Best Music of 2013

 

The 13 Best Albums of 2013

(in no particular order)

 

Chastity Belt--No Regerts (Help Yourself Records)

 

Wickedly funny, raunchy songs from an all-female quartet from Walla Walla, Washington. Boasting amazing vocals and chiming, driving guitars, No Regerts is one of those albums you need to listen to at least once a day for months on end.  

Bombino--Nomad (Nonesuch)

Desert rock filtered through American trance blues with incendiary guitar work from Tuareg artist Bombino from Agadez, Niger.  

Savages—Silence Yourself (Matador Records)

A ferocious debut from London-based quartet.  It’s great to see a buzz band that lives up to its buzz—especially when the overall message of said buzz band is telling you to tune out all the hype, noise and distractions. 

Arcade Fire—Reflektor (Merge)

 

Arcade Fire’s most enigmatic album. During the first couple of listens, I found myself admiring its ambition, but hating its pretension; finding the songs derivative, then inventive; diffuse but too solipsistic. But every listen gave me more to admire. Reflektor is one of those albums that rewards patience and getting past preconceptions.

The National--Trouble Will Find Me (4AD Records)

 

Personally, I think Matt Berninger goes looking for trouble ‘cause it’s so much fun to sing about.  No new ground broken here, but the National make angst and self-doubt so musically inviting.

 

Low--The Invisible Way (Sub Pop)

 

Gorgeous songs of faith, longing and reconciliation, ably produced by Jeff Tweedy.

 

Superchunk--I Hate Music (Merge Records)

 

Somehow Superchunk manages to write a summer road song (“Me & You & Jackie Mittoo”) that also ponders time, loss and mortality.  Maybe music “can’t bring anyone back to this earth” but it’s the best we got.  And on this album, it’s fine compensation.

Mavis Staples—One True Vine (ANTI-Records)

The second album of Mavis Staples produced by Jeff Tweedy is a low-key gem. Her version of Low’s “Holy Ghost” is a spine tingler.

Neko Case--The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You (ANTI- Records)

 

After falling into a depression after a number of deaths in her family, Neko Case creates one of her most personal and arresting albums.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds--Push The Sky Away (Bad Seed Ltd)

 

Nick Cave eases up on the pedal-to-the-metal assault of the two Grinderman albums and Dig, Lazarus, Dig, but these are no lullabies.  The musical restraint creates its own tension, and the lyrics, with mermaids hung by their hair from the streetlights and a fetus on a leash, add to the unease. 

 

My Bloody Valentine—MBV (self-released)

22 years after Loveless, My Bloody Valentine releases an album that builds on that classic and expands the sound.

 

Rhye—Woman (Republic Records)

Is your Al Green CD in the car? Does your Barry White album skip?  No problem, Rhye's Woman will set the mood.

 

Valerie June--Pushin' Against a Stone (Sunday Best) 

 

With a voice that sounds like it's coming from a John Lomax field recording instead of a contemporary album, Valerie June transports the listener. 

2010 Top Ten List

1) This is Happening, LCD Soundsystem
Summer officially started 3:06 into “Dance Yourself Clean” when the volume surges and handclapping gives way to a monster bass line. Finally, I can see the appeal of driving a boom car where the bass rattles all the windows in the neighborhood.

2) The Suburbs, Arcade Fire
This album could have been a load of pretentious crap, filled with clichés about the sterility and open-aired claustrophobia of suburban life. Thankfully, The Suburbs (for the most part) avoids those pitfalls and delivers a meditation on the emotional pull of a place you once called home. And the importance and inevitability of leaving that place.

3) Halcyon Digest, Deerhunter
The album is shot through with lyrics that twist in upon themselves, contradicting lines of optimism, then providing grace notes to the bleakest lines. One of the more poignant tracks, “Helicoptor,” imagines the last moments of Dima, a Russian male escort, before he is thrown off a helicopter. That strange unidentifiable percussive sound is the blade of the helicopter, heard through a drug-addled haze.

4) My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West
In an album filled with diverse musical styles, samples from all over, guest stars and a wide-ranging inventiveness, West still manages to find space to wedge in all of his ego and all of his doubts.

5) Together, The New Pornographers
Not as propulsive as Twin Cinema or as hauntingly lovely as Challengers, Together is still sublime pop.

6) The Lady Killer, Cee Lo Green
This album is much more than the ubiquitous kiss-off single with the Motown bounce. Cee Lo obviously loves the soul stylings of the sixties and seventies and does an inspired take on them.

7) The ArchAndroid, Janelle Monáe
A remarkable debut album, switching between music genres with more dexterity and poise than most veterans could manage. She also seemed to be everywhere at once as a guest artist—appearing on albums by B.o.B., Big Boi and Of Montreal. And she brings it live. Even hampered with a muddy sound mix at Chicago’s Riviera Theatre, she put on a jaw-dropping performance.

8) High Violet, The National
Not the high water mark of Boxer or Alligator, perhaps because what they are writing about is more elusive. Instead of the bipolar extremes of male extended adolescence, with its dizzying self-regard (“All the Wine”) or its groveling lows (“Slow Show”), High Violet is trying to capture something else, that imperceptible slide into adulthood.

9) The Fool, Warpaint
The first full-length album by this LA all-female quartet is hypnotic. Lots of space in these songs to get lost in.

10) Crazy for You, Best Coast
Sunny pop songs about AWOL boyfriends who disappear with the weed.


Lots of Happy Listenings:

The Five Ghosts, Stars

False Priest, Of Montreal

Forgiveness Rock Record, Broken Social Scene

Broken Bells, Broken Bells

Broken Dreams Club, Girls

Astro Coast, Surfer Blood

You Are Not Alone, Mavis Staples

New Amerykah Part Two, Erykah Badu


Their fifteen minutes are over: Sleigh Bells

More Lollapalooza

Arcade Fire
The high point of my summer:

Set list: Ready to Start (opener), Neighborhod #2 Laika, No Cars Go, Haiti, Empty Room Rococo, The Suburbs, Intervention, Crown Of Love, Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels), Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), We Used to Wait, Neighborhood #3 (Power Out), Rebellion (Lies), Keep the Car Running. Wake Up (encore)