I. The "Oh, that's too bad" Division
17. Beck- Morning Phase. The goodness of Modern Guilt, Beck's previous album, only serves to make this one more disappointing. Was anyone crying out for 12 versions of the same mopey, sleepy song from a guy who was at one time a genre-hopping avatar of funk?
16. Thom Yorke- Tomorrow's Modern Boxes. I forgot this album existed for long stretches of time. I'm still not sure if Thom Yorke is good at music or not. What I am sure of is that he's gonna milk that Kid A cow until long after we're all dead.
15. Smashing Pumpkins- Monuments to an Elegy. The howling, manic Pumpkins of the mid-90's are no more, and "Monuments" is every bit as tepid and forgettable as 2012's "Oceania". If I graded on a curve this would be dead last, because getting a Pumpkins album without anything remotely aggressive and challenging is worse than getting no Pumpkins album at all.
14. Sons of Bill- Love and Logic. If I could forget that this is the same band that made 2012's "Sirens", maybe I'd be able to enjoy "Love and Logic" for what it is. I can't do that, though. It's not a total miss for me, but I don't like monotonous, sleepy albums and the changes of pace are too infrequent.
II: The "Meets most expectations but exceeds none" Division
13. Jack White- Lazaretto. If Jack puts away the extraneous instruments, weans himself off his vaguely old-timey affectations, and goes back to garage rock, I'll take him back. But referencing White Stripes songs does not a White Stripes album make.
12. Bush- Man on the Run. Bush put out an album in 2014. I listened to it. Maybe even more than once. It's far better than I would have thought a new Bush album would be. Also, The Meat Puppets, Pearl Jam, and Mudhoney put out albums in 2013, so just like in 1995, Bush is late to the grunge party.
11. Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers- The Independent. Apart from the sneering "grown-up Banditos" vibe of the first track, "The Independent" is about as bland and generic as RCPM has ever been. It doesn't even have Roger's trademark borderlands flair, opting instead for predictable mid-range rock with a little bit of country thrown in. It's not fun for me to type this, but it's what I hear.
10. Rancid- Honor is All We Know. This was my most anticipated album of 2014. I really wanted to love it, but it feels a little thrown together, a little like Tim Armstrong wrote the entire album in the same amount of time it takes to listen to it. It's been 11 years since the last Rancid album that sounded inspired and fully committed, which is a bummer. But hey, we'll always have ...And Out Come the Wolves.
9. Mike Doughty- Stellar Motel. Mike Doughty has developed a habit of releasing his albums at their most half-finished. Stellar Motel is equal parts shiny alternapop and baffling, why-was-I-born-with-ears rap. I don't understand Mike Doughty at all, but I don't really care. As long as there's a few gems mixed in with the one man inside jokes, I'm still on board.
III: The "Pleasantly surprising" Division
8. Lagwagon- Hang. In the nine years since the last Lagwagon LP, Joey Cape has apparently crossed over to the dark side and embraced his metalness. Normally I'd grit my teeth and complain about the general lack of punk on "Hang", but there's just something about Cape and gallows humor that works for me. Plus, come on, first full-length Lagwagon in nine years. It could be an exploration of the medium of farts on snare drums and I'd still find a way to defend it. Instead, I get to tell you to listen to "Reign" or "Burning Out In Style", the punkest songs on this metal-ish record, and just rock out.
7. U2- Songs of Innocence. Nobody else seems to have anything nice to say about this, so I'll say something nice. Hey Bono, thanks for giving me free music instead of making me steal it off the internet. Also, you know what, the music you gave away was pretty good. "This Is Where You Can Reach Me" might even be great. "The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)" and its iTunes commercial might have become grating after the third viewing, but the song in its entirety definitely doesn't suck. But again, even if it did suck, it was free and I could just delete it if I wanted to. So no complaints here about getting more than I paid for.
6. Weezer- Everything Will Be Alright in the End. The theme of this album is "It's fun to be in Weezer making rock music.", and that's fun to listen to. Conscious of its time and place, "Rockin' out like it's '94", delivering Eulogies For Rock Bands, ten tracks of Weezer sounding like Weezer and a brief three-track coda make this album easy to get into and just as easy to put down.
5. Foo Fighters- Sonic Highways. The more I listen to it, the more I think this might be the band's best album to date. It sounds just like every other Foo Fighters album, except there's a commitment and an urgency to each and every song that's impossible to ignore. This is a good rock band trying to make a great album, and they came pretty close. I just wish there was more of it.
IV: The "Oh god yes" Division
4. The Dollyrots- Barefoot and Pregnant
I describe the Dollyrots as "What would happen if Barbie came to life and started a power-pop band". Usually the combination of overly familiar riffs and Kelly Ogden's baby-talk vocals make it so I can't listen to them all the time, but "Barefoot and Pregnant" sees them at the top of their game. Better hooks, better lyrics, great bonus tracks, same sparkly adorableness. I've yet to get sick of it. There's no depth, pain, or catharsis here. Nothing to take seriously or think about very much. Just a pretty pink bubble you can float around in for a while.
3. The Gaslight Anthem- Get Hurt
What I love about Gaslight Anthem is the blood in their music. Singer/lyricist Brian Fallon writes and sings from the heart, and that always comes through. "Get Hurt" isn't the most consistent album, but the lows are no worse than average and the highs are the kind of lyrics that help you make sense of the least sensible parts of life. And you know every line throughout was something he had to open a vein to write.
2. Counting Crows- Somewhere Under Wonderland
Speaking of blood in the music, I've been a sucker for Adam Duritz's charmingly unstable lyrics since I was about twelve, but "Somewhere Under Wonderland" is completely unhinged. He counts in one song with "One. Two. One, two, buckle, dang." He stumbles over rhythms because what he wants to say is just a beat or two too long, and none of it makes a lick of sense. In "Dislocation" he openly rocks out his issues with Dissociative Disorder and even Borderlines like me can totally get it when he says "I don't remember me." It's like having a 40-minute conversation with the nicest, saddest, off-his-medsest homeless man you could ever meet. And even though you find yourself laughing at the most ridiculous parts, you still come away from it knowing the depth of honesty that's always been Duritz's money maker is still there. It might not be as simple as storming through the barrio with Mr. Jones anymore, but hell if he doesn't still mean every word.
1. Against Me!- Transgender Dysphoria Blues
Punk rock, at its heart, is about alienation. Gender Dysphoria is in large part about the same thing- but instead of being alienated from society, your government, your family and friends, or your significant other, you're alienated from your own body. That takes all those other alienations and grows them exponentially. The result of making a punk record on the subject is, in a word, devastating. Laura Jane Grace, the trans woman who fronts the band, does what every great concept album writer does: she uses the real emotions of her real life when telling a semi-autobiographical story. A bottom-rung-of-society transsexual prostitute instead of Laura herself just makes for a more compelling main character, and it's nothing if not compelling. The record seethes and boils with pain, profoundly sad lyrics like "Making yourself up as you go along/ who's gonna take you home tonight?" and "What's the best that you can hope for?/ pity fucks and table scraps" assaulting you into empathy, dropped like bombs in a scorched earth campaign, so constantly and thoroughly you'd think they were throwaway punk rock lines until you pay attention to each one and realize that Grace isn't trying to sell rage to us consumers, she's just trying to let it out. There have been three times in my life when I let a rock album change me as a person. When I was 15, sad, and stupid, I thought Third Eye Blind's debut was the most incredible thing ever, even though- or maybe because- it was just emotional egomania. When I was 23, sad, and stupid, I discovered Alkaline Trio's "From Here to Infirmary" and let it become the soundtrack to years of self-destruction because going down in flames was something to celebrate. I was about to turn 32 when I got Transgender Dysphoria Blues. I was still stupid, and I still am, but just like with the previous two, I feel like I understand my stupidity just a little bit better now and I'm not that sad anymore. We don't learn until it hurts not to learn. TDB makes it hurt. I want everybody on the planet to hear this record.
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