Following on from yesterday's part one post, here is the concluding part of my albums of the year list. Don't forget to check out my list of the of 2014 best songs, which starts with Part One.
5. What Is This Heart? - How To Dress Well
Listening to Sun Kil Moon's Benji felt less like playing an album and more like sitting next to a bruised old school friend as he pours out his guts over a beer and a guitar. I'm a sucker for honesty, and they didn't get much more honest than this.
Amazon [affiliate links]: CD LP MP3 / Spotify
3. Our Love - Caribou
Caribou's most 2014 album was the first to not change the formula - instead it fleshed out the style introduced on Swim. What we have is a little more refined and a whole lot more personal, and nothing else in recent memory has sounded quite as much like what I feel inside.
Amazon [affiliate links]: CD LP MP3 / Spotify
2. Built on Glass - Chet Faker
Effortlessly funky and irresistibly sexy, Faker's beardy R&B does something wonderful to me. There is a variety through Built On Glass that betrays the talent that exists here, whether it is on the slinky, clipped beats and wandering sax of Talk Is Cheap, the sharp bumping synths of 1998 or the circular bluesy vocals of Cigarettes & Loneliness.
Amazon [affiliate links]: CD LP MP3 / Spotify
1. Lost In The Dream - The War On Drugs
Compared to Slave Ambient, Lost In The Dream felt a little restrained - the mix more balanced, the krautrock influence softened, the electronics turned down. Yet surprisingly all this gloss made it feel all the more real. It's dad rock, but it's fucking dad rock for listening to whilst you ride a rainbow comet through the clouds of the Milky Way.
Lost In The Dream asks for a moment of patience: a listen to hear, one to notice and one more to know. Every time I play Red Eyes or Burning or An Ocean Between Waves I feel like I hear them better, like a fuzzy AM signal that gradually gets polished to an original studio recording. These songs give you back every moment you give them and not a second poured into Lost In The Dream's hour duration feels wasted.