It was year marked by dizzying comebacks, recordings that recalled and — in their best moments — brilliantly refracted legends we’d come to think of as settled.
Pink Floyd made perhaps the most improbable return to appear on this Best of 2014 list. After decades away, they reanimated some long-lost sessions with the late Richard Wright that directly connected with an often-overlooked period of the band’s discography. David Crosby has been similarly quiet, though the superlative Croz made the wait more than worth it.
Jackson Brown and John Oates provided muscular retorts for anyone who might have overlooked them, while Robert Plant continued his journey to the edges of his increasingly experimental muse.
Lloyd Cole, after some 30 years, has constructed a worthy follow up to 1984’s Rattlesnake — even while remaining blessedly nostalgia-free.
Those who remember him from the big-label period in the 1980s may have wondered just what happened to Jerry Giddens. Turns out, he’s been teaching. And, apparently, saving up some terrific songs. Meanwhile, Lucinda Williams — somehow — just keeps getting better.
There there was U2’s album. Unfairly obscured by the controversy surrounding their insertion of Songs of Innocence into everyone’s iTunes library, the proper perspective of time reveals a statement of valedictory purpose.
Bucking the trend on this Best of 2014 compendium was Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, a new album by a new act — but one which came with its own historical baggage, too …
No. 10 — U2 – SONGS OF INNOCENCE (ROCK): Sadly lost in the sturm und drang following the whole tempest in an iTunes teapot was, well, the music. Perhaps, with time, we can now give Songs of Innocence the hearing it deserves. After all, the album worked as a kind of travelogue for those who’ve traveled with U2 through its many incarnations — a primer, after too long away, on everything that delivered them to today. Sure, a group coming to terms with each of its famous former selves isn’t exactly groundbreaking, and maybe it’s only best thought of as a prelude to what comes next. But it was certainly not something to be dismissed out of hand, either.
No. 9 — GHOST OF A SABER TOOTH TIGER – MIDNIGHT SUN (ROCK): An enormous leap forward in both focus and experimental verve, the Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger’s Best of 2014 album was a prismatic explosion of psychedelia, woozy but also cut through with these thrilling vocal sun shards. It sounded like the very embodiment of what Syd Barrett might have stumbled upon, had he not been lost in a drug-fueled maze of his own making. At the same time, there was a flinty post-modernism to the proceedings. Forget Sean Lennon’s obvious parental influences. With Midnight Sun, he and Charlotte Kemp Muhl created a world unto themselves.
No. 8 — JERRY GIDDENS + KILLEEN FOUNDRY – DAMN IT ABBY! (ROOTS): A literary musician with a resonant bellow, he’d lived in L.A., and in Austin, then — upon securing a Ph.D — returned to Louisiana as a teacher. Music, for a long piece of this journey, rode in the back seat. Still, as the Damn It Abby illustrated, Giddens was writing songs, collecting thoughts, remembering phrases and details and feelings, whether he was conscious of such things or not. There was simply too much ringing specificity here, the kind of revelations — musical and otherwise — that take miles to internalize. Seems underneath that professor’s coat, there’s remains a poet.
No. 7 — LUCINDA WILLIAMS – DOWN WHERE THE SPIRITS MEETS THE BONE (ROOTS): Lucinda Williams sings with the dust of ages on her boots, her sleeves frayed from years of struggle — struggle with heartbreak, with trying to get by, with determinedly telling it like it is. You heard that all over Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone, from “East Side of Town” (a quick tearing down of the thin curtain that separates the haves from the never-will-haves) to an almost 10-minute trip through J.J. Cale’s “Magnolia” (full of broken Stonesy grandeur, she takes it at a quietly mournful pace) and everything in between. These characters, these scenes, these lessons, all of them are better for having Lucinda Williams’ voice to convey their devastating truths.
No. 6 — PINK FLOYD – THE ENDLESS RIVER (ROCK): Determinedly uncommercial, The Endless River was aimed directly at those still riveted by Pink Floyd’s often-forgotten period between the Syd Barrett years and the career-defining supernova that was Dark Side of the Moon. This era, from 1969’s More and 1972’s Obscured by Clouds, saw David Gilmour’s arrival spark a wave of rangy, largely instrumental experimentation. Pink Floyd raced to the edges of their considerable imaginations, mixing and matching inspirations, soaring to staggering new vistas, charging into sudden dead ends — and, all the while, playing without rules, without maps, without dogma. Same with The Endless River, a largely instrumental recording constructed from Wright’s final recordings with the group which brilliantly revived that sense of dizzying adventure.
No. 5 — JACKSON BROWNE – STANDING IN THE BREACH (ROOTS): This Best of 2014 entry was as layered as it was honest, as reflective as it was determined. Along the way, Standing in the Breach took Jackson Browne to places both reliably satisfying, and surprisingly new. It’s all the more interesting because this stunningly bold statement of purpose arrived in a moment that could’ve been more reflective. After all, his very best music was the subject of a celebrated recent tribute album, something that might have left a lesser artist more humbled than ambitious. Not Jackson Browne. His first album of new songs since 2008 is a moment of peak creativity.
No. 4 — ROBERT PLANT – LULLABY AND THE CEASELESS ROAR (ROCK): Robert Plant sounded, at once, nothing like himself here, and completely (for the first time in a long time, maybe for the first time ever) completely at ease. This is someone describing a new vista in song, and he seemed viscerally alive in ways that he never could on facile throwbacks like “Tall Cool One” or too-slick trifles like “I Believe.” Instead, Plant outlined a muse without borders, gave no quarter to his oldest fans’ built-in expectations, pushed with everything he could muster into a new place where textures from both West and East merge — a place of remarkable scope and delicious intrigue. A place where Led Zeppelin simply never went. No wonder he’s not interested in a reunion.
No. 3 — LLOYD COLE – STANDARDS (ROOTS/ROCK): With this, Lloyd Cole found a smart balance between what he once was, and what he’s become. “It’s Late,” for instance, skiffled along with the same jaunty verve as the title track from his celebrated debut, even as “Period Piece” pointedly faced everything that lay ahead: “I am not afraid,” Cole admitted with a serrated edge straight out of Blonde on Blonde, “to die.” That’s a steely-eyed honesty that Cole might not have ventured before. “These were,” he added, “the best of times.” No denying that. And yet there’s still something to be made of today, and Lloyd Cole did that on Standards. Finally, and likely with nowhere near enough fanfare, he provided the follow up to 1984’s Rattlesnakes that we’d always hoped was in there somewhere.
No. 2 — JOHN OATES – GOOD ROAD TO FOLLOW (ROOTS/ROCK): It’s been a long road, indeed, for Oates. He wrote or co-wrote some 82 songs between 1972-2003 as part of Hall and Oates, including the No. 1 smashes “I Can’t Go For That” and “Out of Touch,” but he rarely voiced their biggest hits — leading some to question, wrong headedly, how much of a role Oates actually played in their Hall of Fame partnership. This tour de force project, which began as a series of stand-alone collaborations with the likes of Vince Gill and Hot Chelle Rae before emerging as a three-EP set, should put that nonsense to rest for good. Good Road to Follow illustrated just what he brought to Hall and Oates, even as it definitively broke apart every stereotype that ever grew up around Oates. You’ll never think of him the same way again.
No. 1 — DAVID CROSBY – CROZ (ROCK): At its best, this Best of 2014 record combined Crosby’s most identifiable personal attributes with propulsive, boldly current musical vehicles. But it didn’t ignore his past or make the awful mistake of conventionalizing Crosby, either — something that doomed his most recent album, the slickery Thousand Roads. Crosby, even accounting for some sonic updating, sounded like himself again: Persistently hopeful, sometimes hard to get, always involving. Over a career which hasn’t produced many solo efforts at all, much less albums with this measure of consistency, a musical mirror image like that remains a very rare, very welcome thing. Croz gives shape again to what can only be called an offhanded legend. The longer you listen, the more time you give it, the better it plays.
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