Year-End Top 5
▼ Music
Top 5 Experimental Albums To Soundtrack Your Faith Crisis
Have you had an existential crisis dealing with the faith that your parents raised you on? The experimental albums in this list can help you process the trauma. … read more
Top 5 Organic Free-Range Local Albums
Are you the cruciferous locavore crusader who’s always first in line at the Downtown Farmer’s Market? Fill your reusable, upcycled basket with some of Utah’s best organic free-range local albums of 2015. … read more
Straight to the Mu’Fuckin’ Greatest: The Best Mixtapes of 2014
For years now, some of the biggest game-changers in hip-hop haven’t been albums—they’ve been “mixtapes”—free, digital releases that may or may not have an annoying DJ who ruins the whole thing. These days, mixtapes are a necessity for staying relevant, which probably sucks for rappers, but appeals to the cheapskate in me. Everyone makes them, so there’s a lot to sift through. Luckily, SLUG has done all the hard work for you, and these are the 10 tapes from 2014 you need to know about.
SLUG Mag’s Top 5 Albums of 2014
Every December, SLUG Magazine sounds the rallying call and gathers the staff’s lists of Top 5 albums from the year. In the next few pages, find a wide range of genres, artists and records that were of note for 2014—with a few other Top 5 beats like video games, comics and movies peppered throughout. … read more
Top 5: Dirty Provo Vol. 1
It seems like Provo’s music scene has been constantly pregnant for the past decade—steadily giving birth to glistening, new indie-rock babes. Jacob Hall recognized this when he moved from Salt Lake City to Provo last May (his cousins offered him a free place to stay). Hall had just emerged from a failed relationship and was taken aback by the community’s support of Provo’s weird yet incredible music scene. … read more
Top 5: Big Wild Wings
Big Wild Wings decided to buck the trends hard by combining a kickass drummer in Chris Soper with a master synth-player in Tyler Hummel, topping it off with the captivating Lyndsi Austin as their lead vocalist on bass. Within the last year, the trio have become the alt/indie band to see in SLC, capping everything off with their debut full-length album, Speaking In Cursive, which came out in November. … read more
Top 5: Ered Wethrin
Just like the epic themes of fantasy and esoteric mysticism that inspired Ered Wethrin’s lyrics, Tides of War takes its time unfolding a vast and enchanting audial world. From the Glen Cook–inspired “Bloody Annals and Brooding Skies” to the Steven Erikson tribute in “Requiem for the Fallen,” Sven Smith’s solo recordings recall the stoic and battle-hardened tales of lesser-known fantasy realms. … read more
Top 5: Foster Body
Foster Body’s debut album, Landscapes, which was released on cassette and digitally in March, captures the Salt Lake City–based, punk combo at a brilliant moment of process—merging strong aesthetic sentiment and live performance practice into a compelling vision for contemporary noise-punk. With eight tracks lashing across the album’s 20-minute duration, Landscapes is a quick yet thrilling listen. … read more
Top 5: Horseback
Jenks Miller, the father behind Horseback’s latest album, Piedmont Apocrypha, has again created a twined nest of experimental sound by combining a base of seething feedback and altering levels of oozing drone. The album as a whole lifts up the listener in a cradle to help see Miller’s vision of music as a single, fluid entity with this nongenre specific album. … read more
Top 5: Hundred Waters
Following the subtly intricate formula of their first album, Hundred Waters’ new release continues with the same airy splendor, but with more refinement. The musical foundation of this album perfectly represents 2014, a year of revitalization and self-discovery, by sounding neither senescent nor ahead of its time, but flawlessly fit into the fringes of current music. … read more