| Hot Mix 2014 on Spotify |
| #100 - 91 | #90 - 81 | #80 - 71 | #70 - 61 | #60 - 51 |
| #50 - 41 | #40 - 31 | #30 - 21 | #20 - 11 | #10 - 1 |
70. Alex G “Black Hair”
At first we were thinking "black hair" might imply youth, but then it occurred to us that black hair on humans is kind of unnatural until it's dyed that way. Cats and dogs and bears might have black hair. In fact, the phrase recurs in the song "Harvey" - the one that is possibly about a vampire puppy (although forgive us because we're probably way off base with that one). So it might be Alex G's tribute to gothic culture. In either case, "Black Hair" is notable for showcasing a few courageously and inventively lengthy chord progressions atypical of most modern songwriters - one of many impressive highlights on DSU. We're psyched as fuck to hear what's next.69. Uncle Acid "Runaway Girls"
We could go into further detail about the imaginary Abbey Road/Black Sabbath hybrid like we've already done on this website 6 other times, but we'd rather just look at these things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgUU1K7lbxg
68. Ava Luna "PRPL"
"We're gonna slow it down a little bit right now." (How come no one throws that into stage banter anymore? Let's work on this.) As a standalone slow jam, "PRPL" generates a calming atmosphere, both intimate and familiar in a late-night WBLS kinda way. But within the context of Ava Luna's compellingly bizarre Electric Ballroom LP, what may have been intended as a mid-album palate-cleanser (and arguably the record's centerpiece) mutates into the weirdest moment on a very weird record. We tracked down drummer Julian Fader for some insight:TMK: I like that one in the middle. The slow one.
Julian: "Oh, PRPL."
TMK: Yeah, PRPL. Didn't someone who worked with Aaliyah mix the album or something?
Julian: "Haha, Felicia's* dad, Jimmy Douglass. We drove to Miami to mix with him. He mixes all the Timbaland stuff and did all this shit in the '70s for Atlantic Records. He has a mix credit on Marquee Moon, and he was telling us about editing the guitar solo on 'Heartbreaker' by Zeppelin. Pretty funny."
TMK: Whoa. That's rules.
Julian: "I think 6 or 7 of the mixes on the album are his [including 'PRPL.']"
(*Note: Refers to Ava Luna vocalist & keyboardist Felicia Douglass - lead vocalist on "PRPL.")
67. Kero Kero Bonito "Intro Bonito"
KKB in the hiz-ouse. Why isn't this band fucking huge yet? Everything here seems pretty nicely aligned for large-scale domination: They're tapping into a European-ized version of J-Pop that seems hugely accessible for U.S. consumption. Their songs are full of subtle and tasteful retro-videogame references, but not in a way that appeals to a boxed-in niche like Anamanaguchi or The Minibosses. And plus, the songs are really fun, way catchy and sung by an energetic mega-babe hottie. They also have really weird and awesome song titles. In addition to an eponymous jam, there's "Bonito Intro," "Intro Bonito," and two songs called "Cat Vs. Dog." These guys should open for Andrew WK. No, seriously. Let's give it some time. 2015 = the year of Kero? We'll find out soon.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B42S91e2U-4
66. Jute Gyte “Mansions of Fear, Mansions of Pain”
Anyone who's friends with Satan on Last.fm might have noticed a recent new entry very close to the top of his "most played" artists. Something about that microtonal dissonance gives Missouri's Jute Gyte an edge to charm The Dark Lord, conveying that special combination of negativity, evil, hopelessness and eternal pain that we all need in our lives. Chainsaw noises fill the descending intro section of "Mansions of Fear" while tumbling with scabs and scars into an unmolested area of hell. After landing, it might resemble the lair that exists deep within Mr. Pickles' dog house. Or maybe it looks like one of those alternate dimensions like on Rick & Morty with colossal, grotesque monsters who are occasionally nice and friendly but usually pretty mean and have no regard for anyone. A few monsters get into a brawl and start slapping each other and screaming.65. Big Sean featuring E-40 “I Don't Fuck With You”
We love this shit, probably for all the same reasons why hiphop writers hate it. Yes, "IDFWU" appeals to 6th graders, and yes, it has a goofy chorus (probably ghostwritten by Kanye), and yes, it's sung by the honeybunch of a former TeenNick cast member. If this were a song from 1989 instead of 2014, we guaranteed those same critics would feel differently about it. Context is everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZaJYDPY-YQ
64. Death From Above 1979 “Virgins”
Kinda unsure how all the kids* who lost their shit over the past few years of Fall Out Boy and Paramore albums were unable to get that same sense of asskicking guitar-pop dopeness from the stronger half of DFA79's The Physical World - by no means a solid release, but just as consistent as any of the strongest (or least-obnoxious) Fueled By Ramen LP's between 2010-2014. While "Government Trash" and "Right On, Frankenstein" stand tall as highlights, an uncredited cameo from Patrick Stump himself could easily have snuck into "Virgins," and we'd be none the wiser. And what's more, it's the one moment throughout their newer reunion jams that's equally as dope as the wild and dirty sex rides on You're a Woman, I'm a Machine.(*By "kids," we mean "music writers" and "anyone who was in high school during 2006" whereas IRL whippersnappers in 2015 seem to be filling the shitty Fueled By Ramen void with Breathe Carolina and the like. Forgive us if we're far from actual IRL, but we're mostly guessing based on what we observe on Twitch.tv. We're old, but we're not THAT old.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuG9D9VntOo
63. Migos “Fight Night”
We might be running out of steam already. We would lose a round of Fight Night right now. As for the song, it's just one of those that you wanna scream along to whenever the chorus happens. We actually don't really know what they're saying but the phonetics are good enough for now. Also, congratulations to Migos on receiving a condemning subtweet from an actual U.S. Senator. Damn yo. There's bands out there that would kill for publicity like this:
Also a quick "my bad." We'll admit that fucked up a few pages ago (in the "About The Money" review) when claiming that Migos stopped doing the triplet-rap thing, since it's kinda all over their most recent mixtape which we only heard for the first time today. We feel like Whoopsie Goldberg right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsVnUpl2IKQ
62. Cloud Nothings "Now Hear In"
Things we know about Cloud Nothings, and what those things might infer: #1 They listen to lots of free jazz in the tour van, which possibly influences their penchant for 7- or 8-minute noise jams that usually happen about once per live set. #2 They recorded their last couple albums very soon after learning the songs, which possibly contributes to their urgency, equally frantic and spontaneous in nature. #3 They fuck shit up, which possibly contributes to how they fuck shit up. "Now Hear In" is our album highlight for combining all of these points with Hüsker Dü and The Replacements, like if Gin Blossoms decided to re-record "Hey Jealousy" about 50 times faster with screamed vocals, bigger amps and more intense distortion pedals.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgFvNKwxYQo
61. Good Throb “Acid House”
The party responsible for our favorite punk release of 2013 had to go and do it again in 2014. Excitement was huge enough for the Bandcamp release of Fuck Off that their allotment of free downloads remained consistently maxed out until just recently. (They're so cool and intimidating that we got too shy to directly contact them for the Dropbox link as they suggested. But the good news is we finally got our copy today. Woo!) As for the jams, Gang Of Four and The Fall seem like the most frequent references. And while the production and guitar-tone match those bands almost identically, the songwriting deserves far more credit for "league of their own" inventiveness. There's really not much else quite like it.| Hot Mix 2014 on Spotify |
| #100 - 91 | #90 - 81 | #80 - 71 | #70 - 61 | #60 - 51 |
| #50 - 41 | #40 - 31 | #30 - 21 | #20 - 11 | #10 - 1 |
Adolescent-sounding voices + "going viral" = one way ticket to one hit wonder (usually). It's not like 
We had to combine these because #1 they flow together within the album context, and because #2 both songs sound like composites of about a half-dozen '70s AM Gold hits. Some might scoff at us for suggesting where sounds might have been borrowed, but Sloan are no plagiarists. Plus, cracking the code yields fun puzzle times. Our case begins as we skim through about 10 reviews of Commonwealth, ultimately revealing two interviews with Jay Ferguson regarding the former. He cites Phoenix, Wings, ABBA and Fleetwood Mac. From our end, we're also hearing ELO, 
The thrashing garage-rock energy of "New Kid" immediately struck us as one of the standout jams on Ex Hex's Rips LP. We simply had to know more, and so we tracked down everyone in the band for our wild n' crazy TMK exclusive:
Meeting somewhere between 
Consider this one sort of an unofficial three-way-tying of the 8-minute To Be Kind jams. (We weren't really into the rest of this album nearly as much. Sorry.) 
Damnit, we really didn't want this one to be a tie. But we would have been kicking ourselves hard had we neglected "Doctor," a punk moment so authentic that it might be tough to decipher whether or not it's a lost relic from the early '80s. "You put your fingers in other people's mouths all day." Priests' cathartic blasts make up the majority of their live set, but it was the invitingly catchy refrain of "Right Wing" that perplexed us most, playing in our heads as we woke up at least a dozen times this past year. Maybe it's the beer talking, but this kinda beats 
"I'm just sittin' in the studio just tryna get to you, baby / But this song so fuckin' dope, girl, it's harder not for me to blaze it / To tell the truth, wish it was you in this booth that I was blazin." Alright, we're confused. This could mean "The faster I'm done with this dope track, the faster I'll get back to you." Or possibly, "Sitting in the studio trying to get everything down and solid so that you can understand me." Or wait, we thought of another possibility too, but we just lost it. Fuck. The tape slows down in the last 10-seconds, sort of suggesting defeat. Schoolboy Q was unable to reach his lady baby, and we're left witnessing the song collapse onto itself despite his best efforts. We're actually kind of feelin' this ambiguity and would rather not consult Rap Genius with this one.
Just saw the commercial for the new Kidz Bop and it should come as no surprise that "Rust" and "Gypsy's" are tracks 1 and 2 respectively. Makes complete sense if you know brats like we do; all 4th through 7th graders love dissonant drone and the sound of flushing toilets; they love PC Worship and know all the words to Social Rust; when they get bored, they draw PC Worship logos on their Surgery Channel trapper keepers. I'll never understand these fuckin' kids these days and their Surgery Channel. It's just like sometimes you don't wanna see that stuff, you know? Like you're just flipping through the channels looking for Charles Barkley porn or whatever and BOOM there's Little Richard on MTV getting open heart surgery. There's this wolf pressing his face against the window and he's like screaming at us right now. 
We were starting to miss T.I. and figured he was a goner. Leave it to Floyd Mayweather of all people to get T.I. back into the spotlight of buzz and gossip. At that point, returning to the radio was a no brainer, as he prepped the same checklist as everyone else who charted on hiphop stations in 2014. After crossing "Call DJ Mustard" off his list (resulting in "No Mediocre"), he did the other thing everyone else did: Stealing the triplet-rap thing from Migos' "Versace," a mostly annoying and timely trend which probably just recently died alongside the end of 2014 itself. Migos doesn't even use it anymore. "About the Money" is probably the only other charting instance besides "Versace" that accents the triplet cadence in an interesting way, while the keyboard loop seemed suspiciously familiar. It's not from Basement Jaxx's "Where's Your Head At," but possibly something similar.
The internet buzz suggests a few of the songs on Eyehategod's outstanding self-titled have been floating around and performed live since as early as 2008. While the uncharacteristically energetic "Agitation Propaganda" or the death-puppet dangling limbs sludge-romp of "Nobody Told Me" could have fit into our Hot Mix just as easily, "Robitussin and Rejection" wins for cutting the deepest. With agonizing, devastating hopelessness intact, nothing beats the lowest depths. At that point, just say fuck it and find literally any fucking drug you can get your hands on. If you can't find money for real drugs, then go raid your parents' closet or your girlfriend's bathroom or anywhere, and just swallow the first thing you can find. Mom's got Robitussin. Cool. Wash it down with your own piss. Numb the pain and move on.
The NY girl's Boston tribute. It's our 2nd favorite song on Broke With Expensive Taste after "212," but mostly because it doesn't confront the listener with the album's predominant excessively-musical production which removed all the grit and rawness from almost all of its other new songs. A few instances on BWET get so EDM-corny and unnecessarily melodic that it sounds like she's rapping or singing over MarioKart (and not in a good way). "BBD" unfortunately indulges the OTHER thing that brought down this record: Her impeccable rap flow on "212" seems to have been completely abandoned in favor of a quieter lower-register Missy Elliott impression meshed with a thick, heavy Long Island accent. Although in this instance, the "BBD" recipe actually works: dancable, catchy, fun, and just minimal enough that it made almost no difference. As much as we love "212," part of us wishes she hadn't included it. While we understand why it's there (money), it supplies a glaring reminder of what we're not receiving. (Note: Well we're not changing this now, but it turns out this song was actually released over 2 years ago on 1/1/13 and isn't one of the album's 12 newer songs. Go figure.)
Probably the best from the more traditional-sounding half of Salad Days. The subdued chorus doesn't resolve itself until after returning back to the verse section, suggesting an unsettled, bittersweet type of freedom. It's kinda weird and lame how stupidly large the Demarco-backlash has grown over the past two years. Yeah, of course he's a fucking weird rockstar, but he's a weirdo who basically invented his own specific combination of recording technique, guitar timbre and tone, achieving a distinct and instantly recognizable atmosphere. And he's still able to write very good songs within the somewhat strict parameters he's built for himself. And what's more, it kinda sounds like Pod-era Ween. All of these things rule. If a few fans of Vampire Weekend or The 1975 or Neutral Milk can't take another weirdo in the world, what difference does it really make? Haters gon' haight.
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