In January I almost posted a year-end list of my favorite music from 2014. I’d been re-listening to a lot of what came out during the past year and figuring out what I’d listened to most, what I’d liked most. And, as you’ll notice, I’d already put together a books list, so I was poised to get back into the game of year-end nonsense after missing last year (and yes, it’s nonsense, but I love it all the same). What stopped me this year was an inkling that Drip Audio might’ve put something out that I’d missed. Drip Audio, if you’re not already familiar, is an absolutely amazing label out of Canada that only puts out the best of the weirdest best, often limiting themselves to one or two releases a year, and, following whatever cycle they’ve been running on over the past few years, often putting the stuff out in the middle of December, when everyone else is looking backward trying to tally the year’s offerings. So, of course, I pull up there home site, and what do I find? There’s a new Subtle Lip Can album. And, just like that, I’m unable to post my list—not without listening to this album. And not just because it’s a Drip Audio release (which will invariably demand a spot on any worthwhile best-of list), but because Subtle Lip Can’s eponymous debut stands as one of the best records I’ve heard in the last ten years. So, my apologies, you can find the list below*, but more importantly, Subtle Lip Can has a new record!! And, hot damn, it’s a brain scrambler. As well one would hope. Still swimming against the current, the trio (Josh Zubot on violin, Bernard Falaise on guitar, Isaiah Ceccarelli on drums) contort their instruments into plinging, gut-bursting, animal-heaving monstrousities. One of the things I really loved about their debut was this quality of playing that generated these gloriously animalistic sounds, nothing like traditional instruments, but more like the loosing of the souls of beasts. And Reflective Drime picks up that thread, those animalisms, with an added tinniness, a here-and-there bed of industrialism, with wide scrapes and pinnish micro-punctures. The bottom line of which is to say, thank everything, there’s a new Subtle Lip Can--get it now and be destroyed. There’s nothing like quite like them.
*20 other favorites from 2014: Alvaays – Alvaays, Angeles 9 – Injuries, Anne Guthrie – Codiaeum variegatum, Battle Trance – Palace of Wind, The Body – I Shall Die Here, Caribou – Our Love, D’Angelo – Black Messiah, Dragging an Ox Through Water – Panic Sentry, Each Other – Being Elastic, The Fun Years – One Quarter Descent, Goodwill Smith – The Honeymoon Workbook, Gordon Ashworth – S.T.L.A., Ian William Craig – A Turn of Breath, Nap Eyes – Whine of the Mystic, Posse – Soft Opening, Rhodri Davies – An Air Swept Clean of All Distance, St. Vincent – St. Vincent, A Sunny Day in Glasgow – Sea When Absent, Vladislav Delay – Visa, White Suns – Totem, Wold – Postsocial
