Alvvays
For an emerging artist treading down a well-traveled path, the right attitude can mean a lot. And that’s something Alvvays has in spades. What makes the Toronto-based quintet stand out are the intangibles, an authentic vibe to its girl-groupy indie-pop that comes from an intuitive knack for creating eminently catchy songs that has more to do with touch and feel than innovation. At its best on its self-titled debut, Alvvays evokes the immediacy and resourcefulness of underground touchstones like Heavenly and the Aislers Set, making the most of getting down to the basics of songcraft and sentimentality.
Thanks to its uncannily wistful melodies and Molly Rankin’s wry, yearning coo, Alvvays tackles the subgenre’s coming-of-age conventions with warm reverence as well as an individual perspective that’s already earned it an identity distinctly their own. Case in point: their ode to the fear of commitment, “Archie, Marry Me”, is not just a performance garnering Alvvays prime rookie-of-the-year consideration, but it’s also its precocious entry in the twee-pop hall of fame. In Alvvays’ hands, nostalgic indie rock has been as forward-looking as anything else this year. – Arnold Pan
Angel Olsen
Before this year, Angel Olsen languished in obscurity, written off as a Patsy Cline sound-alike novelty. But with the release of this year’s Burn Your Fire for No Witness, she realized her potential as an artist, crafting an immaculately balanced record that splits between pitch-perfect classic country ballads like “Iota”, Cohen-esque folk epics like “White Fire”, and guns-out rockers like “High & Wild”. The help of a larger indie label like Jagjaguwar gave Olsen the production quality and variety of backing musicians to truly expand her sound in a direction unlike any other artist out there today. – Logan Austin
Archibald Slim
Atlanta hip-hop is so overwhelmingly, prolifically creative these days that comparisons to New York’s early scenes aren’t all that crazy. With his debut mixtape, He’s Drunk!, Archibald Slim has added himself to the list of ATL visionaries who are gleefully kicking the genre off its moorings (Young Thug, Rich Homie Quan, Migos, Raury, PeeWee Longway, etc.). As the most well-rounded emcee in the Awful Records crew – a loose collective of friends who seemingly record each other on whims and end up turning SoundCloud into a drug for the rest of us – Archie is able to explore the poisonous sociology of the poverty-stricken without ever losing his cool, strolling through the neon smoke of producer Keith Charles Spacebar’s beats like he’s of them, not on them. Conversely, this approach makes the raw outrage of the lyrics even harder to ignore — like that room in your house that’s always chilly, no matter how warm the heart is. – Joe Sweeney
Banks
With a major nomination from BBC Sound of 2013, Banks shaped up to be one of the highlights of 2014 due to her eclectic mixture of R&B, electronic, trip-hop, and dream pop. With a critically lauded album in 2014, Goddess Banks fused these genres and delivered a solid release. With songs that range from perfect balladry (“Brain”) to amazing simplicity (“Stick”), Banks’ debut is definitely a great one. And although critics thought it was rather similar to her contemporaries (Jessie Ware, FKA Twigs, Kelela), Banks truly carved out a niche of her own: electronic-influenced R&B that balances its way between The Weeknd and Aaliyah. – Devone Jones
Battle Trance
A saxophone quartet that use only tenor saxophones on paper does not sound like a great idea. Great pieces of saxophone music, such as Philip Glass’ Saxophone Quartet, derive their melodic and rhythmic complexity in large part due to the differences in pitch of the various kinds of saxophone. However, Battle Trance — the quartet organized by Travis Laplante — have, with Palace of Wind, created an album-length composition that reveals just how much sound and power can be wrought out of a tenor saxophone. Laplante, joined by Matthew Nelson, Jeremy Viner, and Patrick Breiner, here gives a performance with such gusto one will have to continually remind herself that the sounds on this LP are only being made by four instruments.
At times, such as the turbulent section in the first movement of the piece, these men sound as if they’ve just opened the gates of hell and let all of its fury roar out of their saxophones. This music truly lives up to its title; at just over 40 minutes, Battle Trance sculpt a palace of wind and sound, taking (and sometimes forcing) the listener through an audiovisual feast, a tour de force of avant-garde classical music. The press materials for Palace of Wind claim that Laplante created Battle Trance after “literally awoke with the crystal clear vision that he needed to start an ensemble” with the three gentlemen he brought on for this project. What mysterious force of the universe led Laplante to think this? The world might never know. But one spin of Palace of Wind will make it clear that this project was indeed destined, for music this innovative and stunning doesn’t happen randomly. – Brice Ezell
Clipping
Clipping. isn’t as new as us; most listeners didn’t hear about it until CLPPNG, its first big-house record, hit the shelves this summer. Yet the rap group is still in its formative stages, and 2014 was a new beginning for it. The year introduced a new and innovative angle to their formerly abrasive take on hip-hop. To clipping., accessibility is as volatile a tool as any other, because it means more will get in line to hear the protests.
Songs like “Summertime” are immediately appreciable but offer sizable depth as well. Clipping. is just now getting noticed because it’s just now started to approach its music from the listener’s perspective. If music is a form of communication, a message sent from one party to another to be deciphered by the listener, then clipping. is a purveyor of an exceedingly exact memo: not all is how it appears. There are innumerable paradoxes in the world, and we’ll need to keep our eyes peeled in order to catch onto them. Clipping. knows this because it’s been on the other end of the line this whole time, heeding the narratives of their choice of hip-hop artists in order to arm its own armada. – Jacob Royal
Doug Seegers
Doug Seegers doesn’t just sing about the hobo life; he has lived it for four decades, squatting in abandoned buildings in Manhattan, sleeping under bridges in Austin and Nashville, hopping trains to another town where the promise of pocket change dropped into his guitar case seemed better. Seegers harkens back to the classic country of old while establishing his own unique voice and vision. When Seegers howls, mimicking a train whistle in “Gotta Catch That Train”, he evokes the blue yodels of Jimmie Rodgers.
One can hear echoes of Porter Wagoner in “Pour Me”, where the singer sits forlornly at the bar while his ex sways across the dance floor with her new beau, “Lucky him, lovely her, pour me.” A less nuanced songwriter would probably reach for the “lucky-lovely-lonely” progression (those Nashville Music Machine songwriters are suckers for alliteration), but Seegers’ choice of the simple, brilliant pun amplifies both his narrator’s state of mind and his means of coping. That’s smart songwriting, and from start to finish, this is one of the best country releases you will hear this year. – Ed Whitelock
FKA Twigs
When it comes to originality, creativity, ambition, and maturity, no artist who released a debut album in 2014 even comes close to what 26-year-old Tahliah Barnett has pulled off this year. Having facetiously given herself the “formerly known as” acronym after another artist named Twigs threatened litigation, FKA Twigs follows the young auteur example of Grimes, but in a far less flighty way. Instead, she opts for something darker and a lot more mature, meshing sultry, dusky pop hooks with intensely erotic lyrics. Best of all, she uses arrangements that strip the music away of all the flash and flesh, leaving a bare-bones accompaniment of electronic beats and throbs that pulsate with the emotional power of the words and music. It’s a situation where, as soon as the album ends, you can’t wait to hear what she does next. – Adrien Begrand
Hundred Waters
Hypnotic, ethereal, detached, expressive: these are just a few descriptors that apply to Hundred Waters’ sophomore LP, The Moon Rang Like a Bell. Try nailing down Nicole Miglis’ eerie soprano, and you’ll find that it slips untrustingly from your grasp, evading your ears and slinking back into the darkness where it came from. The album is gripped by an unseen fear and a full-moon mysticism, and it’s not out of the question to suggest that much of Moon dances around the concept of feminine mystique and its impact on a male-dominated indie crowd.
The first words you’ll hear on the album opener “Show Me Love” are, “Don’t let me show cruelty, though I may make mistakes / don’t let me show ugliness, though I know I can hate.” A lone vocal track that acts as a prelude to the odd and eerie electronic staccato of “Cavity” and “XTalk”. Is there a hint of new age mysticism and Eastern chord progressions dropped loosely into syncopated rhythms? Yes, that and the simplest of notions: “take my hand when I’m walking”.
Moon doesn’t attach itself instantly. Instead, Hundred Waters have created a delicate grower of an album, one that peels back layers and cadences until you’re not certain if the music is still being made by humans or ghosts. It would be more plausible if it were made by spirits, given its spirituality and subdued sexuality. All of that is to say, Hundred Waters keep you wondering where their inspiration comes from and where they’ll take you next. An astral plane? Your parent’s bedroom? Basement parties? Wherever they go, be sure to follow. – Scott Elingburg
Jungle
There was no consensus on “Song of the Summer” this year. (Yes, Iggy Azalea was everywhere, but so were allergens.) Nothing captured the popular imagination like “Get Lucky” did in 2013, reminding us that songs don’t do that kind of thing as much as they used to. The upside was that we could choose our own summer jams without having to feel like we were missing out on something. And for me, that choice tended to be Jungle’s debut album.
Leading up to its release, the British duo got the hype machine going in pitch-perfect fashion, keeping the member’s identities secret and releasing several feel-good clickbait videos featuring all sorts of killer dance moves. These moves set us all up to be surprised by the actual tone of Jungle, which is soft and languorous, a bedroom R&B production full of floating synths and falsettos. It sounds like something a day-drunk Philip Michael Thomas would’ve put on his Hi-Fi in 1986. It makes me want to put on sunglasses even though I know I look stupid in sunglasses. It makes me feel like it’s not actually going to snow tonight. – Joe Sweeney