Albums
of the year
2014
Last year my goal was to shorten the reviews in my annual top albums post, but I failed miserably. This year, however, time was more limited – in a good way luckily (maybe because I interviewed two of my favorite bands: Lush, and Slowdive!) – and I’ve finally reached my goal. That’s even with 20 albums reviewed, up four from last year. I think I’ll keep this introductory shorter as well. As you can see, to the left is a playlist of a song from each of the albums that I think represents what makes each album great. Oh, and it’s Spotify, so you may need to have an account or something, not entirely sure how that works. Figure it out, or check out the song titles to find them somewhere else. Lastly, note these are in no particular order. They’re all great in their own individual ways, and thus albums at the bottom are JUST as important as those at the top. Enjoy, and feel free to comment if you want – and thanks for reading! Or not.
12
GusGus
Mexico
They’re back! Again! Even I will admit as big of a fan of their 4AD debut ‘Polydistortion’ that I was when it came out in 1997, I never thought they would last beyond a few albums. But here we are coming up on 20 years of existence and their 9th album overall. The secret of their long success (they are quite big in Europe) has been shifting personalities here and there, which brings a fresh perspective every time they have a go at it, and funny enough they keep getting better and better on each album in terms of quality. Their brand is kind of an electro-soul if you will. A lot of this has to do with one of their many singers, Daniel Agust, which has one of the best voices in music today – a crooner with a gorgeously smooth sound that rides over the music perfectly. And the tunes. They’ve perfected how to take electronicdance music and turn it into top 40 radio without having to sacrifice quality. Europe’s figured this out. Too bad it hasn’t happened here yet. Perfect.