Write on Music's Favorite Songs of 2014

Better late than never, here are Write on Music’s favorite songs from last year (in alphabetical order):

Amy LaVere – “Last Rock ‘N’ Roll Boy to Dance”: Inspired by her own adolescent exploits on the lam, this Memphis singer/songwriter and upright bassist turned out one of last year’s most imaginative, musically adventurous albums, Runaway’s Diary. Songs by Townes Van Zandt (“Where I Lead Me”) and John Lennon (“How”) help to tell its story, but its finest moments – like this scene-stealing selection – are of LaVere’s own making.

Angela Moyra – “Bubbalu”: From this Dutch singer/songwriter’s charming debut LP, Fickle Island, this little ditty about a crush is so adorable it’s easy to forget that it’s really a lovelorn lament. Hurts so good, indeed.

   

Bruce Springsteen – “Harry’s Place”: The Boss’ most recent LP, High Hopes, inspired generally mixed reviews among fans and critics – except for Rolling Stone, which deemed it better than every other album released in 2014 save for U2’s similarly polarizing Songs of Innocence. Still, the album has its moments, like an electrified version of “The Ghost of Tom Joad” (featuring Tom Morello’s scorching guitar) and this song, which had been in the works for years and reflects an urban, edgier sonic perspective of Springsteen’s songwriting.

Cat Power and Coldplay – “Wish I Was Here”: This one (from the Zach Braff film of the same name) is so empathetic and universal it’s almost a wonder that it hadn’t been written before. “Every road that’s wrong feels like the road I’m on,” Chan Marshall sings like she knows the feeling all too well. Maybe you do, too. 

Coldplay – “Oceans”: For those who were perhaps disoriented by Coldplay’s more experimental efforts over the last six or seven years, Ghost Stories recalls some of the melodic, piano-rich balladry of earlier albums, Parachutes especially. This song in particular, enriched by an almost spectral intimacy and Chris Martin’s angular falsetto, is among its most intoxicating highlights.

Eilidh McKellar – “Home”: Hailing from Edinburgh, Scotland, this burgeoning guitar prodigy summons a mother lode of moxie and musicianship on her remarkable debut LP, Delta Devil Dreams. With this song in particular McKellar not only displays her rich, ribald guitar playing and honeyed vocals but also an endearing melodic disposition.

Jenny Lewis – “Love U Forever”: There has always been something irresistibly quirky about Jenny Lewis, a quixotic mix of understated musicality and narrative chops that at times includes fun bits of kink and blunt confession. Maybe this song is about a lifelong love affair, but you can dance to it even if it’s not.

Jessie Ware – “You & I (Forever)”: With her second album in two years, Tough Love, Ware has proved her debut (Devotion) was no fluke. This lovely song is among its highlights, and it features the most charming video you’ll see all day.

Johnny Marr – “Dynamo”: The former Smiths guitarist and all-around six-string wizard expanded his sonic canvas for his second solo LP, Playland, illustrated here by what Marr described to described to Write on Music as a love song originally written about a building. “But it was important to me that it felt like someone could sing it to a person who they love,” he added, “romantic love, family love, anything really.” Mission accomplished.

Kasey Chambers with Bernard Fanning – “Bittersweet”: The unflinching honesty expressed in this one is damn near chilling, and its video – shot in one take, ostensibly portrayed by children each representing Chambers and Fanning’s narrators – does little to break the tension or heal the heartache.

Leonard Cohen – “Slow”: Brandishing his old poet’s phonetic authority and a knowing, implicit nod to erotic metaphor, the world’s sharpest-dressed octogenarian heralds the virtues of taking one’s time.

Lera Lynn – “Lying in the Sun”: While the Nashville-based singer/songwriter’s recently released second LP (The Avenues) is currently earning rave reviews, the title track from her previous EP release is just too damn good to overlook. Lynn’s singing on it is breathtaking, her voice coming on as sultry as a slow Southern sunset.

Lily and the Tigers – “Just a Memory”: This aching, mournful gem is but one of the standout moments on the Atlanta, Georgia trio’s masterful LP, The Hand You Deal Yourself. “I definitely was listening to a lot of Otis Redding at the time,” lead singer and principal songwriter Casey Hood told Write on Music last year of the song’s conception. “I love soul and R&B music and Motown.” It certainly sounds that way.

Lucinda Williams – “West Memphis”: The alt.country icon shines a light on the case of the West Memphis Three while a raw, wicked groove sputters and snarls beneath her breath. Consider it a sort of conviction conniption, if you will.

Marissa Nadler – “Firecrackers”: There are artists who sing for you and ones who sing to you, touching a soft spot while your guard’s down to remind you you’re alive. Nadler is of the latter distinction. From her sublime LP, July, this song is utterly exquisite.

Nicole Atkins – “The Worst Hangover”: This stone-soul throwback appears on Atkins’ latest album, Slow Phaser, which is not only the culmination of a gifted artist coming into her own but also the best work of her career to date. 

Priscilla Ahn – “Diana”: With her third LP, This is Where We Are, Ahn signalled a shift, if not a complete departure, from the acoustic-informed aesthetic of her earliest recordings while this, the album’s sensuous opening track, sets the tone. 

Sharon Van Etten – “Nothing Will Change”: Van Etten summoned a tour de force with her 2014 LP, Are We There, translating often intense, personal introspections into universal revelations and, in songs like this one, delivering each lyric like a visceral, nerve-exposed soliloquy.

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – “Forgotten Man”: Stinging with anger and resentment, this one starts off sounding a little like “American Girl” but soon imposes its own ornery indignance on Hypnotic Eye, easily Petty’s best album in years.

Wilko Johnson & Roger Daltrey – “I Keep it to Myself”: Literally knocking on Heaven’s door, the iconic Dr. Feelgood guitarist sought to make one last album, on which The Who’s indomitable frontman was more than happy to join together with the man. As Johnson told Write on Music last year, the chemistry between the two was immediate. “Everybody got on well,” he added. “We just started working ferociously.” And the resulting album, Going Home, is invigorating...almost as much as the miraculous twist of fate that ultimately saved this beloved legend’s life.

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Singer/Songwriter Emily Jane White Previews New Single, “Faster Than the Devil,” Feat. Marissa Nadler

In anticipation of her fourth LP, Blood/Lines (which is slated for release on November 19 on Important Records), singer/songwriter Emily Jane White offers “Faster Than the Devil” as the album’s first single. In a striking confluence of shadow and light, the song contrasts a menacing, gothic vibe to White’s silken lead vocal and an angelic-sounding choir, with singer/songwriter Marissa Nadler complementing the latter, more sublime choral moments. Altogether, it’s an intriguing song and a remarkable preview of the full album to come. 

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Marissa Nadler: Music Helps Me Cope

“Sometimes I wish I didn’t feel things so deeply,” Marissa Nadler confides, soft-spoken yet assured, “but it does make it easier to write from a place of feeling.” 

It’s a telling revelation, suggestive not only of uncommon honesty and candor but, as well, of insecurities that often accompany such insight. For the 32-year-old singer/songwriter, who is currently recording her next full-length studio album, the qualities that largely inform her aesthetic are also those which reveal her at her most vulnerable. 

Consider her most recent works, Marissa Nadler and The Sister, released in 2011 and 2012, respectively, on Nadler’s own Box of Cedar Records. Containing some of her most inspired and affecting songwriting to date, these companion works—“They were recorded in the same studio,” she notes. “Some songs were recorded in the same session.”—illustrate Nadler broadening the scope of her craft and refining signature distinctions that have underscored her music now for nearly a decade.

Nadler, a native of Massachusetts and alumnus of Rhode Island School of Design, was already a seasoned visual artist in multiple disciplines when her debut, Ballads of Living and Dying, was released in 2004. Evoking folk’s acoustic properties (though not necessarily its most traditional or rigid song structures), the album was enriched by the nimble flow of epic poetry with the sort of narrative sweep found in short fiction. Such isn’t to suggest that Nadler’s subjects are contrived, however. As well she insists, “Pretty much everything is very autobiographical stories about people I know.”

In composing the songs for Marissa Nadler and The Sister, Nadler sought new ways of making her music accessible to as many listeners as possible. For instance, she says, “I kind of only recently have discovered the art of the bridge, of things that happen just once in a song to have this really memorable moment. I don’t think I really understood what a bridge was before because I didn’t go to music school. I was a self-taught singer and guitar player. So I just kind of called a song done when it was done.”

As her skills have improved so too has her confidence. “I know some more about music now,” Nadler explains, “and realize how effective a key change or a bridge can be to give a song a little bit more momentum and a narrative arc. I definitely feel that these songs have more of a build, [in] trying to keep people compelled throughout the song.

“I want my music to affect a lot of people,” she continues, adding that her songwriting during this particular period was often inspired by artists whose music had resonated with her in a similarly universal way. “I’d been listening to a lot of records, like Tammy Wynette records and old-school country. I like the mixes on those records where the vocal is really up front.”

Manifested for the most part on the eponymous album, a song like “The Sun Always Reminds Me of You,” for instance, with its steel guitar lending an air of bittersweet nostalgia, wouldn’t sound out of place in some roadhouse honky-tonk pouring out of a Wurlitzer otherwise stocked with George Jones and Loretta Lynn laments. Likewise, “Baby I Will Leave You in the Morning” conjures an air of earthy, flesh-and-blood eroticism not unlike what Bobbie Gentry was producing in her prime—or even of Kris Kristofferson’s most intimately informed classics. 

While the same vocal lucidity is preserved on The Sister, the album is sparser and more ruminative by comparison. In fact except for a few select embellishments—the snare shots that punctuate “Constantine,” the swirling ebb-and-flow effects that surface throughout “In a Little Town”—Nadler sings with scarcely more than her own acoustic guitar as accompaniment. 

Regardless of their musical context the songs on both albums evoke a visceral sense of immediacy, of a moment, as if borne out of a burst of inspiration. Nadler infers as much, describing her songwriting process as one that seems prone to distraction. “I won’t write for a couple months,” she explains, “and then I’ll write all the songs in one sitting. I generally wait until I have a lot of emotions built up about something. Then I sit and write a whole collection of songs all at the same time.”

The emotional transparency of her storytelling makes Nadler all the more susceptible to scrutiny, though, especially when she steps before a live audience. “It’s really painful for me to get up in front of crowds,” she concedes, adding that embarking on a full-fledged tour never ceases to be a nerve-wracking experience. “It takes me four or five shows for me to get into the zone where I’m not just petrified or nervous and sick all day, because I’m worried I’m going to fail.”

Nonetheless, she acknowledges, “Something’s still compelling me to keep doing it. I think it’s the desire to be sharing something with somebody else, or connecting with people.”

Even still, whatever sense of empathy or solace her songs offer listeners, they provide to her as well—perhaps even more so. “I’ve always been really sensitive,” Nadler concludes, “and I think art is the way I cope.”




—All photographs by Courtney Brooke Hall

For more information on Marissa Nadler, please visit the artist’s official website and follow her updates on Facebook and Twitter.

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