Starting a music review blog this late in the year has its disadvantages. There have been dozens of albums released in 2014 that deserve more attention, so before the year is up and the Best of 2014 lists have been compiled, I’ll be briefly spotlighting several albums that have helped define my year in music.

In early August, several of my friends received a text that probably struck them well off guard. Coming from me, someone who’s always more than eager to pontificate à la Paul F. Tompkins as to why jazz music is wholly intolerable, a recommendation for something called ‘Adult Jazz’ should be taken as either the great reveal of some lifelong hypocrisy or a musical epiphany.

Well as it turns out, Guildford/Leeds-based Adult Jazz satisfies neither criteria. In fact, humorous interactions with friends aside, Adult Jazz has satisfied a hunger I hardly knew I had, but one that apparently has been aching at me for years now. With bands like Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, and even Animal Collective‘s album Sung Tongs, I’ve experimented with music that pleasantly pieces together playful and euphonious vocals with free-flowing plucked strings and tribal percussion, and yet while Adult Jazz could be reduced to such a description, it would feel irresponsible, like faulting a child for attempting to better what their parents have come along and done before. In the same way, Gist Is is an album of a new generation, and while its predecessors should be honored for giving us what they have, here is a newcomer with much to contribute, and with its tonal challenges, progressive structures, and florid vocal offerings, we should welcome it with open arms.

Released in August on the band’s own Spare Thought label, Gist Is has a striking fearlessness to it, often challenging the listener to keep up with the sort of atonal chords, gibberish lyrics, and disassembling rhythm you’d find in “Donne Tongue”, or the kinetic drum circle anthem “Idiot Mantra”, in which vocalist Harry Burgess’ voice flutters above like a portent disguised as a small songbird. The centerpiece of the album “Spook”, certainly one of the best singles of 2014, acts as a haunting and impassioned anthem for beauty and bravery in the new world in which it inhabits.

Almost unbelievably, Adult Jazz have delivered a debut album seemingly out of nowhere that excels in authenticity, grace, and longterm appeal. These guys might very well end up my favorite discovery of this year, and if you’ve got the guts, they might even do the same for you.