See Full List (more to follow in January so check back)
Last year’s Best of list reached 96 albums including re-issues. So this year I promised myself that I’d at least try and keep it a lot shorter…I failed. Thanks to our very keen review team, it’s been an incredibly busy year racking up nearly 400 reviews.
In short, making such a list is never easy and in a way that’s a good thing. It’s a reflection of the high calibre of the music we’ve featured, all of which are on this website in the first place because we rate them highly enough to write about. I’ve never believed in wasting energy telling readers about music to avoid, we write about music because we love it and the music featured this year has been exceptional.
There are many reasons for an album making the list and there is always a balance to be struck. I’ve attempted to make it representative of the breadth of music we cover. Those that regularly follow us will know how broad our coverage is. For that reason the albums featured range from folk through to more alternative offerings. Likewise, there are names most of you may know and hopefully some names that are new to more than a few of you.
As with previous lists they are not organised in any order of merit, the list also doesn’t include EPs. A separate list for them may well appear soon. In the meantime, here’s the first batch of album greats.
Enjoy!
Adam Holmes and The Embers – Heirs And Graces
Full Review by Neil McFadyen
Adam Holmes writes lyrics that appeal and engage. His voice drifts from the speakers to fill a room with apparent ease, establishing an instant connection with his audience. In Heirs And Graces these considerable talents have been pooled along with those of his friends to produce an album who’s release starts 2014 on a very promising note for music lovers.
Randolph’s Leap – Clumsy Knot
Full Review by Alfred Archer
It is Ross’s lyrics, which manage to be both humorous and heartbreaking, that sets the band apart from these influences. These are particularly evident on ‘Weatherman’, a song about a man’s petty assessments of an ex-girlfriend’s new man. Any song that includes the putdown, “He talks like a weatherman,” deserves to be widely heard. Even better, though, are the lines, “You said, “he’s a barrister actually/ I said, “Does that mean he makes coffee?””
Sam Brookes – Kairos
Full Review by Simon Holland
This is a stunning work on so many levels. I’ve heard some good stuff this year and each CD makes claim to sound quite unique, different and special on its own terms. Kairos is no exception. What is exceptional is the young talent that Sam Brookes is proving to be. Kairos is an ancient Greek word for time, a partner to the word chronos. Where that latter describes the passage of time, Kairos is more about the quality of time, it could be the right timing, an opportunity to be grabbed, but there is no set length. It’s also a moment or a period where everything is possible, everything happens and that’s Kairos, all 42.04 of it.
Emily Smith – Echoes
Full Review By Simon Holland
Echoes has started a murmur that will echo in my heart for years to come. If you could tune out the background noise for a few seconds you would hear it repeated with a steady beat up and down the land, because make no mistake this is a great record and it won’t be just me that thinks so.
The Driftwood Manor – Of the Storm
Full Review By Alex Gallacher
Their music features a mass of influences but throughout you’ll find a common ground of rich harmonies and striking yet simple melodies. For some reason I couldn’t shake off the sound of Gay and Terry Woods The Woods Band which strode that path somewhere between traditional, folk rock and a healthy dosage of seventies psychedelia. Comparing The Driftwood Manor to such a band is also a token of the value I place on their music…I really do believe they are something very special.
Stanley Brinks & The Wave Pictures – Gin
Full Review By Helen Gregory
In these cynical times, it would be easy to dismiss the idea of an album recorded live in the studio as nothing more than a clever marketing ploy, but anyone who takes that view will miss out on a joyous and celebratory record which crackles and sparkles with a joie de vivre which is sadly lacking from all too many of Stanley Brinks and The Wave Pictures’ contemporaries. Set aside your giant garishly-coloured headphones, put on your dancing shoes and take a large swig of Gin: it’s a real tonic.
Jetsam & Gareth E Rees – A Dream Life of Hackney Marshes
Full Review By Thomas Blake
As a piece of art A Dream Life Of Hackney Marshes is an ambitious undertaking, bursting its muddy banks with originality. It exists simultaneously as a historical document and a contemporary love poem to an unfairly overlooked place. As a piece of music it is excitingly varied and beautifully performed.
Damien Jurado – Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son
Full Review By Marco
Damien Jurado, for his 13th album, has tried to imagine this transposition. His road to Jericho, more than a dusty and arid trail through the Judean Desert; it is a rough West American Interstate, which drives, as Father John Misty observed, along “abandoned motels, barren highways, magazine killers, Chevrolets backing out of driveways in the middle of the night, wedding photos, intoxicated hands, bleary-eyed circus clowns, barstool salvation.” And the expedient works smoothly.
O’Hooley & Tidow – The Hum
Full Review By Simon Holland
Like other fusions of styles that we’ve covered here it creates its own rules and its own space, but really The Hum is all about the songwriting. Even if not all of the contents are obvious, and some are more oblique strokes than stories, there is great value to be found in The Hum. It may be the sound of the world around us, at times just so much noise pollution and sometimes we crave the off button and peace and serenity. But like anything, if you pay close attention and get the balance right then you can here the sounds of the sounds of the world we have made, but also the sounds our place within it. Man and woman placed on an equal footing, free of the prejudices and fears that snare and bind us, working in harmony with nature, just think how productive that might be.
The Furrow Collective – At Our Next Meeting
Full Review By Thomas Blake
Some kind of argument will always exist about the relevance of generations-old ballads like those on this record, but surely the fact that they still exist and are still performed is testament to their lasting significance. It is the skill of the performance that brings out the best in old songs and allows the universality of their themes to come to the fore, and there are few more skilled artists working in folk music now than the four that have combined to make At Our Next Meeting one of the finest collaborative albums of the past few years.
Hafdis Huld – Home
Full Review By Simon Holland
It also has genuine substance and not every song is there to give you the woolly socks and cup of tea cuddle, but the ones that don’t remind you of why you should value those moments that do. They say home is where the heart is and for these 40 minutes at least, I’ll very happily lodge mine with Hafdis.
Moulettes – Constellations
Full Review by Simon Holland
Lyrically the album is a real intrigue throughout. The title track however offers lines like, “A song made into history, an unfolding mystery a particle, a pinnacle decoded, silkily it sped along, impacted like an atom bomb suddenly the atmosphere exploded,” later adding, “Music is a monster that needs feeding.” I’d leave it there, but after strapping my space suit on at the beginning and having my mind well and truly expanded while listening, I can’t resist returning to my own little space odyssey. Constellations – “My god! It’s full of stars.” Thanks to Dr. David Bowman for summing it up nicely.
Tiny Ruins – Brightly Painted One
Full Review By Mike Davies
Close your eyes. Picture lying in an English meadow on a warm, summer day, a gentle breeze, a stream gurgling nearby, the hum of dragonflies and the fragrance of wild flowers in the air. Now, imagine you could capture that in music. Well, that’s the sound of New Zealand singer-songwriter Hollie Fullbrook’s sophomore album ‘Brightly Painted One ‘, recorded in hometown Aukland with bassist Cass Basil and drummer Alexander Freer.