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Absolutely head over heels with Phoebe Ryan and this brand new super awesome cover / mash-up of R Kelly's Ignition and Miguel's Do You. Both original tracks are pretty much modern classics, and this brings them together in a new and interesting way that makes it greater than the sum of its parts. An exciting start to 2015 for this song-writer turned solo artist.
10. Ben's My Friend - Sun Kil Moon
Sun Kil Moon’s Benji was full of personal moments but none felt like they captured the maudlin sense of growing up and growing old in the same way as album closer Ben’s My Friend, complete with that lovely sax work. The way this song sets out the passing of time against Mark Kozelek’s friendship with Postal Service and Death Cab frontman Ben Gibbard is both touching and frighteningly real… Anyone over-30 will likely be familiar with the work that goes into maintaining friendships and the complexity that gradually seeps into life as you age. What once seemed simple and obvious gradually becomes harder.
9. I Can Be Your Light - Hugh
I’ve championed Hugh and band-member Joshua Idehen’s other project Benin City for some time, but I Can Be Your Light from Hugh’s I Can’t Figure You Out EP marked their best moment yet. There’s only so much you can say about this song - it’s not complicated, it’s just beautiful. The openness and the generosity… No track this year came closer to bringing me closer to tears.
8. Bassically - Tei Shi
If there is one artist I’m excited for more than anyone else in 2015 it’s Tei Shi, who seems destined to pick up the hype train where FKA Twigs has got off. After a cover version of Beyoncé’s No Angel, Tei Shi ended up releasing Bassically - a track so fully realised it is incredible she doesn’t even have an album yet. Dark, brooding and incredibly sexy.
7. Brain - Banks
Banks’ momentum seemed to peter-out mid-way through 2014 but her album packs a whole slew of great tracks and Brain remains one of the most thrilling moments of pop music we heard this year, like something evil emerging from the blackness...
6. Putty Tart - Mouse On Mars & Junior Boys
Snuck onto Mouse On Mars’ celebratory collaborations project 21 Again was this glorious slice of electronic R&B, and it pretty much picks up where Junior Boys’ Banana Ripple left off. So much energy, so much sun, so much warmth. Love love love.
5. Two Weeks - FKA Twigs
Two Weeks felt like the realisation of all that FKA Twigs ambition… Taking the passion and creativity of those earlier tracks and applying it to the Twigs’ first real widescreen production… The music and video are both sexy as hell, and Twigs breathless delivery verges on sinister, particularly on that killer line: “I can fuck you better than her” she declared.
4. I See You - The Horrors
What a way to tease your forthcoming album… The first track taken from Luminous sounded like Simple Minds channeling Donna Summer, and I See You feels like a trip aboard the epic Saturn V once it kicks in. Sadly Luminous had showed it’s hand before it even came out - nothing else it contained came close… But you would struggle to find a more epic seven-and-a-half-minutes this year.
3. An Ocean Between Waves - The War On Drugs
Dad rock goes epic. The War On Drugs’ Lost In A Dream managed to take the template from Slave Ambient and make it feel more real and grounded, but the epic Krautrock sense of movement was all over it’s best track, An Ocean Between Waves. Adam Granduciel’s struggle to establish connection is almost tangible here in those closing lines: “I’m at the darkened hillside / And there’s a haze right between the trees / And I can barely see you / You’re like an ocean in between the waves”.
A touching moment that evolves into something even more epic as the song finally hits its stride in the closing minutes - you sense Granduciel maybe managed to mount one of those waves, and is surfing his way to a complete view of the ocean beneath him.
2. Words I Don't Remember - How To Dress Well
One of the most emotionally honest moments on How To Dress Well’s What Is This Heart. Words I Don’t Remember sounds like a lover struggling to piece back together the way they feel - hands slipping through the sensations and feelings… “Who knows if I love you baby, but you’re the one thing on my mind”. Much as with An Ocean Between Waves, Words I Don’t Remember launches out of that emotional insecurity into an epic instrumental closing third, and it’s a staggering moment.
1. Can't Do Without You - Caribou
On which Dan Snaith distills that very feeling of needing someone so bad it hurts… The obsession and neediness that turns love into something darker. Can’t Do Without You is both the most joyous, loved-up and celebratory thing I heard this year and the most desperately cloying. And if I take one thing from this song it is the human connection: we all feel this, for to love that hard is what it means to be human. And Snaith made it into the most addictively beautiful and optimistic sounding piece of sound created this year. Turn it up and forget about everything but the love you feel.
All I need to say is that you probably haven’t even heard of Pr0files, and yet here they created one of the year’s greatest pop records. Take one part Drive-inspired 80s noir and combine with power-pop vocal hooks dealing with broken hearts. Sure, the formula may be obvious, but being this great whilst executing it is spectacular.
19. Chandelier - Sia
Sure, the video has since become a meme that has overshadowed the actual song, and the album never quite managed to hit the same peaks. Yet one thing is clear: Chandelier proved Sia can deliver outstanding pop. Nothing else I heard this year felt so inherently ingrained in 2014 - it will age, sure, but if in years to come you ever want to remember what 2014 felt like then you can’t get much closer than Maddie Ziegler weird teeth brushing dance-routine paired with Sia’s brand of hyper-emotion.
18. Cigarettes & Loneliness - Chet Faker
Build On Glass was one of my favourite, durable listens of the year. Cigarettes & Loneliness is the most grown-up and self-reflective moment on that record, a song that curls itself up inside your foggy mind like the brutally crystal clear realisations of your failure that only truly hit with that unique combination of a hangover and personal shame at 9:15am on a Thursday morning. There really isn’t enough eight-minute beardy folk R&B in the world, and Nicholas James Murphy’s repeated refrain of "Breathe, this is love without love without love without love without love without love” reminds us that we aren’t alone in our imperfection.
17. No Angel - Beyoncé
Beyoncé’s self-titled album dropped out of the blue close enough to Christmas last year that a balanced view was difficult… When the past two years have been dominated by alternative R&B and young up and comers, Beyoncé showed she still knows how to blow them all away… Yet it’s best moment was defined by her willingness to hand over the reigns to the increasingly eccentric production efforts of Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek. The result is No Angel - both breathless and effortless.
16. If You Went Away - Daniel Wilson
Daniel Wilson’s Boy Who Cried Thunder has a handful of wonderful moments but none is as instantly heart-stopping as the dramatic If You Went Away. This is the kind of track that manages to be so in love that it is almost creepily intense, but the production is so sincere it is impossible not to empathise with Wilson’s pain.
15. Goshen ’97 - Strand of Oaks
Strand of Oaks’ Heal starts with a rambunctious bar band rock song of the like it never returns to… Perhaps because it nails the delivery to such a degree there is just no point. Where the rest of Heal uses electronics and increasingly complex production techniques, Goshen ’97 plays it straight, making it’s tail of growing up and growing old all the more poignant.
14. Ivory - Movement
Ivory is the moment where Movement went from being a diversion to one of 2014’s most exciting bands. In comparison to their earlier work Ivory felt darker and sexier, JUST THAT GUITAR.
13. Violence - Andy Stott
It seems like every time we hear from Andy Stott he gets more interesting. Violence was no different - incredibly dense and dark, it recalled Tricky at his most paranoid and is almost guaranteed to stop you in your tracks on your first listen. Play it LOUD.
12. Love Me Like I’m Not Made Of Stone - Lykke Li
Lykke Li’s third album was packed full of emotion, but Love Me Like I’m Not Made Of Stone represents her at her most exposed. It’s hard to listen and not want to do something to reassure, but that is the magic - Li manages to expose so much human emotion.
11. Is This How You Feel? - The Preatures
Technically Is This How You Feel? is a cheat - it came out in 2013… But I only discovered it this year, and it actually remains unreleased in Europe despite significant success in Australia. Is This How You Feel? is timeless, the kind of record that could have been released at any point in the past 35-years, and if you wished Haim would rock just a little bit harder then this is for you. And the video manages to be incredible without even really doing much - it turns out it is impossible to take your eyes off of Isabella Manfredi.
39. Blue Veins - LSBV
38. All We Need - ODESZA feat. Shy Girls
37. Swim - Fickle Friends
36. Strange Feeling - Panama
35. Flame - Ronya
34. Never Catch Me - Flying Lotus feat. Kendrick Lamar
33. Break Free - Ariana Grande feat. Zedd
32. Fame - The Acid
31. Heaven, How Long - East India Youth
Just got here? Get up to speed by reading Part One here. Click the Prev post button at the bottom of this post to get to Part Three.
50. Slow Build - The Range
49. Lighting Sparked - Dillon
48. Kind Of…Sometimes…Maybe - Jessie Ware
47. Girl - Jamie xx
46. Sick Beat - Kero Kero Bonito
45. Call My Name - Haerts
44. Pretty Girls - Little Dragon
43. A Place Called Space - The Juan Maclean
42. Never Work For Free - Tennis
41. Pieces - Paperwhite