Music trends may come and go, but every year is sure to bring plenty to popular music. 2014 gave the world no shortage of great albums – but which ones to listen to? Our musically knowledgeable music reporter, Daniel Bromfield, has compiled his picks for the best, boldest and most exciting records to come out in 2015.
5.  Salad Days/Salad Days Demos – Mac DeMarco

Mac DeMarco writes pop tunes in the early-Beatles vein: short, sweet and snarky. But rather than cramming dazzling amounts of content into two minutes, DeMarco’s tunes wander and somehow find their way to the end in enough time to form a good pop song. His craft is on top form in Salad Days, and the demos give curious insight to his creative process, adding a few haunting instrumentals that are as enjoyable as his lyric songs.
4.  Why Do The Heathen Rage? – The Soft Pink Truth

As a gay man who likes black metal, Drew Daniel is perpetually faced with the issue of liking a genre with a history of homophobia. On his bold, brilliant Why Do The Heathen Rage?, he tackles this problem by recasting black metal songs as queer club-friendly disco. His source material is ripe for this treatment – metal lyrics about sinners and sodomites could easily apply to LGBTQA* people as seen through homophobic eyes. But Daniel also has a keen sense of humor, and the fun he has in pitting these two genres against each other makes this album as enjoyable as it is admirable.
3. Sandopolis – Hashman Deejay

Canadian producer Hashman Deejay evokes the vastness of space and time by drawing from other genres that aim to do the same, particularly the interstellar concerns of Detroit techno and the warped nostalgia of deep house and chillwave. But his approach to this music is so simple and effortless it’s hard to say if he’s doing it on purpose. This is simple, laid-back dance music capable of rocking both stoner dens and dance floors – and infuriating DJs who spend weeks on end perfecting the right side-chain.
2. It’s Album Time – Todd Terje

Everything about It’s Album Time reeks of patrician smugness at first. It riffs on space-age pop, bossa nova, disco and all manner of pop music’s goofiest outcasts, topped off with a sad man with a martini seated at a piano on the cover. But, Terje is a skilled composer and he’s aware of the time and painstaking care needed to make these tiki-bar comforts. This is perhaps the year’s most sumptuous listening experience, and for all of Terje’s self-consciousness, it might take a few listens for the album’s inherent goofiness to sink in.
1. Beyoncé – Beyoncé

Pop has historically portrayed sex as something one person gives up to another. On her monumental self-titled fifth album, Beyoncé casually thumbed her nose at this entire tradition by portraying it as something fun, filthy and most importantly, mutual. If Beyoncé were sexy songs alone, it would still probably score the top spot. But she also reflects on marriage, motherhood, body image, envy and death in such detail and with such conviction that every song could potentially yield an album. All of this over music that treats contemporary pop trends (indie pop, alternative R&B, post-dubstep) as pastiche for the first time in their histories. This is something unprecedented.
Honorable Mentions: Vladislav Delay – Visa, Vashti Bunyan – Heartleap, Aphex Twin – Syro, Tink – Winter’s Diary 2
Check out the Arts and Culture desk’s top albums of 2014 at dailyemerald.com

Yet for all the great albums that came out in 2014, it seemed mostly like a year in transition.  Few new pop stars or major genre trends emerged, and most of the year’s most acclaimed albums were by relative veterans (Aphex Twin, Sun Kil Moon, Run The Jewels, Swans, St. Vincent) — as were its biggest (Taylor Swift, Coldplay). Yet a few promising artists have emerged this year that may blow up in 2015 and make it an even better year for music.
Here are some of those artists:
Mood Hut
Deep house is all over the charts thanks to Disclosure’s massive success in 2014. But Vancouver’s Mood Hut collective has been quietly honing a classicist take on the sound that’s as suited for casual home listening as it is for large-scale raging. The collective’s flagship act Pender Street Steppers released the awesome Life In The Zone in 2013 and crewmember Hashman Deejay released the stunning Sandopolis towards the end of last year. But most of its most promising acts have yet to issue any widely available albums. 2015 may change that.
PC Music
Masterminded by producer A.G. Cook (who may or may not make all the music he releases), this London-based web label specializes in minimal, creepily artificial Top 40-style pop songs, delivered by robotic pop stars with names like QT and Hannah Diamond. Though there’s a whiff of irony about PC’s productions, its songs are as catchy as anything on the radio right now, and it would not surprise me to see one of its anonymous pop products actually make it to the charts. (I nominate Hannah Diamond’s “Every Night” as a candidate.)
John Williams
The 82-year-old composer rocked the world nearly 40 years ago with the original Star Wars soundtracks, and he’s stepping up to the conductor’s platform once again for the upcoming sequel trilogy. Hearing his gleeful orchestral music in the trailer for Episode VII was a treat, and now that his soundtracks are bigger than ever (Frozen, Guardians of the Galaxy, Mockingjay), it’s not unlikely whatever new music Williams cooks up for Episode VII will be a hit.
Father John Misty
J. Tillman has been working the festival circuit for a while as Father John Misty. But his upcoming album I Love You, Honeybear – slated for a February release – may finally treat him to a slice of the critic’s pie he’s so far only tasted with his old band Fleet Foxes. After his first single “Bored In The USA,” he seems slated to step up to the curmudgeonly-white-guy throne Sun Kil Moon held last year.
Disclosure (even more so!)
Disclosure’s been big for a while, but it has increasingly chosen to stay behind the scenes as producers. Its monopoly on the recent deep house boom means it’s a lot of aging musicians’ first collaboration choice for a late-career reinvention. It has already worked with Mary J. Blige on her new The London Sessions, and they’re supposedly in the studio with Madonna. Who knows who’s next? Elvis Costello, perhaps?