55 9Bach: Tincian

Welsh is always wonderful sounding to sing in, even though I do admit the language barrier could mean that Lisa Jen Brown could actually be singing beautifully sounding missives complaining about the influx of immigrants on the country and how she now feels like a foreigner in her own country wot wiv all dese darkies about and I’d be none the wiser. With her fantastic voice acting as further and extremely potent musical instrument ‘Tincian’ is essentially a collection of exquisite sounding mood pieces. Extraordinarily listenable

54 Say Anything: Hebrews

Well any album that starts with a song called John McClane is never going to be that bad is it? Brilliant and catchy pop punk that doesn’t mind being a little unusual, so unconcerned in fact that the album’s sound can occasionally verge off into the extremely irritating but no way near often enough to really hurt the record. The way that guitars have been generally thrown out shows how confident the band are that the song’s sheer quality is good enough to work without most standard rock tricks, a belief that’s almost always proved to be correct. Perhaps I only like it so much because the lyrics to 666 speak to me somehow (‘I lost my virginity to myself/I’m just sparks and meat/I believe in love but I’m gassy, dark and hollow/I’d rather drink, smoke, die young, be reborn and repeat’)

53 Mac Demarco: Salad Days

Demarco’s third album may be the most difficult record of 2014 to truly dislike, even if the title track’s ruminations on the difficulties of aging (‘As I’m getting older, chip upon my shoulder/Rolling through life, to roll over and die’) can be slightly annoying coming from the mouth of a 23 year old. Dude, let’s all just chill out, yeah? Too much effort can be, like, totally offensive bro. It can be difficult to truly love an album quite so weightless, even though it must take a shitload of work to sound this effortless.

52 Asgeir: In the Silence

I know, I really thought this would be much higher too, this list is full of twists and turns and it’s me writing the fucking thing. Asgeir’s wonderful second has already sold about a million copies in his native Iceland, which when you consider the population means about 242% of all Icelanders own a copy. Professional polymath John Grant translated the lyrics into English for Ásgeir Trausti’s attemp at the Western markets, so are we to blame Grant for lyrics that occasionally sound far too World-weary and downbeaten for a 19 year old? The one real complaint about ‘In the Silence’ is that it can very occasionally be weighed down by it’s overwhelming ‘niceness’ but it is nonetheless an absolute delight.

51 Jeremy Messersmith: Heart Murmours

My goodness, just listening to this album now has increased my general mood 564%, I love everybody and every thing, there really isn’t enough people in the World to hug is there? Admittedly that could be the MDMA I’ve just taken, but I only did that because I knew I was going to be listening to the wonderful ‘Heart Murmours’ so it’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation. A wonderful collection of well- crafted pop songs that really deserve to become new standards- I for one would love to see Fleur East singing the equally wonderfully named I Want to Be Yout One Night Stand on next week’s X Factor, though I accept that may be more for personal reasons. Sure, nothing here is going to shake the World’s very core, but it’s still an absolutely spellbinding collection.

60 Bruce Springsteen: High Hopes

Essentially a stopgap throwaway that combines studio recordings of old live favourites such as the brilliant American Skin (41 Shots) with extremely decent covers of songs such as Suicide’s Dream Baby Dream. As such make-do projects go it’s not bad at all, even if if includes a version of the previously classic Ghost of Tom Joad with extra Tom Morello fret-wanking ejaculated over the top that if it were a cover of another artist’s song you’d accuse Bruce of misunderstanding it shockingly but since it’s his own song you can only put the whole horrific exercise down to early onset dementia.

59 Mark Lanegan Band: Phantom Radio

Ah Mark Lanegan, the guy whose voice provides some much appreciated recognition of the benefits of smoking (it seems to get such bad press in other areas, so it’s nice to have some balance). ‘Phantom Radio’ is more of a straight ahead rock album than a lot of his more recent releases, and it’s actually more when Lanegan actually attempts to widen the vocabulary such as The Killing Season– Mark Lanegan discovers trip-hop??- that it loses its way slightly. Too few genuine highlights to be considered one of the best in a very impressive career, but extremely good in places.

58 Sinéad O’Connor: I’m Not Bossy I’m the Boss

Sinéad O’Connor is unarguably a very good thing, unless perhaps you’re looking to her for advice on the best tattoos to get. The brilliant title of ‘I’m Not Bossy I’m the Boss’ (if this list were based solely on such things you could expect this to be much higher) reflects an absolute confidence in herself, there’s nothing apologetic here and her distinctive voice is layered so it can occasionally sound like you’re confronted with an entire choir of Sinéads, which is certainly no bad thing. There’s also frequent bursts of humour (Kisses Like Mine‘s brilliantly cheeky chorus of ‘I’m special forces/ They call me in after divorces/ To lift you up’ a particular highlight) that you might not have previously associated with her, and the record is just generally shot through with a great sense of a woman happy in herself. There are certainly songs you’ll want to skip, and the second half of the album is markedly the stronger side, but it’s still a generally brilliant collection of songs.

57 tUnE-yArDs- Nikki Nack

One of the great enemies of ease of typing- I mean look at the state of that fucking name- return with another example of brilliantly inventive and unashamedly odd music. TUnE-yArDs’s (does that first ‘t’ need to be capitalised after a full-stop? This is a fucking nightmare) music however remains strangely distant and easier to appreciate than fully love, perhaps its slightly too self-conciously concerned with sounding ‘weird’.

56 Fucked Up: Glass Boys

Yes yes, if you’ve never heard one of the World’s least firewall-friendly bands (there’s much worse coming up, stay strapped in) you’ve already seen that name and quickly and definitely decided that the music is most certainly not for you. Give it a listen though and I guarantee you’ll be surprised how much you’ll love it, it’s almost like Fucked Up have chosen their explicitly profane name after becoming scared of being possibly considered (spit) mainstream- their commercialism is actually a closely guarded secret. It’s only Damian Abraham’s rasping metal shriek that stops Fucked Up sounding really no less mainstream rock than the Foo Fighters. These songs really should become karaoke standards.

65 Hozier: Hozier

Seen a photo of Andrew Hozier-Byrne? Yeah he might say how this album was ‘heavily influenced by Flying Lotus’. Very, very good debut, which may sometimes sound like it merely exists as a showcase for the voice, but what a voice it is! The constant ham-fisted emotion poured out of every track can grate slightly over 54 minutes, and it can seem a little too convinced of its own importance, but a definite good start. And no matter how many times you’ve heard Take Me To Church (a marvelously good opener that the rest of the album fails to match) or seen its devastating video it never fails to excite.

64 Cats on Trees: Cats on Trees

Already a massive hit in France about 16 years ago *research needed*, and it sounds very French in the sense you can imagine it being directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet- it’s occasionally sickly sweet and even the picture pf the band on the record’s cover captures the type of people who would definitely take photos of a fucking gnome on holiday in a horrifically syrupy way- the chorus of Full Colours is about turning into a rainbow or some shit, I mean come on. Yet even with its slight lack of defining characteristics you can’t help but like an album that sounds this good and often brushes against sheer beauty. A little more unashamed oddness like the brilliant Tikkiboy would be much appreciated.

63 …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead: IX

Album number… erm… No idea what number album it is, there’s really no way of knowing, but it must be, like, number a million or something for AYWKUBTTOD (Christ, even when you spell it out in letters the name’s still far too long) who about a decade ago were absolutely the coolest band to say you liked, but have since dropped off the radar despite still frequently releasing records. ‘IX’ decides that perhaps it was a mistake to try out slightly different styles on their last two albums and instead run back with their tail between their legs to what they do best- a punky kind of pop that’s not quite new-wave that they show on the album they still master rather simply. There are a little too many lurches into U2 arena rock- all echoes, vein-popping emotion and Edge-like guitars. A solid 7.7/10

62 Sohn: Tremors

Following James Blake’s success at creating such critically and somewhat commercially acclaimed angular r’n’b/electronica are we now going to see lots of albums like this? Christopher Taylor’s music is so heavily influenced by James Blake I’d advise James to look in his cupboard right now to check if Taylor isn’t there with hole already drilled into the wall so he can better watch Blake shower. Remember that rabbit I bought you for Christmas James? Yeah, might want to check to see if Sir Foo Foo is still there. ‘Tremors’ is reguarly brilliant, though it lacks direction somewhat and can never truly sound like it isn’t merely a pastiche. Perhaps Sohn’s music is better suited to sound tracking particularly stressful Hollyoaks moments or demonstrating the sounsystem in the new Bose album.

61 Jack White: Lazaretto

Jack White has the ability to be absolutely amazing, as he has proved with each and every one of the wonderful White Stripes albums, but instead he has a strange obsession with proving how much of an authentic bluesman he is- his worrying fascination with delta blues is so strong and all-encompassing I can only assume there’s a disgustingly fetishistic sexual element to it, the dirty perve. The fabulous title track and lead single proves how brilliant he can be if he cuts the chords slightly and cares little about how weird he sounds (second single Would You Fight For My Love is similarly unconcerned with conventions), but far too often he’s so inclined to ape blues rock that with a full band he sounds more like a 21^st century Eric Clapton rather than Robert Johnson reincarnated. Was it the shackles put upon The White Stripes music or Meg herself who previously kept these compulsions in check? Either way it seems that White is now far more concerned with looking backwards than moving forwards.