentions (kind of, anyway): The Ineffable Beauty of Tropical 2

Catching up with today...my only vote to place was Lewis; DJ Q, Fennesz, Moodymann, Kelis were on my mental longlist; "Archie" is great but the rest of the Alvvays album didn't grab me; expected to like Young Marco much more than I did; really need to listen to Gigi Masin but I'm lazy about albums that aren't on Spotify.

I forgive you JF, you have saved us so many times.

When there was only one set of footprints it was when JF carried ILX

Unlurking to thank the voters for turning me on to a lot of really enjoyable music in these results. (Much more so from the albums than tracks.)

lol, i'm 2/37. one from each day. that is about to change however, i can feel it.

Avi Buffalo

nice enough record, but not something i would have voted for

Voted for Ronika, as its arguably as good as any album from the 80's Nile Rodgers production/freestyle/Ze Records era, and there's nothing sacrosanct about any Pop graveyard. Pleased to see Kelis. DJ Q is a belated discovery.

one thing that i know was totally overlooked and is very good / more exciting than e.g. leon vynehall was shinichi atobe's butterfly effect. i should have voted in this.

Would be eager to meet this studio tech!

Yeah, maybe that's a bit of a silly comment. Typed out after a couple of beers!

I guess my feeling is that as the glitch aesthetics and post-digital has become convention, the kitsch sentimentalism that Endless Summer was first engaging with doesn't have such an obvious foil against all the signal processing. So the whole thing unfortunately comes across as a bit trite to my ears these days. That said, I'd be curious to return to 'plus forty seven degrees 56' 37" minus sixteen degrees 51' 08"' and 'Field Recordings' maybe.

xp 'butterfly effect' is pretty good, idk about exciting

Listening now to the one direction album and realising they're as good at this point as girls aloud were back in the day.

otm

I was a bit disappointed by Butterfly Effect...expectations might have been a bit high but it didnt particularly grab me

these results are not satanic enough.

1Direction tho

http://www.overthinkingit.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/1d-satan-banner-590x331.jpg

More like One DIMENSION, amirite?

666Direction there's 5 of them so they can stand at all 5 points in the pentagram before sacrificing a virgin for the dark lord

the other singers in this countdown could take a lesson from their example

I'd never heard of One Direction before this poll, are they like a boy band? They look really young in those pics.

Really enjoying this Ronika album

Yes Tuomas they are just like a boy band except they sacrifice livestock to Azrael

That's One Direction

Classic One D!

http://i.imgur.com/htMIKBH.jpg

lol

btw - hooray for Gigi Masin! Amazing collection of tracks, and great work by the Music From Memory guys for putting this together.

dj q - great album albeit one i felt like i should have gone back to a lot more than i did? like, i enjoyed it in a low-key way but it never turned into an addiction. "notice me" and the epic "through the night" are highlights

DJ Q is like Funkystepz for me in that his tunes (instrumentals especially) are like mini-Autobot components of a whole and they just don't sound right on their own. Like nearly everything on the album is good and I think I voted for it but I keep thinking about how much more thrilling they'd be pitched up in the mix and all piled on top of one another. As someone who came up through records like the Brown album and Exit Planet Dust, I like dance albums to feel like DJ sets and the album didn't capture the rushiness of his own sets, when it quite easily could have done.

OTM. Q's tracks have a consistent vibe and are relatively short for dance tracks, so a mixed album (possibly with a separate-track vinyl release for DJs) would have been a lot more useful.

My highlight was 'Trust Again' FWIW

Yeah the thing that prevented me loving Ineffable more is that it wasn't clear to me why I was listening to discrete album tracks from the best DJ in the world. It's still a great album but can't compete with one of Q's better MoS or Nocturnal sets let alone seeing him spin live (best night ever still).

Voted for Fennesz and Alvvays from yesterday's run, I liked the Katy B and Lee Ann Womack albums as well, the latter is completely out of my wheelhouse but yeah it definitely deserves to place.

Just saw that Avi Buffalo split - wonder if anyone but me threw a vote to At Best Cuckold. (The other worthwhile indie-pop record, which I forgot about for a bit just now.) Really hit the spot for jangly self-loathing.

― Simon H., woensdag 28 januari 2015 1:35 (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I threw it a vote. Loved their debut album, the second one was really good too. No way it'll pop up here though.

just struck me that unless ariana grande places in the top 40 (which i think...possible but unlikely?), she'll get shut out completely. no track, no album, not even a guest spot

Still getting over the fact that "Bang Bang" finished higher on the tracks poll than anything on her album.

I'm beginning to think that nothing I voted for will actually place in the top 77. :( I guess Neheh Cherry or Mirel Wagner or Meshell Ndegeocello still might appear, though their chances feel a bit slim already.