2014 Year in Music

Normally I would write a post post that recaps the best music that I discovered and listened to this year. However, this past year was not a terribly good year for new music, and I found myself listening to less new music. Or should I say new albums. I still viciously consume music blogs in search of new music so that I can add more songs to my Soundcloud playlists, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend doing that. I would recommend, however, using Spotify radio, which draws from Spotify's large database of music and normally selects a nice variety of music, new and old.

Anyway, what I'm not saying is that I didn't listen to new albums. So below I have listed the few standouts, for me, of this past year.

Angel Olsen "Burn Your Fire For No Witness" - Beautiful voice, wonderful songwriting. This is truly a great album. My favorite of the year.

Beck "Morning Phase" - This is probably a biased pick because I've been a Beck fan since I was 8 or 9 years old, but this is a very good album. It's delightfully somber and just sounds so good.

Todd Terje "It's Album Time" - Dance music can be fun!

Ariel Pink "Pom Pom" - "Put Your Number In my Phone" is my favorite song of the year, maybe of the past 5 years. This album isn't perfect, but I really like it. It's just weird enough to catch my attention.

And that's pretty much it. I did like The War On Drugs album, but it took a while for me to get into it. The band Tops put out a pretty good record. The Mac DeMarco album was good, and so was the Real Estate record, but they were both very similar to their past albums. Maybe my tastes have narrowed, or maybe I need to take a break from new music, but either way, I'm looking forward to the new year.