The most important female albums of 2014
Outgoing year in the world of music has become really important for women. And although the loudest album in a long time "Beyoncé" was released over a year ago, this does not in any way discredit what happened in 2014. As part of the year, we talk about the coolest female albums, among which there are records for every taste: here you can find classic American rock, hard noise, British hip-hop, and Russian indie pop - everything that is necessary for listening and listening to the end of the year.
Warpaint "Warpaint"
In the first Warpaint album, all the songs seemed to sprout through the air - so much so that they were deprived of some kind of inner core - and not everyone considered it a plus. On the next record of the same name (as if this was the beginning of something completely new), they had confidence in themselves and a clear groove, supported by unexpected bits; the voices themselves, however, appear here as if from nowhere and the group needs much less. This is where the beauty of Warpaint lies: their infinitely beautiful music seemed to have blossomed with the help of this injection - as they say in such cases, the drums came. The band had a well-known cover for "Ashes to Ashes" Bowie and much less popular and performed only live "I Feel Love" by Donna Summer - and their music froze somewhere between the phrase that the dust goes to dust, and that someone feels love - and in this man-made beauty is all the joy of this recording.
Angel Olsen "Burn Your Fire for No Witness"
This year there seemed to be more good female near-folk albums than male albums (if this conditional separation is necessary at all) - we can recall both Sharon van Etten and Linda Perhaks and Vashti Banyan, but the most important of them was recorded by Angel Olsen. . The fire - the one that should be burned alone - does not immediately flare up in the heart of the listener: at first, the disc does not make the proper impression. Those who know how to listen will be rewarded: comparable in strength to the impact of their voice with Katie Stelmanis from Austra, Olsen will howl and then cry, but even in moments of despair, she does not lose the inner core. Her voice can not be accurately described, because it is impossible to unravel to the end: there is both meekness and rigidity, and a lot of other things in it - the same is true in music. Sharp rock gives way to the quietest folk, keyboards really work like a piano in the bushes, appearing from nowhere: when in one of the best songs here, "Forgiven / Forgotten", she sings "Do you ever forgive me for loving you?" ", she immediately wants to forgive everything.
Perfect Pussy "Say Yes to Love"
The debut album of the band Meredith Graves begins with the sound of the included film projector and ends almost with it - “practically”, because the film ends, but the last song is essentially the noise track “VII”. This circumstance cannot fail to suggest that the songs here are like a Sundance film about people who have lost faith in life, but gradually regaining it, people approaching thirty. Perfect Pussy sounds very fresh - just like the guitar bands of the nineties, fearlessly rushing to fuzz, could afford. The main thing here is still the words, which, according to Graves, can not be heard because of her shyness. There is, of course, some slyness in this: so frankly she writes about everything that happens to her. Love here is not magic, but something resembling work, and at the same time it is very present - and with Perfect Pussy themselves, very real and tangible.
Mica Levi "Under My Skin OST"
Anyone who watched Jonathan Glazer’s recent movie “Stay in My Skin” could not help but pay attention to the music playing in it: tearing violins, percussion depicting footsteps, noise denoting vacuum and emptiness - all this is constantly accompanied by the heroine Scarlett Johansson and very accurately conveys its alien essence. The soundtrack author, Mika Levi, was previously known as Mikachu. This is the first work, signed by her own name, but not the first, where she takes the side of the avant-garde. Earlier, she had already released a live album "Chopped & Screwed", created on the basis of impressions from this kind of remixes, invented by DJ Screw. But it was in his film debut that Levi managed, firstly, to perfectly feel the heroine, secondly, to match the picture, and thirdly, to add something of his own. An important detail seems to be that the most heartbreaking composition here is called "Love".
Lykke Li "I Never Learn"
The main claim to the Swede Likke Lee is that her new album is too similar to Lana Del Rey - but in fact they have completely different goals and thoughts. While Del Rey is building a myth around himself, Lee is destroying him and trying to show himself. "I Never Learn" is the result, according to the singer, of the most difficult parting in her life, and therefore the songs here are appropriate: they seem uncombed, sometimes not as they should be. Lykke once sang that youth does not know about pain - but now she suffers and realizes that youth has already passed. Almost a mourning photo, which at the same time reminds of something iconographic, is a hint that this is not just an album, but a copy of a woman’s life in her twenty-something years, which was very painful, but it goes further . When Lee sings "Hold On We're Going Home" during a new tour, she presents it as part of her own drama - this is the thing: everything brings relief to her, but it is no longer necessary.
Kate Tempest "Everybody Down"
First of all, Kate Tempest is a poetess, but "Everybody Down" shows that she is not only well controlled with the word, but also knows what to clothe him with. This is not just an album, but a real radio play about two residents of London who met at a party and fell in love with each other. As complicating circumstances - not finished, but painful relations, friendship and family ties, and, moreover, drugs; because of the latter, the degree of drama rises even higher. The music is not in the last plan - from the first chords of "Marshall Law", one of the best songs of the year, we immerse ourselves in the atmosphere of the suburbs, but thanks to the bad noise in "Happy End" we can think that this happy ending is imaginary. One could compare Tempest with Mike Skinner - the fact that The Streets: it is already quite independent, and the last name, translated as “storm”, suits her very much.
Lana Del Rey "Ultraviolence"
The second album of the main American diva waited with bated breath, which is not surprising given the number of hits in the opening. More interesting is that many were disappointed with what they heard this year. The irony is that Ultranasiliy is indeed the good old one, clearly oriented towards the music of the late sixties and seventies. This is a classic American tragedy, majestic and unplayed - the only problem is that the picture taken in our time with an old camera was taken for an ordinary instagram picture. Del Rey is, of course, an actress, but of those who play their part by living into it: thoughts of death, performances in the cemetery and something similar are part of the image. Except for the fact that she no longer has any image - only Lana Del Rey. In the first album, she embodied the world of patriarchal values - here, through a floating sound, much greater freedom appears.
Fanny Kaplan "Plasticine"
In a strange way, in a country where the main singer is Zemfira, there are practically no interesting female rock bands. Muscovites "Fanny Kaplan" a little, but change this situation for the better. Just want to say that "Plasticine" - the album is truly amazing. Recorded without the participation of a computer, only on analog equipment, it is ideally listened to in the old cassette player, and in headphones connected to a phone or laptop, it is already somewhat strange. However, even without observing this condition, there is something to pay attention to. It is noticeable that the trio was inspired by know-wave and - quite a bit - minimal-wave, but the main thing is that they play here as if there was no music other than this, and even now it’s not the tenth, but the maximum end of the eighties. Texts about cosmogony and something abstract, self-irony about their lack of listening - all this is a great example of an album, the scale of which emerges as you listen.
La Roux "Trouble in Paradise"
For all the loud pop albums one could not even notice the modest return of Ellie Jackson, better known as La Roux. With her appearance, she is now clearly hinting at Bowie of the seventies, but she is more focused on pop music of the same time and quite a bit on disco. Compared to the rest of the giants, her music is rather calm, but not to say - weighed: she reminds someone of sunny days, someone of something long-standing, but for Ellie herself, this album has suffered. Since the debut, she managed to quarrel with her co-author and practically started working from the beginning, and this dark side makes the album so interesting. Problems appear in the paradise from the title, and the darkness comes through the careless songs - sadness in general can be considered one of the main trends in pop music this year. But it was Jackson who managed to file it almost unnoticed and to the point.
Jenny Lewis "The Voyager"
Jenny Lewis plays in the group Rilo Kiley, but where are those who worked with her on her new album better known - this is Beck and Ryan Adams (not to be confused with Brian), and because of this her album turned out to be as American as possible. "The Voyager" is a shameful American alternative rock that takes its roots in blues and country music; according to the title, it is the music of the eternal nomads, running from place to place. It would be possible to consider her album too local history, not going beyond the country, but in this case neither additional context nor immersion into music is required. Lewis songs, very simple and endearing, fall right in the heart and are ready to soften anyone. There are such albums that seem to be optional and too light - “The Voyager” is one of those, but this very ease is very much for him.
FKA twigs "LP1"
Talia Barnett started her career as a dancer, only she knows how to dance to songs from her debut album only in herself, which she often shows both in her music videos and, say, in Google Glass advertising. The latter fact also says a lot about it: of all the great pop discoveries of this year, it is she who follows trends not only in music, but also in technology. “LP1” after the first two EPs is quite a conscious simplification and a departure towards the mainstream, but this is a completely justified step, and the degree of candor in its texts has not changed. Barnett looks like a classic millennial and makes music appropriate. Let the best song on the album be helped by the producer of the hit singles of Lapa Del Rey, and not the fashionable Ark and Samf, namely FKA, a girl with a deceptively detached look, manages to build a bridge between those who only set the trends of pop music and those who successfully uses.
Pharmakon "Bestial Burden"
Margaret Shardier, acting under the pseudonym Pharmakon, along with Danish Frederik Hoffmeyer (Puce Mary) succeeded in describing the depths of a person through the noise that penetrates and eats into the listener. If the second, rather, reflects on the spiritual and the inner, the first one immediately speaks on the subject of the physical, which is visible - Bestial Burden itself is written under the impression of a cyst removal operation. A heavy breathing, an animal roar of a patient waking up from anesthesia, an internal cry to nowhere, accompanying not the harshest, but perceptible noise experienced earlier in his soul. On real events, however, it is not based - judging by the general mood of the album, its lyrical heroine dies due to complications after the operation. “Bang Bang” by Nancy Sinatra sounds, nails are pounded into the coffin - about this prose of life and the whole album.
Naadya "Naadya"
We can already say that the debut recording of the group by Nadezhda Gritskevich was definitely the most discussed Russian album of this year - they often wrote about Naadu this year. What is the main merit of this album? Of all the positions of local female music, Gritskevich is trying to come up with something new - so far only a strong woman comes out who is trying to be weak (or vice versa): this is not a cardinal change in the situation, but nevertheless it is clear that she is selected from the usual list of roles that can offer women modern music. Perhaps, from such a side, “Naadya” was not considered by its author, but this is really a big deal for local music - and it’s not at all that the modern Jamesbluck wave suddenly affected its native open spaces. In addition, the last song here is sung altogether from the face of a man - it is this change of roles that is present in our music extremely rarely. However, this is just a good album, in which everyone will find at least a couple of sticky songs.
Taylor Swift "1989"
Many people who care about the state of modern music were worried about the fact that not a single platinum album came out this year. This was the case until recently, but the Taylor Swift album fixed the situation. "1989" is a really bright record in which the singer finally switched from country music to 100% pop music - and did not lose: there were practically no songs like "Shake It Off" and "Bank Space" this year (and if there were Taylor wrote them too). Yes, perhaps some of them are too simple or somewhat banal, are below the general level - but it is worth understanding that Taylor initially takes the high bar. Self-ironic, one that likes to be funny, allowing herself unexpected images, Swift has quite expectedly become America’s main singer, whether you want to reckon with this or not. As she sings in the first single from the album, the haters will continue to hate - but in vain.
Nicki Minaj "The Pinkprint"
Niki Minaj is currently the flagship of the female hip-hop: you can think of the picture of Snoop Dogg, where the performer sits alone with the signature "Niki and other good female rappers." Much more important is what happened with Minaj herself after the release of the song "Anaconda" and the refrain "oh my god, look at her butt": firstly, she showed the level of self-irony that is necessary now, secondly, she once again confirmed that can sing what she wants and what she wants. "The Pinkprint", mostly lyrical, is an album that there are things that are unchanged during any trends: it doesn’t matter whether trap is in fashion now or something else, love remains love. Better, Minaj, of course, no one would cope with this work - it is her charisma that adds so much to the album. Most likely, the disc will pass by the majority of the album lists of the year - released recently, it just missed the deadline of most music sites - and this is the main chagrin associated with it.