ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2014

This album was a massive grower for me. Was really disappointed with it the first couple of listens but I kept coming back to it and ended up putting it in my top 10. I was surprised how well it did in all the end of year critics lists.

http://i.imgur.com/MV057fR.jpg

TIE-38 ANGEL OLSEN Burn Your Fire for No Witness [390 points, 14 votes, 1 first place vote]

The Angel Olsen was solid and good but somehow I never got DEEP into it

she's good

ooh a tie!

The Lana Del Rey album has a couple of good songs on it; unfortunately one of them is called "Fucked My Way To The Top"

i vaguely assumed that song was a 'lol this is what people think of me' satire like "Blank Space"

Really like Angel Olsen's voice but the songs just didn't stick at all. Thought she would be a lot higher.

i know nothing about Angel Olsen. Who is she and what does she do?

thought i'd like angel olsen, didn't hate it but the songs really didn't stick and the scratchy arrangements weren't enough to keep me persevering...

Yay Angel Olsen! Third vote placed.

Really like Angel Olsen's voice but the songs just didn't stick at all.

Never really got into the first Lana Del Rey album but love this one. There are some bad songs but the good ones are amazing.

know nothing about Angel Olsen. Who is she and what does she do?

kinda leonard cohen, kinda roy orbison, kinda pixies. this album was great and her writing is wonderful, best song is probably 'hi five'. such a warm, human album. still didn't vote for it though

"cruel world" tho

(re: LDR)

I feel like a lot of people who loved Video Games but were really disappointed with her first album really like Ultraviolence.

huh, I bought that LDR album on itunes a while ago and never got around to listening to it

that's the sort of ennui-soaked profligacy she sings about!

lol

http://i.imgur.com/PO2ILrF.jpg

TIE-38 MARK BARROTT Sketches From an Island [390 points, 14 votes, 1 first place vote]

I feel like a lot of people who loved Video Games but were really disappointed with her first album really like Ultraviolence.

― Kitchen Person, Wednesday, January 28, 2015 9:46 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

This is certainly the case for me.

so who is Mark Barrott?

Yesssss

sweeeeet

xxp Balearic beach hippy house vibes, a bit more purposeful than the nearly-as-good Young MArco album IMO

never heard of it! great cover though :-) :-) would sit nicely next to the botanist record

ah fantastic
missed my ballot but this mark barrott album is beautiful
as beautiful as the artwork

so who is Mark Barrott?

― Dan S, Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Lives on Ibiza and runs the International Feel label. Ace Balearic vibes

I haven't heard this but really liked Baby Come Home from the Spotify playlist. Not sure I'd need a whole album of that kind of thing though.

that track's a bit anomalous TBH, a good opener but the rest of the album is a lot less baggy and more blissed-out Hatchback vibing

I like the cover, and the title! will have to check it out

can someone explain angel olsen to me? i tried and tried but have no idea what's interesting about that record.

yeh baby come home is unique compared to the rest of the album

yesss that mark barrott album is so so fine. another one that slipped off my ballot bizarrely. agree that it does a lot of what the young marco album did but with more purpose

"dr. nimm's garden of intrigue and delight"

Baby Come Home kind of reminded me of Sebastien Tellier which is no bad thing at all. Might give the rest of the album a go. As others have already said, the artwork is really beautiful.

can someone explain angel olsen to me? i tried and tried but have no idea what's interesting about that record.

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, January 28, 2015 8:56 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I didn't vote for it but liked its sound, which is a darker, broodier take on Sharon Van Etten.

It was the AV Club's #1 album of the year. Here's the write up:

More of a slow, warm smolder than an incinerator, Burn Your Fire For No Witness tops this list after creeping into voters’ hearts and minds over the course of 2014. Released in February on Jagjaguwar, Angel Olsen’s second studio LP is an exercise in quiet badassery, solid from front to back with nary a moment of shallow emotion or thin, clichéd “solo female singer-songwriter” sound in sight. Olsen’s Patsy Cline-like coo works with simple but full instrumentation to make songs like “Unfucktheworld” and “Forgiven/Forgotten” statements of both seduction and malice. Olsen is clearly an artist who’s lived through loss, loneliness, and heartbreak, and grown stronger in spite of all the drama, emerging on Burn Your Fire with a passion that’s not only impressive, but downright aspirational. Olsen might not look like a shit-starter, but wrong her or someone she loves, and she’ll harness all her emotion and power to reduce you to ashes with one callous and withering glare. Just because her name is “Angel” doesn’t mean Olsen won’t fuck you up. [Marah Eakin]

http://www.avclub.com/article/20-best-albums-2014-212282

i also really like the front cover of the young marcos album as well.

can someone explain angel olsen to me? i tried and tried but have no idea what's interesting about that record.

well if you don't like the basic sound of it there's no point in forcing yourself tbh, but beyond that basic appeal, i only made a real connection to it once i started listening to the lyrics

re: Angel Olsen I think her voice sounds unique in today's world, it has a hyperemotional but not hysterical quality. to me it also sounds like something from the 60s/70s folk era

Yeahhhh Barrott!

The Emma Ruth Rundle album won my listening time and vote that would otherwise have fallen to Olsen.

wasn't nuts about some of barrott's cheesier sounds but it's really nice overall

Voted for all of Young Marco, Gigi Masin, Mark Barrett, very glad to see them all placing - played them all a ton this year, great music for being lazy to.

Here's one you all can argue about for the next hour while I drive to work...

http://i.imgur.com/a0FUdRv.jpg

37 SPOON They Want My Soul [400 points, 11 votes]

traditional outraged squawk at shit indie sullying my shoes

Count me as another skeptic who came around on Lana Del Ray, fantastic album

Love Angel Olsen as well "Unfuck the World" should have made the tracks poll

horrifically offensive post aimed at Spoon and their fans; subsequent apology

why spoon, why?