Der amerikanische ROLLING STONE hat gewählt: die 50 besten Alben 2014 – die Top 20

U2, Coldplay, Skrillex: Das schätzen die US-Kollegen. Sehen Sie hier die Top 20 der 50 besten Alben 2014, gewählt vom amerikanischen ROLLING STONE. Plätze 3-1. Die Begründungen im Original.

von Sassan Niasseri 02.12.2014

20. Sharon Van Etten: Are We There

2. Bruce Springsteen: ‚High Hopes‘. This new peak in Springsteen’s 21st-century hot streak is his most gloriously loose, vibrant album in years. In the past, Springsteen would never have allowed himself to release an album that includes two covers and reworked versions of his own older tunes, let alone give Tom Morello license to splatter virtuoso wah-wah’ed madness over much of it – but Springsteen was so much older then. Now he’s more unpredictable than ever, and it’s working: Despite the varied origins of the songs, High Hopes hangs together with striking sonic and thematic consistency, finding fresh angles on his central concern: the fault lines in the American dream. Springsteen worked on much of the album during his year-and-a-half-long Wrecking Ball world tour, and the expansiveness of that tour’s 19-piece incarnation of the E Street Band – featuring a horn section, backup singers and a percussionist – carries over to the big, bold arrangements of tracks like „High Hopes“ (first recorded in the early 1990s by an obscure L.A. punk crew called the Havalinas), the bar-band romp „Frankie Fell in Love“ and the gangster’s portrait „Harry’s Place.“ The revamped version of „American Skin (41 Shots)“ – a song about police shooting a young black man, originally echoing the killing of Amadou Diallo in 1999 – proved to be a tragically prescient choice for the year of Ferguson. But the album’s high point is the Morello-Springsteen duet on „The Ghost of Tom Joad,“ where Morello’s rage-filled, celestial solo is a song in itself. The whole thing runs together like a marathon gig, united by a hard eye on the national condition and the fire in Springsteen’s voice.

1. U2: ‚Songs of Innocence‘. There was no bigger album of 2014 – in terms of surprise, generosity and controversy. Songs of Innocence is also the rebirth of the year. Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. put their lives on the line: giving away 11 songs of guitar rapture and frank, emotional tales of how they became a band out of the rough streets and spiritual ferment of Seventies Dublin. This is personal history with details. In the furiously brooding „Cedarwood Road,“ named after Bono’s home address as a boy, he recalls the fear and rage that drove him to punk rock. „The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)“ is a glam-stomp homage to the misfit voice that inspired Bono to sing. And that’s his mother, who died when Bono was 14, still guiding and comforting him in the chorus of „Iris (Hold Me Close).“ This is a record full of the band’s stories and triumph, memory and confession detonated with adventure and poise. In its range of sounds, there may be no more complete U2 album: The band bonded its founding post-punk values with dance momentum in „Volcano“ and the raw, jagged „Raised by Wolves,“ and humanized the digital pathos of „Every Breaking Wave“ and the harrowing „Sleep Like a Baby Tonight“ with the vocal folk-soul warmth of The Joshua Tree. „I have a will for survival,“ Bono sings in the closing track, „The Troubles.“ Songs of Innocence is the proof – and the emotionally raw rock album of the year, at any price.

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