Everyday Be Listening to Nathan's Favorite Records, 2014

1. D’Angelo and the Vanguard, Black Messiah
Out of nowhere, D'Angelo and his appropriately-named backup group cast a spell of hypnotic jazz-funk-hard rock-flamenco-Great American Songbook-Beefheart-There's a Riot Goin' On jams so potent that they make up for 14 years of silence.

2. Freddie Gibbs and Madlib, Piñata
Culled from years of relaxed sessions between the Gary, Indiana emcee and former Stones Throw's vinyl virtuoso, Cocaine Piñata (the semi-official title) finds Gibbs smoking Madlib's best-laid rhythms like they were nickel bags. A soul sample lover's paradise.

3. The Underachievers, The Cellar Door: Terminus Ut Exordium
As the title suggests, this LP is all about linguistic beauty unrelated to meaning. Issa Gold and AK have the endless back-and-forth energy of a young OutKast, and like that group, their tightness reinforces each other's skills.

4. Kimbra, The Golden Echo
With her stunning musicianship, ace choice in collaborators, unlimited vocal range, and twin allegiances to the groove and the avant-garde, the New Zealand pop star is in a class with only one other artist: Janelle Monae.

5. Schoolboy Q, Oxymoron
Schoolboy is the edgiest, nerviest, most unpredictable rapper in the Top Dawg roster and perhaps on the entire West Coast.  Oxymoron is a gangsta/confessional record that is alternately a scary, hopeful, and thrilling window into the mind of a restless thinker.

6. Boris, Noise
Another year, another Boris album with a so-generic-it's-audacious title, another set of explosive churning stadium rockers that never go anywhere one expects. "Angel" is the 19-minute monster of the year.

7. Goat, Commune
Do I care about Goat's devotion to Swedish vodou traditions and communal mysticism? Not really. But their music is enveloped in pleasure, bursting with dozens of uncharacteristic influences (afrobeat, psychedelia, drone, Beatlesque melodies) that will dizzy the listener who attempts to identify them.

8. Sturgill Simpson, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
The psychedelic qualities of this record are overstated--this is outlaw country-rock in the Kris Kristofferson, Gene Clark mode that is stronger because it demonstrates Simpson's authentic songwriting before lightly breaking the Nashville sonic mold (unforgettable album closer "It Ain't All Flowers").

9. Big K.R.I.T., Cadillactica
No one seems willing to anoint Big K.R.I.T. "king of the south," so he made this 15-song case. This time, he leaves the production to others and refines his songwriting and hooks. Is there a better rapper in America?

10. Run the Jewels, RTJ2
Best listened to divorced from thinkpieces on Ferguson, etc. (as if Killer Mike and El-P were the first rappers ever to protest police brutality), I prefer to think of RTJ2 as the best rap-rock record since the Judgment Night soundtrack.

Freeze That Verse: Aaron's Favorites, 2012

1. R. Kelly, "Write Me Back"

Bravura soul form a bravura soulman. The singer's a student, rebuilding from lush, gently shifting blueprints drawn decades ago, alive to their possibilities today. Says it himself: love has the greatest vision of all time.

2. Goat, "World Music"
A furious, mindbending stew of nearly every sound blurted out to fuck with your head in the Twentieth Century--from psych and drone to metal, Afrobeat and pastoral folk. Recklessly borrowed, played with abandon.

3. Kendrick Lamar "good kid, m.A.A.d city"

A tour of King Kendrick's life, years before that title became appropriate. Woozy, jazzy and menacing, narrated by a shapeshiting MC, at turns thoughtful and impulsive, but always true to himself.

4. Miguel, "Kaleidoscope Dream"
His five 2012 EPs are also a must, collectively the flowering of an R&B auteur. Miguel's a suave oddball--his compositions run from grown and sexy to achingly needy--unafraid to throw out an idea, look the listener in the face, and dare you to join him.

5. Spiritualized, "Sweet Heart Sweet Light"
A sound born from Spaceman's latest, darkest chemical experiences. An album dreamed from a sick bed, shuffling towards a transcendence it realizes through celestial rock and roll.

6. Café Tacuba, "El Objeto Antes Llamado Disco"
An ebullient blur of fluttering, ringing, propulsive noises, artful in the most subtle and spectacular ways.

7. Dinosaur Jr, "I Bet On Sky"
Choppy waves of riffage clash up against the pointilistic clarity of J Mascis' solos. Alongside J's voice, as high and whiny as his Jazzmaster, the sound is as massive and breathtaking as ever, maybe a little warmer.

8. Tame Impala, Lonerism

Drenched in flange, swimming synth and clattering drums, Kevin Parker's dense, enormous visions radiate outwards--just beyond comprehension, easy to get lost in.

9. Tennis, "Young & Old"
Songs fashioned from Beach House guitar lines, untangled and exposed to the sun. Featuring not only 2012's acest deployment of organ, but the sweet churn of Patrick Riley's guitar and Alaina Moore's heavenly sighs.

10. Rick Ross, "Rich Forever"
The finest product the Bawse has distributed thus far, not simply consolidating his success, but justifying it. An appropriately monstrous and expansive set of beats forms the bed for Ross and his business partners' cartoon villain games.