Best Music: 2014 – Bigger, Badder, More Bloated Edition

Updated:

Please click here for the Best Albums: 2014 Spotify playlist.

And I’m back for my yearly installment, with 15 morsels for your enjoyment! A few points at the top:

1. I was worried, round about May, that my music tastes trended overwhelmingly towards white, male artists.  I would wonder, “Is it me? Am I blinkered by privilege, comfortable in my gendered auditory ghetto?” Well, probably, but as the list can attest, the rest of the year brought a bounty of more diverse artists my way, and 7 of my top ten are female led ensembles.

2. It’s not so much that my musical tastes are eclectic…though they probably seem that way. It’s more that I have increasingly found myself drawn to the ends of the spectrum, poppy to arty, and the list reflects that. It’s like a truffled pheasant, stuffed with Cheez-Wiz. (I still couldn’t bring myself to pick 1989 by Taylor Swift, catchy though it is. A man has to have standards.)

3. There are WAY more self titled albums on this list than I thought there were.

On to the picks!

15. Strand of Oaks – HEAL

Like many of the albums on this list, HEAL is not a debut, and Timothy Showalter has a body of work that is well regarded on it’s own. I, however, had not heard of him, and this was a superb introduction. Not only is it a wonderful slice of American rock n’ roll (just with a +5 to sweet synth riffage), it is also a painfully honest look at the more unsavory aspects of Showalter’s own history, depicting his journey from innocent boy to a depressed recluse, “fat, drunk and mean.” It would be depressing if it wasn’t shot through with a clearly hard-won belief in the possibility of change.

And if it didn’t rock so hard.