Best Of The Year 2014: First Quarter Update

One of our favorite articles to do every year is our quarterly lists. For all you new readers out there, every three months each of our writers posts a list of their five favorite releases of that year as of that moment. This could include albums that aren't even out yet; any album that we have heard that is released in 2014 is eligible. On this edition of our quarterly updates, The Hotelier, Cloud Nothings, St. Vincent, Sun Kil Moon, The War On Drugs, Real Estate, and You Blew It! all appear on multiple lists, highlighting the diversity of our writers. We hope you discover something you wouldn't ever expect. All lists are below, and will be linked to any coverage we have done on the albums.

Artist of the Day: Sun Kil Moon

Maybe it's the beginning of the cold, winter months or the first snow that makes Sun Kil Moon so relevant, but regardless, Mark Kozelek's brainchild is one that cannot be ignored. After leading the seminal 90's slowcore group, Red House Painters, Kozelek went solo under the moniker Sun Kil Moon. His slowcore roots stayed to an extent, but his playing excelled and flourished. Kozelek's knack for fingerpicking and arpeggios is beyond belief, and he rivals the skills of any prominent classical guitar player.

Sun Kil Moon's music is haunting beautiful, but mellow and inviting. Although the sometimes coldness of the lonesome guitar rings a bit too hollow, Kozelek's vocals are always warm as he transcends a level between singing and storytelling.

Kozelek's latest album, entitled Benji, is set to be released in February on his Caldo Verde label. It promises to be as sentimental and honest as every release he has put out prior, and it is one of my personal most highly anticipated albums of 2014.

Website

Album Review: Sun Kil Moon - Among The Leaves

Album Rating: A-

One of the few universally accepted musical atrocities is making an album where "every song sounds the same."  Music fans and critics have the misconception that every song is supposed to have a different "feeling," different instrumentation, is supposed to tell a different story, and is supposed to leave the listener in a different state of bliss.  They think that having an album where every song sounds the same or even similar is an insult to the minimal level of creativity it should take to create an album, it is an insult to all of the songwriters and musicians that actually made an album that was a "labor of love" instead of just a few days and a few sounds, and it is everything that is wrong with the cliched and forced music we hear on the radio and everything that is wrong with music in general.  They think that having an album where every song sounds similar makes for a disgusting and filthy album full of repetitive and uninspired sounds and songwriting.

Album Retrospective: Sun Kil Moon - Tiny Cities

Album Rating: A

I usually hate everything about covers. I hate the idea of "stealing" someones work for your own personal gain, I hate the idea of claiming that you changed that work enough to make it your own, and I hate the idea of every artist in the free world botching "Let It Be." Covers to me have always been an admission of an artists lack of creativity or even worse a shameless admission that the artist you are covering is more talented than you are. Covers for me were always an excuse instead of being actual art.