Drowned in Sound's Favorite 50 Albums of 2014

If you have a tolerance for drums that go ‘fzzz’, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes is a lovely, lovely record, easily Yorke’s best non-Radiohead effort.

Syro sees a master craftsman return with renewed inspiration. And while it might not technically be James' most innovative album, it way well be his best: his most complete and engaging under the guise of Aphex Twin.

Despite the dualistic structure of Angels & Devils, the album’s two halves are never in opposition to one another; its vocalists all equally damned, equally resilient to their fate.

Pe’ahi is an uneven reinvention, but it’s a brave one, too - the manner of its release isn't the only surprise that comes with it.

The album is an enjoyable hodgepodge that trades neat cohesion for scattish variety. It’s an overview of all Britt can do when given a guitar and a ruthlessly tight entourage.

It’s a record without a weak link, that doesn’t outstay its welcome, and excites you about the possibility of seeing it all played live. 

The extremely subtle musical template that The Antlers have adopted here only avoids grating as a whole by the end of the record because the songs get stronger as the album goes on.

The darkness was always there, in Hadreas, in the songs, but now it’s in the music, Too Bright, to sound ridiculously over the top, has darkness in its soul.

The homogeneity of sound is fascinating and oppressive and inscrutable, a brooding cosmic puzzle that Liars keep rearranging to new effects and opaque ends.

Present Tense might lack the immediacy of both Smother and Two Dancers, but scratch away at the surface and its a record oozing with the precision and maturity we've come to expect from its creators.

In Conflict is a fine composition free of the fussy baggage that often comes with grand artistic vision.

The memories that Harris explores on Ruins are to us what those physical Portuguese ruins were to her - decontextualised mysteries, distant waves whose ripple hints at some past trauma we’re locked out of.

I Never Learn is by no means a failure - the highs are grand when they come - but it has a tendency towards bombast and shallow self indulgence that sees it edge dangerously close to the fringes of mediocrity. 

What they have created is a consistent work which showcases the band’s diversity as well as their skill and passion in making music which treads the ground between weird and wonderful.

The music operates less as an end in itself and more as a counterpoint to the keening, whispering, screeching, gasping voice-as-expression-of-humanity: within the silicon maze, she suggests, there’s a ghost trying to get out.

Total Strife Forever is that scarcest of things; a masterly record which walks a unpredictable line musically yet remains entirely consistent in quality.

The Hum, whilst sounding very different, is very much a continuation of Pearl Mystic, and absolutely does not disappoint. 

Confidently frail and hesitant, LP1 is a refreshing reaction to, and a calm assault upon, the unfathomably fast-paced total noise of the current age.

Benji contains some of the most evocative songs about mortality and youth that have ever been written.

Their belief regained and creative juices flowing at a rate of knots, Interpol have delivered their finest record in a decade with El Pintor.

It’s not that Rave Tapes is disappointing, it’s just underwhelming - but it’s beautiful enough that maybe that doesn’t matter. 

For all its radiance and attention to detail, Here And Nowhere Else only just breaks the 30-minute-mark, yet in that half an hour exudes more emotions than a counsellor's waiting room.

The ten tracks collected here, ranging from five to 34 minutes in length, demonstrate everything that Swans have ever been over their career, but it is their bloody mindedness that continues to stand out.

Lost In The Dream is an instant salve to the shittiness of modern life, an album that would sound as though it could have been made anytime in the last five decades were it not so immaculately produced

Steeped in the postpunk aesthetic, a well-established rock style that nonetheless remains richer and deeper than any other in formal possibilities, this is a record that conflates doubt and optimism while at surface remaining aggressively articulate.

Throughout its ten pieces, Eagulls delivers in every conceivable way. 

What sets Alvvays apart from their peers is the sense of darkness and melancholy that hides behind the somewhat sprightly tunes on offer.

July is a grown up album – but it’s not a cleaned up one: Marissa Nadler may flirt with the sun now, but still articulates the dark like no one else.

Swift’s self-empowerment is so irrepressible that you can actually hear her kiss off the haters with the help of a brass backing section.

Indeed it is a deep, dragging record; listening to it an experience akin to wading through particularly delicious molasses and it will take the hardy listener a good few attempts to find the key by which they can unlock most of its treasures.