The Best Of The Best Albums Of 2014

Best Of list season is upon us once again. Rejoice! This year, the top albums section is a little larger than usual. In the past I've tried to keep it to 10 selections, but I'd rather not subject myself to the painful mental calculation that is having to make a cut.

So after taking a quick look at my Best Of 2014 playlist on my computer (these are the notable albums that graduate from my general 2014 playlist), I've chosen the records that I've found myself coming back to more often than others. This is how I arrive at what is 'best.' In a further deviation, I will not be ranking the albums in any sort of preferential order. Instead, I'll order them by release date. This will save me from even more cognitive distress.

Click the images to be spirited away to YouTube...

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The Best Of The Best Albums Of 2014

James Vincent McMorrow - "Post Tropical"

The Hotelier - "Home, Like Noplace Is There"

The War On Drugs - "Lost In The Dream"

Chet Faker - "Built On Glass"

Kishi Bashi - "Lighght"

Lewis - "L'Amour"*

Owen Pallett - "In Conflict"

The Antlers - "Familiars"

FKA Twigs - "LP1"

QT - "Hey QT"†

Tennis - "Ritual In Repeat"

alt-J (∆) - "This Is All Yours"

Perfume Genius - "Too Bright"

Thom Yorke - "Tomorrow's Modern Boxes" / "Youwouldn'tlikemewhenI'mangry"‡

D'Angelo and The Vanguard - "Black Messiah"

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Honourable Mentions

 Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra - "Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything"

Phantogram - "Voices"

Beck - "Morning Phase"

Cloud Nothings - "Here And Nowhere Else"

Real Estate - "Atlas"

You Blew It! - "Keep Doing What You're Doing"

Doug Paisley - "Strong Feelings"

Jamie xx - "Girl / Sleep Sound"

Ought - "More Than Any Other Day"

Damien Jurado - "Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son"

First Aid Kit - "Stay Gold" / "America"

Jack White - "Lazaretto"

Tycho - "Awake"

Lost In The Trees - "Past Life"

El Ten Eleven - "For Emily"

Cocoanut Groove - "How To Build A Maze"

Aphex Twin - "Syro"
Manchester Orchestra - "Cope" / "Hope"
Pink Floyd - "The Endless River"

Jessie Ware - "Tough Love"

Caribou - "Our Love"
Hannah Diamond - "Every Night"

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* This is a 2014 reissue from Light In The Attic records. You can read more about Lewis here.
† It's a single, not an album. So what?
‡ The single "Youwouldn'tlikemewhenI'mangry" was released December 26, two months after the full length was released. It's a darn good track, and you can name your price and download it here. Since I paid about $50 for "Tomorrow's Modern Boxes" on vinyl, I opted to name a price of $0 to download this terrific single.

Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series

I don't often read novels, but when I do it's usually the ones that the movies I like are based on. I consume my fiction mainly through movies and television shows, and this applies perfectly to the Millennium series. I'm just not as into fiction books as these two:

Post by The Film Stage.

The original Swedish film adaptations found their way on my To Watch list in 2009, and I thought they were terrific. When it was announced that David Fincher would direct the English adaptation, I was rightly stoked. Fincher is easily one of my favourite directors. It wasn't until after The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011) was released that I finally picked up the novels. They've been sitting on my shelf ever since.

For whatever reason, I've chosen to start reading the series this week. I'm just about through with the first novel in the series, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The original Swedish title is Män som hatar kvinnor, which literally means "Men Who Hate Women." I think that's a way cooler title, but I guess it's a little less inviting than what it was ultimately changed to for the English market.

It's been a while since I've read any novels (the last was Cormac McCarthy's Child of God a few months ago), so I guess the time was right to take a break from my steady diet of non-fiction. Other novel-reading-after-movie selections include David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let The Right One In, and Christopher Priest's The Prestige. I got the jump on Paul Thomas Anderson's upcoming film adaption of Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice and read that one a year or so ago. 

Off the top of my head, one of the only non-film-adapted novels I've read somewhat recently is The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt. It's a great little novel, and last I checked it was optioned by John C. Reilly for the film adaptation. There's also Pynchon's Bleeding Edge and Lindqvist's Handling The Undead. And there was Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I read long before there was even news of a screen adaptation. (See also: The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories.) I've been following the non-existent progress on that one for years until it was finally produced as a television series which is set to air next year. I'm super excited about that one.

There aren't many other novels on my radar, except for maybe David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks. Non-fiction is really my thing these days, and has been ever since I devoured so much Michael Crichton and Stephen King in my early teen years. Tolkien came a little later. But dang if I ain't lucky I grew up in the days before Harry Potter and all these other "YA" blockbuster series. Yeesh. I will never understand why adults read YA stuff, either. They should be embarrassed. But I suppose it's better than reading nothing at all...