David Allen, Liset Marquez and Wes Woods list their best albums of 2014

header Hello everyone, The Inland Empire Music Now blog is back and a staff list of best albums in 2014 is an easy way to begin.  We’ll jump right into it.

David Allen:

1. Wussy: Attica! (Shake It)

(Video: http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/saturday-sessions-wussy-performs-teenage-wasteland/)

2. Spoon: They Want My Soul (Loma Vista)

3. The War on Drugs: Lost in the Dream (Secretly Canadian)

4. Angel Olsen: Burn Your Fire for No Witness (Jagjaguwar)

5. St. Vincent: St. Vincent (Loma Vista)

6. Parquet Courts: Sunbathing Animal (What’s Your Rupture?)

7. Courtney Barnett: The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas (Mom and Pop)

8. Sturgill Stimpson: Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (High Top Mountain)

9. Loudon Wainwright III: Haven’t Got the Blues (Yet) (429 Records)

10. Various Artists: Role: New Sounds of Brazil (Mais Um Discos)

Honorable mentions: Rosanne Cash: The River and the Thread (Blue Note); Lucinda Williams: Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone (Highway 20); Tune-Yards: Nikki Nack (4AD); Jack White: Lazaretto (Third Man); Caetano Veloso: Abracaco (Nonesuch).

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Liset Marquez

1. Damien Rice: My Favourite Faded Fantasy (Vector Recordings) (Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnzHOsiaJns)

2. St. Vincent: St. Vincent (Loma Vista/Republic)

3. RAC: Strangers (Cherrytree, Interscope)

4. Mr. Little Jeans: Pocketknife ((Sony Music, Australia)

5. Sylvan Esso: Sylvan Esso (Trekky/Partisan)

6. Frazey Ford: Indian Ocean (Nettwerk)

7. Benjamin Booker: Benjamin Booker (ATO Records, Rough Trade Records)

8. Zola Jesus: Tiaga (Mute)

9. Banks: Goddess (Harvest)

10. David Gray: Mutineers (Good Soldier Songs)

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Wes Woods II

1. Run the Jewels: “Run the Jewels 2” (Mass Appeal)

(Video and caution explicit language) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuWQyfGa1yI

2. The War on Drugs: Lost in the Dream (Secretly Canadian)

3. D’Angelo and the Vanguard: Black Messiah (RCA)

4. YG: My Krazy Life (Def Jam)

5. Flying Lotus: You’re Dead! (Warp)

6. St. Vincent: St. Vincent (Loma Vista)

7. Spoon: They Want My Soul (Loma Vista)

8. Freddie Gibbs and Madlib: Piñata (Madlib Invazion)

9. Ex Hex: Rips (Merge)

10. Wussy: Attica! (Shake It)

Honorable mentions (and not in any kind of order): Damien Rice: My Favourite Faded Fantasy (Vector Recordings); Little Dragon: Nabuma Rubberband (Because Music); Big K.R.I.T.; Cadillactia (Def Jam); Caetano Veloso: Abracaco (Nonesuch); Mac DeMarco: Salad Days (Captured Tracks); Slipknot: .5: The Gray Chapter (Roadrunner) 

Agree? Disagree? Let us know in the comments with your selections also.