Truck Torrence – Best of 2014

Behold! 11 musical things I enjoyed in 2014, all-in-all a good year for music. Check out all of our 2014 year-end lists here.

1. Ariel Pink – Pom Pom

Pom Pom is my favorite album of the year. Lipstick is probably my favorite song of the year. Even with his flaws and unfortunate Kim Fowley detours, Ariel Pink is one of the most interesting songwriters out there and I think history will ultimately be very kind to him.

2. White Fence – “Anger! Who Keeps You Under?”

From the album “For The Recently Found Innocent”

3. Drab Majesty

Just looking at this guy gets me really bummed out, but he’s great! I saw him with Minks and Nic Hessler (neé Catwalk) last December at the Echo. He stood onstage alone with a guitar, drum machine and some effects pedals, then spent the rest of the night floating around the venue like a phantom. His album comes out in the spring of 2015.

4. The KVB – Out of Body EP

I shazammed these guys like 20 times before I eventually decided I should probably just buy this record.

5. Kraftwerk – Live at the Walt Disney Concert Hall

Kraftwerk was one of the few bands left on my “must see” bucket list, so when they did their string of 3D shows at the Walt Disney Concert Hall i decided to go all in and saw them 3 times. It did not disappoint.

6. French Vanilla – “Carrie”

They remind me of X-Ray Spex.

7. White Fang – “Talkin’ to Gary on the Corner”

I know nothing about these guys other than the fact that their Facebook url is “whitefang420.” and that they’ve re-appropriated the Taco Bell logo as their own, so there you go.

8. Aphex Twin – Syro

13 years between proper LP’s was way too long!

9. Toy – live at the Echo

Noisey shoegazers from the UK that put out a pretty great album (Join The Dots) in 2013 finally came to LA this year thanks to Part Time Punks.

10. Samira’s Song a Day – “The Endless Space Between You and I”

from Samira Winter’s Song a Week project. I heard about this on Mukta Mohan’s show on KXLU (Wednesdays, 6-9am 88.9fm), which you should listen to as well.

10. Cosmonauts – Persona Non Grata

Look, i’m going to be honest with you. this album came out in 2013 but nobody seemed to notice and I basically listened to it all year and saw them twice so i’m thrusting it upon you again.

I tried to find video of St. Vincent on SNL since that was one of the best TV performances I’ve seen in ages but NBC took it down! Shout out to my favorite KXLU shows, for without you, I would be nothing: Part Time Punks, The Bennett Show, the Zoo Croo, and Mukta!