JMG Top Ten For 2014

For the second year in a row, my favorite track of the year is by out and openly HIV+ singer/songwriter John Grant, whose collaboration with Hercules & Love Affair spawned a gorgeous modern dance video interpretation of Grant's tale of coming out positive to a lover. Culled from my Spotify playlists, here's my top ten for 2014.

1. John Grant - I Try To Talk To You
2. The 2 Bears - Not This Time
3. Duke Dumont - I Got U
4. Perfume Genius - Queen
5. Royksopp & Robyn - Monument
6. SBTRKT - New Dorp, New York
7. Clean Bandit - Rather Be
8. Dave Aude w/Andy Bell - Aftermath
9. Le1f - Boom
10. Bright Light Bright Light - I Believe

My 2013 list is here, my 2012 list is here. Let us know what your favorites for 2014 have been.

MORE FAVORITES:
Sufjan Stevens - A Little Lost
Erasure - Elevation
Aphex Twin - Minipops 67

Perfume Genius - Fool

Stereogum recaps:

Too Bright, the intense and powerful new album from Perfume Genius, is one of the year’s best, and it’s also given us the haunted, surreal, generally unforgettable videos for “Queen” and “Grid.” Today, we get a third, for “Fool,” that’s very much in line with the last two. The video has a very glammed-up Mike Hadreas rollerblading down a British lane and through a grocery store, into an arcane religious ritual that transforms into an avant-garde modern dance recital. It’s one of those videos where you have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen next and you can’t wait to find out

Queen is definitely in my year-end top ten.

Perfume Genius - Grid

His previous track Queen is already on my best of 2014 list. Stereogum reviews the latest:

Perfume Genius is, among many other things, one of our great working music-video artists. His video for “Queen,” the first single from forthcoming album Too Bright, was a surreal masterpiece, and his new “Grid” video isn’t far behind. The clip, from director Charlotte Rutherford, finds a glammed-up (and eventually bloodied) Mike Hadreas surrounded by dancing, silver-bodysuited demons, then made to serve as the centerpiece of a bizarre dinner party. The video is a tough thing to parse but an even tougher thing to shake. Its atmosphere is knife-edge intense, and its images burn their way into your brain.

Perfume Genius - Queen

Via Stereogum:

A couple of days ago, Perfume Genius announced the new album Too Bright and shared the stark, powerful first single “Queen.” Mike Hadreas, the man who performs as Perfume Genius, has said that the album represents a confident, confrontational embrace of queer identity and of the effects it can have, and that sure as hell comes through in the video, which is a truly great piece of work. Cody Critcheloe, the man behind the performance-art pop project SSION, directed the video, a surreal masterpiece that starts with Hadreas playing a street hustler and jumps into the unknown from there.

Wow. I love this. You might recall his similarly compelling 2012 video with late porn star Arpad Miklos.