Favorite 20 Albums of 2014

Wisdom for Debris, Eluvium

Ghost Trees is a blog with (apparently) 2 posts per year. Prolificacy has always been the specialty here.

I’ll cut the crap. Last year on my blog I wrote about lists. I still do not like them.

I was asked to contribute to Decoder Magazine’s end-of-year features again this year (Last year I wrote an ode to Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse and Jason Molina of Songs: Ohia. You can find the feature here: “More Yellow Birds and Lunch Box Blues“), which I did. And when my feature is posted, it will be clear that I again skirted the actual topic of commenting on a list for 2014. So here I go and post a list on my blog anyway. I don’t know. There is a sixteen-year-old in me still following through on some kind of silly tradition that I started.

Rank	Artist	Album	Label
1	Swans	To Be Kind	Young God Records
2	Grouper	Ruins	Kranky
3	Eluvium	Wisdom For Debris	(self)
4	The War on Drugs	Lost in the Dream	Secretly Canadian
5	Have a Nice Life	The Unnatural World	Enemies List Home Recordings
6	Fennesz	Bécs	Touch
7	Dads	I’ll Be The Tornado	6131 Records
8	Owls	Two	Polyvinyl
9	Maxwell August Croy and Sean McCann	I	Students of Decay
10	Horseback	Piedmont Apocrypha	Three Lobed Recordings
11	Fire! Orchestra	Enter!	Rune Grammofon
12	Adult Jazz	Gist Is	Spare Thought
13	Thee Silver Mount Zion	Hang On To Each Other	Constellation Records
14	Orcas	Yearling	Morr Music
15	Inventions	Inventions	Temporary Residence
16	Rivulets	I Remember Everything	Jellyfant Records
17	Christopher Willits	Opening	Ghostly International
18	Wolves of the Throne Room	Celestite	Artemesia Records
19	Alex Cobb	Marigold and Cable	Shelter Press
20	Sun Kil Moon	Benji	Caldo Verde

That Swans record is a monster. For other people who have read my blog before, you might see some familiar faces like Owls, Horsback, Fire! Orchestra, Rivulets, Grouper, etc.

The year was an interesting one in listening to music for me. I got hooked on a lot more older stuff, and did a good deal of traveling with the day job and on vacation. This meant fewer times with a computer or plugged in, limiting my music carrying capacity to a few old apple products and somewhere in the range of twelve GB. Great new musical seductions – that War on Drugs one surprised me!

I’ll look forward to doing more writing for Decoder Magazine in 2015. And the other news for me is that I’m leaving Berlin to move back to San Francisco, so my music access points will change again, and I’m sure my list(?) next year will be quite different.

Adam

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Spring 2014

Dear faithful devoted blog readers,

The passage of time between blog posts is just a matter of reality at this point. I do not intend to make blogging a more central part of my life. Lately the purpose of keeping a blog has become more apparent to me – to fill in the gaps with what I do not have a chance to say on Decoder or what might not be appropriate in other avenues.

2014 has been a great year for finding new music releases. I have blogged before about Owls’ self-title record (Jade Tree, 2001), and so the reformation announcement was pretty exciting to me. Good news is that the new record really hits my buttons. It’s a strange thing, though – I would call it more “middle of the road” indie rock and certainly not as immediately striking (and probably also will not be as influential, ultimately) as its predecessor. But the hooks are bigger and mathy arrangements are less impenetrable. I have this secret hope that “I’m Surprised” becomes popular enough that I could slip it on in a Friday evening setting and not completely freak out the general public. I’ve spent a lot of time with TWO so far, and I am so pleased that it’s met my (very high) expectations, in its own little way.

Another really special record that I’ve been appreciating this year has been Horseback’s Piedmont Apocrypha, which was released on Three Lobed Recordings in March. Horseback is led by Jenks Miller, an astoundingly talented and versatile guitarist who finds himself recording and collaborating across styles, from noise to folk to black metal and back. Apocrypha sounds a little bit more mellow than some of its older siblings under the Horseback name, but that doesn’t mean it’s less compelling. Particularly gorgeous is the 10-minute-plus ambient second track. Apocrypha is a mix of dynamics, beauty, and exploration that I can only highly recommend to fans of vision quests in the woods, or other Miller projects. I attempted to write a review of the record in greater detail, but I realized I don’t actually understand the tradition of psychedelic music from which it has descended, and quite honestly, the review written alongside the Three Lobed release is just perfect.

I’m still going to shows. Above is a particularly artsy (and accidental) photo I took of Cian Nugent, who played with his band, The Cosmos (No Quarter Records), here in Berlin a few weeks back. It was an aurally rich, complex, and consonant folk-rock blowout orchestra. The droning organ and violin bowing, coupled with the driving rhythm section, created the dense bed of warm sound, over which the Irish guitarist could work in dreamy licks and dustbowl landscape painting. There is really not enough praise for Mr. Nugent and his troupe of open-hearted explorers.

Who knows when I’ll post again on the blog, but maybe someone at some point will find something new in this post. Umbrellas into the future,

Adam

Top 20 Albums of 2013

Another year and it’s time for another snapshot of my music favorites. Lists seem such an evil to me at times – they feed into the hype cycles and can direct and redirect attention in a way that may be harmful to smaller artists. Awards are distributed in some bizarre frenzy of groupthink (look at the film industry), and who is to say that we shouldn’t frame our reference window seasonally, or monthly, or decennialy? But in the same breath, I think documenting personal preferences can be valuable to mark growth, guide future investigations, and reflect on what has been meaningful in my world.

There are never “final” lists or finalized versions of anything in life. We can spend hours in the studio perfecting music or years thinking that a marriage will finally work once it gets over a certain hump. Like photographs, life is a series of snapshots or moments. Making a list is like taking a polaroid picture of a specific year of music and what it meant to me as it was ending.

After that far too off-topic ramble, it’s time for the list where everything’s made up and the rankings don’t matter.

1	The Appleseed Cast	Illumination Ritual	Graveface Records
2	Wooden Wand	Blood Oaths of the New Blues	Fire Records
3	My Bloody Valentine	M B V	self
4	Tim Hecker	Virgins	Kranky
5	Lumerians	The High Frontier	Partisan Records
6	Disappears	Era	Kranky
7	Kurt Vile	Wakin On A Pretty Daze	Matador Records
8	Wooden Wand and the World War IV	Wooden Wand and the World War IV	Three Lobed Recordings
9	The National	Trouble Will Find Me	4AD
10	Lucrecia Dalt	Syzygy	Human Ear Music
11	Jenks Miller	Spirit Signal	Northern-Spy Records
12	Esmerine	Dalmak	Constellation
13	Julianna Barwick	Nepenthe	Dead Oceans
14	Aidan Baker	Already Drowning	Gizeh Records
15	Mountains	Centralia	Thrill Jockey
16	Thee Oh Sees	Floating Coffin	Castle Face Records
17	Chelsea Light Moving	Chelsea Light Moving	Matador Records
18	Youth Lagoon	Wondrous Bughouse	Fat Possum Records
19	Gnod	Chaudelande	Rocket Recordings
20	Gabriel Saloman	Soldier’s Requiem	Miasmah Recordings

What a wonderful year of music it was. See you in the new year,

Adam

Beat Wings in Vain – Gushing Cloud review

From my last post on ghosttrees, I subtly referenced that I was contributing to Decoder Magazine. I am quite happy about the opportunity to more formally direct my music ramblings into forms like reviews and features that people may read.

With “Dirt Beam,” we are introduced to a staccato, multi-layered Casio horn chug that contrasts with an Eastern, chiming guitar (or is it keyboard?) riff. By the time we can mentally adjust to the contrast and slightly off-kilter guitar/key tones, Kumo launches into a frenetic The Name of this Band Is Talking Heads-like world-funk groove, while spaced-out squiggly synths lurch in all directions. And before we can even figure out what’s happening, the song has pivoted eight more head-spinning times, mixing all the UFO-isms, flickering trumpets, and tapestry of samples into a soaking, twisted, frenzy before ebbing back toward calm. It’s surely a representative end to a chaotically joyful listen.

This is a short blog post pointing to my recent review of Gushing Cloud‘s 2013 LP, Beat Wings In Vain on Intangible Cat. It’s really an impressive mix of styles for getting down to headphone grooves from the comfort of your living room. Check it out.

More Decoder-related and “A Touring Daze”-related news soon.

Adam

September 2013

Hello blogosphere,

Once again I’m on the move. On Thursday I move to Berlin (again). I’m really excited about it, but I figured I would take a moment and share with the world some music I’ve been paying attention to this summer.

• Between Two Worlds – Danny Paul Grody – Three Lobed Recordings (review) – I saw Danny perform a lot of this material when he opened for Grouper at the Hemlock Tavern in San Francisco, and it was quite beautiful. A great moment at the show was when the soft-spoken, gentle, former Tarentel-er asked to turn the air conditioning off because it was distracting him and his gliding dreamy work.
• Mi Sei Apparso Come Un Fantasma – Songs: Ohia – Paper Cup – incredibly energetic, crushing, moody live (cobbled from several?) performance(s) by Molina and his Songs band near the peak (or depths?) of their brand of abyssal folk haunted dirges. RIP, Jason Molina. Glad I discovered this, although it’s sad that it took me until these unfortunate circumstances to discover it.
• Cat Mask at Huggie Temple – Desert Heat – MIE (review) – some awesome dust bowl open-highway psychedelia scratching my Six Organs of Admittance, Sun City Girl,s and even Chris Forsyth itch.

I’ll be doing a lot less reviewing moving forward (since I’m not going to be at KZSU at all in the foreseeable future), but maybe I’ll find a new college radio-type community soon in Berlin? I’ll continue to take photos occasionally at shows. I’m excited about seeing S at the Soda Bar in San Diego on Monday. First time I’ll be able to see one of my heroes (proof I’m a Jenn Ghetto fanboy). In any case, take care, my friends and talk soon.

Adam