10. Anberlin - Lowborn
Anberlin has progressed beautifully from it's jagged pop-punk roots of Never Take Friendship Personal to the darker and more poetic Cities to the heavy guitared New Surrender. Earlier this year however Anberlin decided they'd release one final album and call it quits. Lowborn is a fairly strong record on a song-for-song basis, and the added emotional heft of it being a swansong helps to elevate it above the weaker entries in the band’s catalog, even despite its numerous issues.
This is not the Taylor Swift we heard in Fearless or Speak Now, hell she's even grown from her previous, and quite exceptional, album Red. But whether you are a Swiftie or not, this album can not be denied of your attention as Taylor finally made the full fledged leap into pop music, leaving her country roots behind. There's evolution with purpose in every fibre of 1989, and far from jettisoning her integrity in this drastic lunge, she's proved in her bold, risky decision that she's got courage in her convictions to pull it off and faith in her fans to accept the new direction.
Devil is more than just Chiodos' first album in seven years to feature Craig Owens behind the mic again, it's a "prove it" album. It seems kind of weird that the future of the band that has sold hundreds of thousands of records could be determined by this album, but here we are - Devil is the band's renewed opportunity at the scene domination they left behind in 2009. Devil is assuredly the most daring, exhilarating, and personal work of Chiodos' career, reigniting the band to continue on. So even though this isn't peak Chiodos (yet), Devil has the band on the right path to reclaiming the the top spot of the scene food chain sooner rather than later.
Last year, frontman Ryan Key’s wife was paralyzed from the waist down, and that devastating event informs every song on this record. The result is an album that is simultaneously heartbreaking and hopeful. There are moments of despair, but on the whole, Lift a Sail rings as an uplifting testament to love and human resilience. From track one to track 13, those themes swirl and churn until they infect you completely. There are no singles, at least not with the immediacy of “Ocean Avenue” or “Always Summer.” But while Lift a Sail probably has none of Yellowcard’s best songs, it is arguably the band’s most accomplished front-to-back album.
6. Fireworks - Oh, Common Life
Part of what makes Oh, Common Life so gripping is the way Fireworks have pushed their songwriting into a place that sounds wholly theirs, fusing their pop-punk influences with power-pop smarts and a host of ’90s alt-rock flourishes. There’s so much depth to absorb here, yet it’s also instantly rewarding, and it happens time and again on Oh, Common Life; as adventurous as the album is, there’s nary a misstep to be found.
5. Andrew McMahon In The Wilderness - Self-Titled
The result of the Everything in Transit phenomenon—aside from the fact that the record skyrocketed quickly into all-time top fives for fans everywhere—was that it made sure no one would ever again have rational expectations about what Andrew McMahon could accomplish as a songwriter. Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness is the sound of an artist who is completely happy and completely comfortable in his life, and that’s a beautiful thing. It’s not a perfect album, but the core sentiment of always cherishing the people you love resonates to me, and the songs are catchy and effortless enough for me to fall more and more in love with them every time I press play.4. Four Year Strong - Go Down In History EP
Woah, woah, woah! How does an EP get up this high on a top albums of the year list? Well simply put, the EP is five songs of huge, intricate, explosive guitar work, thumping drums that refuse to take a rest, Day and O'Connor's signature call-and-return vocals, the occasional necessary breakdown and gang vocal portion, and the catchiest choruses FYS has ever penned. You'll be hard pressed to be bored for a single minute while spinning this EP, that's a guarantee.
I ran into Forever Came Calling just before summer 2014. I was coming off an incredible pop-punk high, singing along and riding the wave of pop-punk revival staples such as Handguns, State Champs, The Story So Far, and The Wonder Years. What hit me was honest, and unappologetic heart on your sleeve lyrics and this fall's What Matters Most is no different. Unapologetically energetic, unabashedly honest and unwaveringly consistent, Forever Came Calling prove they've got what it takes to become the next household name in Pop-Punk.
Like a great novel, it’s hard to imagine that the fictitious characters who populate We Don’t Have Each Other, the debut full-length by Dan “Soupy” Campbell’s solo project Aaron West And The Roaring Twenties, don’t actually exist in the real world. Campbell, who normally fronts pop-punk kingpins the Wonder Years, has built his enviable career on an uncanny knack for lyrical storytelling, and with this new release, he’s shown he can weave a soul-churning fictional yarn too, with all the surging emotion and subtle nuance of his first-person and non-fictional narratives. As usual, Campbell makes it seem effortless.
Speaking of pop-punk kingpins... Bouncing back from their first lineup change since 1997, New Found Glory return with Resurrection, an album of triumphant pop-punk that finds the band returning with a new found (heh) sense of focus and confidence. Written after the band's tumultuous relationship with guitarist Steve Klein led to his ejection from the group, New Found Glory sound like anything but a band recovering from a tragic loss. Revitalized and refocused, New Found Glory tackle the ugly business of parting ways with pop-punk aplomb, pouring their energy into creating the quintessential break-up record, that just so happens to also be my favourite record of 2014.
Bayside - Cult
Taking Back Sunday - Happiness Is...
Seaway - All In My Head EP
Handguns - Life Lessons
We Are The In Crowd - Weird Kids
Real Friends - Maybe This Place Is The Same And We're Just Changing
Transit - Joyride
No comments:
Post a Comment