The Granddaddy of them all... WRESTLEMANIA! Woops I meant, THE YECA!! Your year-end is an institution, as it's one of the few threads remaining tied to ATRL's past. Very excited to read through the 2014 edition!
I'll have more to say when i'm commenting on individual lists, but your YouTube list is always a lot of fun. The Hogan and Cena videos are teriffic, and Shrek is Love Shrek is Life... What else is there to say? Singular greatness! Oh and I also love the DMX Reading Rainbow vid, as anything DMX-related in humour is always funny to me.
Your Past Songs countdown is such a great idea, as it's ridiculous to only talk about songs from this year when we do these things, as we often get into older songs just as much in the year, as your list points out. And this list has plenty of great songs, AWK, Human League, Bowie, Sabbath, King Crimson (Def make an effort in the next year to listen to more of their stuff. It is so great!), Elvis, Cranberries, Queen, APC, T. Rex, Led Zep (Achilles Last Stand truly is the greatest!), and a worthy #1 in Sigor Ros. Great variety!
Red! Sorry for the delay :weep: but I'm finally here!
From your latest set my faves are:
Professional Griefers! that song is amazing, and the music video even better.
Team but unlike you, I really love Lorde
Achilles Last Stand + Promises
I loved the David Bowie original just as much as I loved Nirvanas cover of it.
Yes, I feel the same way now, and both for very different reasons. I'll probably always have more feelings for the Nirvana cover, but the Bowie original might just be better.
Quote:
Originally posted by THERihFan
Also, yes, Agaetis Byrjun is probably one of the most beautiful albums ever made, it's just... Timeless.
That's a pretty good word to describe that album, too. "Timeless". I imagine it will sound just as good thirty years from now.
[QUOTE=mathuss;25694771I need to check some Sigur Rós album, I liked the songs I've heard from them but never dared to listen to a whole album.[/QUOTE]
Well, I put it off for YEARS, so yeah, it can be a pretty daunting task. I did finally get the time and opportunity to check some more material of theirs out, and, as you can tell, I'm REALLY glad that I did.
Quote:
Originally posted by madonnas
Ooh, I used to always kind of pass off The Human League as a B-list Synthpop group, but I've gotten into them too. Human, Don't You Want Me and I Believe in Love (!!!!) are fantastic.
Well, see, I did that, too, but I also am a huge 80's fan, including the synthpop of the era, so there really is no good reason for me to have not cared for The Human League.
Quote:
Originally posted by Dr. Spaceman
The Granddaddy of them all... WRESTLEMANIA! Woops I meant, THE YECA!! Your year-end is an institution, as it's one of the few threads remaining tied to ATRL's past. Very excited to read through the 2014 edition!
Honestly, I'd prefer to call it WRESTLEMANIA! Red's Best of 2014: WRESTLEMANIA! And now, all I can imagine is Vince McMahon bellowing out the title of my year-end thread on ATRL. This time of the year brings out the best in all of us.
Quote:
Originally posted by AshleeSimpsonFan
Red! Sorry for the delay :weep: but I'm finally here!
Please do try to stick around for a little while. I'm going to try to.
Okay, I've actually got pretty much everything ready for the first Albums update except for the layout, which I'm tinkering with right now. I have no idea if it will look any good, honestly, but I hope the albums will make up for it all the same. And thank you all who have commented so far! As always, you guys are the reason I try to put in as much effort into these threads as I can before I inevitably disappear in a cloud of smoke.
For this list, I decided to take a bit of a different approach and experiment just a teeny bit with the layout. The layout is inspired by my very, VERY brief atrlcritic days. I'm not sure if it will look as good as I want it to, but I hope that you guys will enjoy it all the same.
Kimbra
The Golden Echo
Release Date: August 15th, 2014
Previous Albums:Vows
Previous YECA Albums Success: N/A
Favorite Tracks
There were two albums this year that I really, really, REALLY wanted to like more than I actually did this year. One, as some of you already know, is tUnE-yArDs' followup to her seminal work w h o k i l l, Nikki Nack. I felt that it played things a bit too safe after turning music on its head with her previous album. The other album I wanted to like more than I actually did belonged to the female voice of the biggest hit of 2012,. Since "Somebody That I Used To Know" hit it big, we had heard precious little of Kimbra. Sure, we had Vows, and it was great, but god, we needed more of Kimbra. Enter The Golden Echo, Kimbra's highly anticipated second LP. I was very excited to get another glimpse into the mind of the New Zealand songstress. The first song we heard was "90's Music", and honestly...it's bad. Legitimately bad.
That one song nearly prevented me from listening to the album altogether. But I sucked it up and listened to the whole thing, notably skipping right past "90's Music" to get the rest of the album. And what's here, for the most part, isn't bad, but it's not quite on the level of Vows...with a few big exceptions. With "Madhouse", Kimbra takes us back twenty years with a song that feels much more like an homage to 90's music than...well, "90's Music". "Carolina" is laid back and breezy in the best possible ways, complimented quite nicely by Kimbra's vocals. "Goldmine" wouldn't have sounded too out of place on Vows. But, without a shadow of a doubt, this album's saving grace (and the reason it even made this list at all) is the tour de force "Miracle". A decidedly modern pop take on 70's funk, "Miracle" is pop music at its finest, with a killer bass lick and the best vocal performance on the album. If only the rest of the album matched the quality of "Miracle", we'd be talking about a top 10 album of the year for me.
Jack White
Lazaretto
Release Date: June 10th, 2014
Previous Albums:Blunderbuss
Previous YECA Albums Success: N/A
Favorite Tracks
It was always going to be an extremely tough task for Jack White to follow his first solo album, the Grammy-nominated Blunderbuss. To Jack's credit, he doesn't try to top it. Instead, Lazaretto feels more like a supplement or an epilogue to its predecessor. The title track is a perfect example of this. It sounds like it could have been a perfect fit on Blunderbuss, complete with its sexy main guitar riff and frantic Jack vocals. Now, I guess you could say that the way that I'm describing Lazaretto is like describing an album full of B-sides, but I don't think that the quality of Lazaretto is of that of a B-sides album. It's a very well-made album from top to bottom, with a couple of standout tracks here and there. It doesn't quite hit as hard or resonate as much as Blunderbuss, but that's okay, because it doesn't need to. It's more than content to be a necessary follow-up to an album that any artist would have struggled to get past.
Foxes
Glorious
Release Date: May 12th, 2014
Previous Albums: N/A
Previous YECA Albums Success: N/A
Favorite Tracks
Yes, I realize that the album cover is the one for the deluxe version of Glorious. I like the color one more, sue me. The next two albums struggled with a similar issue. Foxes' debut LP, Glorious, was one that I looked forward to listening to, thanks to the quality of its singles and the quality of the vocals of Louisa Rose Allen, whose voice breaks me down into a thousand tiny little pieces every time I hear it. "Let Go For Tonight" just feels so alive every time that I listen to it, "Glorious" is beautiful, and "Holding Onto Heaven" has, arguably, the best Foxes vocal performance of the bunch. I was looking forward to a pretty good pop album, if the singles were any indication. The problem was that the rest of the album didn't quite stack up with the singles. That's not to say that they were bad. Hell, "Night Owls Early Birds" came pretty close to making it as a "Favorite Track". But those four singles, man...your average pop artist would have a difficult time topping that quartet, let alone a promising little vocalist like Foxes. If nothing else, though, Glorious is worth checking out for the singles. They are definitely worth your time.
Trust
Joyland
Release Date: March 4th, 2014
Previous Albums:TRST
Previous YECA Albums Success: N/A
Favorite Tracks
As much as I wanted Glorious to be more than just the great singles, I wanted Joyland to be more than its great singles so badly. "Rescue, Mister" and "Capitol" are two of 2014's best tracks, single or otherwise, and I guess that it would have been hard for any album to follow those two behemoths. I'll have more to say about these songs later, though it's safe to say that I adore both of them. But outside of a couple other noteworthy tracks, I didn't quite get what I was hoping for. This could have been the electronic album to rule them all. Instead, it merely etches its place alongside other electronic greats, with an asterisk for what could have been. But do seek out the main two singles, because my goodness, they are something else. Oh, and the title track, which is a nice, brisk listen with a very lively chorus. And "Icabod", which is the kind of exciting and soaring electronic music I was hoping to get more of.
Death From Above 1979
The Physical World
Release Date: September 9th, 2014
Previous Albums:You're A Woman, I'm A Machine
Previous YECA Albums Success: N/A
Favorite Tracks
If only I had discovered Death From Above first and not Royal Blood. Death From Above 1979 and Royal Blood, admittedly, have similar motives and ideals, right down to the "Let's break down the locked doors of rock and roll and blow everyone away" mindset. The problem is that I discovered Royal Blood first, and thus, they were the ones to get the lion's share of my love and affection. But what Death From Above 1979 does here with The Physical World cannot be overlooked. The Canadian duo's first album in ten years, it's a very welcome return that rocks almost as hard as their breakthrough debut, You're A Woman, I'm A Machine, which I also only discovered AFTER I discovered Royal Blood. "Right On, Frankenstein!" is...well, it's a monster. A very fast-paced and pounding monster, but a monster all the same. And man, those last three tracks are something else. "Government Trash", "Gemini" and the title track are all delightful hard rockers. Maybe if you guys check out DFA first and not Royal Blood, maybe you'll have the adverse reaction that I had. But The Physical World is still definitely worth a listen.
20-16 is done! Hooray! Next up will be albums 15-11, which features a long-time YECA staple continuing to chug along and rock out, a pop artist that exceeded some pretty lofty expectations for yours truly, the return of the 21st century Hall & Oates, an album that completely blindsided me and shouldn't have from an alt rock giant, and the comeback album of the year that really isn't the comeback album of the year, because they have been making really good and fun albums for years, but it's just the album that the more "hardcore" fans really wanted for years, and...okay, I'll just stop there. Let's just say that I have a LOT to say about that particular album...when the time comes.
Wow @ The Lorde ranking with all those legends in your Past Songs list. I do think "Team" is one of her best— I might rank it third behind "Ribs" and "A World Alone." (How can you not be into these masterpieces?)
I was really looking forward to Glorious because I loved her song "Warrior" and the "Let Go For Tonight" demo. But then I never listened to the album. "Let Go For Tonight" remains, well, glorious, though.
but unlike you, I really love Lorde 
The title track was just okay though. 
"Let Go For Tonight" remains, well, glorious, though. 
