→ April 6, 2015
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March 2015 music update.

My breakdown of the Craig Kimbrel/Melvin Upton trade is up for Insiders, as are my (for entertainment purposes only) standings and awards predictions for 2015.

My apologies for the delay on this month’s playlist, but I was on the move most of last week and didn’t have much writing time. This list is heavy on tracks from albums that came out in March, which was a fertile month for new releases from major alternative acts.

Lord Huron – The World Ender. Lord Huron’s new album, Strange Trails, comes out on the 7th; I have an advance copy and have enjoyed it, although it doesn’t have a cross-over hit like “Time to Run.” This track’s dark, shuffling rhythm matches the macabre lyrics perfectly, and it’s the style I’d like to see vocalist/guitarist Ben Schneider employ more frequently.

Of Montreal – Bassem Sabry. Of Montreal are actually of Athens, Georgia, and defy any easy characterization as their sound changes from album to album and sometimes from track to track. Their thirteenth album, Aureate Gloom, came out in early March, and returns the band to their rock roots, with some psychedelic-rock inflections that seem to come from the 1970s.

Purity Ring – stranger than earth. The Canadian duo’s second album, another eternity, also came out in March, and was stronger overall than their debut, lyrically and musically, although I wish the band didn’t push Megan James’s vocals through the effects board so frequently, as they make her otherwise gorgeous voice sound tinny and shrill.

Young Fathers – Shame. Winners of the 2014 Mercury Prize, Young Fathers will put out their second proper full-length, White Men Are Black Men Too, on Tuesday the 7th. I can’t vouch for the title’s accuracy, but this lead single continues their trend of combining electronic sounds and world-music rhythms with sparse lyrics, some rapped and some sung, so that characterizing them strictly as a hip-hop group seems to fall well short of the mark.

San Cisco – RUN. Their 2013 track “Awkward” was my #18 song of that year, and released a full-length album, Gracetown, early last month. The disc is solid with a number of upbeat, Aussie-pop gems, including this track and “Too Much Time Together,” yet another band leading the giant wave of great indie-pop acts from down under.

Modest Mouse – The Ground Walks, with Time in a Box. I was disappointed in Modest Mouse’s album, Strangers to Ourselves which finds them kind of stuck in neutral, maybe even sliding backwards without Johnny Marr’s pop-rock sensibilities to keep Issac Brock from veering on to the shoulder. When the tempo’s up and Brock’s lyrics come at you like a deluge from an open fire hydrant, Modest Mouse’s music becomes fascinatingly bizarre, as in this track, which seems to be constantly spinning rather than moving in the typical linear fashion of a pop/rock song, running six solid minutes of strangeness.

Death Cab for Cutie – Ingenue. Death Cab’s latest album, Kintsugi, marks their first album since guitarist/producer Chris Walla left the band, although his work appears on the album. The sound is different, however, more distinctly a Ben Gibbard record, with Gibbard’s trademark earnest lyrics and delivery but lacking something – a little acidity, or a pinch of salt – to balance out the preciousness he can emote when his voice is mixed to the front of a track. The flip side is that the album feels more accessible, perhaps even a bit more commercial, because Gibbard’s hooks stand out so much more.

Of Monsters And Men – Crystals. The new album is due June 9th. I can’t wait, but I’m also concerned we might just get more of the same, the way Mumford & Sons underwhelmed with their second album.

Black Rivers – The Ship. The other two-thirds of Doves have formed their own group, and their sound is more like that of their original band than the solo work of singer/bassist Jimi Goodwin. The Williams brothers bring some electronic elements into their music, more than we ever got on any Doves album, but whichever brother is singing isn’t quite up to the task.

Courtney Barnett – Elevator Operator. I reviewed her amazing debut album last week, and this opening track is one of my favorites, both for the story she tells in the lyrics and the way the music announces the shift in her style to a heavier, more rock-base dsound.

Lower Dens – Société Anonyme. Pitchfork loved this album, Julia from Sirius XM loves this album, but I do not love this album. It’s pleasant but tame, too light on hooks. “To Die in L.A.,” the lead single, is its best track (with its most memorable riff); this song, the final track on the album, was my second favorite.

Tame Impala – Let It Happen. Good song, but really, Kevin, seven freaking minutes? Who do you think you are, Opeth?

Grimes – REALiTi (Demo). It doesn’t have The Drop of her dubstep hit from last year, “Go,” but Grimes seems to have learned how best to deploy her childlike soprano over the electronic eclectica of most of her discography. This song is a demo from her fourth album, which she has reportedly scrapped but might still release some day. She should, if this song is any indication of what it’s like.

Westkust – Swirl. Pitchfork comped Westkust to shoegaze, but the vocals are way too clear for that comparison to hold much water, and there’s more of a California tinge to their melancholy than the Oxonian sound of Swervedriver or Ride. The Swedish band’s debut album is due here in the U.S. in “early summer.”

Speedy Ortiz – The Graduates. I’ve reached the point where Speedy Ortiz could release a cover of John Cage’s “4’33″” and I’d put it on a playlist.

Joy Williams – Woman (Oh Mama). Williams was the singing half of The Civil Wars, and also the attractive half, but that group dissolved in apparent acrimony (you’d think the name would have tipped them off) last summer. Williams was a solo Christian contemporary artist before going alt-country in the Civil Wars, but this lead single from her album Venus is more like smart pop, a feminist anthem just waiting to be discovered.

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→ April 2, 2015
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Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit.

My latest boardgame review for Paste covers NanoBot Battle Arena. I also have an updated top 50 prospects ranking up for Insiders.

Courtney Barnett’s two singles from 2014, “Avant Gardener” and “History Eraser,” were both on my top 100 tracks of the year primarily for her clever, witty lyrics, which told complete stories with inventive wordplay and a willingness to break out of standard meters and rhyme schemes. Her first true full-length album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, more than delivers on the promise of those earlier songs, with better hooks and more upbeat rock sounds while maintaining the high standard of wordsmithing she’d already set for herself.

Led by two stomping tracks, “Elevator Operator” and lead single “Pedestrian at Best,” Sometimes I Sit… is a tour de force of finding humor in despair and setting it to a guitar-rich soundtrack; it harkens back to the halcyon days of the Smiths, where Johnny Marr could get you off the couch and Morrissey would send you to the therapist’s. The opener tells the story of a disaffected white-collar worker who has had enough of cubicle life and reveals that all he ever wanted was to be an elevator operator; the second track comes at you like a shouted-word (rather than spoken-) statement of purpose, with a chorus that candidly offers, “Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you/Tell me I’m exceptional and I promise to exploit you.” Barnett has no use for the typical tropes of the female pop artist, and instead asserts herself in juxtaposition with statements of insecurity or even occasional self-loathing.

Barnett is too young to remember the ’80s but there are hints of that decade’s strain of British new wave artists who built their hooks around guitars rather than synths and employed wry irony that often went over listeners’ heads throughout the album. “Debbie Downer” sounds like the descendant of an Aztec Camera tune, shockingly upbeat for its title (where, indeed, she’s told by a somewhat older woman to quit frowning, only to inform her target, “Don’t stop listening, I’m not finished yet”). “Aqua Profunda!” revisits a common theme in Barnett’s lyrics, that of the embarrassing incident, this one where she’s swimming in a lap pool, notices the guy in the next lane, and tries to impress him, only to have the whole thing go awry. “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go to the Party” is true.

Barnett’s slower songs have always fallen short of the mark for me because she’s not a singer; she talk-sings, and her lyrics would largely work as spoken-word offerings anyway, but without solid music behind her the unmusical nature of her voice is exposed. Sometimes I Sit has two long, meandering bluesy tracks, “Small Poppies” and “Kim’s Caravan,” that clock in at just about seven minutes apiece and couldn’t hold my attention that long. When she reduces the tempo, it works better with more storytelling; “Depreston” starts out as an ennui-scented trip to buy a house in the suburbs, only to turn dark when she sees signs of the previous owner’s life in some of the house’s features and décor. The story evolves so that the languid pace of the song never becomes an obstacle for the listener. Plus she points out in the lyrics that by making coffee at home she’s saving $23 a week; we should all admire such thrift. “Dead Fox” is one of the album’s catchier songs, but it’s a rare case of Barnett’s lyrics – a critique of consumerism (including the feel-good variety) – feeling forced.

Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit is the best debut album I’ve heard so far this year, and one of maybe a half-dozen albums I can think of so far this decade that I’d recommend on the basis of its lyrics alone. Barnett’s ideas threaten to spill out of the speakers, and the quality of her music is already improving. She’s probably destined to remain on alternative stations because of her quirky delivery and too-cerebral lyrics (you have to pay attention to them), but she deserves a wide enough audience to keep her producing this kind of art for many more albums.

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→ March 1, 2015
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February 2015 music update.

I’ve got a new draft blog post up on Kyler Murray, Ke’Bryan Hayes, and AJ Minter.

February started weakly for new music, but I ran into a number of new releases towards the end of the month that gave me enough to fill out an hour-long playlist, which is usually my goal for each of these posts. March should be very strong, with new albums due from Purity Ring, Modest Mouse, Lower Dens, and Death Cab for Cutie.

Saint Motel – My Type. Definitely my song of the month, as it’s this wildly exuberant funk-infused pop gem that just appeared on my radar a few weeks ago (thanks to increasingly heavy rotation on Sirius XM’s Alt Nation) but that hit #2 in Italy at some point in 2014. They’re an American quartet from LA with an album and a few singles/EPs to their credit, but this was my first exposure to them. The follow-up single “Cold Cold Man” isn’t up to this level but is also solid enough to be a hit in its own right.

Rose Windows – Glory, Glory. Psychedelic rock with a hint of doom metal that reminded me of early Trouble (the Metal Blade/Def American years), but with a female lead singer and more of a rock stomp to the chorus. I’m not sure there’s enough of a market for this kind of music any more, as it sits somewhere in the grey space between several different subgenres, but there certainly should be.

The Wombats – Greek Tragedy. Somehow these Liverpudlians keep churning out hilarious, poppy singles that avoid grating like the novelty songs they would otherwise appear to be, from “Let’s Dance to Joy Division” to “Your Body is a Weapon” to this track, which comes from their upcoming April release Glitterbug. Their hooks are their main strength, but the wry lyrics of all of these songs elevate them above the field of generic songwriting even within indie pop.

Chromatics – Just Like You. Chromatics have changed their sound so often that I don’t know how to characterize them; this particularly track, available as a free download (at least right now) on soundcloud, is sort of ambient synth-pop that’s light on the pop and heavy on the ethereal elements, like a quiet monk’s chant over a faint electronic beat.

Blur – Go Out. Britpop is dead, but Blur will release their first album in twelve years this April. I wouldn’t say I love this song, but I’m cautiously optimstic that we’ll get something akin to the classic Blur sound now that Graham Coxon is back in the fold.

The Little Secrets – All I Need. Another Liverpool act, this one a duo, The Little Secrets just put out this debut single, a bright and shiny bit of classic pop with a vocalist who sounds quite a bit like Sarah Shannon of the ’90s power-pop act Velocity Girl.

Life in Film – Get Closer. I thought these guys were from Australia between the lead singer’s accent and the band’s peculiar sound, but they’re actually from Hackney, England, so I guess you could call them hackneyed. This track reminds me a bit of classic English Beat right down to the lead singer’s vocal resemblance to Dave Wakeling.

The Bots – Blinded. A couple of brothers who haven’t even reached legal drinking age, The Bots just put out their debut album in October, an eclectic mix of stoner and garage-rock tracks that often sounds very young in its lack of discipline. Lead single “Blinded” is more focused than most of the album with a heavier groove-metal feel behind the vaguely White Stripes/Drenge-ish aesthetic.

ELEL – 40 Watt. The newest project of Ben Elkins, formerly of Heypenny, the eight-piece ELEL released this debut single late last year, with a promising, unusual sound that incorporates some faintly Caribbean rhythm elements behind an earworm chorus.

Speedy Ortiz – Raising the Skate. Speedy Ortiz is an acquired taste with their deliberately dissonant noise-rock sounds, but their music particularly appeals to me because it alludes heavily to a style that became very popular around the time I was in college, especially the band Helium.

Wolf Alice – Giant Peach. It’s grunge-ish, but simultaneously heavier and poppier than most of that genre, with heavy guitar riffs that wouldn’t embarrass Tony Iommi in the song’s tremendous outro. Wolf Alice’s debut album, My Love is Cool, is due on June 22nd and is already one of the LPs I’m most looking forward to hearing this year.

BOOTS – I Run Roulette. I missed this track when it came out in November, one of the first singles from singer/producer Jordan Asher, whose biggest musical contribution to date is his production of most of the album Beyoncé in 2013. “I Run Roulette” has an industrial feel to the music, but the vocals are almost gentle in contrast, resulting in a more accessible song that sounds like it could have come from Trent Reznor’s mind but not his mouth.

The Mowgli’s – I’m Good. Not as good as “San Francisco,” their debut single and best song to date, but if you like their general sound, sort of a hippie revivalist vibe where all seven members seem to be singing at once but without the depth you’d expect from that many voices in harmony.

Waxahatchee – Under a Rock. Everyone seemed to love her previous single, “Air,” but me; this song is more my speed, a mid-tempo jangle-folk track that uses her voice’s softer qualities (think Alexandra Niedzialkowski from Cumulus or Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir from Of Monsters & Men) to create contrast to the amped-up guitar lines.

Hot Chip – Huarache Lights. They’re never going to create another “Over and Over,” a single to which all of their other world will inevitably be compared (by me, at least), but this is a step up from 2012’s “Don’t Deny Your Heart,” due to both a slightly heavier instrumentation and more layering, producing a more sophisticated sound that’s still accessible but less cloying.

Purity Ring – Begin Again. Their second album, another eternity (iTunes), comes out on Tuesday the third, with lead single “Push Pull” already one of my favorite songs of the year. “Begin Again” isn’t as strong, lyrically or musically, but makes great use of Megan James’ waif-like voice over undulating electronic beats that wax and wane over the song’s three and a half minutes.

Apocalyptica – Cold Blood. I love Apocalyptica because they’re so bizarre – a metal act with three classically-trained cellists that began its existence as a Metallica cover band and now produces highly melodic hard rock. They’re almost too commercial for me, but there’s something unapologetic about their sound that I like even when I don’t like the songs themselves. I suppose if this isn’t hard enough for you, Napalm Death’s thirteenth studio album, Apex Predator – Easy Meat, which came out in late January, might be more your speed. (I found it totally unlistenable, but your mileage may vary.)

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→ February 18, 2015
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Range Anxiety.

My review of the boardgame Evolution went up on Tuesday over at Paste. I’ll hold my first Klawchat of February on Thursday at 1 pm ET.

The Twerps hail from Australia, where weird indie music seems to be quite readily accepted as normal. I described them recently as pleasantly annoying, which is much better than annoyingly pleasant, and that phrase fits their second album Range Anxiety (in addition to their eight-song 2014 EP Underlay, which included “Heavy Hands,” #42 on my list of the top 100 songs of last year) as well as everything that came before. The quartet craft short, catchy jangle-pop songs around a single hook each, and their singing styles are the polar opposite of the sanitized auto-tuned music that fills American pop radio playlists – to a fault, sometimes, as the Twerps don’t care if they’re a bit off key.

The Twerps frequently cite Australian indie heroes the Go-Betweens and Dunedin Sound propagators The Clean as major influences, both quite obvious in their music, which also reminded me of American jangle-pop act Let’s Active and perhaps even early Aztec Camera – all of it from another era of alternative music entirely. Their own sound is a bit more stripped-down than even their earliest influences, minimal without becoming experimental, which fits their one-hook-per-song formula, a formula that works best when the Twerps keep things to about three minutes – true of all but two songs on the album, with one of those exceptions the lead single, “I Don’t Mind,” one of the worst tracks on Range Anxiety and not at all representative of what the band is capable of producing.

I’ll direct your attention instead to “Back to You,” a more upbeat, jangly tune in line with “Heavy Hands” that introduces its point straight off with the line “Somebody out there is doing better than me.” The song has one riff, and about enough humor in the lyrics to sustain it for two and a half minutes – another thirty seconds and the song would have felt overlong. Julia McFarlane takes over lead vocals for the Sambassadeur-like “Stranger,” another three-minute gem that leads into “New Moves,” which sounds a bit like another Aussie indie-pop band, the Darling Buds, with a sunny guitar riff that contrasts with the muted vocal medley. McFarlane returns to the lead later in the album on the waltz “Shoulders,” the most successful downtempo track on the album – primarily because of the strength of her strong yet understated vocals. “Cheap Education” thrives off a simple guitar riff that gave me the sense that the whole song was spinning in circles, which I’d like to think was the whole point given the wordplay in the lyrics.

The annoying part of their sound does take over from time to time, in large part because the male vocalists don’t like to stay on key very well, such as the positively irritating “Love at First Sight,” where I can only assume the band was trying to create some irony by layering fingernails-on-blackboard vocals over a pretty if slightly standard ballad. “Adrenaline” has the same problem – you should almost expect a Twerps song with that title to be more like a dirge – while closer “Empty Road” runs about two minutes longer than it should have; although their attempt to build a song with multiple hooks and layers is admirable, it just doesn’t work out over five full minutes.

Range Anxiety truly isn’t for everyone – it’s the kind of album I would probably have rejected on first listen a decade ago, when I was much more closed-minded about music in general (I knew what I liked and didn’t see much reason to listen to anything else). It’s an album that rewards a little patience and the willingness to overlook the moments when the Twerps outfox themselves by overdoing the irony or singing out of tune, with solid payoffs in a half-dozen tracks that are minor pop jewels.

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→ February 3, 2015
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Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance.

Is there anything quite so Belle & Sebastian as a song titled “Enter Sylvia Plath?” The veteran Scottish indie-folk-rock-whatever group, known as much for their low profile as for their music, have always enjoyed great critical acclaim but never much commercial success, which I believe is the result of their refusal to sound un-British and their use of song titles and lyrics that range from abstruse to sinister, too cerebral for mass appeal even though much of their music is blatantly pop in nature. They’ve had a few gold records in the UK, but have had very little sales traction outside of Britain, not even in Australia, often the most receptive market for distinctly British acts.

“Enter Sylvia Plath” encapsulates the paradox of B&S, as it’s a 131 bpm electronic dance song that name-drops a poet/author who produced depressing material that matched her tragic biography. It’s part of the soft middle of the band’s new album, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, their first since 2010’s quiet, underappreciated Write About Love. The new album kicks off with a quartet of effusive pop songs that would fit as well on any pop/top 40 station as on independent or alternative radio, including the lead single “The Party Line” (#3 on my list of the top songs of 2014), enough to buoy almost any album on to a year-end best-of list. Beyond the initial promise the boys (and girl) can’t sustain the energy that drove the opening chapter, with music that’s more pleasant background listening rather than the hook-laden stuff that demands your full attention, more intriguing lyrically than musically.

Ah, but that opening tetrad is something else. “Nobody’s Empire” begins with a swirling piano riff and softly thumping bass drum before lead singer/songwriter Stuart Murdoch introduces a sunny melody that goes back to 1960s pop, belying the lyrics describing Murdoch’s own experiences with the debilitating chronic fatigue syndrome, along with the first of many wonderful quotes from the record – “Marching with the crowd singing dirty and loud/For the people’s emancipation” (Shouldn’t all protest songs be dirty and loud?) “Allie” plays like a sly, sinister detective story describing a woman fighting some kind of mental illness that puts her through delusions and desires for self-harm, over the album’s best hook, a shuffling minor-chord blues pattern that refuses to let you catch your balance any more than the song’s subject can. “The Party Line” might be the best pure pop song Belle & Sebastian have ever recorded, replete with Murdoch’s typical wordplay (he’s calling you to the dance floor more than to a partisan debate). “The Power of Three” at least starts to downshift the listener before the softer middle third of the album, moving towards a glammier ’70s vibe with the tinny synth riff that powers the bridges after each chorus, although by the end of its four minutes they’ve dissipated much of the energy that powered the first trio of tracks.

The middle of the album drags both due to the drop in tempo and the length of several of its songs, with “The Cat with the Cream” a sedative to bring everyone down from the high of the start of the album, leading into “Enter Sylvia Plath” almost with a whisper. “The Everlasting Muse” dips into a musical allusion to Russian folk dances for an incongruous middle movement, certainly true to the band’s roots in folk music but less subtle than their best work. The pace doesn’t pick back up until the seven-minute opus “Play for Today,” featuring Dum Dum Girls singer/songwriter Dee Dee Penny sharing vocal duties with Murdoch in a song laced with mid-80s new wave trappings that seems to run far shorter than its actual length thanks to the shared vocal duties. That song sets up “The Book of You,” with Sarah Martin taking over lead vocals on another banger that builds up to an old-fashioned rock guitar solo, but the newfound momentum collapses with the dirge-like closer “Today (This Army’s for Peace.”

For a band that’s been around for nearly twenty years now, releasing nine albums, Belle & Sebastian manage to sound new at several points on Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, never more so than when they live up the album’s title by producing songs that combine great hooks with beats and rhythms suited for the dance floor. The album is surprisingly incoherent for a group whose songwriting and production always feel so meticulous, almost like it’s two half-albums mashed together without a thought to sequencing. The portion that finds Belle & Sebastian feeling the urge to get up and dance is the revelation here, a new dimension from a group that, while talented, seemed to have fallen into its own set ways.

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→ February 1, 2015
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January 2015 music update.

The whole top 100 prospects package is now up for Insiders, including:

I got a complaint yesterday that one of the team reports wasn’t long enough. With over 48,000 words in the whole package, you can send any such criticisms to /dev/null.

January was a great month for new releases, especially tracks previewing albums coming in March or April. Here’s the Spotify playlist, with a note on each song coming up below:

Purity Ring – “Push Pull.” I didn’t love their first album, Shrines, but this lead single from their upcoming sophomore LP Another Eternity is a marvel, especially in Megan James’ lyrics, which seem to draw heavily from classical English poetry. “A fever billowed with the wind/And I bade the sky therein.” The music struggles to keep up with her vocals, at times sound like a weird remix the way the track doesn’t line up with her meter, but she could probably sing this a cappella and I’d still listen.

Wildhoney – “Molly.” This Baltimore shoegaze act, one of two Charm City bands on this playlist (along with Lower Dens), is signed to a Canadian punk label, but their music is more Curve, Swervedriver, and early Lush than Bad Religion or the Descendants. The tiny guitar line behind the vocals is the track’s separating factor, although I liked how the walls of guitars in the chorus referenced My Bloody Valentine without drowning out Lauren Shusterich’s vocals.

HOLYCHILD – “Running Behind.” The percussion lines remind me of tUnEyArDs’ “Water Fountain,” but with non-irritating vocals. My daughter loved this song on first listen, and I have a feeling it’ll be a quick crossover to pop radio, since it’s only “alternative” in the sense that it’s not popular yet.

The Districts – “Peaches.” Seems like my favorite fruit (especially for pie) is a popular topic for songs of late, including this new release that has some resemblances to the Hold Steady with its blues/roots-rock backing and sung-talked descending vocal lines. The whining guitar riff that parallels the vocals in the chorus strikes a fine balance between hooky and annoying.

Viet Cong – “Silhouettes.” I admit to being a little off from the consensus on this debut album featuring two of the three surviving members of Women, finding it very uneven, with lead single “Continental Shelf” missing my top 100 from last year. “Silhouettes” has a dark, Joy Division/Bauhaus kind of vibe but with harder guitar lines that made it the standout from their eponymous album, relased two weeks back on indie Super Tuesday.

Modest Mouse – “Lampshades On Fire.” It almost sounds like Johnny Marr never left. I never loved Modest Mouse before “Dashboard,” which I suppose means I’m not a True Fan or something, but also means I particularly like this new song’s rhythm – and as always there’s a lot of fun wordplay in the lyrics.

Coasts – “Oceans.” They’re going to be compared to Coldplay because their next single is called “A Rush of Blood,” but the similarity is just in the attempt to craft songs that feel anthemic with big climaxes of drums and shimmering guitars. Coldplay has its detractors, and I find their work frustratingly inconsistent, but they do write some pop hooks that prove indelible, something few imitators (save, perhaps, Bastille and Imagine Dragons) have been able to do. Coasts has a shot, though, based on these two singles, both of which came out last year in the UK.

Matt and Kim – “Get It.” Solid melody, weak lyrics, which unfortunately has been the duo’s formula for much of their careers.

Belle & Sebastian – “Nobody’s Empire.” I adore the first four tracks on this album, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, but it tapers off into maudlin material that is probably more authentic B&S but just not my style. “The Party Line” was my #3 track of 2014; “Nobody’s Empire” will likely rank very high for me on this year’s list.

A. Sinclair – “Suit Up.” From this Austin band’s October album Pretty Girls, this single kicks the door down with the intense introductory riff. I imagine they’d be fantastic to see live given how much energy comes through in their studio recordings.

Young Ejecta – “Welcome to Love.” Formerly known as Ejecta, this side project of Neon Indian’s Leanne Macomber – who is once again au naturel on the album cover – put out their second short album of ethereal, quietly melodic synthpop that highlights Macomber’s breathy alto.

Sleater-Kinney – “Price Tag.” The opener from their amazing comeback record, No Cities to Love, which I reviewed in January.

Tobias Jesso Jr. – “How Could You Babe.” I’m still not sure how much I like this mournful piano ballad, which is driven primarily by Jesso – whose debut album comes out in March – crooning the song’s title repeatedly. It’s been stuck in my head a few times already, though.

The Mowgli’s – “Through The Dark.” They may never do anything I like as much as “San Francisco,” but I do love this septet’s sound when the entire group starts singing in unison, practically begging you to join in. Their second proper album is due this spring.

Death Cab for Cutie – “Black Sun.” It seems like 2015 is the big year for comeback records from some of the biggest alternative acts of the aughts – these guys have been gone for four years, Belle & Sebastian for five, the Decemberists for four, Modest Mouse for six, and Sleater-Kinney for nine. “Black Sun” is very promising, especially the guitar interlude, which brought back to mind my favorite track from 2011’s Codes and Keys, “You are a Tourist.”

Lower Dens – “To Die in L.A.” Did they steal that guitar sound from Robert Plant’s “Big Log?”

Courtney Barnett – “Pedestrian at Best.” When she plugs in and there’s some real music to back up her brilliantly twisted lyrics, she’s among the best voices in independent/alternative music today, contorting the language into whatever shapes she desires, with brilliant imagery and incisive wit. Here’s hoping her next album continues what she’s started here.

Twerps – “Back to You.” Twerps, an Australian quartet who remind me in many ways of the Go-Betweens, seem to specialize in understated, pleasantly annoying pop tracks, a formula that works about half the time on their debut album Range Anxiety. Everyone’s raving over “I Don’t Mind,” one of the two longest tracks on the album, but the off-key singing and twangy, repetitive guitar licks work much better on songs half that length, as with the syncopated riff that powers this sunny bit of indie-pop.

Voivod – “We Are Connected.” Voivod’s 1989 album Nothingface had a huge influence on my tastes in music; at a time when “metal” largely meant the glam-rock derivative of hair bands, with Metallica the edgy alternative to Poison and Cinderella, Voivod – who toured off this album with two similarly unknown acts, Faith No More and Soundgarden – produced intelligent, aggressive, intricate songs exploring dark themes with lyrics that, if nothing else, moved beyond what was available on the radio in those pre-satellite, pre-web days. The band’s sound changed in the mid-90s with Negatron, going more toward death-metal growls and “groove” riffs; withh the 2005 death of original guitarist Denis D’Amour they will probably never recover their original vibe, but “We Are Connected” at least restores the clean vocals and spaced-out thrash sound that made them one of metal’s first real innovators.

And while I’m not going to put anything from Napalm Death’s upcoming album on the playlist (I’ve never been a fan of their brand of extreme grindcore), this piece on the letter that lead screamer Barney Greenaway wrote to Indonesian President (and Napalm Death fan) Joko Widodo is worth a read. Here’s hoping it succeeds in convincing Widodo to commute those two criminals’ death sentences.

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→ December 12, 2014
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Top 100 songs of 2014.

As with all of my music lists, like my top 14 albums of 2014 and my top 100 songs of 2013, this represents my personal preference. I thought 2013 was a little stronger, but the second half of 2014 brought a slew of very strong albums from veteran acts that boosted the year and made stopping at 100 songs harder than I expected it to be.

If I don’t like a song, it’s not here. That wipes out some critically-acclaimed artists’ 2014 releases entirely, including St. Vincent, FKA Twigs, Run the Jewels, Beck, Mac Demarco, Ariel Pink, Bombay Bicycle Club, and Sharon van Etten. Other folks liked that stuff. I didn’t.

Some songs that were among the last ones I cut from my list, in no particular order, looking just at artists that didn’t make it: Dotan – “Home;” Viet Cong – “Continental Shelf;” Dreamers – “Wolves;” Walk the Moon – “Shut Up and Dance;” Echosmith – “Cool Kids;” Gardens & Villa – “Colony Glen;” Bleachers – “I Wanna Get Better;” Ex Cops – “Black Soap;” The Wytches – “Gravedweller;” Soundgarden – “Storm;” Max Jury – “Black Metal;” Cold War Kids – “All Of This Could Be Yours;” Sir Sly – “Gold;” Knox Hamilton – “Work It Out;” and Arkells – “What Are You Holding On To?” I’ll put together another playlist with those songs and more that “just missed” in a day or two.

The Spotify list includes 98 of the 100 songs. I didn’t take the time to craft amazon and iTunes links because it takes forever; that’s the only real income I derive from this site, so if you already wanted to purchase something, feel free to use the Amazon Link in the header.

100. Kele – Closer. The lead singer of Bloc Party goes trip-hop, which might be a permanent switch given how half-hearted BP’s last album was. The album, Trick, is wildly uneven, but the back-and-forth with the unnamed female vocalist on “Closer” and the musical nods back to ’90s two-step make this the record’s best track.

99. White Lung – Down It Goes. This would be riot grrrl material if it were still 1997, but instead it’s just bright yet angry punk with a female vocalist.

98. Twin Peaks – I Found A New Way. Twin Peaks are a bunch of snotty kids and they sound like it, but I mean that in a good way. Named after a TV show that went off the air before any of its members were born, their music has a raw, old-school feel with more current tweaks like the occasional screamed vocal.

97. Ryan Adams – Gimme Something Good. I know many of you are enormous fans of Adams and his latest album; I don’t quite share that level of enthusiasm, but this song’s sparse roots-rock hooks stood out for me. In the battle of solo albums from guys who led beloved bands, Adams beat Jack White handily in 2014.

96. Midnight Masses – Am I A Nomad? A side project from two members of …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, a band you’ll see twice further up on this list, Midnight Masses have a spacier, more ethereal sound, with pulsating drums and heavy keyboards, with reverb and delay giving the song a chaotic feel despite its simple arrangement.

95. Death From Above 1979 – Always On. Ten years after their debut album, DFA1979 came back with their second record and the same hybrid of rock, dance, and even punk; “Always On” has the best balance, which for me means more rock, including a killer guitar riff.

94. Band Of Skulls – Himalayan. Himalayan was one of my favorite albums of the year, incredibly underrated because (I think) it’s not groundbreaking and quaffs deeply on the 1970s … but Band of Skulls does it so well and the production is so strong that it feels like a fresh record. The band crafts great riffs that really groove without losing the essence of classic rock that informs much of their music. The title track was one of three to make this list, with another (“Toreador”) just missing.

93. Sleeper Agent – Waves. One of a few alt-novelty hits on my list this year, affected in part by which of them my daughter liked the most; I think this was in the middle of her list, but I found it didn’t hold up that well under a hundred or so listens.

92. Opeth – Eternal Rains Will Come. Death-metal icons turned prog-rock revivalists Opeth put out an album, Pale Communion, that has barely a metal element on it (I suppose that makes it a non-metal album) and has half of its ten songs clocking in past the six-minute mark. If you like guitar and keyboard noodling, it has some fantastic passages, although I found the middle of the disc lagged. This song opens the disc and the shorter “Cusp of Eternity” follows, serving as a more accessible intro before they get too proggy with the eleven-minute third track. I also find it fascinating that a band so closely associated with the technical/melodic death metal subgenre could morph so completely into a different genre over the course of just a few albums.

91. The Kooks – Bad Habit. The Kooks are just a goofy, fun British rock band who produce great hooks and often slip over the line into self-parody; their September 2014 album Listen had a handful of great singles, balanced out by a few songs I’ll never listen to again. “Bad Habit” was one of the great ones, the song that I heard most on Sirius XM, not quite as distinctly British as “Down,” with a little more American blues influence instead.

90. Hundred Waters – Innocent. The best album of 2014 for me wasn’t full of great singles – it’s a cohesive, imaginative soundscape that uses Nicole Miglis’s vocals as another instrument on top of the layers of keyboards and drum machines. My two favorite tracks from The Moon Rang Like a Bell are on this list, but Hundred Waters’ genius is much better appreciated on the level of the full album.

89. Colony House – Silhouettes. Another alt-novelty hit, “Silhouettes” has the good sense to get in and out inside of three minutes, which is about how long the chorus’ hook works. There’s actually more nuance in the music behind the verses with off-beat guitar strumming before the traditional chorus (complete with the cute bit of workplay) kicks in.

88. Bestfriends – Lakeshore. Indie-electro-pop with the Passion Pit-type vocals, but with a more electronic and upbeat sound than PP or Foster the People.

87. Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness – Cecilia And The Satellite. Another alt-novelty hit, right down to the name of the song and the band. A friend of mine, upon hearing the name of the then-new band Coldplay, asked, “what the hell kind of name is that? Why don’t you just name a band ‘I Wanna Poke You in the Eye.’” Coincidentally, that’s the name of my new djent-folk side project.

86. Run River North – Beetle. I felt like these guys showed a lot of promise on their debut but didn’t go far enough to creating their own sound independent of their influences, bands like Mumford and Sons and the band they mimic quite well here, Of Monsters & Men.

85. Kaiser Chiefs – Coming Home. The lead single from their Education, Education, Education, and War was their biggest hit in about a decade, and it brings the kind of wit and irony they showcased on their first two albums, but here presented over what’s practically a ballad.

84. Ásgeir – Summer Guest. This Icelandic folk singer/songwriter features lyrics written by his 72-year-old father when singing in his native tongue, but he’s found international success thanks to a reissue of his debut album with new vocals recorded in English. It’s not normally my cup of tea, but his wistful delivery and the combination of melancholy textures and lilting folk melodies is addictive. It deserves a much wider audience than it received here.

83. Future Islands – Seasons (Waiting On You). The feel-good hit of the summer, or the spring, in large part because of that dance the lead singer did on Letterman. I haven’t liked anything else they’ve done, but this is about as great as a pop/rock song can be without a guitar.

82. alt-J – Hunger Of The Pine. Lead singer Joe Newman takes top billing here, but ended up overshadowed a bit by the Miley Cyrus sample in the chorus that just didn’t add enough to the song to make it worthwhile. Of everything on their bizarre sophomore album, This is All Yours, “Hunger” did the best job of recapturing the band’s attempts to play with textures from their debut, although it wasn’t the best song on the disc.

81. Dan Sultan – Under Your Skin. Sultan won Australia’s equivalent to the Album of the Year Grammy for Blackbird, which marries blue-eyed soul with some heavier guitar riffs. If you’re old enough to remember what Little Caesar tried, Sultan does something similar but much more effectively.

80. Animals As Leaders – Tooth and Claw. Highly technical metal – I’d say this is the metal equivalent of set-theoretic topology – with masterful guitarwork from bandleader Tosin Abasi, a fretwork virtuoso who incorporates elements of jazz with speed-metal shredding for an amazing instrumental experience on their 2014 album The Joy of Motion.

79. Broods – Mother & Father. This New Zealand brother-and-sister duo produced an understated album of atmospheric electronica that hid some enormous hooks below Georgia Nutt’s soothing ambrosiac vocals. This second single from the album was its most overtly poppy song, impossible to get out of my head once I heard it. They did not receive any bonus points for the fact that I think the lead singer is really cute.

78. Speedy Ortiz – Doomsday. A one-off track recorded for the Famous Class/LAMC 7” series, which has also featured Parquet Courts and Ty Segall, “Doomsday” reminds me a lot of Helium, the former band of Mary Timony (see #72), with a deliberately dissonant, lugubrious rhythm line beneath Sadie Dupuis’ sweet, melodic vocals. One of only two tracks on this list that’s not on Spotify.

77. Young Rising Sons – High. Yet another alt-novelty hit, one of my true favorites of the year though, even with the trite lyrics, because of the vocal turns and tumbles in the chorus and its unexpected truncation a half-measure too soon. YRS will release their debut album early in 2015 after recently scoring a major-label deal.

76. Interpol – All The Rage Back Home. El Pintor marked a comeback of sorts, although I still think these guys spend every album trying to recreate Joy Division’s solitary LP. My longtime friend Pete, who has similar tastes in music, wants you to know he thinks “My Blue Supreme” was a better Interpol choice for this list.

75. Darlia – Queen Of Hearts. The Nirvana comparisons held for the length of this song, but their remaining releases didn’t have the same hook or urgency as this lead single.

74. Spoon – Knock Knock Knock. Spoon might be the most important American rock band going right now, and They Want My Soul did nothing to hurt that status … but it was a little light on experimentation. “Knock Knock Knock” and the follow-up track “Outlier” saw Britt Daniel et al stretch their legs a little and incorporate different sounds and borrow from other genres, with more electronic influences adding a new dimension to their core roots-rock sound.

73. The Kooks – Forgive & Forget. Don’t let the intro fool you; this song rocks as soon as the drums kick in, and it bursts back into life with every return to the chorus.

72. Ex Hex – Beast. The big comeback album for Mary Timony (ex-Helium and Wild Flag) was a lot of fun, with tight songs full of big hooks, more accessible than her earlier noise-rock endeavors, as if Timony matured and decided to make music that might get played on the radio. Rips has its share of airplay-worthy tracks, with “Beast” the best showcase of Ex Hex’s high-energy approach.

71. Waylayers – Magnets. The best Coldplay song of the year wasn’t actually by Coldplay; this synth-heavy Waylayers track sounds a lot more like material from Parachutes with a drum machine behind it.

70. …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead – Sound Of The Silk. It wasn’t the best song from IX but it was the most interesting; the Trail took their share of risks and pushed some boundaries and other cliches on the album, never more so in this mini-suite of segments that pulls a few hairpin turns before arriving at the giant climax that brings every element together.

69. Young Fathers – Get Up. Surprise winners of the 2014 Mercury Prize, this British alt-hip hop trio comprises one Liberian-born MC and one born in Scotland to Nigerian parents, so it’s not surprising that you hear African influences in their rhymes and portions of the music … but they lack the technical prowess of the old-school rappers I favor. “Get Up” is here because the track itself is strong enough to make up for some deficiencies in the vocals, and both MCs also handle some singing duties. It’s not a hip-hop track; it’s a neo-soul song that happens to have rapped verses.

68. The Creases – Static Lines. A Brisbanite quartet that bears some of the distinctive sounds of the Australian punk-pop icons the Saints, bearing better production qualities and a vocal delivery that’s laconic rather than angry. Based on their EP Gradient, which leads with “Static Lines,” I’m cautiously optimistic about them breaking out in 2015 when they finally drop a full-length album.

67. Stars – This is the Last Time. I was back and forth between this and “Trap Door” for my favorite song from Stars’ latest, but the latter track imitates New Order too closely whereas “Last Time” has Stars showing off a more independent identity within the same shameless poppy sound that their singles always seem to bear.

66. The New Pornographers – Fantasy Fools. Brill Bruisers is such an effusively upbeat experience, with so many talented musicians seemingly subverting their disparate identities to produce this cohesive album that seems like it shouldn’t have been possible. “Fantasy Fools” is a high point, without quite slipping over the edge of pretentiousness the way they do on “Dancehall Domine,” never sacrificing the energy that powers the album to its various peaks.

65. Glass Animals – Pools. I know “Gooey” was the big hit, but I found it cloying and have no interest in discussions of anyone’s peanut butter vibes. “Pools” employs drums filled with water to give it that jungle-percussion effect, and the tempo and mood are much easier on the ears and the part of the brain that handles imagery.

64. alt-J – The Gospel of John Hurt. If your favorite tracks from An Awesome Wave were “Matilda” and “Fitzpleasure,” this is the song from This is All Yours for you, with the gradual, organic buildup of diverse elements (and the harmonies spelling out a key word in the lyrics) to a giant crescendo at the finish, as well as the same allusion to a classic film.

63. Faded Paper Figures – Real Lies. A synth-pop trio from Los Angeles that produces upbeat, electronic tracks heavy on keyboards and drum machines (clap your hands everybody) with mixed results when it comes to memorable hooks. This lead single from their fourth album, Dynamo, has that solid melody in the chorus and the allure of the south Asian-style guitar line in the second half of the track.

62. Superhumanoids – Come Say Hello. A dream-pop acted fronted by Sarah Chernoff, whose powerful voice – I think she gets high enough to be safely called a soprano – stands out even over the curtains of shimmering, reverbed guitars and synths behind her. “Big Bang” is another favorite of mine from them from 2014.

61. Banks – Beggin for Thread. Do her friends call her Banksy? (Probably just once, if they’re smart.) Jillian Banks strikes me a little as the American Lorde, a singer-songwriter with clever lyrics and a distinctive, low-alto delivery.

60. Little Daylight – Overdose. A favorite of my daughter, who latches on to songs based largely on how strong their melodies are and, before I even know she likes it, seems to have the words memorized (not always accurately, but that’s one of the many true joys of parenthood – hearing how your kid fills in the blanks to song lyrics she doesn’t know). Anyway, “Overdose” is a silly alt-pop confection and we’ll probably never hear from Little Daylights again.

59. King Tuff – Black Moon Spell. Love the guitar work here, with giant riffs and stoner distortion that call Marc Bolan to mind, as well as the modulation to a minor chord right in the middle of the main lick. It almost doesn’t matter that there’s anything after the first 45 seconds of the song, although that’s all solid work that refers back to those same ’70s hard rock icons.

58. Band Of Skulls – Asleep at the Wheel. More highly referential hard rock with deep roots in ’70s rock, “Asleep” opened Himalayan in style, with a heavy, deep twist on a traditional blues shuffle before the car hits the skids and the guitars open up for an enormous offbeat riff behind the chorus. Band of Skulls’ music is time out of joint and I love it.

57. The Rentals – Thought Of Sound. The return of the Friends of P fifteen years after their last full-length was a pleasant if totally unexpected development of 2014, and they sound like they never left, with that same similarity to early Weezer (where lead singer Matt Sharp formerly played bass) in a highly pop-inflected form of guitar-and-keyboard indie rock. “Thought of Sound” will probably bring you back to the late ’90s with its music but it’s very tightly produced and less deliberately messy than their first two albums were.

56. The Kooks – Down. The goofiest, most British song on the album probably never stood a chance of airplay over here, and I didn’t even like it that much on first listen, but the more I played it the more I found it sticking with me, as long as you can get past the drunken yodeling that starts the song. Listen didn’t have enough creative moments overall, but this song was their most successful attempt to do something out of the norm, especially in the way the guitar and vocal almost do a call-and-response in the verses, and the way they layer sounds in the final chorus.

55. Gap Dream – Fantastic Sam. Light up a joint and plug in your Moog. The minimal lyrics inspire a few grins, but Gap Dream’s strength is his ability to redraw the boundaries of psycheledic music to create something that doesn’t sound 40 years out of date.

54. Doss – Softpretty. This solo electronic artist breathes her vocals on “Softpretty” rather than singing them, but her voice is just a veneer over the high-voltage drum machine and the (synthesizer) steel drum melody that powers the song.

53. HAERTS – Giving Up. HAERTS was one of my favorite albums of the year, but four of the best songs were released on an EP last fall that I didn’t hear enough until after crafting my top 100 of last year. That means some of their best songs (especially “Wings”) fell through the cracks in my rankings; “Giving Up” is the best of the album’s new songs, putting the power of Nini Fabi’s voice to good use over yet another St. Lucia-produced pop gem.

52. TV On The Radio – Lazerray. When TV on the Radio really rock, they’re great; “Wolf Like Me” and the one-off 2013 single “Mercy” are among my favorite songs of the century so far. Their new album was more mellow than I’d hoped, and more commercial than anything they’ve put out so far, which felt like a bit of a letdown. “Lazerray” is one of the two best tracks because it fucking rocks.

51. Cloud Nothings – I’m Not Part of Me. Another album that fell a bit short of expectations for me; Dylan Baldi’s indie-rock stylings haven’t grown or even changed all that much through three full-lengths, perhaps the inevitable result of how quickly he writes and records all of Cloud Nothings’ material. “I’m Not Part of Me” and “Now Here In” were my favorite tracks from the album, simple, catchy, mostly three-chord rockers … just a lot like what we’ve heard from Baldi before.

50. Radkey – Feed My Brain. This trio of brothers appeared on my list last year with “Cat and Mouse,” and now have two EPs and a few singles to their credit, with a full-length LP expected in 2015 before any of the members turn 20. They’ll get Bad Brains comps because they’re an African-American punk band, but they’re much more accessible (if no less angry), and the lead singer sounds more like the singing brother in British rock duo Drenge than H.R. I’ll be very disappointed if their album next year is anything less than great and commercially successful.

49. Hospitality – I Miss Your Bones. One of the most original singles of the year, “I Miss Your Bones” almost dares you to dislike it with the hard strumming behind the opening verse and a drum pattern of which J.P. (not Stephen) Sousa might approve. It also contains the best expression summing up the deep longing for another person I’ve heard since Everything But the Girl’s “Missing.”

48. Hooray For Earth – Keys. I hadn’t heard of HFE before Racy, their fourth album, appeared in July; their indie-rock formula often includes heavy, distorted guitar lines contrasting with New Wave-style synthesizers and a lot of very upbeat melodies – if they were on a major label, I’m sure I would have heard of them by now by virtue of the airplay they would have received. I found their slower stuff (like the title track) a little overwrought, but “Keys” and “Say Enough” are both great examples of how fresh they can sound when they go uptempo.

47. The Raveonettes – Killer in the Streets. The Raveonettes dropped an album in June with no advance notice whatsoever, which seems like it would be impossible to do in the age of leaked records and social media, but there it was. The Danish indie-rock duo sound like they could be from California with their sunny, fuzzed-out guitars and shimmering reverb throughout Pe’ahi; the sliding guitar riff made “Killer” my favorite track from the disc.

46. CHVRCHES – Get Away. I didn’t expect any new music from CHVRCHES this year with the release of their debut album last September, itself about a year in the making, but the BBC project to re-score the movie Drive brought us this track, which would have fit perfectly on The Bones of What You Believe.

45. Dum Dum Girls – Rimbaud Eyes. The lyrics to this song are all drawn from the poems of French romantic poet Arthur Rimbaud, who was known for his libertine lifestyle and eyes that a childhood friend described as “pale blue irradiated with dark blue—the loveliest eyes I’ve seen. Lead singer/guitarist Dee Dee Penny has an appealing, smoky yet not too-low voice, and the swirling guitar lines here seemed to call back to some of the acts from the early-90s Madchester scene like Inspiral Carpets.

44. Jenny Lewis – Just One Of The Guys. Lewis, formerly part of the indie-rock heros Rilo Kiley, writes and sings seriously precious folk-rock tracks, and some of that threatens to take this song into the abyss … but it never quite goes there, in part because the subject, the pressure a woman in many male-dominated settings feels to conform, is a damn good one.

43. Night Terrors of 1927 – When You Were Mine (feat. Tegan & Sara). NT27 made my list last year with their morbid “Dust and Bones,” but headed in a much poppier direction in this collaboration with Canadian duo Tegan & Sara, sounding more like the Killers than their previous songs. The fact that Blake Sennett, half of NT27, was once in Rilo Kiley with Jenny Lewis, who’s in the previous slot on the list, is a coincidence.

42. Twerps – Heavy Hands. This Melbourne quartet sound a bit like they recorded this entire EP in the back of a bus, but seldom has a band name better described an artist’s music. The song is delightfully annoying, with earworm single-note guitar lines and whisper-song vocals.

41. Cymbals – Erosion. Another band that appears to have worn out their old Joy Division records, Cymbals would have been called “darkwave” when I was younger, with gothic, gloomy, new wave-inflected songs that reflect the sensibilities that existed in the wake of the initial punk movement. They also put out a two-song EP earlier this month called What Eternity that seemed to find them in a happier mood than they showed on the late-2013 album that contained “Erosions.”

40. Wild Beasts – Wanderlust. Wild Beasts’ Present Tense was wildly acclaimed on its release, especially in the U.K., but it’s too eccentric for me and not grounded enough in the kind of pop/rock foundation that I typically enjoy, kind of like Everything Everything without the hooks. “Wanderlust” is the most accessible and ear-friendly song on the album and features the unforgettable line “don’t confuse me with someone who gives a fuck.” I won’t, I promise.

39. Bear In Heaven – Autumn. I liked their single “Sinful Nature” a few years ago, but “Autumn” ratchets up the tension with a driving drum-and-bass line before the walls of noise arrive with the tribal chorus accentuated by reverb on the vocals.

38. Ty Segall – Tall Man, Skinny Lady. So simple, yet so great. The song is built almost entirely around one drum loop and a six-chord guitar pattern, barely even varying when it reaches the bridge and we get another electric guitar noodling around without apparent direction or destination. Not on Spotify.

37. Hundred Waters – Xtalk. The best track on the year’s best album, although it isn’t a collection of singles so much as a single work of art that functions best as a complete record. The little piano line that opens the song is one of the few true pop hooks on the album, but it’s the syncopated drum line and singer Nicole Miglis’s use of her voice as a melodic instrument that makes this song the standout on a standout disc.

36. Courtney Barnett – History Eraser. I love Barnett’s storytelling both on this song and “Avant Gardner” – which has a better story but weaker music – and just wish she wrote better, less languorous music. “History Eraser” is about a night of drinking gone somewhat awry, whereas “Avant Gardner” is the best song ever written about an asthma attack (at least since “The Pop Singer’s Fear of the Pollen Count”).

35. alt-J –Left Hand Free. The story behind this song is already becoming apocryphal, but it seems like the A&R men didn’t hear a single so the band members wrote this song as something of a joke, only to discover afterwards that they actually liked it. So do I, even though it’s kind of dopey in its own way, but it is the most immediately catchy song they’ve written so far.

34. Ben Howard – In Dreams. I loved Howard’s Mercury Prize-nominated 2012 album Every Kingdom, a somewhat traditional yet intelligent and technically sound indie-folk record, but his latest album, I Forget Where We Were, takes a much darker turn; it’s a more ambitious record, with seven songs that stretch past five minutes, and featuers more musical experimentation, but it’s also less melodic and accessible as a result. “In Dreams” has the disc’s best compromise between those darker tones and the beauty of his first album.

33. To Kill A King – Love is Coal. “Love is not like diamonds/love is coal to keep you warm.” A lovely if unexpected metaphor, one which describes both this song as a whole and their Exit, Pursued by a Bear EP as well, marks the chorus of this multifacted song which adds texture with each movement, moving from a stark piano-and-vocal opener to a rock-paced third passage that leads into a traditional guitar solo that shouldn’t even be in the same song – but it all works together because TKaK understand how to build tension and then tear it apart without ever interrupting the flow of a song.

32. Snakehips featuring Sinead Harnett – Days With You. Snakehips are a pair of producers/DJs who were better known for remixes before putting out their own music this year, but the reason this song is on here is the vocal performance by Harnett, who elevates a solid trance/trip-hop backdrop with her sultry delivery.

31. Movie – Mr. Fist. Movie, the second least-googleable band name of 2014 (the first one was Perfect Pussy … seriously, don’t google that), put out a two-sided single earlier this year, “Ads” b/w “Mr. Fist,” both unabashed throwbacks to the early years of Britpop, particularly the first Blur album and its immediate followers, with a distinctly British sense of humour that permeates all of their lyrics. “Ads” and their latest song “Tusk Vegas” are also worth a listen, available on their soundcloud page.

30. Twin Peaks – Flavor. There are a ton of great hooks among the sixteen songs on Twin Peaks’ Wild Onion, an uneven effort but an impressive one for a band whose members are still unable to drink legally. The album shows more influences than you’ll hear on the two Twin Peaks songs I have on this list, but at heart they seem to be a power-pop band with garage-rock tendencies.

29. KONGOS – Come With Me Now. One of the bigger crossover alternative hits of 2014, “Come With Me Now” is actually three years old. First released in KONGOS’ native South Africa in 2011, the song popped up on U.S. alternative stations in the first half of this past year, eventually hitting the pop charts and ending up on Dancing with the Stars (in my daughter’s favorite dance of the season). KONGOS blend rock with kwaito, which Wikipedia describes as a South African variant of house music. None of that explains the accordion, though.

28. Strand of Oaks – Goshen ’97. Easily the best song on Strand of Oaks’ autobiographical Heal, “Goshen ’97” features J. Mascis (of Dinosaur Jr.) on lead guitar, and you can absolutely hear those hints of “Start Choppin” whenever his guitar enters; Mascis’ style of playing is distinctive and provides “Goshen ’97” with an energy that’s lacking on much of the rest of the album, and provides a needed contrast to the wistful lyrics of the song.

27. Band Of Skulls – Nightmares. The Skulls get psychedelic here, a brief respite from the harder sounds throughout Himalayan, producing my favorite song on the album – it grooves rather than rocks, to use the technical terms for the things.

26. …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead – Jaded Apostles. Not that Trail of Dead care about hit singles, but if there was one to be found on their 2014 album IX, I thought this would be it. Coming in with a twelve-note guitar riff that repeats in the background of the entire song, just to end up one of a host of layers of guitars and drums that create the complex, nuanced backdrop to the vocals. In a related story, Keith Law and the Jaded Apostles are currently shopping for a record deal.

25. Ages and Ages – Divisionary (Do The Right Thing). Perhaps the best music video of 2014, although I don’t watch enough to award such an honor to anyone. It’s fantastic, though, and reflects the song’s lyrics and the way the vocals build up over the course of the song, with all eight band members singing at least four different parts.

24. Kaiser Chiefs – Cannons. It seems very Kaiser Chiefs to write an anti-war song that’s rather upbeat, featuring a refrain that mocks one of Tony Blair’s slogans while talking about “smashing regimes between courses.” It’s ambitious by their own standards, but doesn’t lack the pop sensibilities that populated all of Education, Education, Education, and War. The song concludes with a spoken-word performance by actor Bill Nighy, reading a poem written by the Chiefs that fits with the song’s theme.

23. The War On Drugs – Red Eyes. I know for many of you, Lost in the Dream was the best album of the year, but the Bob Dylan references turned derivative for me after just one full listen; there are solid ideas here, but it never carved out its own sound to my ears. The length of the songs – six of the ten tracks clock in at 5:48 and up – didn’t help either. (The only sub-four minute song is a filler instrumental.) “Red Eyes” was the obvious single, one of the album’s shortest tracks so that the central riff doesn’t play itself out, and the Dylan influences sit more in the backdrop rather than front and center as they did on the nine-minute opener “Under the Pressure.”

22. Wye Oak – Glory. I liked Wye Oak’s previous stuff, which was guitar-driven, more than their sparse, synth-and-drum album Shriek released this year, both due to the shift in instrumentation and the presence of a lot of slower, minimalist songs. “Glory” is more uptempo and Jenn Wasner’s voice works better with more music tracks behind it.

21. Yellow Ostrich – Shades. Yellow Ostrich started out as a solo project of lead singer and songwriter Alex Schaaf, who later expanded the band to its current four-piece alignment. (One former member, Jon Natchez, is now part of The War on Drugs … and is also a reader here, so, hi, Jon.) Schaaf’s songwriting took a huge leap forward on their fifth album, Cosmos, which boasts a fuller sound (thanks in part to the addition of a second guitarist) and the highest production quality of any of their discs.

20. Thumpers – Unkinder (A Tougher Love). This British duo create much bigger sounds than any two-person outfit has any right to produce, although obviously they have some help in the studio. “Unkinder” was one of the most enthusiastic songs of the year, with rapid-fire, stuttered lyrics and music that practically begs you to get up and “shake the building into piles.”

19. TV On The Radio – Happy Idiot. Not quite as good as “Mercy,” TVOTR’s one-off 2013 single that was inexplicably omitted from their November album Seeds, “Happy Idiot” still satisfies my personal desire to hear these guys let ‘er rip, even though it’s more of a slow boil this time around, with singer Tunde Adebimpe drily describing the emptiness after a bad breakup over a high-bpm drum loop.

18. Grimes featuring Blood Diamonds – Go. Grimes and her partner-in-crime Blood Diamonds offered this song to Rihanna, who turned it down, which just proves once and for all that Rihanna is a box of rocks, because this would have been by far the best song she’d ever recorded. I didn’t like Grimes’ 2012 album Visions because of her babydoll delivery, but on “Go” she dials her voice down a half-step to the perfect level, and Blood Diamonds submits maybe his best work yet, with an experimental mix of trance, dubstep, and dark electronica.

17. Manchester Orchestra – Top Notch. This song’s opening riff is the Sam Cassell’s “Big Balls” dance of guitar riffs, daring you to come up with something bigger, louder, more testicular than that one sound. It puts the lie to the extreme-metal myth that guitar riffs must be faster to be better. Some other things happen in the middle, and there’s a story here about two brothers making some kind of difficult choice, but this song is about that gigantic riff.

16. La Sera – Losing to the Dark. Ex-Vivian Girl Katy Goodman now records under La Sera, and this anthemic post-punk track marries a classic hard-rock guitar track of which Iron Maiden would approve with a depressing story of dealing with a partner who can’t stop abusing alcohol and drugs.

15. Amplifier – Black Rainbow. When the Astros sign me to be their closer, this will be my entrance music. This Mancunian band draws heavily on ’70s British rock and metal acts, especially Pink Floyd Black Sabbath, but without the slow pacing. Their 2014 album Mystoria was their most successful yet, but the most interesting aspect of the album is the wild effects pedals used on the lead guitar lines.

14. Tove Lo – Habits (Stay High). This unsparing account of Tove Lo (pronounced like the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu) trying to get over a bad breakup via drug use and casual sex set over a bouncy, R&B-tinged electronic track became a surprise crossover hit, reaching #3 on the Billboard top 100, the highest performance (per Wikipedia) by a Swedish artist in 20 years. I was just surprised the lyrics didn’t prevent pop stations from playing it, but that probably shows my age.

13. Spoon – Rent I Pay. They Want My Soul made my top albums of 2014 with a mix of what I’d call American rock and some more experimental tracks; “Rent I Pay” led the former category, still distinguishing itself with the staccato guitar line and Britt Daniel’s almost equally punctuated delivery.

12. Sleater-Kinney – Bury Our Friends. Nothing says “we’re back” by releasing one of your best songs ever as your first new track in nine years. Their album, No Cities To Love, comes out on January 20th.

11. Jungle – Busy Earnin’. I thought this London R&B collective had a shot to win the Mercury Prize, perhaps co-favorites with critical darling FKA Twigs (whose music and lyrics I find insultingly juvenile), but Young Fathers surprised everyone with their victory. Like most of Jungle, “Busy Earnin’” delivers a faithful rendition of the best soul/disco sounds of the ’70s, for whatever reason reminding me in particular of “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now.”

10. Foster The People – Are You What You Want to Be? Supermodel was a top 20 album for me this year, but I only went to 14 because it’s 2014 and I need something to keep me from making these lists infinitely long. “Coming of Age” and “Best Friend” are solid, but “Are You What You Want to Be?” brings the African beats behind the verses before the big four-chord riff that opens the song comes back for the chorus. I want Mark Foster to do a whole album of experimental pop like this, without the expected moments like “Coming of Age” provided.

9. Broods – Bridges. The song that put Broods on the map, varying from the sweet, balladesque introduction to the trip-hoppy chorus where singer Georgia Nutt dials up to falsetto notes she just barely reaches.

8. Prides – The Seeds You Sow. It’s all about opportunity; this song reminds me quite a bit of Bastille’s massive hit “Pompeii,” certainly enough that “The Seeds You Sow” should have merited some airplay on alternative stations, but this Glaswegian pop trio, who have yet to release a full-length album, garnered just a brief appearance on the British top 100 and no notice whatsoever here in the U.S. This isn’t the ideal test of a song’s merits, but everyone I’ve introduced to this synthpop anthem has raved about it.

7. Milky Chance – Stolen Dance. The vocal style here annoyed me at first, as did the German duo’s ridiculous name, although I guess it’s possible that ridiculous just makes it more memorable. The chorus of “Stolen Dance” gets my earworm of the year award, though, and I love the lo-fi approach to an electronic genre that usually abides by a more-is-more philosophy. Their debut album, Sadnecessary, is just $5 right now on amazon.

6. The Holidays – Tongue Talk. Another obscure one, at least in the U.S., since The Holidays are successful in their home country of Australia, winning the Australia Music Prize award for the best debut album in 2010. Their second album, Real Feel, came out in February, with a few solid singles including “All Time High” and “Simple Pleasures,” as well as the standout “Tongue Talk,” which elevates their normally mellow pop sound with the addition of one fast guitar riff to turn it into a pulsating driving song.

5. Phantogram – Black Out Days. A good electro-pop song that becomes sublime thanks to the soaring vocals of Sarah Barthel, who reminds me of the vocalist from School of Seven Bells but with more power to hang with the gyroscopic synth line in what amounts to the song’s chorus, the strongest track from their second album, February’s Voices.

4. alt-J – Every Other Freckle. This is the alt-J we know and love, a song about obsession that features wild and sometimes inappropriate analogies (“I wanna bed into you like a cat beds into a beanbag/Turn you inside out, and lick you like a crisp packet”), unexpected musical shifts, tempo changes, and layered vocals. It’s looser than anything from their incredible debut album, An Awesome Wave, but the closest link between that album and their 2014 follow-up This Is All Yours.

3. Belle & Sebastian – The Party Line. Raise your hand if you saw this coming: an unapologetic dance track from sardonic Scottish folk-rockers Belle & Sebastian. Well, it’s here and it’s awesome, as if this was the kind of music the group was born to make. (You can’t have “The Boy with the Arab Strap” back, though.) The title of their forthcoming album, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, due January 20th, promises more of the same.

2. The New Pornographers – Brill Bruisers. The title track of their 2014 album is the ne plus ultra of the New Pornographers’ sound, that of six musicians fusing all of their individual talents into one ebullient, stomping whole. Brill Bruisers was my #2 album of this year because of how well A.C. Newman, Dan Bejar, Neko Case, et al all melded their sounds, never more fully than on this indie-pop gem.

1. Royal Blood – Out of the Black. My pick for the best song of 2014 is this dark, menacing, bass (with octave pedal) and drum track that would sound equally at home in a doom-metal mix as it does here on a list that’s mostly alternative rock. Their self-titled debut album didn’t quite live up to the expectations of this massive single, especially the four-note lick at 2:37 that brings it back to the chorus one last time, the best guitar riff of the year.

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→ December 11, 2014
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Top 14 albums of 2014.

My Insider content from the last few days:
* The Jimmy Rollins trade
* The Mat Latos and Alfredo Simon trades
* The Matt Kemp trade
* The Rick Porcello/Yoenis Cespedes trade
* The Wade Miley trade
* The Howie Kendrick/Andrew Heaney trade and Brandon McCarthy signing
* The Dee Gordon trade
* The Jon Lester signing
* The Francisco Liriano re-signing
* The Miguel Montero trade
* The Jeff Samardzija trade (and David Robertson signing) and Oakland’s return
* The Jason Hammel signing
* The Brandon Moss trade

My review of the boardgame Concordia is up at Paste, and I did an interview about baseball and metal with Decibel.

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My ranking of the top 14 albums of the year is below, and reflects my own personal preferences, with a balance between albums that have a few standout songs and ones that worked better as cohesive units. You can see last year’s top 13 albums list for a comparison and to see if something you expected to see here actually made last year’s list (e.g., CHVRCHES, Arctic Monkeys). I heard a lot more than I ranked here, but getting to fourteen albums I truly liked and would recommend wasn’t even easy.

Linked album titles go to full reviews. My ranking of the top 100 songs of the year will follow in a few days.

14. The Kooks – Listen. Goofy British pop-rock songs that didn’t work so well as a collection, especially with a few tracks worth skipping, but featured a number of very strong singles, including “Bad Habit,” “Down,” and “Forgive and Forget.”

13. Animals as Leaders – The Joy of Motion. (amazon• iTunes) An all-instrumental technical/progressive metal-fusion record … or something like that. If you love guitarwork, including jazz-inspired soloing, with unconventional song structures, featuring numerous musicians operating at the far right end of what is possible with their instruments, you’ll love this album. Otherwise, maybe just move on to #12.

12. To Kill a King – Exit, Pursued by a Bear. (amazon• iTunes) It’s an EP, which is kind of cheating since I hadn’t included EP releases on previous lists, but 1) this is my list so I get to make up the rules 2) I love the title and 3) it’s a really fucking good EP. They remind me in particular of Animals that Swim, a British band from the 1990s and early 2000s that made folk-rock songs that often sounded like great drinking songs and made great use of horns as well as guitars. To Kill a King aren’t afraid to work the horns, the acoustic and electric guitar, the piano, unconventional percussion sounds, and backup harmonies that range from the typical to the borderline-annoying. Wikipedia’s entry compares them to The National, but To Kill a King’s lead singer actually sings rather than mumbling his lyrics. Opener “Oh My Love” plays like a dirge with a nod to Andrew Marvell; “Love is Coal” seems like a straight middle finger to Mumford & Sons and all of their clones, saying “this is how you do the slow-fast-slow thing, posers.”

11. Insomnium – Shadows of a Dying Sun. The best metal album of the year for me comes from this Finnish melodic death-metal act previously known for primarily downbeat and often soporific music that wasn’t saved by the technical prowess of its guitarists. Shadows brings them much more firmly into the melodic camp, with the occasional clean vocal, far more ornate song structures (with actual movements in some tracks), and somewhat less dreary lyrics. There aren’t many bands operating in this demilitarized zone between classic thrash, classical metal, and straight-up death metal, but it’s a sweet spot for my particular tastes.

As an aside, my top metal albums of the year: Insomnium, Animals as Leaders, Pallbearer’s Foundations of Burden, Horrendous’ Ecdysis, and At the Gates’ At War With Reality.

10. Band of Skulls – Himalayan. I like to rock, or more specifically, I like to listen to bands that rock, preferably without apology or relent. (I do like to rock a little, though.) Band of Skulls draws deeply on genres from 1970s classic rock to the more commercial part of 1990s grunge, and most of this album is driven by huge guitar riffs, blues shuffles, and bass-heavy grooves. This is music for people who just love hard rock that isn’t metal and still boasts great melodies, from the title track, “Asleep at the Wheel,” “Toreador,” and the psycheledic “Nightmares.”

9. Ex Hex – Rips. It’s good to have Mary Timony, formerly of noise-rock icons Helium and the all-female Wild Flag (with Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney, whose 2015 album should appear on my list next year), back with a new band. Ex Hex is punk-pop more than anything else, hook-filled with a slew of short, punchy, fast-paced songs that are a little light lyrically but incredibly fun to listen to, including “Beast,” “Don’t Wanna Lose,” and “New Kid.”

8. Kaiser Chiefs – Education, Education, Education, and War. The big comeback album for the band best known for their 2004 hit “I Predict a Riot” was by far their most mature, measured, balanced effort ever, easing up on the overly clever lyrics just a bit and filling the album with compelling hooks and more nuanced songwriting. Lead single “Coming Home” found them almost serious and pensive, while “Cannons,” “Ruffians on Parade” and opener “The Factory Gates” brought the electricity you’d expect from the Chiefs along with newly thoughtful, sardonic lyrics. This album, with a title mocking a speech once given by Tony Blair, didn’t chart in the U.S., but hit #1 in the UK and went gold, their best showing since their second album came out in 2007.

7. Broods – Evergreen. (amazon• iTunes) This New Zealand brother-and-sister duo first hit with their single “Bridges,” a top 10 song for me this year due to its stunning contrast from the sweet, piano-driven verse to the thumping chorus where singer Georgia Nutt shifts up to a falsetto that almost strains her range. Their full album has great contrasts throughout within that dream-pop/electronic framework, most with strong melodies, showing a lot of range for a very young pair of songwriters on their first album.

6. …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead – IX. With their ninth album (duh), the ol’ Trail of Dead are at their most melodic and textured, with tremendous percussion work by their tandem of drummers and hypnotic, swirling guitar lines, without losing the structural complexity that has marked nearly all of their work. It might not have received the insane acclaim of Source Tags and Codes, but it’s a more accessible and thoughtful album, led by “The Doomsday Book,” “Jaded Apostles,” “Lie Without a Liar,” and the closer “Sound of the Silk” that just left me on the floor gasping for air.

5. Spoon – They Want My Soul. Spoon has become, for me, the definitive American rock band, or perhaps rock-and-roll band, drawing as they do on influences from throughout rock history while incorporating folk, country, and more current electronic elements in their songs. They Want My Soul was a bounceback of sorts after a pair of less exciting albums, bringing more experimentation and a wider range of styles with barely any hiccups along the way (other than the single “Inside Out”). You’ve heard and probably liked the straightforward singles “Rent I Pay” and “Do You,” but when Spoon get nostalgic on the cover “You Just Don’t Understand” or start playing around with structure and synths on “Outlier” or “Knock Knock Knock” they manage to expand boundaries without losing their ability to craft compelling hooks.

4. HAERTS – Haerts. Three of the five best songs on here appeared on an EP late last year, but that’s not to say the remaining songs on the band’s full-length debut, produced by St. Lucia (who appeared on last year’s list with his own debut album), which all showcase singer Nini Fabi’s powerful, slightly smoky voice over masterfully crafted strata of keyboards and drum machines. “Giving Up” is the best new song and the only one on my top 100 this year, but “Wings,” “Hemiplegia,” and “All the Days” are standouts from their first EP.

3. alt-J – This is All Yours. It wasn’t as groundbreaking or mindblowing as their debut album, An Awesome Wave, my favorite album not just of 2012 but of the decade so far, so I could call This is All Yours a mild letdown … and yet it’s still a work of great imagination and continues the trio’s refusal to work within the conventions of modern music, even within what’s generally called “alternative” but isn’t quite as radical as the name might indicate. This is All Yours is uneven, with a few songs they could just as easily have omitted (“Choice Kingdom” and “Pusher” in particular), but they soar with the manic complexity of “Every Other Freckle,” the slow expansion of “The Gospel of John Hurt,” the four-vocalist gimmick that actually plays on “Warm Foothills,” and the so-bad-it’s good “Left Hand Free.” It’s not as cleanly produced as their debut, unfortunately, which cuts into the atmosphere it creates and stunts the beauty of tracks like “Warm Foothills” or “Hunger of the Pine.”

2. New Pornographers – Brill Bruisers. I don’t know how a collection of singers and songwriters this broad and diverse could push out an album this cohesive, but Brill Bruisers is an ebullient power-pop masterpiece; what it might lack in invention (compared to, say, Twin Cinema) it more than makes up for via its sheer pop brilliance. The title track is one of the best songs of the year, landing in my top 10, but “Dancehall Domine,” “Fantasy Fools,” and “War on the East Coast” all shimmer with gorgeous pop hooks and note-perfect performances across the board.

1. Hundred Waters – The Moon Rang Like a Bell. (amazon • iTunes) I never reviewed this album because I didn’t quite get it when I first received it a review copy back in May; it was just too weird, too unconventional, almost the way I never quite got the Cocteau Twins. But I kept coming back to certain songs that stuck with me – “Xtalk,” “Innocent,” “Out Alee” – and realized the issue was that I had to get used to the production, which put singer Nicole Miglis’s voice so front and center that you can almost hear her thinking. This is cerebral music, but that doesn’t mean it requires more of the listener than an open mind; think of Hundred Waters’s songs as the pattern on a lake when hit by a raindrop or a skipped stone, with each track within a song rippling outward on its own to create a gorgeous, cohesive whole. I haven’t heard anything quite like it before, which is something I want to say about any album I’m calling the best of its year.

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→ December 2, 2014
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November music update.

My analysis of the Nelson Cruz signing went up yesterday for Insiders, as did my annual gift guide for the home cooks on your list this year, the latter here on the dish.

I’ve already begun sketching out my top 100 tracks of 2014 list as well as a ranking of my favorite albums of the year, but I’m holding that until after baseball’s winter meetings, which are next week in San Diego, just to steal myself another week or so to make sure I haven’t missed any songs I’ll regret omitting. In the meantime, here’s one more monthly playlist to tide you over, with a few songs that will appear on the year-end ranking.

Kele – Closer. Bloc Party’s lead singer goes in a totally different direction in his solo work, with elements of trip-hop, two-step, and more traditional electronica. The album is uneven, but “Closer” is its best track between the tempo changes and the duet with an unknown female artist (I can’t find proper credits for the track anywhere).

TV on the Radio – Lazerray. I was psyched for their latest album, Seeds, to come out, but was mildly disappointed in how much of it is 1) mid-tempo or slower and 2) vaguely commercial-sounding. When they really let ‘er rip, they’re at their best; “Lazerray” should bring back memories of last year’s one-off single “Mercy” or their first crossover hit, 2006’s “Wolf Like Me.”

Young Fathers – Get Up. Young Fathers were the surprise winners of the 2014 Mercury Prize; this British rap trio’s album Dead was … well, let’s just say I wouldn’t have given it the award. But “Get Up” winks back at ’60s/’70s Motown-era soul in the chorus, and YF’s technical shortcomings are far less evident because the verses are tight and the music is strong.

King Tuff – Black Moon Spell. That fuzzed-out guitar riff seems lifted off some lost ’70s vinyl, maybe a Thin Lizzy B-side, and the slight shift into a minor chord when it repeats the second time through each chorus is just perfect. I’m a sucker for a distorted lead guitar hook.

Dreamers – Wolves. Indie-rock with a good sense of melody, not terribly distinguished (so far) from a few dozen other bands with similarly ungoogleable names, but with the benefit of some early support on Sirius XM that at least is getting this strong lead single (“and if you lie down with wolves/learn to howl”) some airplay in advance of their debut album, due next year.

Death from Above 1979 – Always On. I didn’t know these guys did heavy, but the grinding guitar riff overpowers the grunge-pop drum and vocal lines here to take the song beyond the generic.

Ex Cops – Black Soap. I actually assumed Ex Cops were from somewhere in Scandinavia, just based on their sparse arrangements and lead singer Amalie Brunn’s voice (turns out she’s Danish, but the band is based in Brooklyn). I guess she was involved in a controversy earlier this year when she put out a dark metal record under the name Myrkur without revealing her identity, to which I give a giant ¯\_(?)_/¯. Anyway, “Black Soap” is a solid alt-pop track that’s gotten some quick buzz thanks in part to the involvement of Billy Corgan in producing the record. Not to be confused with Futurecop, which also put out an album last month.

Empires – Please Don’t Tell My Lover. It’s electro-pop, I think, but the guitar riff is more pronounced than most tracks in that subgenre, which is worth extra points in my book.

Dan Sultan – Under Your Skin. Winner of the ARIA award for Best Rock Album for his Blackbird (just $5.99 on iTunes right now) this year, Sultan is an Australian Aborigine singer/songwriter who draws deeply on 1960s/1970s soul sounds … which a lot of folks do these days, but Sultan actually pulls it off without sounding a bit like a fraud. “The Same Man” is the other standout track from Blackbird, but I like “Under Your Skin” best for its snarling intro riff and tight two-and-half minute run time.

Stars – This is the Last Time/Trap Door. Stars made my 2012 top 40 with their New Order-mimicking “Hold On When You Get Love.” Their latest album doesn’t plow any new soil at all; they’re playing it very safe, hewing close to their new-wave inspirations, but they do that sound particularly well, regardless of which vocalist takes the helm. The former has a hint of New Pornographers when Neko Case takes the mic; the latter is the song that reminded me most of that 2012 standout track.

Broncho – Class Historian. This song is going to annoy me if I listen it too much, due to that weird “duh-duh-duh” thing they do every thirty seconds, and I don’t love tracks that overproduce the vocals to make them sound low and distant, but there’s a decent pop hook underneath here and I think the song’s going to get a ton of airplay.

CHVRCHES – Get Away. Mentioned earlier this year, now available on Spotify. The song is from the BBC’s “re-scoring” of the movie Drive.

Banks – Waiting Game. Yeah, “Begging for Thread” is the best song from her Goddess album, but I figure you’ve probably heard that already; this was my second-favorite.

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→ November 4, 2014
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Ex Hex’s Rips.

My ranking of the top 50 free agents (with capsules on each one) is now up for Insiders, along with the first of six buyers’ guides, this one on starting pitchers.

Ex Hex is the new project for longtime alt-rock guitarist Mary Timony, who first rose to prominence in the very out-there Helium in the early 1990s (where her cherubic face clashed with their love of dissonant sounds) and more recently surfaced in the one-and-done supergroup Wild Flag, which also featured Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein. (And boy do I love Sleater-Kinney’s newest song, “Bury Our Friends.” Welcome back.) Timony’s newest project, Ex Hex, is probably her poppiest one yet, a power trio writing simple, punk-tinged, mostly upbeat songs that never sniff four minutes. Their debut album, Rips (iTunes), is basic, and a little surprising from a former Helium member, but very catchy, to the point where it would have been great summer listening – there’s a definite Beach Boys vibe to the vocals – had it come out a few months earlier.

Ex Hex’s formula is pretty simple: One hook per song, with a big chorus, lots of power chords, and some high-gain guitar riffs for accents. You could split the album into two parts – the uptempo power pop tracks that hint back to early post-punk acts like the Slits, and the slower tracks that expose the lack of technical difficulty in the guitar lines. Fortunately, there are very few of the latter, because Ex Hex’s real appeal on Rips is when they just let ‘er rip like a high school garage punk act, just with better production. Opener “Don’t Wanna Lose” comes in with a bang and hits on all cylinders, banging drums and reverbed-up guitars, before the power chords arrive like a souped-up “Mama Kin,” but with a dash of riot grrl in the lyrics. “New Kid” gets in and out inside of three minutes and never lets up its pace, even when it’s just Timony over the drums and hand-claps, leading into one of the album’s best choruses, full of roll-the-windows-down-and-hit-the-gas energy from start to end. “Waterfall” has the same kind of electricity, built on a basic blues shuffle compressed into four bars, although it has some of the album’s more insipid lyrics (“You took me to a party and you/hid behind the door/then you stole my wallet and passed out/on the kitchen floor”), certainly Rips‘ biggest weakness.

When Ex Hex slows things down, it sounds like demo territory, stuff that probably should have been left on the cutting room floor. “Outro” closes the album in contrary fashion – we just rocked out for most of the last thirty minutes, so now you give us a slow-dance number to end it? “Hot and Cold,” the first single from the album, borrows its main riff from Tommy James and the Shondells’ “Crimson and Clover” and follows the mopey chorus with huge guitar bends that seem lifted from “My Sharona.” The Knack might be a good point of comparison for Ex Hex, skinny ties aside; Ex Hex has that kind of intensity when they let it rock, but part of why “My Sharona” was a hit was that it was all hooks and no slack. Timony and company may have wanted to vary their output a bit, but simply slowing down the same three-power-chords and a chorus framework doesn’t work.

Ex Hex’s Rips doesn’t fit with the rest of Timony’s history, opting for simpler, more commercial sounds, but doing so successfully thanks to strong hooks and tight song structures. Her ex-boyfriend, Ash Bowie, got his old band Polvo back together a few years ago, releasing Siberia, an album as relentlessly complex as their pre-work, last autumn. We all get older in our own ways.

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I’m heading out on vacation on Wednesday, which will make posting here sparse and my presence on social media sparser. I’ll still try to get a Top Chef recap up later this week, and there will be a new ESPN Insider column from me almost every day while I’m gone.

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