2014: Year End Review by Bobby Gorman

10. Against Me! – Transgender Dysphoria Blues – Total Treble Music

I’ve always loved Against Me!. Reinventing Axl Rose is easily one of the most pivotal punk albums of all time; but I’m also one of the few who even loved White Crosses and New Noise. Basically, anything Laura Jane Grace has ever recorded has been pure gold in my eyes. The newest endeavour,  however, didn’t hit me as hard as they normally do.

Transgender Dysphoria Blues is easily Against Me!‘s most important album to date, pushing the topics of sexuality and transgender politics into the national conversation. I mean, how often do you see someone on David Letterman playing a song called FUCKMYLIFE666? Grace speaks from experience, and tells tales from the heart but it lacked a certain pull that all their prior material had for me. It wasn’t until seeing these songs live that the album truly sunk in. There’s a most definite sonic evolution here – partly due to a completely reworked line-up change and markedly different production techniques – and that evolution, for the first time ever, made me unsure of what to think of a new Against Me! album. But it’s been eleven months since the album was released at the tail end of January and I’m still rocking out to it and still finding new intricacies hidden within it with each passing listen.

9. The Menzingers – Rented World – Epitaph Records

This was one of my most disappointing albums of the year. It was never bad but it was never great either. I felt cheated as On The Impossible Past is – to put it bluntly – pure perfection. This, the follow-up, was not.

A few songs stood out but as a whole it felt forgettable but I kept playing it back, over and over again and it slowly grew on me. There’s still some god awful tracks – Transient Love, Sentimental Physics – are you kidding me? But as I saw them play two nights back to back, I subconsciously found myself singing to Rodent, Nothing Feels Good Anymore, In Remission and I Don’t Wanna Be An Asshole Anymore.

 So honestly I don’t know what to say about this record. I don’t love it and there’s songs that I absolutely hate, but I’ve listened to it more than most other albums this year and will replay In Remission over and over again.  The biggest fault of this album is that it’s not On The Impossible Past but I think I need to admit that nothing ever will be and simply move on.

8. Chumped – Teenage Retirement – Anchorless Records

I’ll be the first to admit that Teenage Retirement does not deserve to me in my top ten simply because the first time I listened to the album was at 5pm on New Years Eve. It came out back in November but never found its way into my ear drums until the final seven hours of 2014. Yet the moment the guitar riffs break into the feedback squeal of December Is The Longest Month, there was something there. Pop-punk mixed with nerd rock – it’s what I wanted Cayetana‘s Nervous Like Me to be – a mixture of Weezer, Caves, punked up Lemuria and all those bands you love to sing along to at Fest, Chumped have delivered a pop-punk album that will definitely become a staple in my playlist.

Despite having only listened to the album three times, Teenage Retirement easily beat out almost every other album that I listened to over and over again throughout the year. 

7. Pup – Pup – SideOneDummy Records

Technically, this album isn’t eligible for this list having been released in small distribution in 2013 in Canada. But SideOneDummy picked it up and gave it a wide release this year, putting it on the radar of countless other music fans starving for something new. Raw and recorded off the floor, Pup is a frenzied sonar attack. A bombastic onslaught of guitars and gang vocals, Pup is a house party of epic proportions detailing the trials and tribulations of growing up  living for the moment and accepting fate and going for the ride.  One can only wonder where they’ll go after this.

6. The Holy Mess – Comfort In The Discord – Self Released

Opting to self release their follow-up to Red Scare Industries` Cande Ru Las Degas, The Holy Mess` Comfort In The Discord picks up right where they left off. This is fast paced, catchy, gravelly gruff-punk from the streets of Philadelphia. With two distinctive vocal deliveries, Comfort In The Discord never fails to entertain and never feels respective or redundant. There’s part Junior Battles and part Dillinger Four and all awesome.

5. The Copyrights – Report  – Red Scare Industries

The Copyrights have always been good in my eyes, but Report elevates them to the level of great. Gruff pop-punk that would make The Ramones proud, The Copyrights do no wrong here. Now if only we could get a new Dear Landlord album sometime soon.

4. The Hotelier – Home, Like NoPlace There Is – Tiny Engines Records

The Hotelier is not the type of music I tend to gravitate towards yet Home, Like NoPlace There Is, has barely stopped playing through my car speakers as I drive around Vancouver. Soft and soothing yet loud and all consuming, The Hotelier pull you in with their massive, emotional guitar lines. It’s an emo album that elevates the Saves The Day structure to new heights. There`s undeniable passion and sincerity that seeps through the viscerally pained vocals and while there`s no simple hooks or run of the mill melody to entice you, Home`s complexity and passion have you coming back again and again and again.

3. Modern Baseball – You’re Gonna Miss It All – Run For Cover Records

Modern Baseball were the band everyone was talking about at Fest 12 and I missed them so when You’re Gonna Miss It All came out I knew I had to see what the fuss was all about. And my god, were they right. On top of going on to put on one of the best shows at Fest 13 again this year, Modern Baseball also released an album that compliments their live reputation. This is modern day Weakerthans and I couldn’t ask for anything more.

2. The Lawrence Arms – Metropole – Epitaph Records

The only one of my four most anticipated albums of the year to live up to  my expectations. The Lawrence Arms have always been one of my all time favourite bands, and the Chicago threesome built on their legacy here. Oh it’s cleaner for sure, but the back and forth play between Brendan Kelly and Chris McCaughan is the type of musicianship that can only be honed after years of writing together. Beautiful Things, Seventeener, Drunken Tweets, The YMCA Down The Street From The Clinic, all of these are songs that add more to The Lawrence Arms‘ already perfect back catalogue of gems.

1. Joyce Manor – Never Hungover Again  – Epitaph Records

After their disappointing Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired, this pop-punk foursome came barrelling back with a vengeance here. Ten songs crammed into just over nineteen minutes, Never Hungover Again is far and beyond  the best album of the year. Just listen to Heart Tattoo, Schley, Victoria, Falling In Love Again, The Jerk, End Of The Summer – hell, listen to any track you want – and you’ll never want to stop. It really is unlike anything else out there at the moment.

5. Less Than Jake – Do The Math – Fat Wreck Chords

See The Light was not an album that really jumped at me last year, but the seven inch single from that album featuring Do The Math and the b-side Connect The Dots definitely did. Do The Math features one Chris song and one Roger song and two fantastic fast-paced ska tunes.

4. RVIVR – Bicker and Breathe – Rumbletowne Records

RVIVR can do no wrong and Bicker and Breathe follows that rule.

3. Cayetana – Hot Dad Calendar – Tiny Engines Records

A blistering two song seven inch from one of Philadelphia’s most promising indie rock/pop-punk band. Reserved when necessary but built on jangly hooks and interesting vocal delivery, Hot Dad Calendar led the way for what was to become their debut album with Nervous Like Me and there couldn’t be a better introduction to the band than this.

2. Ex Friends – Animal Needs – Coolridge Records

These four songs comprise some of the best eight minutes of music this year. A perfect guy/girl vocal trade off with rousing choruses and larger than life hooks, it’s a less crusty Star Fucking Hipsters that can be played on repeat for hours. If only I knew they also released a full length (Rules for Making Up Words) this year before I started writing this, I’m sure that would’ve made it into my year end list too.

1. Front Bottoms – Rose EP  – Bar None Records

If I could put EPs into my top ten list, this would’ve made the top three for sure.  This EP is perfect. Literally perfect.

Break Your Heart – Gaslight Anthem

Break Your Heart gives me chills every single time I play it. The album, Get Hurt, doesn’t. I’ll see them in March though and will listen to this album at least twenty more times before that time, so I’m not giving up on it yet. No matter what though, the soulful beauty of Break Your Heart will always find its way to my ear canals. 

Anti-Flag – A Document of Dissent – A-F Records

I’ve always loved Anti-Flag, but this album reminded me exactly why I love them. Sure, in a digital age “greatest hits” albums are redundant – I already owned every single song on here; but man, hearing them back to back forced me to go back and examine one of the first political punk bands I got into – and what a nostalgia trip it was.  In a year where so many classic bands released new albums (Pennywise, Lagwagon, Rancid, etc.) it’s nice to go back and see what it is that got you into the punk in the first place. 

Red Scare Industries – 10 Years Of Your Dumb Bullshit

The first record I ever got from Red Scare was The Falcon‘s God Don’t Make No Trash (Up Your Ass With Broken Glass) and it remains one of my favourite EPs of all time. In the ten years since then, Toby Jeg has crafted one of the most respected indie record labels around. Red Scare is literally a feeding ground for the punk scene and for their tenth anniversary they got all their bands together to record new songs. This means new songs from The Falcon, Nothington, The Lillingtons, The Copyrights, Cobra Skulls, Teenage Bottlerocket, Elway, Masked Intruder and more. It’s really shocking how many amazing bands one label can hold.

Anxiety Attack Records – Thunder Road: A Folk-Punk Tribute to Bruce Springsteen

Released as a free digital compilation (from bandcamp), Thunder Road sees nine Canadian folk-punk bands tackling some of Bruce Springsteen‘s greatest hits. Some are more straight forward covers – Jesse Lebourdais‘s The River or Jon Creedon‘s Atlantic City – while some sees the bands giving their unique spin on the classic tunes (James Renton‘s Thunder Road and Choir! Choir! Choir!‘s I’m On Fire) but all nine songs introduce you to some of Canada’s greatest folk-punk acts doing these songs justice.