10. Haim – Days Are Gone
In terms of plain and simple fun this year, no record beats Days Are Gone. From its opening synths, which are as warm and cheesy as baked macaroni, the three Haim sisters — along with drummer Dash Hutton — indulge in 11 tracks of comfort food pop, from the angular guitars of “Forever” to the disco chorus of “Don’t Save Me.” Each track conforms to a tried and true verse chorus verse format but, Haim’s knack for instant classic songwriting keeps the record from seeming stale. There’s a devil may care spirit to each track, and, even better, a sense that all three sisters are having a blast making it.
Where many of 2013’s best records were intimate, serious and challenging, Days Are Gone was the FM radio pop antidote none of us knew we needed. I’ve probably listened to “The Wire” more than any song this year — I know each word by heart. Some might accuse Haim of relying too much on the soft rock touchstones of the mid 70s, but writing music this enjoyable and generous is harder than it looks. Whether you’re making a heartsick mixtape or looking for something to crank on a Summer road trip, Days Are Gone will, from now on, be the obvious choice.
9. Majical Cloudz – Impersonator
“See how I’m faking my side of it / I’m a liar, I say I make music.” These are the first lines Devon Welsh sings on Impersonator, his second album as one half of Majical Cloudz. Backed by producer and multi-instrumentalist Matthew Otto, Welsh’s lyrics only get more direct from there — his rich, thick baritone masks his unflinching confidence, the mark of an artist unafraid to bare all. The songs are catchy and (mostly) radio friendly, but the duo is unconcerned with anyone other than those who are directly affected by their stories of love and loss, hope and failure.
The simple beauty of Otto’s electronic ambiance and Welsh’s conversational tone give Impersonator an emotional directness that help make its heaviest moments palatable. Though it may lack the immediate gratification that’s come to define the biggest successes of the social media age, the record’s patience and opaqueness are hardly flaws — Welsh is happy to repeat a line ad absurdum to make sure it really sinks in, and Otto creates tonal atmospheres which shifts only subtly throughout four minute runtimes. Impersonator is inviting, but it doesn’t beg for your attention. Majical Cloudz didn’t make this record for you, but you’re more than welcome to sing along.
8. Waxahatchee – Cerulean Salt
I am every person mentioned throughout Cerulean Salt, and if you’re a university student reading this, you probably are, too. Katie Crutchfield, formerly a member of the band with the Greatest Name Ever (P.S. Eliot) has condensed her considerable pop punk chops down to the bare essentials: catchy melodies, straight-faced deliveries, and lines that land like gut punches. On her second solo album as Waxahatchee, Crutchfield’s quarter life crisis is told in miniature tableaus — dreams of lazy mornings, sleepless nights and undiagnosed depression. Each track is a snapshot of millennial malaise told with just enough empathy to know she must be one of us.
But Cerulean Salt doesn’t use its singer’s youth as a crutch — the songs range from indie heartthrob folk to riot grrrl style punk rock, and each one is as musically adept as it is quietly moving. “Swan Dive,” one of the record’s best songs, is a particularly cynical take on happily ever afters: “I’ll keep having dreams about / Loveless marriage and regret.” But despite her heartbreaking and sometimes bleak lyrics, Crutchfield’s songs often shine with potential and — gasp! — optimism, in spite of themselves. Maybe there is hope for us, after all.
7. Chance the Rapper – Acid Rap
Chancelor Bennett was still a teenager when he recorded Acid Rap, his second self-released mixtape and his first since graduating from high school. Despite his youthful cadence and gleeful enthusiasm, Acid Rap is a record beyond its artist’s now twenty years, an impressive balance of snarky wordplay, socially conscious manifestoes, and idiosyncratic charm. Featuring an enviable troupe of guest stars — from Ab-Soul to Childish Gambino — Acid Rap’s thirteen tracks see the rapper commenting on the gang violence in his Chicago hometown, haunted by the ghost of his deceased friend, and longing for the days of diagonal grilled cheeses and Rugrats VHS tapes.
What’s most impressive about the record, and Chance himself, is the amount of effort he puts into each verse — the rapper is constantly pushing himself, testing his limits in an effort to prove his worth. The result is one of the most confident and awe-inspiring performances on a hip-hop record in years, and one that has catapulted Chance from relative obscurity to Kendrick Lamar levels of reverence. Like that emcee, whose inventive approach to the genre may be the most prominent influence on Acid Rap, Chance’s music feels like a reinvention of the form, a mix of styles old and new that never once feels like a retread of old ground.
6. Autre Ne Veut – Anxiety
Anxiety is a record for your high school boyfriend who called you at three in the morning to make sure everything was okay. It’s a record for the girl who slipped love notes inside your locker with locks of her hair. It’s a record for everyone who has stalked Facebook pages or blog histories. Arthur Ashin’s hair-raising falsetto PBR&B as Autre Ne Veut expresses all the hopeless devotion and unhealthy obsession of love and longing without sparing us the grisly details — the protagonists of his songs are hung up and hairbrained, and each song finds Ashin exploring another angle of uncertainty and existential angst.
At first listen, the songs on Anxiety — whose dramatic flair and intoxicating melodies would make Beyoncé blush — don’t seem to be hiding any dour subtext. But Ashin’s crisp songwriting and dance floor beats are occasionally and brilliantly upset by dischord: a saxophone skronk here, some squealing feedback there. These moments add an almost subconscious tension to Anxiety that help keep its grandest and most maudlin moments in check. Ashin’s populist pop casts a spell which is as disquieting as it is exhilarating — never before has anxiety sounded so good.
5. My Bloody Valentine – m b v
“It’s not as good as Loveless!” I know. But how many records are? Kevin Shield and company’s much anticipated follow up to their 1991 shoegaze masterpiece may not hold a candle to its predecessor — but don’t let that obscure m b v’s quality, which is tremendous in its own right. mbv shares Loveless’ fuzzed out dynamic and whispered vocals, but it also injects a few modern kinks into the band’s DNA. Tracks like the drum-heavy “Nothing Is” and the bizarre closer “Wonder 2” keep m b v fresh and unpredictable, even though its analogue production and nineties flavour seem downright anachronistic.
What inspired Kevin Shields to finally release the record, which he has been tinkering with for over two decades, is still unclear — his perfectionism has become indie rock legend, which led many to believe m b v would never be released at all. But the record’s charm is that it seems to exist both in the present and the past. It’s distinctly a 2013 record, but in an alternate universe it could well have been released in 1993 and few would have batted an eye. My Bloody Valentine’s shoegaze supremacy has not dimmed in twenty-two years — let’s face it, longer than most of you reading this have been alive. That’s something.
4. Neko Case – The Worse Things Get…
Neko Case has become alt-country’s Poster Girl because she’s as good a storyteller as her honky tonk progenitors. Each of her songs has a strong sense of personality, whether she’s writing from the perspective of a murderer or a tornado. But The Worse Things Get… is the best album of Case’s career because she’s writing from her most interesting point of view yet — her own. Even when spinning yarns in third person, Case’s playful humour and dynamic personality have always shone through, and on The Worse Things Get…, Case’s singular charm is finally given a well-deserved moment in the spotlight.
The songwriting on The Worse Things Get… is also Case’s strongest — the tightest and most vital chemical formula of her charismatic alt-country we’ve yet to see. The choruses are catchy, the genre experiments all click, and Case’s commanding vocal presence is as intoxicating as ever. The record has the added bonus of being endlessly quotable, as Case is also in top form lyrically — most of the album’s earworms would be incomplete without her unique brand of bite-sized wit. Case’s latest record is the culmination of 16 years of twangy talent and unabashed awesomeness, and it’s about time we took notice.
3. Arcade Fire – Reflektor
After one of the most elaborate PR campaigns for a record in recent memory, is it any surprise that backlash was waiting on the other side of Arcade Fire’s release of Reflektor? Shouts of disappointment were never far from the record’s release — as quintessential indie rock exemplars, the band’s fairweather followers were quick to find flaws in the record’s sprawling runtime, genre experiments, and pretentious lyrics. Sure, Reflektor doesn’t share Funeral’s poignancy or The Suburbs’ radio-friendly swing, but it’s the most inventive and fascinating release the band have put out since their magnum opus nearly 10 years ago.
Indebted to the rhythms of Haiti, Berlin Trilogy Bowie and the dance punk expertise of co-producer James Murphy, Reflektor’s thirteen tracks are alternatively life affirming, world weary and bitterly critical. Kierkegaardian analyses and Greek mythology are the closest Reflektor gets to a singular concept, but Arcade Fire’s music was never about grasping a single message — the brilliance is in the band’s remarkable chemistry, distinctly uncool embrace of sentiment, and old-fashioned songwriting talent.
Reflektor has its share of oddball songs and left field quirks, but the band retains a sense of unity and identity throughout, making the record another in a long line of home runs for the Montreal sextet.
2. Kanye West – Yeezus
Kanye West didn’t record Yeezus aiming for critical adoration or popular fanfare, although he probably knew he would get both anyway. From its opening moments — a disarming barrage of static buzz — West’s astronomically anticipated sequel to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy announced itself as anything but. Kanye is all id here, challenging listeners to like him as his most depraved, destructive and ruthless misogynistic self. “Soon as they like you / Make ‘em unlike you,” he quips in “I Am a God,” and it may as well be the album’s mission statement — even the song’s title is a thinly veiled provocation.
Yeezus also abandons Kanye’s signature maximalism in favour of cacophony, anachronism and contrast. It’s a record of dualities, pairing aluminium beats and shallow production with harmonic interludes and fearless confessions. Kanye’s po-mo pastiche is reflective of his own manic depressive public image: the megalomaniacal monster and the sensitive sonneteer meet at Yeezus’ heart, but they’re unable to find common ground. This tension propels the LP through ten tracks of hubris and hangover, and in the end there’s no clear resolution — but Yeezus’ brilliance is ultimately in its denial of easy answers and happy endings. Kanye West is living in the now. He is the nucleus.
1. Vampire Weekend – Modern Vampires of the City
If you could go back in time to last January and tell me that Vampire Weekend would find its way to the top of my Best Albums list, I would have laughed. Up until the release of the band’s sublime third record Modern Vampires of the City, their Afrobeat ebullience and rich kid narratives did nothing for me. Now, I think of them as one of the best bands working today — musicians who did some much needed growing up with elegance, intuition and flat out brilliance. Modern Vampires is a distinctly thirty-something record, exploring faith, youth and culture with hyperliterate charm and unpretentious frankness. Ezra Koenig’s tenor has mellowed and his lyrics have deepened, asking questions about God and growing up with a poetic twist that befits the band’s straight laced pop rock aesthetic.
The band has also abandoned their world beat crutch, incorporating pitch shifted vocals, unconventional instrumentation and more spontaneity. Where the band’s earlier records felt stuffy and micromanaged, Modern Vampires is given room to breathe and reflect — notably on the record’s striking centerpiece, “Hannah Hunt.” Each song has a distinct tone, but all contribute to the overall thesis of the record, which is one of modesty, maturity and subtle cynicism. Who knew they had it in them?
