my top 10 music releases of 2014 presented with comment

1. Cardinal Cardinal - Distant Lover

There's a Youtube video of John Bradley playing a solo acoustic show when the other member of Dads is MIA and he introduces a song by saying "This song is about being in a long distance relationship and it sucks and it's great. Try it sometime" which is advice I think maybe I took to heart and anyways now I'm married.

2. Pianos Become the Teeth - Keep You

I often think there is an Ideal Jeff Album out there, a single music that would scratch all of my eardrumly itches. Further, maybe all the music I love is the stuff I've found that's closest to this Ideal Jeff Album. Slowly I've built up a catalogue of what I think this album would have:

• twinkly guitars, riffs
• singer who is not afraid to scream but does not scream all the time or even most of the time and sings pretty but maybe not all that well
• sad lyrics that are ambiguous enough that I can fill them with my own feelings but also packed with enough detail for me to know that they are sincere concrete and meaningful
• catchy but not too catchy but maybe almost a little bit too catchy so that the songs get stuck in my head in the morning and I just gotta listen to it that day
• no keyboards (if it is a rock/metal/punk/hardcore/etc, which it probably is)

Anyway the first time I listened to Keep You it struck me as the closest thing I've found to Ideal Jeff Music and now it's a bit over a year later and that is still the case. Just listen to the way he screams "so let's say nothing some more!" Feelings feelings feelings. Also not talking is great. Saying nothing forever saying nothing for life.

3. The Hotelier - Home, Like Noplace is There

When my mom first heard The National she said that their songs sound like she's heard them a thousand times before. Like the melodies are new but also they resonate in a deep deep way with the subterranean prehistoric melody detectors in our earbrains. That is also imo an apt description of Home, Like Noplace is There. Like a daydream of ghosts of favourite albums past but then on top of that it's way better.

Plus frontrow screaming along to their set at Bar Le Ritz P.D.B. on a chilly fall night was probably the most satisfying night of my life? I bought a t-shirt and it makes me feel a little bit happy every time I wear it.

4. La Dispute - Rooms of the House

There's a scene in Virginia Woolf where Mr. Richard Dalloway is invited to a lunch party and Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway is not. Clarissa hears of this, and then she thinks about death. I like this clever move from a specific event (not being invited to the lunch party) to an only kind of related general anxiety (death). Anxieties weigh heavy on us u kno, so they have a strong gravitational pull, sucking pulling bringing all our thoughts into their mass.

This clever move is all over Jordan Dreyer's lyrics. For example "First Reactions After Falling Through the Ice": he goes from falling through ice to wondering what would 'you' do if he died (fly out to his funeral? get too drunk at his wake? climb into his coffin and try to resuscitate him?) Specific event (ice fall) is sucked into general anxiety (hoping some faraway spirit that is obviously important to Jordan still finds his spirit important to him/her).

My thoughts do this! Crossing the street glides pretty quickly to thinking about death, a lone cheerio in a full bowl of milk makes me feel like a lone cheerio in a bowl full of milk, et cetera. I think this way especially when I'm sad but also kind of all the time. Anyway, I cherish V. Woolf and L. Dispute because you gotta hold your kindred spirits close. Also notable is how the lyrics of "First Reactions" segue from ice fall event to faraway spirit anxiety just as the music segues from rockin' first part to quieter middle part. There is a music-lyrics synergy in all of La Dispute's album that is UNMATCHED, or maybe ONLY MATCHED BY OTHER MUSICIANS WHO PUT SIMILAR AMOUNTS OF THOUGHT AND EFFORT INTO CREATING A SYNERGY BETWEEN THEIR WORDS AND THEIR SOUNDS.

5. Taylor Swift - 1989

Since I listen to music all the time, I don't often end up with mental associations for specific albums. Pretty much all music is happy music sad music dog walking music kitchen cleaning music. But I listened to 1989 a lot while playing Faster Than Light and I did not listen to it a lot while doing anything else, so it's one of the exceptions. Now my musical mental associations are: Aloe Blacc's Good Things with being sad and heartbroken, The National's Trouble Will Find Me with being sad and heartbroken, and Taylor Swift's 1989 with spaceships.

6. PVRIS - White Noise

Paramore and Chvrches were two of my favourite 2013 albums so it makes sense that I am really into PVRIS because they sound like a Paramore-Chvrches hybrid even down to the name starting with a P and the misplaced V in place of a vowel. (V is for vowel? Maybe their name started out as CVCVC?)

7. Antemasque - Antemasque

i hoep tanya is the cedric to my omar and/or vice versa

8. Salomé Leclerc - 27 fois l'aurore

In the Montreal metro there was annoying Sugar Sammy ads that said "en francais svp" and I did try to en francais some of my music listening while I was there. I never did go beyond musicians I discovered via metro ads though. One of those ads had Salomé Leclerc's face on it and this here albums'g to some of the best sounding guitars I've ever heard. Not bad STM, not bad.

9. Modern Baseball - You're Gonna Miss It All

I'm noticing a lot of post-hardcore albums with distance/keeping/home/house in their titles on this list, albums I've held close to my heart over the last two years. It's almost as if I moved across the country once or twice or something.

10. Kittyhawk - Hello, Again

But there's also a "hello" on this list =) in my changes and in my travels I made some friends met some people.

:)

friends

:D