Top 10 Albums

10. PC Music, DISown Radio Mix (self-released)
It’s rare that I’ll include any kind of mixtape on a year-end list (actually I’m pretty sure it’s unprecedented, unless I included Diplo’s first mix for MIA years back), but what the shadowy, commercially bent PC Music enclave did with utopian electronic pop throughout the course of the year was undeniable. I spent much more time listening to singles from the likes of AG Cook, GFOTY, Sophie, and Kane West, than any traditionally formatted music. It’s hyper-processed, plastic beyond plastic, Japanese Kawaii cuteness, ’80s Top 40 milked of nostalgic essence, poolside charm, neon baubles, and sensory overload chopped into bite-sized, easily digestible moments of euphoria. This hopefully is where pop music is headed, and this mix, is going to be your best introduction to that future.

9. Ex Hex, Rips (Merge)
Wherein Mary Timony, she of Autoclave, Helium, and Wild Flag, emerges a phoenix once again with a concise and colorful blast of unapologetic, pretense-free power pop. My band had the pleasure of opening some shows for the DC trio in March, well before the release of Rips, and by the third show most of this record was already embedded in our heads. It was that catchy and that flawless. Coincidentally, in a year where I was rescuing records by Dwight Twilley, NRBQ, and Phil Lynott, Ex Hex went ahead and made their own homage to that era of pop purity, albeit with a ’90s sensibility and a ’10s workmanship.

8. Mac DeMarco, Salad Days (Captured Tracks)
It’s a testament to Mac DeMarco and his third album, Salad Days, that we can now attach “straight” and “mainstream” to descriptions of his artistry. It all happened so organically. He’s got the bummer surf kids, the acid-fried Ween burn-offs, the lo-fi, dorm-room guitarists holding out for something wonkier, and every turnt millenial in between. I saw it with my own eyes.

7. Eastlink, Eastlink (In the Red)
I don’t know much about this record and this band, and I prefer to keep it that way. It’s better unraveled blindly, letting Eastlink’s miscreant choogle cover you in its exhaust, an “ignorance is bliss” cacophony. Like a number of just-missed LPs from the Unholy Two, Burnt Skull, and Mordecai, Eastlink’s seemingly effortless debut revels in a po-mo freakout of paranoia and noisy, snaky boogie—whether that’s the intent or not. There are genuine sing-a-longs, Nuggets mutated over three generations and four guitars (!!!), all trying to stay on the same track.

6. Iceage, Plowing into the Fields of Love (Matador)
Were you to tell me upon seeing Iceage’s first show in America that these Copenhagen punks would still be alive and well and a Matador powerhouse today, I would have made a joke. It probably would not have made you laugh because back then the white-hot combustion of Iceage’s presence and fury made you feel like a 14-year-old on butane and dirt weed while Crass and the Misfits played from some worn tape in the background of some basement or garage. Heads full of ideas, execution full of violence and bad decisions, Iceage have now countered any controversy (well, maybe) and misgivings for being luckily green, with their most mature record in Plowing. Please heed my word and don’t discount that this band can evolve even farther than they’ve already established on this record. But for now, this’ll do as a triumph of their stylish stoicism and gross melody, now rich with sophisticated blues, a new kind of post-millennial blues.

5. Aphex Twin, Syro (Warp)
I suppose it’s ultimately an ephemeral knee-jerk reaction to Syro that puts the album on this list. In the realm of Richard D. James, most might not think of it as extraordinary, but in the sphere of someone who only dabbles in this type of circuitry, it translates as a landmark. It’s one of those albums when stacked against a now infinite sea of peers (i.e. anyone who incorporates MIDI into their music-making) the guy composes as if he’s competing for the title of acid house Noble laureate. Did I just use acid house as an adjective in 2014? Am I too out of touch to even touch Syro? All I can gather in my own self-reflection of my self-reflective magnetism to only certain strands of electronic/dance is that Syro breaks tiny ceilings of linearism and melody—and not to mention precog sonic palettes—to blossom as a work I’ll be listening to years down the road.

4. Javiera Mena, Otra Era (Union Del Sur)
I made mention of Javiera Mena four years ago in my 2010 list. Back then, she played the pawn for my gregarious attraction to every beat borne of South America, but she was among the elite. In the present, her model is de rigueur—Robyn, Kieza, La Roux, Lana Del Rey—and those percolations from Brazil, Argentina, and Mena’s native Chile can be found mutated in most of the Top 40. To humanity’s benefit, Mena’s latest stunner, is, as the title suggests, of another “era.” Be it coke-fueled Moroder mirror-balled or something more subtle like the electronically symphonic “Pid,.” it’s “todos beuno.” I used to think to be international she’d need to heel to an English speaking audience, but no, this stuff is over the heads of the Western world, even hurdling what is said to be the future of pop, hence the reason I have none of her releases in a physical format or why you don’t hear her on American radio, yet.

3. A Sunny Day in Glasgow, The Sea When Absent (Lefse)
So far, I see A Sunny Day in Glasgow as a band built in fragments: American shoegaze, battered IDM, ethereal soothsaying, power electronics. The Sea When Absent, though, again designed by members across the globe in a kaleidoscopic Jenga puzzle of layers, appears to level those planes enough to sound as complete and formed as they must initially broadcast in the mind of Ben Daniels. In a world that obsesses over the next note played by Kevin Sheilds, it represents a thriving life beyond Loveless.

2. The Stevens , A History of Hygiene (Chapterhouse)
Charming naivety and osmotic pedigree—Australian quartet The Stevens have a bit of both on their unassumingly perfect debut. It runs along without catching much attention on the first few listens, but begins to grow like a welcomed tumor exponentially on each successive spin. Indie-pop signifiers of the ’90s (Pavement, The Clean, Arab Strap) help in explaining A History of Hygiene, but none come to define this band. Live their MO is even more enigmatic. I just hope they keep their prolific streak going well into 2015 and beyond.

1. Ariel Pink, Pom Pom (4AD)
Aside from Ray Davies, Martin Newell (of Cleaners from Venus), and by default, R. Stevie Moore, Ariel Marcus Rosenberg is the greatest living pop songwriter. And while Mr. Pink has suffered, perhaps, less exposure sans the Haunted Graffiti, Pom Pom is perhaps his greatest triumph. Melding all of the time-warping ideas from past albums like Worn Copy and House Arrest into a full-on psychedelic smorgasbord of channel surfing, it is his opus in miniature (if only because larger things lie in the future).

The Next 10

20. Makthaversken, II (Run for Cover)
Basically an album full of torch song anthems played by indifferent Swedish punks reacting to the sweetness of standard issue Swedish punk. It’s enthralling and recalls both the best of post-punk dourness and rip-it-clean ’90s guitar rock. Be on the lookout, they’re about to pounce in a big way methinks.

19. The Gotobeds, Poor People Are Revolting (12XU)
I never thought Pittsburgh was much fun till I met these kids. Party record of the year.

18. Angel Olsen, Burn Your Fire for No Witness (Jagjaguwar)
File under: it came out way back in February but I’m still playing it incessantly. I tend to lump all of this year’s femme folkish firebrands into the same pile. You can have Grouper all day, she’s got nothing on Olsen’s impassioned songwriting.

17. Merchandise, After the End (4AD)
Not nearly as brilliant as Children of Desire, but where that record’s beauty through obfuscation was the focal point, on After the End, it’s the magnification of Brit-obsessed maudlin pop. As much as it apes everything from Aztec Camera to Duran Duran, it traipses on those influences with pointed urgency.

16. Taylor Swift, 1989 (Big Machine)
Erase “Shake It Off” from this record (and yes, I own the goddamn record) and you’ve got a spotless, crystalline pop effort. Undeniably so.

15. Spoon, They Want My Soul (Loma Vista)
This is the first Spoon album I’ve cared about in over a decade. It was probably a good idea for Britt Daniel to take some time off from his flagship, explore other waters, and then reconcentrate on the sometimes gritty, sometimes bratty, but above all lovelorn songwriting of his earliest days. Comeback of the year?

14. Giant Claw Dark Web (Orange Milk)
Local introvert turns to ’80s R&B and classical electronic composition to craft a giant record of cuts, glitches, and otherworldly beats. File right beneath the PC Music camp.

13. Saintseneca, Dark Arc (Anti)
Local folkies turn to dreams and nightmares, oddball stringed instruments, and even electric guitars to craft a giant record of infinite harmony and light.

12. D’Angelo and the Vanguard, Black Messiah (RCA)
Another record where the jury’s still out. It arrived just before the holidays when most of us were tidying up these here year-end lists. But it felt so good on first listen and stands to be an instant classic. Nothing this year (sans Prince) came close to emitting such a stoned-funk sense of atmosphere.

11. Foxygen, …And Star Power (Jagjaguwar)
Expected much more in this, the duo’s follow-up, and maybe there is much more. For now, it’s dense and dark and still worthy of examination. Pick through it and there are number of shining gems to adore.