Best of 2014: Reader picks

Before I get into my personal picks for the best records of 2014, I want to give my readers the spotlight.

To tabulate this list, I looked at all the posts to this blog for the year. I tossed out all of the Saturday Shuffles which tend to get quite a bit of traffic and focused just on the reviews. These are the Top 10 most viewed articles of the year.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you again in 2015.


10. Metallica - "Lords of Summer." Published April 8. A new tune from Metallica that may or may not make their next record. I liked it despite its flaws.

Review: Van Canto, "Dawn of the Brave"

As bizarre as it is, I wasn’t sure that I was going to review this latest record from a cappella metallers Van Canto. Then I got to the final song on the record, a cover of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” and I just couldn’t resist.

“Paranoid,” as we all know, is a fairly simple three-chord tune and wouldn’t seem to lend itself to the multi-voice a cappella treatment as well as a more complex composition, but Van Canto gives it the old college try. The results, with guys going “bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom dah dum doo” is at the same time sort of ridiculous and, strangely, absolutely entrancing. I had to listen to at least three times in a row, and I’m still not sure what I think about it. But I think you need to hear it.