We still have a month left in 2014, so there’s plenty of time for me to be disappointed by everyone. But we’ll take a couple weeks off for the holidays, and once you take out time for sleeping and eating it’s basically just a couple days-a weekend really. Better get it over with now. These are the 10 things I was most disappointed by in 2014.
10. Pink Floyd’s Endless River Of Money Grabs:
Ugh. Sometimes new music actually hurts your legacy. Someone should tell David Gilmour this.
9. OutKast reunion:
Andre 3000 has said that he gets nothing from performing OutKast songs live. He feels nothing while performing them. And it shows in every live clip I’ve seen from this 20th anniversary cash-in they finished up this summer. You could almost feel Big Boi doubling up his energy to try and get Andre excited.
8. Rural Alberta Advantage’s latest:
Go to RAA’s Spotify page and click any random song. Which album is it from? You probably can’t tell because they all sound exactly the same. Props for delivering a strong live performance at Metro, but it’s time to play with the formula a bit.
7. Avi Buffalo:
Really thought this would be a homerun. After waiting for four years I guess I built it up in my head too much.
6. High Hopes for Springsteen:
Just bad. From start to finish this is the worst Springsteen record in a long, long time. No surprise it was named #2 album of the year by Rolling Stone (just below the most relevant band in the galaxy U2).
5. Crush Songs by Karen O:
I don’t know what I was expecting, but not this swill. After a couple of years where Yeah Yeah Yeahs seemed to be getting some of their fire back, this solo release feels as watered down as a Walmart-only Kenny Chesney record.
4. Arcade Fire’s Reflektor tour:
On a whim I bought a half-priced ticket to see Arcade Fire at the United Center. It was horrible. Their music isn’t made to be played in huge arenas, and no amount of lights or showmanship is gonna change that. The best part of the show was Mavis Staples coming out for the encore (which was, admittedly, amazing).
3. The Voyager by Jenny Lewis: I caught a set Jenny Lewis did at a fest and she sounded great. That got me all amped up for The Voyager, which came out a week later. Unfortunately, the best song she sang that day was “Silver Lining,” and nothing on the new record comes anywhere close. Rabbit Fur Coat is the only solo Lewis record worth anything, and that was already eight years ago.
2. That awful song by Hozier that they play every ten minutes:
This is literally the most boring song I’ve ever heard on the radio. Carrie Underwood tried to write a more boring song than this and it drove her to madness. I feel like Hozier might be the only dude I would pick to LOSE a fight to the guy from Passenger.
1.The Neutral Milk Hotel festival experience:
After seeing Jeff Mangum solo in a nice venue, and then seeing NMH at a rock club, I was crazy excited to see the band again at not one but TWO festivals (TURF and P4k). That excitement waned pretty quickly when I realized that, despite the 15 year hiatus, a lot of people don’t care about Neutral Milk Hotel. Seeing them headline a club is cool because everyone is there to see them and sing and scream and dance along to their music. At a festival people are there because they bought a ticket and whoever they wanted to see alrwady played but they don’t want to leave early and feel like they wasted money (also: BEER!). So you hear a lot of “Oh god this is awful. People actually LIKE this? His voice is so nasal and annoying.” And you can’t punch the person because security is right there.
For every person just as excited as you are, there are 20 that could care less. It makes the set painful instead of joyous and completely kills the moment.