Best of 2014, part 1

Another year in music is almost over, so it's time for ProgActive to once again select its best achievements. As before, we won't be discussing entire albums but individual tracks. And like last year, we will divide this issue into two parts: today, we will go through some overall observations and assign honorary mentions to five songs that we felt were exemplary but didn't quite make it to our Top 10. Then, on New Year's Eve, we will publish our actual Top 10.

Last year, Steven Wilson took the first two spots on the list with his masterpieces from The Raven That Refused to Sing album. In 2012, the winner was one of Wilson's projects, namely Storm Corrosion. This year, as far as we know Wilson hasn't released anything so we will finally have someone else win. Unlike Wilson, one of our past favorites Anathema has released a new album which is worth mentioning here, so let's begin with its opening track The Lost Song Part 1.

It has been challenging to evaluate and rank Anathema's latest release. The group continues to make fine music, but their arrangements have become a little too noisy for me. Many of the album's tracks start well, like the one embedded above, only to get marred by earache inducing electric guitar work towards the end. Excellent compositions, not so enjoyable execution. This is the main reason why I have ended up handing them honorary mentions, even though many tracks on the album such as parts 2 and 3 of The Lost Song and Dusk (Dark Is Descending) are really good.

Another group with a lengthy history and roots in much heavier material than what they currently play, is Swedish Opeth. They released their new album Pale Communion in late summer and while it was a really decent effort, sounding much more like genuine seventies prog than metal, I have had a hard time picking any standouts from it. Overall, a very good album but there are few individual tracks to get really excited about. Here is our favorite, an instrumental called Goblin that at least fully deserves its honorary mention.

2014 was not particularly enjoyable for seventies prog fans in some other respects. Just think about it: both Yes and Pink Floyd released new albums and both of them were among the weakest releases in the genre! The new Yes album Heaven & Earth sounds like the group should already have quit; the new Pink Floyd album The Endless River for the most part contains hugely disappointing, extraneous material from The Division Bell sessions two decades earlier and has been promised to be the group's last effort. Fine, but wouldn't it have been a grander exit to have left this virtually useless compilation unreleased and been content with The Division Bell as their swan song?

So, no honorary mentions to those two, I was just wondering aloud. All three of our remaining ones go to beautiful instrumentals that are pretty compositions but don't really have the edge that would have been required to enter our actual Top 10. First up is the Texan post rock group This Will Destroy You whose new album Another Language was released in mid-September without much fanfare. I probably wouldn't have even noticed, had the album not appeared in Spotify and had that service not sent me a notification e-mail about it. I felt that it wasn't a particularly strong release overall but there were a couple of pleasant tracks on it, the most memorable of them the somehow fragile sounding The Puritan.

I have a feeling that this year has been weaker than 2013, and that is not only due to Steven Wilson's absence. I am looking at the final Top 10, to be published on New Year's Eve, and it seems that even there, only the Top 6 represents true greatness. What is encouraging about it is that, of those six tracks, three are genuine, wall-to-wall progressive rock which promises good things for the genre in the future. Complicated, artistically ambitious rock is still alive and well. The remaining three tracks in top six also border on prog but should be classified as art rock. One of them bears classical influences, one is reminiscent of nineties guitar rock and one sounds like an exceptionally moody pop song. We'll get into more details in only two days.

One of the first album releases of the year was Rave Tapes by Scottish post rock group Mogwai, an old favorite, out on 20 January. We found their instrumental Heard About You Last Night immediately after that which was only about three weeks after compiling the Best of 2013. That led to thinking that with that track, the next year's best list had already started to form. Well, OK, no. Mogwai does deserve to be mentioned but the track is not quite strong enough to enter our Top 10.

Compiling "the best of the year" lists immediately when the year ends always leaves one slightly in doubt. I am fairly certain that I have succeeded in finding most of the best the year has had to offer, but there is always the possibility of unintended omissions because some new song still remains among those I have not heard. In fact, that is a certainty; it is another thing altogether if hearing all those missed tracks had actually caused a significant change on the list.

For example, I have heard several really good 2013 tracks that I had not heard when I compiled last year's list, but that didn't seem to matter much. Only The One You Are Looking for is Not Here by Katatonia and Heartstrings by Frost* would have been mentioned but would not have affected the list by much. Katatonia's song is so good that it might have robbed the tenth place from Boards of Canada; Frost* would have been outside Top 10 anyway. Trusting that this year is not much different, I will publish my Top 10 with confidence.

Finally, we return to Anathema whose new album Distant Satellites also contains one pleasant instrumental that I like but which isn't quite Top 10 material. The track is called Firelight and it has been embedded above. We are now content with our five honorary mentions for tracks that were considered for inclusion in the Top 10 but didn't quite make it. On 31 December, we will get to the ones that did.