Especially around the end of the year, a more or less groundbreaking fact can easily be observed throughout western society: The importance of the leftovers. Take the christmas dinner. We here at the NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION sanatorium, receive devastating letters year after year, asking for help and succor. Families and relationships have been destroyed over silver-plattered turkey mayhem or under the mistletoe. The leftovers instead, they represent an opposite. Ease. Comfort. Quietness.
When you wake up, slightly hung over and languid, there’s nothing better than raiding the fridge and putting a wild arrangement of meat, sauce and garnish into the microwave and just wait for this shrill sound to indicate it’s all good now. The television set humming, the sofa calling your name and your pants saggy and just not yet gravy stained. It’s great cause there is no pressure. No one cares. No one is watching. No one keeping an eye on you. The same rule obviously applies on records. So I decided to take a step back from delivering thoughtful wisdom this time and decided to let the so-called writers of NBHAP put down a little arrangement of this year’s leftovers, to serve you a post-horrible-year dish that’ll blow your tender ears and minds.
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[two_third last=”yes”] AC/DC
Rock or Bust
Label: Columbia
Fuck retirement, fuck dementia, fuck innovation, fuck seriousness and most of all: fuck the critics. AC/DC trust in rock. And we trust in AC/DC. Because they don’t change. Because they don’t try to. They just rock the blues away. Time and time again. With or without Malcolm Young. Keep it up: Rock or Bust! – Friederike Bloch
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[two_third last=”yes”] DARK WAVES
Dark Waves
Label: Five Seven Music
I ran into Nick Long’s music two years ago, when his musical project was still called WILD HEART. I fell in love with his sound in one. I grabbed his EP and it’s been on heavy rotation ever since. His reinvented sound is even more intimate, moving and layered and has been with me through some long nights, when I was in desperate need of saving. ‘Life comes in waves of darkness and light.’ – That’s what it’s all about. – Josefine Vorwerk
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[two_third last=”yes”]EMBRACE
Embrace
Label: Cooking Vinyl
Leaving while being on a career high. You don’t really need to understand why the British stadium rockers went on on a eight-year hiatus after their 2006 album This New Day. But it’s actually really good to have them back. The sound of their self-titled comeback LP hasn’t pretty much changed in the past decade. Epic and emotional anthems team up with big gestures. Not new: But these guys somehow invented that sound. Thumbs up for the original. – Norman Fleischer
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[two_third last=”yes”] GLASS ANIMALS
ZABA
Label: Wolf Tone
Released on super-producer Paul Epworth’s new imprint, Wolf Tone, GLASS ANIMALS’ album ZABA is certainly an impressive debut. With its twist of pop, R&B grooves and expressive vocals, it’s quite unlike anything we’ve heard this year. Wanting the album to take you on a journey from start to finish, lead singer Dave Bayley cities influences such as Madlib, Nina Simone and FLYING LOTUS. Named after the children’s book The Zabajaba Jungle by William Steig, the oxford quirk-pop quartet’s first full-length is sexy, tropical and gorgeously bizarre.’ – Ange Suprowicz
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[two_third last=”yes”] OUGHT
More Than Any Other Day
Label: Constellation Records
Montreal quartet OUGHT blew on the scene with More Than Any Other Day, a record that picked up where early 80s post punk left off. An album that is as compassionate as it is angry, the songs can go quiet/loud in heartbeat, with a driving percussion to hold it all together. This is the album you put on when ‘no one gets you.’ – Kika Jonsson
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[two_third last=”yes”] SLEAFORD MODS
Divide and Exit
Label: Harbinger Sound
NOEL GALLAGHER himself recently complained about the fact that Britain’s legendary working class is currently not really represented via the countries pop musical output. You can get a bit sick of all the ALT-J‘s and other former middle class art students, but for all those who needed a bit rougher Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn are the official saviours of British punk rock. They sound as if THE STREETS recorded a SEX PISTOLS album. Their music is lo-fi and the songs are rants about basically everything Jason Williamson is sick off. It’s the soundtrack of a frustrated and left-behind generation. This record is a pamphlet and if the SLEAFORD MODS are clever they gonna ignite an even bigger fire in 2015. We’re not interested in extinguishing it. – Norman Fleischer
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[two_third last=”yes”]TEMPLES
Sun Structures
Label: Heavenly Records
TEMPLES pulled off one of the most impressive and lauded debuts of the year with the enigmatically titled Sun Structures. Insisting in our recent interview with the band that the record ‘isn’t sunshine music’, tracks like Shelter Song and Colours to Life nonetheless leak an infectious pop enthusiasm that wouldn’t be out of place on the sandy shores of the West Coast – or dreaming away on a grey English day, as you please. Bathed in marbled colour and drawing from the streams of multiple decades, Sun Structures promises rotation long beyond the present. – Chloe Mayne
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[two_third last=”yes”]THEE SILVER MT ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA
Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything
Label: Constellation
If this year taught us one thing, maybe it’s this: Shit’s still fucked up, don’t fool yourself. And if this fatalistic sounding but – looking at the world around our safe harbor – actually not that untrue statement finds one record to be represented by, then it is THEE SILVER MT ZION’s epic Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything. This record is plain and simple. The best of anger, sadness and poetic beauty – post-rock with a big fat grim smile, sarcastic but hopeful and passionate to the bone. – Henning Grabow
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[two_third last=”yes”] TRIGGERFINGER
By Abscence of the Sun
Label: Excelsior Recordings
2014 easily could have been 1970. Sadly, not all golden oldies did blow us away. Still, my melancholic soul was very happy for every nostalgic album being released. One of my most favourite albums this year was from TRIGGERFINGER. A very bluesy and rocky album that is still accessible to many. MORRISSEY, Slash, Stevie Nicks and Judas Priest have all given me countless hours of pleasure and pure enjoyment in the past and also succeeded doing that this year. But I have to be honest here; maybe I was just very happy to hear anything new from the Belgian rockers. – Emily Schennach
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[two_third last=”yes”] VON SPAR
StreetLife
Label: Italic Recordings
With their fourth longplayer, the Cologne-based band incidentally released one of the best albums of the year. It’s an unbelievable eclectic and well produced masterpiece, that also could be able to gain the attention of a broader audience. Finally. The band once more creates stunning sound scapes somewhere between electronica, synthpop and indeed with that special kind of meandering ‘krautrock’ flavour. I really can’t say more than this being an excellent album recorded by excellent musicians about which we recently also reported a bit closer right here. – Stefan Kutschera
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