I have been using Spotify to listen through various magazine and website 'Top Albums of 2014' lists. For me some real highlights are 'American Interior' by Gruff Rhys, 'Run the Jewels 2' by Run The Jewels, 'St Vincent' by St Vincent, 'Carry On The Grudge' by Jamie T and 'Everybody Down' by Kate Tempest.
An interesting string of comments through Pitchfork's list is the comment that a major theme in much of the music last year was issues of physicality:
Attempting to transcend the physical yet being constantly aware of how that physicality is constantly being threatened is a hell of an undertaking—more apparent this year, though nothing new.
And
It's music about living inside your body and feeling revulsion, but despite the horror, there's also something comforting there, a shared space for raw experience that feels transformative.
And
If we had to give it a name, 2014 was the Year of the Body. How fitting that in a moment of digital saturation, we now turn our attention to the physical world, particularly the flesh we find ourselves living inside
And
On Too Bright Hadreas all but destroys any lingering perceptions of weakness or frailty with a record that is, among other things, a kind of treatise on gay panic and the horrors of the body. The album’s centerpiece—the much-heralded “Queen”—is the record’s undisputed banger (“No family is safe when I sashay,” he triumphantly declares), but Too Bright shines brightest in it’s weirder moments. “Fool” flirts with finger-snapping doo wop, while “My Body”, with it’s whispery “I wear my body like a rotted peach” line, is the most visceral and haunting.
And
In the end, the saddest, most vulnerable structure is the human body—none has ever survived forever, or lasted for the ages—but Ruins reminds us how much poetry and beauty can be found in the simplest moments before that inevitable silence.
What should we think about this? How should we explain this?
