Top 50 Songs of 2014 (50-41)

Trying to chart any one trend from a year's worth of songs can drive you crazy and 2014 was no different. There was the hushed, autobiographical folk of Sun Kil Moon; Nicki Minaj's rap domination and whatever the hell you want to file away FKA Twigs' work from LP1 as. And that doesn't even scratch the surface of the Britpop brilliance, Apocalyptic post-rock and emo love that 2014 treated us to. What I'm saying then is that no one list, no matter how massive, could do the year justice. This list tries by factoring in: commercial success, critical reception, replayability and listener resonance. Hopefully it succeeds.


50. "Picture Me Gone"- Ariel Pink (pom pom)

 



















Ariel Marcus Rosenberg, better known to us as Ariel Pink, specializes in subterfuge. For all of the pop mastery he displays on a song like "Round and Round," he hides with ridiculous titles like "Butthouse Blondies" or "Plastic Raincoats in the Pig Parade" from this year's pom pom. In interviews he can't wait to touch on the taboo: suicide, misogyny, BDSM and genocide. There's nothing that's off topic for indie music's John Waters and that's lead to more than a few skirmishes. 

That said, no amount of self-destruction can paper over something like "Picture Me Gone," pom pom's standout track. Sure Pink tries. He reconfigures a past of flipping through a family photo album into a future of swiping left on an iCloud, but how he's relating to his fictional child is oddly poignant. "Let's make a toast to glory days, when you were 8 and I was only 41," he warbles as woozy background music pushes to the forefront. Pink's parent is the last one of a dying breed, the last to put the smartphone down. It's a crystal clear vision, one that's untainted by the electronic age.

49. "Blank Space"- Taylor Swift (1989)

If T-Swift made one mistake with the otherwise unimpeachable 1989 it was rolling out "Shake It Off" as the first single instead of lead track "Blank Space." One is a cloying piece of forgettable pop with a culture-appropriating video; the other is blissfully ascendant, bubblegum boom-bap that gently skewers critics of her journalistic approach to romance writing. If I have to tell you which is which, you've heard neither.

"Blank Space" isn't a success though just for its smart blend of the strong and sugary, it's a home-run because it flips through Swift's Rolodex of themes without calling on one for too long. "Magic, madness, heaven, sin," jealous lovers and tortured romantics, they all shuffle around in the ample room "Blank Space"'s cavernous booms provide. Swift will always have her detractors and won't ever be all things to all people, but she comes close on "Blank Space."

48. "I'm Coming Home"- Lil Boosie (Life After Deathrow)

By any measure, 2014 was a victory year for the Baton Rouge-bred Lil Boosie. He sprang from Louisiana State Penitentiary in March after serving five years for drug and gun charges and then went on a year-long tear, popping up on everything from 2 Chainz tracks to Rick Ross cuts. Boosie made his name on euphoric, springy songs like "Zoom" and damn if he wasn't going to celebrate now that he had his life back.

Oddly Boosie's greatest win in 2014, the November mixtape Life After Deathrow, is an intensely dark piece of minimalist country rap and "I'm Coming Home" is its pitch-black center. Boosie Bad Azz's squawk is swapped out for a weary mumble in the chorus. Cheery little keys have been strangled by menacing synth lines. What should be celebratory turns accusatory when Boosie recalls: "3 or 4 b****es, (What they did?) they told me lies I told them I was coming home, they rolled their eyes." No ever really leaves prison and "I'm Coming Home" makes that painfully clear.

47. "Say You Love Me"- Jessie Ware (Tough Love)

 
2014 was another terrific year for emotionally mature R&B which is both a blessing and curse. Of course that means we get Tinashe or FKA Twigs, but we also lose sight of someone like London's Jessie Ware, whose slow-burning "Say You Love Me" is one of the unquestionable successes in a crowded R&B year. 

Few things can be more frustrating in a relationship than realizing there's an unequal distribution of effort. That one person just doesn't seem to be trying. On "Say You Love Me" Ware rides that frustration to incredible heights, nearly screaming: "want to feel burning flames when you say my name" over a metronomic drum beat and rippling guitar. Sometimes actions just don't speak loud enough; you need to verbalize what you feel. "Say You Love Me" is that clarification shouted from a mountaintop. 

46. "Man of the Year"- ScHoolboy Q (Oxymoron)

"Shake it for the man of the year." Shake it for one of the coolest dudes to ever rock a bucket hat. Shake it for the unflappable confidence that oozes out of this former Hoover Street Crip's voice. Shake it for those expertly placed drum machine strikes and hi-hat skitters. Shake it for that Chromatics sample, so good it's hard to believe that no rapper beat Q to the punch on using it. Shake it to sweat the drugs and alcohol out of your system. Shake it to forget the bills piling up on your busted coffee table. Shake it any way you please. There's no wrong way. "Man of the Year" is all-inclusive.

45. "New York Kiss"- Spoon (They Want My Soul)

When I reviewed Spoon's constantly blooming eighth album, They Want My Soul, in August I wrote that closer "New York Kiss" is "the final memory, its Jim Carrey walking around the decayed beach house with Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." To the raspy-voiced Britt Daniel it's "another place to place your memory on," a locale encircled by rattling xylophone and synthesizer washes where you first made contact. 

"New York Kiss" is the sort of time-specific memory that never disappears; it can't be beaten out by heavyweight drums or deflated mantras ("there ain't a thing I miss"). Arguably the worst thing about a break-up is that you lose a person to share with. You now have to keep all of the intimate moments to yourself. Eventually they'll be nothing left but a blurring "neon sign," a "New York Kiss" that stands outside of any person or place.

44. "I Love You All"- The Soronprfbs (Frank soundtrack)

The music-dramedy Frank isn't an easy film to sit through. Michael Fassbender plays the enigmatic leader of an experimental outfit and what begins as a commanding performance turns to a sympathetic portrayal of someone whose mind has betrayed them. The idea that only suffering can bring "true art" slips away when the audience sees Fassbender as Frank, sans mask, struggling to put words together in his parents' home. Mental health disorders aren't artistic fountains or credibility boosters, they're cruel impediments.

Which is what makes the film's final song, "I Love You All," so remarkable. In one shining moment, Frank bests his disease. "Cowpoke sequined mountain ladies...fiddly digits, itchy britches," it's all nonsense, made crazier by the Theremin that's wailing off in the corner of a dusty old bar. But Frank sounds so sure of himself you're forced to hum along. "I love you all" he informs us; his voice stretching further out to the corners each time. We should love him for making something so endearing.

43. "Interference Fits"- Perfect Pussy (Say Yes to Love) 

Beyoncé and the aforementioned Taylor Swift received gobs of credit for boldly pronouncing themselves feminists in 2014, moves that deserve praise using any parameter, but neither felt innately risky or political. The kind of experiments you attempt can only push so far when you're two of the biggest pop stars in the world. Which is why in Queen Bey's glitchy earworm "Flawless" you hear a TedTalk from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and not Valerie Solanas reading from the Scum Manifesto.  

On Perfect Pussy's flawless debut Say Yes to Love Meredith Graves, the lead-singer of the Syracuse dream-punk quintet, captures the spirit of an entire movement without once uttering the word "feminist." She crashes through the topics of work, religion and marriage like a battering ram. With "Interference Fits," the album's blistering focal point, Graves essentially douses a white lace dress in lighter fluid and sets it ablaze. "I never wanted any children, just a nice apartment with open air," she yawps under waves of distorted guitars and churning bass. Marriage is an institution and institutions inevitably fall apart or become corrupt. It breaks you down, takes your money and forces you to compensate as Graves puts it. Great as they are, Beyoncé and Swift won't ever have to settle; making them intensely unrelatable to most girls and young women out there looking for an idol. Like Sleater-Kinney before them, Perfect Pussy is a "female group" that succeeds because they know they don't always have to preach. Sometimes it’s enough just to mosh.

42. "Webbie Flow (U Like)"- Isaiah Rashad (Cilvia Demo)

The most nakedly honest moment for hip hop in 2014 remarkably has nothing to do with Drake. It's delivered by Chattanooga, Tennessee's Isaiah Rashad, a 23-year-old son of the South who now counts ScHoolboy Q and Kendrick Lamar as labelmates on TDE. It's a simple line and one that goes against the shtick of Southern rapper Webbie, who Rashad pays tribute to in the title. "And I'm gon' testify girl and I'm gonna touch your thighs girl" Rashad shyly croons in the song's hook. In the verses Rashad hides behind turning up, chugging Bombay and twinkling Fender Rhodes. With that first half of the hook he's alone in a bedroom, hands shaking as he talks to the woman he wants to do right by. Rashad's not the dude who strutted to "So Fresh and So Clean," he's the thoughtful guy who put "Ms. Jackson" on repeated and vowed to do better. If Rashad is standing on equal footing with OutKast somewhere down the road, know that work like this put him them.

41. "And I Am Nervous"- Shy Boys (Shy Boys)

Jitteriness isn't something that should be appealing. It's a feeling no one wants to have. Though when you listen to "And I Am Nervous," a slice of landlocked surf pop from Kansas City, MO's Shy Boys its hard not to ask: "could it be so bad?" Collin Rausch's voice is syrupy sweet, even when it's fraying. His brother Kyle's bassline is the kind of trotting thing that makes Peter Hook and Joy Division so hypnotic. Konnor Ervin mostly avoids drum fills, which only prolongs the feeling of being suspended in animation. The lyrics primarily consist of the song's uneasy title and serve to draw you. "What's he nervous about?" you wonder. By the time you figure it out, you're stuck in the dark with him.

(Look for Part 2 to pop up right above this one. And if you love the songs included, say so in the comments. If you hate them and have nothing but righteous indignation for the countdown, express that to.)

"Musical Schizophrenic"- A conversation with London indie pop artist Oscar

Oscar Scheller's a self-described "musical schizophrenic." If the London native's not recording bright, love-struck indie pop under the mononym Oscar, he's staying up in his flat until 5 in the morning recording "crusty acid house" with his friend Guy as Claude Money or dabbling in shifting garage music. He's a classically trained art school grad who wrote a dissertation on "The Emotional Economy of the Sampled Sound" and enjoys the head knocking NYC-rap of Lord Finesse, the careful R&B structuring of Destiny's Child, Ride's intimate shoegaze and infinitely fun baroque pop courtesy of the Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society. Scheller will go nearly a month without working and then have a deluge where he writes multiple songs in a weekend. 

When's he wrapped on one of those new tracks, he'll play it for his mom Rebecca, who he inherited part of his musical "disorder" from. Rebecca would make mixes of current U.K. pop hits for Oscar when he rode to school as a child, and splice in New Order, Blondie and the Slits, because she was "a bit of a punk." And if that weren't enough, Oscar's father Martin was a "Bohemian with a joint in his mouth," who made some of the earliest acid house as Funtopia for Arista. The deal never quite materialized, but Oscar still has stacks of the records from Martin's broke artist days. Music is permanently hardwired into Oscar's DNA and you can hear it in his baritone voice.

Who's at the top of the list of bands you'd like to see?
Modern bands...I wanna see Slowdive, I know they’re an old band, but I wanna see them. They would be top of my list, 100%. 

So you're a shoegaze guy then, have you seen My Bloody Valentine?
I’ve seen My Bloody Valentine, which was, I thought it was pretty amazing. It was so loud that people were kind of throwing up afterwards. It was intense. After a while all the feedback and frequencies made this incredible singing noise. It was beautiful, but deafening.

When did you start listening to bands like that?
I was quite late with guitar music. When I was a teenager, I was into R&B and hip hop. My sister was into drum & bass and U.K. garage and all that kind of stuff, so I kind of took CDs from her room and was involved with that, but I think when I first started listening to shoegaze I was about 17 or 18.
 
What about it appealed to you?
I suppose like the delicacy of it and the intimacy as well.

Shoegaze isn't unlike R&B in that way.
Oh God yeah. Some of the best R&B is really minimal.


I can hear shoegaze and hip hop elements in a song like "Be Good" but how does R&B fit in? With the R&B the influence of that is vocally, there are lots of indie singers that could have these crossover soulful voices because they actually sing it's not yelping into a microphone. Julian Casablancas for instance has a great voice. I guess Morrissey as well has got a good voice.

Morrissey is a comparison that comes up a lot for you in the press, why do you think that is?
I don’t think we sound anything a like. I think the reason that people say that is because I sing with my own accent. And as soon as you’re an English band that doesn’t sing in an American accent, you are someone else.

And they seem to suggest you're also gloomy? I just find it funny because I’m really not a miserable person, I’m really silly.

Where does a mistake like that come from? I think people can’t really work out what it is. I think because my voice is so low, people assume I’m kind of deadpan. And I try to sing higher, but I write songs for where my voice is.

But the whole sad thing is kind of a character and even when I do try to write happy songs, they do come out a bit bittersweet.



When did you first start writing?
I was 13 or 14 and started writing on the piano and it was straight up pop ballad kinds of things. I was listening to a lot of Alicia Keys. It was cheesy and really teenage. 

And then I picked up the guitar when I was 15. My friend showed me a few chords and my mom showed me a few chords too, she could play Buddy Holly.
I was in lots of bands that weren’t mine where I was asked to be the singer. Like from the age of 15 I was in bands and learning how to do that.

Was there any frustration with playing in a band versus solo because there was more to worry about? I think when you’re young, it was a lot easier because we all went to the same school, we all finished school at 4 o’clock, and none of us had girlfriends or real lives, so it was like 'yeah lets go practice and do that gig.' So in a way it was kind of easy, but it didn’t feel like that at the time.

And I started to realize that I really knew what I wanted and I had to sing other people’s lyrics which frankly I didn’t like and it wasn’t the best.

So was performing the plan then or did you want to go to school?
I did the whole art school route; I thought it was the promised land. You read about art school and you read about punk and all the great bands that went there and you think 'God that must be such an exciting place, you can dress how you want and you can just express yourself and do what you want.'

Of course that wasn’t the reality. Capitalism has kind of taken such a stranglehold on any kind of individual education system. It’s no longer a school of art, it’s actually a university which the semantics of are completely different. It's incredibly prescriptive and academic and in a way you can’t really call it art school anymore.

I definitely had a hard time there and that was definitely when I started doing the Oscar stuff. I was so pissed off with art school; I was just spending all my time at home writing and coming in occasionally and showing some work and sort of bullsh***ing.

Was the early music you were doing as Oscar for school at all or just an escape from all the bulls***? It was to get away from all the bulls***... I was kind of going through this conflict with everybody around me saying 'why the f*** can’t I come in and play my album or play my songs?' Because it’s as much art as whatever the painting is or whatever the installation is. So it was definitely the kind of escape from that.


How much of that was a conscious decision?
I was tired of straight indie music going to see boys with guitars. The whole thing was boring and tired. It was all either super electronic or complete rip offs. I wanted to exaggerate the fact that I’m an avid record collector. In a way the art school was helpful in that it makes you quite cynical and does strengthen all your references and makes you look at things in or out of context.

The music came about because I wanted to write pop songs, but I’m real, I’m in a bedroom. I’m not a manufactured artist, so I just kind of did it the way I knew best. I played around with lots of old school drum loops because I didn’t have a drumkit and couldn’t make a noise in my bedroom because I live in a flat. So it was the easiest way to do it. All late at night; just drum loops and singing really quietly into a microphone.

Lo-fi approach intentional or because you don’t have the equipment for it?
It’s not intentional. I think if I had a proper drumkit and I knew how to record it and I had studio time, of course I would love to have the songs fully realized. And in a way the songwriting has been improving. Now the songs I’m writing are kind of like album tracks and they do need a kind of high-fidelity.

I think the next thing is to release a new single or EP. Just keep building it.

Oscar's debut EP 146b is out now on Smalltown Supersound imprint Brown Rice.

In Revue: 'Wild' (Miguel)

While it seems ostentatious that kaleidoscopic crooner Miguel would surprise release a new EP of progressively druggy R&B less than a week after D’Angelo damn near broke the music web with his masterful sneak attack Black Messiah, it makes sense in the right frame.

Miguel has a penchant for psych-soul/funk/R&B "ballads" that transmute at least three times before his voice floats away from them. If D'Angelo didn't outright invent the style on his 2000 record Voodoo, he helped popularize it. A song like "Playa Playa" can shift from narcotized tribal chanting to muted horns and not bat an eye. Without D'Angelo's work on that sophomore LP, we arguably don't get: the Weeknd, Frank Ocean, Solange or Miguel. Miguel's decision then has nothing to do with brazenness; it’s a tip of the cap to a sonic forefather.

Even if this new untitled EP (Wild to make it easier) was positioned as a contender to D'Angelo's hazy throne it would still rightly be viewed as a success. Miguel really rose to prominence with the Art Dealer Chic EPs in 2012 and the format suits him incredibly well. Each plea for a late night rendezvous is more desperate; every line of pillow talk tenderer because you know there's a finite amount of time. The Sun will be coming up soon and then it'll all be over.

But that's one facet of Miguel's inimitable style. He can do braggadocio with the best of his R&B peers and Wild's opening track "nwa" allows him to fully indulge. "She just wanna ride with an NWA," he hums over closely-mic'd drums, G-Funk synth wobbles and dust settling guitars. It's the sort of the line that's infinitely cooler because of how calm Miguel sounds delivering it. He's not pretending, he's a legit "NWA," and if you don't believe him you can ask legendary Philadelphia everyman Kurupt. The Dogg Pound member goes the Miguel route, barely rising above a gruff whisper, but he doesn't have the same effortlessness. He's the dude memorizing pickup lines while Miguel's breaking the ice with something he just thought up.

And if closer "coffee" is any indication, those lines clearly work. What starts as chat about "street-art and high-fashion," accompanied by blankets of static and murmuring bass, soon "devolves" into tongue kissing. Everything follows a natural path until Miguel and unnamed lover end with "coffee in the morning." "Coffee" has one of the cleverer hooks I've heard in 2014, if only because it finds a new way to portray a night of passion. It documents the kind of psychic connection that can form between two people who started off looking for the physical.

Miguel's true genius then is taking genre tropes and spinning them into audio gold. Like "Candles in the Sun" before it, "hollywooddreams" should sink under the weight of its own idealistic hokum, but it doesn't because of Miguel's commitment to the material. He's earnestly hoping for a "big break," trying to find a dream lost under surging guitars and twinkly synthesizers. There's no doubt he'll spot that break. With the artistic vision Miguel has, he could find anything.