Listening Habits 10-11.14

The end of November brings us to the start of the festive period for music lovers everywhere: the time to share your favorite music with the world by making "Best of" lists! CMC will, of course, honor this tradition as well, but (sticking to our own habits) we will wait until the actual end of the year before we finalize our ever evolving annual list.

In the meantime, we bring you a Top 15 of our favorite albums for October and November 2014 featuring some strong candidates for the annual Top 50:

At the top of this list we have the seventh and, in our opinion, best solo album by Ty Segall. The extremely prolific musician took his time in the making of "Manipulator" (14 months is quite a long period for his usual standards) and the results are truly outstanding: 17 tracks clocking close to an hour of non-stop garage rock brilliance, not encountered since the heyday of The White Stripes a decade ago. It’s just three months since the release of this album, but "Manipulator" already sounds like a classic to our ears: the crowning achievement so far in Ty Segall’s impressive, ever increasing body of work.

Mary Timony has been among my favorite musicians ever since I first noticed her work with Helium in the early '90s. I still remember being blown away by "The American Jean", an early single I discovered in the Rough Trade Shops compilation "Unnecessary Niceness" sometime in the summer of 1993. Twenty-one years and many excellent albums later, Timony is delivering the goods once again with her fearsomely rocking new outfit Ex Hex and their awesome debut LP with the self-explanatory title "Rips". Lock up your sons, Ex Hex are casting some pretty irresistible spells out there!

In our Top 5 you will also find Thurston Moore’s latest solo effort channeling his Sonic Youth self with the help of his old band mate Steve Shelley, My Bloody Valentine’s bass player Deb Googe and Nought / Chrome Hoof guitarist James Sedwards, Shellac’s return after seven years with "Dude Incredible", their best album since the early '00s, and Goat with "Commune", the Swedish collective’s imaginative second effort, going deeper into our collective, primitive subconscious.

Here are all the autumn 2014 additions to CMC’s record collection:

Top 15 Albums

1.   Manipulator - TY SEGALL
2.   Rips - EX HEX
3.   The Best Day - THURSTON MOORE
4.   Dude Incredible - SHELLAC
5.   Commune - GOAT
6.   Brill Bruisers - THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS
7.   The Hum - HOOKWORMS
8.   Plowing Into The Field Of Love - ICEAGE
9.   IX - ...AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD
10. The Physical World - DEATH FROM ABOVE 1979
11. At Best Cuckold - AVI BUFFALO
12. …And Star Power - FOXYGEN
13. Barragán - BLONDE REDHEAD
14. Taiga - ZOLA JESUS
15. Strange Weather EP - ANNA CALVI

Top 15 Tracks

1.   Feel - TY SEGALL
2.   Waterfall - EX HEX
3.   Hide From The Sun - GOAT
4.   Dude Incredible - SHELLAC
5.   The Best Day - THURSTON MOORE
6.   War On The East Coast - THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS
7.   So What - AVI BUFFALO
8.   On Leaving - HOOKWORMS
9.   Trainwreck 1979 - DEATH FROM ABOVE 1979
10. The Lord's Favorite - ICEAGE
11. Ghost Rider - ANNA CALVI
12. How Can You Really - FOXYGEN
13. Hunger - ZOLA JESUS
14. Dripping - BLONDE REDHEAD
15. The Dragonfly Queen - ...AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD

Have a listen to our October - November Top 15 here: