My Favorite 50 Albums from 2013

These are the 50 albums I thought were most worth my time (and potentially yours) that came out in what is now last year:

50. Kayne West - Yeezus. The striking production puts it in the top 50. The inane lyrics put it at the bottom.
49. These New Puritans - Field of Reeds
48. Youth Lagoon - Wondrous Bughouse. Spotty but with multiple great tracks. Sounds like he did nothing but listen to Animal Collective and Of Montreal after his first album.
47. James Blake -  Overgrown
46. EPROM - Halflife
45. IO Echo - Ministry of Love
44. Haim - Days Are Gone
43. Sigur Ros - Kveikur
42. White Denim - Corsicana Lemonade
41. Machinedrum - Vapor City
40. Disclosure - Settle
39. Kurt Vile - Waking on a Pretty Daze
38. Bombino - Nomad
37. Booka Shade - Eve
36. Cut Copy - Free Your Mind. A weaker 'Zonoscope' is still a good album.
35. Bonobo - The North Borders
34. Girls In Hawaii - Everest
33. Volcano Choir - Repave. Fun to get to hear what Bon Iver might sound like if it took more risks.
32. Deafheaven - Sunbather. A euphoric black metal album for the ages.
31. Sky Ferreira - Night Time, My Time
30. CHVRCHES - The Bones of What You Believe
29. The Besnard Lakes - Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO
28. Nine Inch Nails - Hesitation Marks
27. Neko Case - The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight...
26. David Bowie - The Next Day. Has anyone else ever made at least one very good album in 6 consecutive decades?
25. Phosphorescent - Muchacho. With special thanks to Jeff Tweedy for making unabashed alt-country credible.
24. Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
23. My Bloody Valentine - m b v. A worthy successor to 'Loveless' that still may have been 15 years too late.
22. Majical Cloudz - Impersonator. Electronic minimalism with a gorgeous voice.
21. Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold
20. Jon Hopkins - Immunity. An entrancing electronic album that must be listened to straight through for optimal impact.
19. Fuck Buttons - Slow Focus. An absolutely mammoth album. An exhausting listen, but in a good way.
18. Foals - Holy Fire. Delivering on the promise of 'Total Life Forever' with a more complete, consistent effort that soars just as high and contains one of my five favorite riffs of the year (chorus of "Inhaler")
17. Danny Brown - Old. My vote as the best-sequenced album of the year.
16. Deerhunter - Monomania. An inconsistent but mostly great album of rough-around-the-edges guitar rock.
15. Local Natives - Hummingbird. More similar to (later) The National than you'd think, which I of course mean as a compliment.
14. Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City. They were always good, but they've stepped their game up a serious margin. Faded for me personally later in the year, but one of the best pop albums of the year.
13. Queens of the Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork. I didn't expect to care about this album much at all, much less continually cue it up throughout the year. Homme & co. still has a surprising amount to say.
12. Jagwar Ma - Howlin. Jumps between psychedelic Beach Boys pop and synth-heavy, electro jam sessions.
11. Speedy Ortiz - Major Arcana. Their jagged, dissonant guitar work is the best Pavement impression being done today.

10. Hookworms - Pearl Mystic. It's the finest love letter to Spirituzalized's 'Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating In Space' that's ever been written, but that's selling it short. 'Pearl Mystic' is a full-on force of nature.

9. Darkside - Psychic. A spacey, prog-y, guitar-dance album that manages to cover territory both ambient and funky. I found myself reaching for this album more often than any other when getting into my car for a late night drive.

8. Frightened Rabbit - Pedestrian Verse. FR continue to shed their Scottish-folk roots in favor of a meatier sound that adds more weight to their devastating heartbreak anthems, though Scott Hutchison's signature folksy, heavily-accented voice remain as charming as ever.

7. London Grammar - If You Wait. Captures the minimalism and clean guitar work of The xx as well as the trip-hop sensibilities of Portishead, but its Hannah Reid's forceful, beautiful vocals that send  the trio over the top.

6. Burial - Rival Dealer (EP). He (she? They?) does it again. Released after most best-of lists went live, the three song, 28 minute EP expands the mysterious producer's range while still hitting all the familiar check marks: eerie interspersed vocal samples, meticulous sub-bass work, piercing synth melodies, and some of the best ambient interludes music has to offer.

5. The National - Trouble Will Find Me

Here's the interesting thing: for being such "indie rock titans" ("indie elder statesmen" may be more accurate), The National are, at their core, not a rock band at all. Other than the thunderous "Sea of Love," 'Trouble Will Find Me' follows the precedent set by 'High Violet' in featuring the warm, nimble bariton of Matt Berninger and the inventive, active drumming of Bryan Devendorf, while guitarist brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner float and shimmer through the background or toss out subtle and gorgeous clean guitar riffs like afterthoughts. It's an accessible album, but the brilliance of it takes a few listens to grasp. Performed live, the album's energy shines through and the songs sound more immediate, but on the album, they coax you in with a guitar hook and then prod you to listen to all of the detail work they've done. It seemed to initially underwhelm many, but it's a truly rewarding album that has lingered on throughout the year, sounding fresh and new on the fourth listen or the 14th or 40th. Matt's lyrics prod at the existential dread of being a middle aged man in an ostensibly indie rock band that continues to pull itself reluctantly up the rungs of festival poster billing. On "I Need My Girl" he sighs, "I'm under the gun again / I know I was a 45 percenter then / I know I was a lot of things." Later, he's a caricature of himself, "a television version of a person with a broken heart." But in the end, he doesn't care, dismissing doubters and supporters alike with the last line of the album: "You can all just kiss off into the air."

4. Los Campesinos! - No Blues

"They're going to be big," David Kohl, the main character in Kieron Gillen's 2009 comic 'Phonogram': The Singles Club' says of Los Campesinos! "Actually scratch that. They're never going to be Big-big. But they're going to be big to some people." Kohl was right on the money, as unlikely as the prediction may have seemed back in 2009, when Los Campesinos! were indie darlings with all the buzz MySpace and YouTube could muster. It's only "some people" who can get really invested in a 7 piece band producing tight and explosive, intimate but raucous, fearless but vulnerable, indie pop music, fronted by someone like Gareth Paisey (or, fine, Gareth Campesinos!), a self-loathing, self-assured singer who evokes a football-obsessed Morrissey but truly aspires to be Paul Heaton. It's the strongest record they've produced, recapturing the energy and vigor of their early years and matching it with the maturation and more tightly-constructed songwriting of their latter years. They've cleaned up their production (guitarist Tom Campesinos! gets co-producer credit with previous LC! producer John Goodmanson) while still sounding as huge and vital as ever. And Gareth is still Gareth, winning Lyricist of the Year running away. "There are no blues that could sound quite as heartfelt as mine" he gloats to open "As Lucerne/The Low" and he's right, though it'd be a disservice to reduce him to a mere gloomsayer and follow his request on "Cemetery Gaits": "Two words upon my headstone please, don't need name or date, only 'Sad Stories.'" The average listener won't catch all of Gareth's football (UK version, please) references but you don't need them--as he points out, "the low is what I came for." A lyrics sheet and fast internet connection are necessities  keep up with Gareth, but if you don't mind missing the meaning in lines like "leave with all the dignity / of a missed Panelka penalty," LC!'s never sounded better as a band and with 'No Blues', have cemented their status as one of Britain's, and indie music's, finest acts.

3. Savages - Silence Yourself

No one seems to deny that Savages are "good." Rather, the "critics" ("haters", more accurately) want to dismiss them as mere derivatives of 80s post-punk legends. And yes, singer Jehnny Beth looks eerily similar to Joy Division's Ian Curtis and sounds a lot Siouxsie and the Banshees' Siouxsie Sioux. But that's just it--it's a surface-level criticism only. The haters are writing them off too quickly to listen to how skilled the four-piece is, individually and in unison. Beth's lyrics are often uncomfortable and always unafraid, describing a night of S&M with a fearlessness that dares you to feel squeamish. Thompson's guitar swerves violently and suddenly between atmospheric screeches and drones and "Holiday In Cambodia"-esque riffs, as seen on the manic "Husbands." It's not guitar work focused on "riffs" per se, but the opening salvo of album highlight "She Will" may be the best guitar line of the year (not to mention her deranged, wailing screech of a guitar solo on "Waiting For A Sign"). Fay Milton's drumming is razor-sharp and comes alive, particularly on the cymbals, at all the right moments to propel the songs to their often jarringly-abrupt conclusions (and the quickly muted cymbal strikes on "She Will"--oh man). Alyse Hassan's bass work is the real star; everything on the album goes through her mean, biting basslines. The album opens, after a sample from 1977 movie Opening Night, with Hassan's swaggering "fuck you" of a classic punk bassline. On the riotous "No Face,", Hassan chugs manically through the verses while Thompson drones overhead, before the two crash together, Thompson's guitar mimicking the bassline an octave higher. It's an impeccably tight album, centered around recapturing their impeccably tight live shows. They were the first act I saw at Austin City Limits this year and they remained the best, even topping post-punk legends The Cure (my personal favorite band, who were a delight, let's not shortchange my heroes) who, due to rain, became the de-facto closers of the weekend.  That in itself is a meaningful triumph--Savages may not have started this party, but they've revived it entirely, with the most impressive debut album of the year.

2. Arcade Fire - Reflektor

From the first whispers of James Murphy's involvement ("Is Arcade Fire going to make a dance record?"), to the first reports from The Reflektors' live shows (I remember hearing "It's like if David Bowie wrote Talking Heads songs while on vacation in the Caribbean"), to the release of "Reflektor" the single, Arcade Fire's follow-up to one of the best records of the new millennium was far and away the most highly anticipated release in a year packed with big name projects. Obviously, the pressure to follow 'The Suburbs' is immense, and a band can reasonably go one of two routes: try and make the same kind of album, only better (usually a recipe for mediocrity, or at the very least, disappointment via diminishing returns) or turn left and defy expectations by making something different and unique--often a recipe for disaster, but also potentially greatness. No, 'Reflektor' is not as good as either 'The Suburbs' or 'Funeral'; now that we've dispensed with that silly question, we can focus on what it is. It's fun. It doesn't take itself too seriously (one of Arcade Fire's few perceived--but real--weaknesses). The band sounds like they're enjoying themselves more than they ever have before--how could they not take joy in the double-time explosion of "Here Comes The Night Time"? That they can have so much fun while pushing their own limits--few would expect this band to be able to groove so easily or have the audacity to make a noisy dub-reggae song--is impressive in itself. What's more impressive is how easily they blow the roof off the album with "Normal Person" and its staggeringly huge grunge-times-glam-rock chorus. Or that they could dabble in the kind of dance synth-pop that bands like Hot Chip, Cut Copy,  or even latter-day Killers cash their checks with, and blow them all out of the water with "Afterlife". Or that this same band could use slide guitar on "Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)" and make it beautiful and heart wrenching. Or that they could also integrate Haitian percussion and rhythms and have it make sense while not being that big of a deal. Or that they could combine elements of Kierkegard, the 1959 film Black Orpheus, the greek Orpheus myth, and musings on the isolationism inherent in an era where so much of human connection and interactivity is conducted through depersonalizing technology. It should be a bloated mess, but it somehow isn't. At least, not to me. It's been 2013's most controversial album this side of Kanye West, and I understand that it may miss for some people. But I find something new to admire with every listen. At the very least, they haven't made a boring album. You can call 'Reflektor' a lot of things, but you can't call it boring.

1. Baths - Obsidian

As far as follow-ups go, 'Obsidian' is as dark and unexpected a left turn as any record this year. 2010's 'Cerulean' was a bright, woozy, melodically-driven dance album--to be precise, an album of beats, not songs. 21 at its release, producer Will Wiesenfeld spoke of his desire to move beyond merely making beats and his frustration at being labeled a "DJ", his desire to play with a live band and become more of a lead singer, but a prolonged struggle with e. coli left him unable to do more than crawl between his bed and the toilet and sidetracked the new album. The frustration at the feelings of helplessness, being betrayed by one's own body and most basic bodily functions, the months of creative void, the much-close-enough-thank-you brush with mortality: these themes largely comprise the lyrics and inform the dark, brooding, heart wrenching album. All of these themes, in fact, appear on one track ("Phaedra") alone: "Phaedra it is you that made / me want to kill myself," "Phaedra it is you that I / owe all my lackluster / Phaedra this apathy," "the thought of mortality / dormant in me." Baths' instrumentation has branched out considerably, bordering on eclectic. 'Obsidian' is punctuated by clicks, whirs, rattling chains, the sounds of running water, traditional drum kits, thumping bass drums, gorgeous piano interludes and jarring piano breakdowns, but the driving force is Wiesenfeld's wavering but transcendent voice. Vastly improved from the shaky and shrill falsetto that occasionally grated in 'Cerulean,' it turns 'Obsidian' into the "weird version of a pop album" Wiesenfeld told Pitchfork he really wanted to make all along. In a way, it's his own twisted, tortured take on the Postal Service's iconic 'Give Up', if the target audience were existential 20-somethings instead of lonely, lovesick adolescents. But where 'Give Up' was content to beep and boop over Ben Gibbard's whispers about staying in bed and making movies, Wiesenfeld throws himself and the kitchen sink at his pain, whether its writing a metal dance anthem ("Earth Death") or screaming about intestinal disease ("lodged in the rectal wall of agony / hell is our only home") over the jagged, slow burn of "No Past Lives," or tearing down his first boyfriend on the lurching "Incompatible": "You don't do anything with your life / fascinating, terrible - your stupid idling mind / I can prod your hurt all night." Weisenfeld later adds, "I was never poetic and never kind," and while there's certainly poetry in 'Obsidian,' it is definitely not kind. Intimate, yes. Dark, definitely. Brilliant, absolutely. But not kind.

Here's a Spotify playlist of (almost all) the list: 

Albums of 2013

As well of as my favorite individual tracks from 2013:

2013