21. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – “Self Titled”
And speaking of music that is jubilant and fun, we (finally) get to The Pains of Being Pure At Heart. It’s pretty rare that the young band that’s universally beloved at the beginning of the year is still universally beloved at the end of the year, but this band is one of the few to accomplish that task. When you look the amount of pure joyfulness per a cubic inch on display in their music, it’s not too tough to figure out exactly why that is. It turns out that songs like “Young Adult Friction” and “Stay Alive” are just as lovable on their hundredth listen as they are on their tenth. What The Pains of Being Pure At Heart is selling is nothing short of indie-pop at its very finest, and their doing it with an enthusiasm that makes it tough to have any cynicism towards a genre of music that is often a haven for the cynical. Lead-singer Kip Berman’s voice is right at home amongst all of the fuzz and haze of the band’s music, and all year long it has managed to work its way through your speakers and into the hearts of music fans everywhere.
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20. Major Lazer – “Guns Don’t Kill People, Lazers Do”
Wasn’t it about time that a couple of the world’s more interesting hip hop producers got together and put together a modern day homage to the best of reggae and dancehall under the ruse of a cartoon military commander? Okay, so maybe it doesn’t sound like the best of ideas from the outside looking in, but DJ’s Swith and Diplo really manage to make it work. All it took was the band holing up at Tuff Gong in Jamaica and collaborating with some of the finest that the label had to offer, and they came out with hands-down one of the best summer albums of the year. From the laid back “Can’t Stop Now” (can’t you just smell the weed drifting through the air?) to the grimy “Hold the Line,” Major Lazer delivers a plethora of neatly-packaged ready to enjoy tunes. It’s sure to be enough to satisfy the reggae fan in each and every one of us.
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19. Taken By Trees – “East of Eden”
In order to record her sophomore album under the solo moniker of Taken By Trees, Sweden’s Victoria Bergsman traveled well outside of the usual musical box, all the way to Pakistan. It seems a bit obvious to say, but you can really hear that emphasis on a more global sound on East of Eden. Bergsman’s music has always been smooth and soothing, even during her days with her band The Concretes, but here she has started to work in all manners of new instrumentation, and most notably the hand drums. For somebody whose music has long had a real simplistic and natural feel to it, the marriage is a perfect one. Also, perhaps was there no more perfect a fit for a cover of an Animal Collective tune than Victoria Bergsman, with her warped version of the band’s hit “My Girls,” under the title of “My Boys.” Just about everything on East of Eden feels exotic and comfortingly homey at the same time, the music has an abundance of soul, and that’s something that you won’t find just everywhere.
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18. Japandroids – “Post-Nothing”
As I said during an earlier discussion about Japandroid’s great song “Young Hearts Spark Fire,” coming of age music very rarely rocks as hard as this. That the band could capture that energy on one track is impressive enough, but for them to have done it eight times is pretty astounding. And make no mistake about it, it’s that unhinged garage-rock energy that makes Post-Nothing so intriguing, though I guess it also doesn’t hurt that the music is clever either. My favorite example of that simple cleverness comes on “I Quit Girls,” the albums last track. It presents the sensation of falling for a girl through blissfully youthful eyes. The band sings “She wears white, six days a week / She was just, one of those girls / And if you’re lucky, on the seventh day, she’ll wear nothing” before summing it all up brilliantly on the tracks final line by saying (you guessed it); “After her, I quit girls.” As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t get much better than that.
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17. K’naan – “Troubadour”
I wasn’t that surprised by how much I enjoyed K’naan’s sophomore album on my first listen. What I was surprised by, however, was how much the album stuck with me throughout the course of the year. The Somalia-born rapper just brings more story-telling ability and raw passion to the music than most rappers are capable of, and he delivers a wide variety of great music because of that. “Wavin’ Flag,” (already mentioned as one of my favorites) is more sung than rapped, and the optimism and hope of the song is nothing short of touching (the same could be said for the also excellent “Fatima”). “I Come Prepared,” meanwhile, is about as good a hip hop song as you’re liable to hear all year long, as both K’naan and Damian Marley absolutely murder the track. Meanwhile, you have a track like “America” that, despite the name, embraces much more of a global feel by putting have of the track in Swahili. In short, Troubadour is a globe-spanning jaunt through the world of hip hop that is sure to move and entertain even the most jaded of rap fans.
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16. Fever Ray – “Self Titled”
It was not a bad year for Swedish musician’s formerly of successful groups that are now recording solo projects under obtuse aliases. Okay, so maybe that description is a bit too specific to mean a whole lot, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Fever Ray album is just awesome. The entire project is drenched in a murky mysteriousness that makes the music all the more haunting and exhilarating. Karin Elisabeth Dreijer Andersson’s vocals are both grim and shrill, but also undeniably beautiful. The darkness of songs like “Keep the Streets Empty For Me,” “If I Had a Heart,” and “When I Grow Up” (just to name a few) was all reflected in the music videos made for the tracks, but it also served to help underline the downright cinematic nature of the music. If Andersson didn’t have a very clear vision for what she wanted this album to me, then at least she did a great job creating the illusion of one. Andersson’s debut as Fever Ray is one of the few albums that seems to get more intriguing, and just plain better, with every single listen that you give it.
i wasn’t too psyched about ‘the ecstatic’ when i first heard it but it’s definitely a grower. ‘the embassy’ is great. really unsettling.
Agreed. I reviewed it a little earlier in the year, and have come to the conclusion that I was a bit too tough on the album. It was certainly the kind of LP that you had to learn to appreciate a bit.