Everything Good That 2014 Left Behind
There’s a moment midway through LP1 where FKA twigs builds a texture so close and pressurized it sounds like the inside of someone else’s dream, and you understand immediately that whatever else 2014 was going to give you, it was at least going to give you that record.
Whatever the year did to you personally—it had range—the music held. Some years leave behind a specific sound, a mood you can point to later as the feeling of that particular stretch of time. 2014 left a pile of records and tracks that actually earned their moment.
Angel Olsen broke something open on Burn Your Fire for No Witness, her voice doing things that shouldn’t technically work as often as they did. The War on Drugs made Lost in the Dream—a road-trip record in the best possible sense, the kind of album that makes four-hour drives feel like something worth doing. Lykke Li wrote I Never Learn and turned controlled devastation into an art form. Lorde proved the debut wasn’t a fluke, still the most interesting mind working the intersection of dread and pop ambition.
Perfume Genius made quiet, bruised piano music that hit harder than it had any right to. Wild Beasts remained the most underrated band in England. Robyn released nothing and stayed more compelling than most people with albums out. Grouper made music that sounds like memory in the process of dissolving—something almost purely felt, almost impossible to describe after the fact.
St. Vincent with her best record. Blood Orange building his version of New York soul, slow and internal and gorgeous. Jessie Ware staying criminally underappreciated. Yumi Zouma proving dream-pop could have actual bones. Woman’s Hour making a record where every song felt like a door you’d been standing outside for years. Elderbrook. Arcade Fire. Great Pagans. More.
I pulled the best of it into a playlist and it holds—not because 2014 was a banner year for anything in particular, but because the music made its argument regardless. Everyone else whose record I’m not mentioning is welcome to reconsider their career choices.