AOTY #2: Julian Casablancas + The Voidz - Tyranny

I'm getting this out of the way now: Tyranny was created by Julian Casablancas, who was in The Strokes, who emerged from the posh New York teenage prep world to bless us with one of the few perfect albums of the 2000s. This context is unavoidable, and instead will strengthen the argument at hand: Tyranny is the second-best album of 2014, and quite possibly the one that, in retrospect, becomes its most dissected

Tyranny sounds like nothing else, but its context is all too familiar. When artists enter their "experimental" phase, it is only after achieving perfection that they seek to toy with conventions and curate a never-before-heard product. Kanye West's Yeezus, a vortex of sound, only comes into existence when a creator knows all of the rules - how else can they be broken so well? While Mr. West samples his artistic credo early on, Jules's takeaway is that it's more powerful when done in your own voice - This isn't for everybody, this is for nobody, he says, and the rest of the album is spent in Jules-nation, population one

Whenever the album entered the vicinity of approachability, the music warped its course with no time for listeners to adjust. It truly is an "album" in every sense of the word; each part exists in its own world under the cohesive tent of experimentation. Which leads us to the album's crowning achievement: "Human Sadness"

Spanning eleven minutes in length, "Human Sadness" renders all other long-form songs released in 2014 completely irrelevant (here's looking to you, Swans). Even more than the "world music" of fellow indie darlings Vampire Weekend, "Human Sadness" and Tyranny as a whole is globalization music. Mass-consumption, ambiguity, many small parts adding up to a distorted whole, how do you accurately encapsulate escapist music?

- Brian Duricy stopped the review here because if you read it, you'll get it

Make sure you catch up on the entire list of 2014's best albums before we reveal which one snagged the top spot tomorrow!