I keep putting this off because I keep trying to hear just a handful more 2013 albums, and I still have a bunch left. It's already way too late, and I've already got way too much to get through so I might as well just go ahead and do this now.

Like before I want to go through everything, bad to good, because it's more fun to talk about the bad stuff. Also the order of all of this could change a lot as I get time to listen to them more, and it's more a document of all the 2013 stuff I listened to than attempt to distill just the very best of it.

I heard way too many 2013 albums, and I still have a handful more to get to that won't be on here.

I only listen to stuff that I think I'll like, and for the most part, I don't end up hearing much that I think is truly bad.

2013 Albums

The Bad (Grade: F)

178. Baths – Obsidian: Absolutely terrible! Proof that catchiness is not in itself a virtue, too. I wouldn't hate this nearly as much if the most annoying songs didn't get stuck in my head so easily. This got some hype early in the year, but was it just me or was it conspicuously absent from almost every year end list?
177. Arctic Monkeys – AM: Actually the first Arctic Monkeys album I've ever heard. Why did I start here? Good question! I'm probably going to use this as an excuse to continue to ignore all of their previous releases, at any rate.
176. Savages – Silence Yourself: From the folks who brought us Interpol about 11 years ago, comes another band... who should've come along 11 years ago? Empty, posturing, derivative post-punk is still cool if it's an all-girl band, I guess.
175. The Field – Cupid’s Head: I have no one but myself to blame here. This is like the third album by The Field that I've listened to and not liked. I keep hoping to "get it"! So dull and repetitive. Again!
174. Wavves – Afraid of Heights: Time to pack it in, dude. You're done. You had a good run for someone with absolutely no talent. And you're still about 100x better than your girlfriend (Best Coast). Or ex-girlfriend? I haven't kept up.

The Weak (Grade: D-)

173. Tree – Sunday School II: When Church Lets Out: Free mixtape. I can't remember much of anything about this except I think he has a really gruff voice.
172. Devendra Banhart – Mala: Surprisingly not embarrassing, just totally forgettable and unremarkable.
171. Mutual Benefit – Love’s Crushing Diamond: Nothing much here as far as I can tell. Sunny indie folk ca. 2005.
170. Vampire Weekend – Modern Vampires of the City: I feel like I defended VW's previous two albums only to end up having them fall somewhere in the lower portion of my year end lists, much like this one. Only this time, the haters seems to have all become converts. Just in time for VW's most boring record! Weird.
169. Daft Punk – Random Access Memories: It bordered on depressing to see this topping so many year end lists. To be honest, I don't like anything Daft Punk did after Homework, but even still, there was a lot of good music released in 2013. There was absolutely no reason why such a dull and plodding Daft Punk album (with a couple of bright spots, I'll admit) was worth more than a passing notice.
168. Kevin Gates – The Luca Brasi Story: Another free mixtape. I feel like I can almost remember a few thinks about it.
167. Queens of the Stone Age – …Like Clockwork: Time to pack it in, guys. This just sounds so tired.
166. Chance the Rapper – Acid Rap: Some pretty cool production on this, and I think some of his lyrics are pretty good, too. But oh man, his vocals. Really hard for me to take.

More to come.

The Meh (D+)

165. Prurient – Through the Window: Prurient has made some pretty cool noise records and some tossed-off garbage, and sometimes it can be hard to discern between the two. This is definitely more on the accessible side, being beat-based electronic music, but I still think it's closer to the latter category. Something about feels shallow and lazy. Also kinda feels like he's trying follow in Pete Swanson's footsteps.
164. Pharmakon – Abandon: C'mon, if this wasn't a tall, pretty blonde chick, would anybody care? "Crawling on Bruised Knees" is pretty cool, I'll admit, but the rest of this is like sub-par Wolf Eyes.
163. Mikal Cronin – MCII: What a disappointment! What the hell is this? Mushy '90s alt-rock? Hoping this is just a sophomore slump. Major bummer.
162. David Lang – Death Speaks: I don't know, part of me feels like this is a caricature of "artsy" music. Also, it's kind of repetitive. And just not my thing, I guess.
161. Speedy Ortiz – Major Arcana: I actually became aware of this band's existence shortly after reading "The Death of Speedy Ortiz" in the second Jaime Hernandez Love and Rockets collection for the first time. Unfortunately, as great as it is to reference one of the greatest and still most under-appreciated comics of all time, this is some pretty rote early '90s revivalism.
160. Disclosure – Settle: Turn off your brain and let this play in the background, and it's not too bad. Bright and lively. But it's hardly anything new, distinctive, interesting, or special. The hype is mystifying.
159. Colin Stetson – New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light: I want to like this guy's music a lot more than I actually do. This is a step down from his last album which already felt a little hollow and gimmicky. And here he trades the Laurie Anderson vocals from Vol. 2 for Justin Vernon (Bon Iver). Ugh.
158. Four Tet – 0181: Sort of an extended mix of a bunch of Four Tet stuff. Given away free. I've been coming to the opinion that even at his best, Four Tet was always pretty boring. So this never had much of a chance.
157. The Flaming Lips – The Terror: Speaking of boring... this may actually age better than Embryonic, but for now I find it to be a total snooze.
156. Hiss Golden Messenger – Haw: His collaboration with Steve Gunn - Golden Gunn - is pretty cool, but this album is kind of dull. Hard to get a handle on his personality as a songwriter or pinpoint what, if anything, makes him special.
155. Thundercat – Apocalypse: Kind of disappointing after his previous album Golden Age of Apocalypse. This feels a little more retro, maybe.
154. JK Flesh/Prurient – Worship Is the Cleansing of the Imagination: The Prurient half of this isn't bad, but the JK Flesh (Justin Broaderick) half is super cheesy.
153. Action Bronson – Blue Chips 2: Action Bronson is a really good rapper who sounds exactly like Ghostface. I actually like the little vintage radio commercials thrown in as skits more than the songs.
152. Deafheaven – Sunbather: Here we go. Bullshit meter all the way in the red. I probably wouldn't have much of a problem with this if it didn't seem to be so universally hailed as a big deal and a great album. It is definitely neither. It's Explosions in the Sky outtakes with a screamo band's version of black metal vocals. The last track sounds a little like My Bloody Valentine, and so it's blackgaze! Pffft.
151. Retribution Gospel Choir – 3: I love Low. This is Alan Sparhawk's side project so I keep giving it a chance even though it's never really done it for me. This is two side-long Neil Young & Crazy Horse jams, minus Young's charming tendency to seemingly ad-lib vocal lines over the course of his longer songs, and minus Crazy Horse's charming earthiness and shambling imperfection. This band is perfectly tight, and Sparhawk repeats the same lines over and over and over and over.

Same experience. Went back into the catalog to sample what I was missing . . . nothing.

I detect a trend here. If it remotely sounds like anything that's been recorded before, it's shit. Pretty hard to avoid doing these days, Drinky.

That's not really the point, and a lot of the stuff I do like sounds like plenty of old stuff.

It's subjective, and I can't pretend like I have some completely fair over-arching standard that governs how I rank and rate everything. There's the stuff I like and the stuff I don't, and whatever quick summary I can throw out as to why.

Plenty of other people would dismiss my #1 album as being derivative. Or my #2 if they've heard it. Or virtually everything else on my list.

When I say QOTSA sound tired, though, it's because they sound like they're repeating themselves. Same with some of the others up there.

Wait, you're making a list of almost 200 albums?

Between teaching and playing, i hardly get through any new albums. I mean, I go record shopping alot, and I do buy some new stuff, but nothing on that scale.

I guess I used to though...

So far we're in agreement.

2013 was a weird year as far as the semi-published music lists. Everything seemed absolutely arbitrary, as if any semblance of objective standards had been removed from music criticism. So you'd always see a heartless stab at punk cred with Parquet Courts or Thee Oh Sees standing next to children's music like Haim or Tegan & Sara and awful mainstream tripe like Kanye West, not to mention the stubborn clutching at tired old faves like QOTSA and Flaming Lips and the outsized appreciation of harmless fluff like Mikal Cronin and Vampire Weekend. And that fucking Arctic Monkeys album showed up on so many Top Tens. None of it made any sense, at least not in the way that you could recognize an organizing intelligence behind it (either subjectively or objectively speaking). This might be what it's like to truly live in a post-rock world (and by post-rock I don't mean failed 90s subgenre, I mean that rock is now truly nothing but a dim memory cherished only by the next generation to die en masse).

All that said, I'm sure we'll have plenty to disagree about in the next 100 or so entries.

Yeah, it's too much. I can't pretend like I really had time to listen to any of these more than 4-5 times, and there are still 5-6 more albums from 2013 that I have or plan to listen to that didn't make it on here yet.



Almost! Up until your comment about Parquet Courts and Thee Oh Sees. I don't think they're heartless at all. But I'll get to them.

Just to clarify, I don't mean Parquet Courts and Thee Oh Sees are heartless, I mean the inclusion in these lists is heartless. It's like the list makers decided they needed a token album of something a little raw to balance out the gloss.

The OK (C-)

aka The Doldrums. A lot of these aren't good or bad enough for me to have any strong feelings about them so I may just not say anything at all. Some of them might be growers, and some of them might be real stinkers that haven't managed to piss me off yet. For now this is where they stand.

150. Scott Churchman – Ignore That Noise
149. Daniel Menche – Marriage of Metals
148. Julianna Barwick – Nepenthe: I do like this better than her past efforts, I think, but she's still like a vastly inferior Grouper
147. Special Request – Soul Music: Drum 'n bass nostalgia! A fine idea and well executed, just too much of the same thing.
146. Czarface – s/t: More nostalgia, but this time for early '90s east cost hip-hop. Some Wu-Tang background figures make a decent, fun, if mostly forgettable record. "Air "Em Out" is great, though.
145. Waxahatchee – Cerulean Salt
144. Alan Licht – Four Years Older
143. Merchandise – Totale Nite
142. Dan Friel – Total Folklore: Sort of like Dan Deacon, Jr. but somehow a little more obnoxious.
141. Kurt Vile – Wakin on a Pretty Daze: It took a really long time, but Smoke Ring for My Halo did grow on me after a while. Maybe that will happen with this, but so far Zzzzzzzzzz
140. Dirty Beaches – Drifters/Love Is the Devil: Drifters is really good, but Love Is the Devil is pretty tedious. This dude releases too much music.
139. Janelle Monáe – The Electric Lady: In theory she's awesome and I'm a fan, but in practice the android/sci-fi themes are a little too corny. And the songs just aren't that good.
138. Lycus – Tempest: Getting to the proper metal on my list, and there's a lot (for me). This is "funeral doom metal" which means it's super slow and sludgy. And kinda boring and indistinct.
137. M.I.A. – Matangi: M.I.A.'s another one I'm a fan of in theory, but her albums mostly aren't favorites of mine. This is probably her weakest one.
136. No Age – An Object: Decided to give this a change despite mostly negative reactions and the fact that I was never a huge fan. I did like their two previous albums, but this one is definitely missing something. Their vocals have always been their weakest point, and they seem to be even more upfront here.
135. Inquisition – Obscure Verses for the Multiverse: Kinda rowdy black metal. It's sorta fun.
134. Mariposa – Holy Ghost
133. Fuck Buttons – Slow Focus: Their best album I guess. Congratulations, guys!
132. Darkthrone – The Underground Resistance: I just started listening to "classic" Darkthrone over the past year or so, and I didn't really know what to expect from new material. It's pretty good, considering. Nothing like the awesome early stuff, of course, which is both a good and bad thing.
131. Kelela – CUT 4 ME
130. Mouth of the Architect – Dawning
129. Kanye West – Yeezus: Actually a lot better than his previous album. Still full of crappy songs with some terrible lyrics, but the best parts come close to redeeming it. "On Sight" is great, and "Black Skinhead" and "New Slaves" are both pretty good.
128. DJ Rashad – Double Cup
127. Touché Amoré – Is Survived By
126. Vastum – Patricidal Lust
125. Marnie Stern – The Chronicles of Marnia: I also want to like Marnie Stern more than I actually do, but this has its moments. "Still Moving" kinda sounds like Deerhoof which is of course a good thing.
124. Joanna Gruesome – Weird Sister: Like Speedy Ortiz, just a little too familiar and not quite enough personality of its own.
123. Double Dagger – 333: Too short, mostly. I wanted more from this band after the great Masks EP.
122. Nails – Abandon All Life: WAY too short.
121. The Range – Nonfiction
120. Dead C – Armed Courage: I'm still trying to decide if the Dead C are bullshit or not. They've been around forever and apparently built a career on sounding like they don't give a shit. That could just be an illusion as there are several stretches in these two long tracks that sound legitimately good. I just don't know.
119. KA – The Night’s Gambit: Solid, laid-back hip-hop. This dude is a really good MC, but maybe just a little TOO laid back.
118. Sigur Rós – Kveikur
117. Vattnet Viskar – Sky Swallower
116. Pantha Du Prince & The Bell Laboratory – Elements of Light: Kinda boring. I'm hoping this doesn't count as the real follow-up to Black Noise, which I loved.
115. Danny Brown – Old: Danny Brown is pretty cool. I liked XXX a little better, though, because it sounded like he wanted to be the next Kool Keith. This sounds like he's trying to be the next big rap star.
114. Painkiller – The Prophecy: Say what you want about John Zorn, his bands - Naked City, Masada, and this one - are great. Really just not crazy about the bass sound, which is kinda wet and dated. The playing is all really good.
113. Grave Miasma – Odori Sepulcrorum
112. Mark Kozelek & Jimmy LaValle – Perils from the Sea: Contains the excellent "Gustavo" but is a little overlong and monotonous. Still, this was the beginning of Kozelek's recovery from the awful misstep (or maybe awkward transition) Among the Leaves.
111. Mostly Other People Do the Killing – Red Hot: Really fun jazz quartet featuring exciting trumpet player Peter Evans. They play all styles of jazz, but this outing is fairly tame. On this record, they're expanded by a few members, and they play homages to hot jazz and swing. I like better when they're playing a little wilder and freer.

oh jesus christ get the fuck over yourself.

Don't take it so personally, Lucy. I didn't even read your list.

I'm not taking it personally. I'm just surprised you're still hanging on to this "I'm calling out anyone who isn't as punk as me" motif.

The Pretty Good (C+) Part 1

110. Ben Trickey – Rising Waters: This is a good friend of mine, and including him here is kind of weird. I hope he never sees this. He made a good album here, though, and he's gotten a really good band together lately (minus one dude who moved). If you're in Atlanta or the surrounding areas, check him out if you get the chance. Country-ish singer/songwriter. First person to ever play Songs: Ohia/ Jason Molina for me. In addition to Molina, he's a big fan of David Dondero and Cory Branan, and I think he's pretty heavily influenced by earlier Bright Eyes and Ryan Adams/Whiskeytown stuff.
109. Unknown Mortal Orchestra – II: A step down from their debut but still pretty enjoyable.
108. Raum – Event of Your Leaving: This is Liz Harris of Grouper plus some guy. Not as good as Grouper.
107. Inter Arma – Sky Burial: Sludgy black stuff. I like it, but I don't find this sort of thing super exciting even though it seems to be the metal de rigueur.
106. Yamantaka // Sonic Titan – UZU: Sacrifices some of the energy and spontaneity of their debut for proggy polish and complexity. Not bad, not exactly what I was hoping for.
105. Mountains – Centralia: A good ambient guitar/drone record is still just another ambient guitar/drone record, but better.
104. Local Natives – Hummingbird: These guys make really nice, pleasant music. If I gave these songs time to dig in, I could see myself ranking this higher. Maybe.
103. Milk Music – Cruise Your Illusion: Rough and ragged rock that almost kinda recalls Mudhoney. More energetic and emotional, though.
102. White Fence – Cyclops Reap: These guys made an awesome record with Ty Segall in 2012, but on their own they're just kinda weird and samey.
101. Pusha T – My Name Is My Name: Pusha is a great MC. I love the first two Clipse albums. This has some kind of annoying hooks and just OK production, though.
100. Rhys Chatham – Harmonie du Soir: My introduction to Rhys Chatham, a name I've been seeing around forever. I know he's more or less a contemporary of Glenn Branca so this may not be fair, but this title track here kinda just sounds like warmed-over '90s Branca which isn't that good in the first place. The drums here at least are better (not all just constant cymbal crashes), and the other track is pretty cool. The bonus track is great.
99. Agrimonia – Rites of Separation: More epic black metal, but this is starting to get a little more energetic and exciting. Could be quite the grower, actually.
98. Wolf Eyes – No Answer: Lower Floors: Wolf Eyes continues to make good Wolf Eyes albums, if anybody cares. I sort of do.
97. Various Artists – Weary Engine Blues: Jason Molina tribute album put together pretty quickly after his death. There are some genuinely touching covers by some fairly high profile people (Mark Kozelek, Damian Jurado, collaborators Scout Niblett and Will Johnson) and a great rendition of Didn't It Rain by Shearwater's Jonathan Meiburg. There are also contributions by a lot of unknowns that sometimes feel a little opportunistic and in some cases are really bad. Will Oldham's cover - both the song choice and rendition - kind of sucks.
96. Huerco S. – Colonial Patterns: Some of that newfangled electrobusiness. Incorporates Oneohtrix Point Never type weirdness into some dark, beat-based stuff.
95. Death Grips – Government Plates: I like these guys, but they've pretty much done the same thing on three albums in fairly rapid succession. It's a pretty good thing, though.
94. Golden Gunn – s/t: Record Store Day release that's a collaboration between Hiss Golden Messenger and awesome guitar guy (and part of Kurt Vile's touring band) Steve Gunn. I'm going to guess that the best parts of this are due to Gunn's contribution.
93. Rhye – Woman: I don't go for much of this new R 'n B stuff, but this is pretty nice.
92. Mazes – Ores & Minerals: A catchy little indie rock album. A tiny bit shrill, maybe.
91. Woe – Withdrawal: Mean and dirty black metal.

I think you should give the Mutual Benefit another chance.

The Pretty Good (C+) Part 2

90. Iceage – You’re Nothing: I thought their debut New Brigade was awesome. Perfect noisy punk. Something about this isn't quite working for me though. Like the breathy, teen vocals feel like they're more in the foreground or something?
89. Mainliner – Revelation Space: A new Mainliner album is an event, even though Kawabata Makoto has been releasing stuff as Acid Mothers Temple pretty steadily. The Mainliner brand remains stronger and less diluted, but this album is maybe a tad too repetitive and not quite face-melting enough.
88. Scout Niblett – It’s Up to Emma: She's great, and this would probably be a lot higher if not for that "No Scrubs" cover. Ironic or sincere, it doesn't really matter. It's bad.
87. Factory Floor – s/t: 1) How does it take more than one person to make this music and 2) Why does it take them so long to make it? This album was forever in the making, and the two best tracks on it had already been released as singles, one of them two full years in advance of this album. They are potentially very good, but they need to get to work.
86. Melt-Banana – Fetch: Hey, they're back! I didn't actually hear their last album, but people didn't seem to like it. I think this is closer to their 2003 album Cell-Scape which is arguably their best. This is nicely balanced with some more melodic and subdued moments to counter the usual high-pitched fury.
85. Giuseppe Ielasi, Kassel Jaeger – Parallel/Grayscale: Ominous, gurgling noise record. Fairly interesting.
84. Yuppies – s/t: Sort of slacker punk in a similar kind of vein with Parquet Courts and Tyvek. Just not quite as good.
83. Blood Orange – Cupid Deluxe: About as good as this new wave of R 'n B stuff can get, I think.
82. Diarrhea Planet – I’m Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams: I'll bet these guys are a lot of fun live. Good album. Good band name. Good number of guitarists (4?). I wouldn't change a thing.
81. Black Host – Life in the Sugar Candle Mines: Kinda free-ish jazz band. Solid, but nothing essential or revelatory here.
80. Noisem – Agony Defined: Fun, brutal neo-thrash band. Good, but not as good as Power Trip.
79. Toro Y Moi – Anything in Return: Pretty big step down from his previous album Underneath the Pine, which I love and think is hands down the best thing to come out of chillwave. This is actually kind of step backward, sounding more like his debut which I didn't like that much, albeit with all around better songs and production.
78. Fabio Orsi & Pimmon – Procrastination: Drone that's kind of tuneful and endearing. Almost shoegaze-y.
77. Arcade Fire – Reflektor: The first half of this is actually really good. Starts to crumble under its own ponderous weight in the second half.
76. Carcass – Surgical Steel: Really old death metal band has still got it, and if the track names are any indication, they've even got a sense of humor about it. Ferocious and fun.
75. Low – The Invisible Way: A reliably good Low record with at least one real gem on it - "Just Make It Stop". I kinda just wish Mimi sang all of their songs these days.
74. William Tyler – Impossible Truth: Another solid instrumental guitar record from this guy.
73. Sightings – Terribly Well: Another solid noise album from Sightings, who are maybe kinda starting to stagnate a little.
72. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Push the Sky Away: Surprisingly good album that I like just as much as some of his most highly regarded '80s work. I have honestly never been a huge fan, though. "Jubilee Street" is really nice.
71. Nosaj Thing – Home: Low key electronic album that's kind of a grower. Really pretty and soothing. Aptly titled.

I will.

The Pretty Good (C+) Part 3

70. Jenny Hval – Innocence Is Kinky: Some nice guitar on this. I like her voice.
69. Doldrums – Lesser Evil: Electronic indie pop that fits maybe somewhere between Animal Collective and Grimes.
68. Skeletonwitch – Serpents Unleashed: Even though this is on the more melodic side of black/thrash, it's also legitimately evil-sounding.
67. The Men – New Moon: The Men continue to morph away from tense, noisy punk toward more laid-back, countrified Crazy Horse-styled slacker rock. Some pretty good songs here, but I liked them more as noise rock band.
66. Darkside – Psychic: Nicolas Jaar and some other guy's first full-length as Darkside after releasing a single a few years ago. From that single, this project sounded like it would be more dance-oriented than Jaar's solo stuff, but to me this album just sounds like a continuation of Jaar's previous album, Space Is Only Noise. It's groovy, sexy, somewhat dark semi-electronic music that unfolds slowly, and feels more like the work of live - albeit heavily processed - musicians than of a producer. This may grow on me more, and I definitely like the fact that it isn't built on loops or chopped-up sounds.
65. Fire! – (Without Noticing): Noisy Swedish avant-jazz trio of saxophone, bass, and drums, featuring Mats Gustafsson on sax. Cool stuff, and I've enjoyed a lot of things I've heard in the past where Gustafsson has been involved. Also interesting that the song titles from this were all inspired by Bill Callahan's book of poetry Letters to Emma Bowlcut.
64. In Solitude – Sister: Melodic, catchy sort of goth-metal. Not the sort of thing I ever would have thought I would have liked, but it's been really endearing.
63. Ty Segall – Sleeper: A slightly disappointing follow-up to the huge 2012 that he had (3 albums, 2 very good and 1 great). A more subdued, acoustic psyche-folk album somewhat reminiscent of Tyrannosaurus Rex. Segall definitely has a pretty serious Bolan fetish, but he always manages to add a little something of his own.
62. The Ex & Brass Unbound – Enormous Door: Dutch noise rock veterans teamed with a brass band, creating a vaguely jazzy punk, sometimes almost like noisy, mutant ska, sometimes almost like Afrobeat. There's even a cover of Konono No. 1 (not Afrobeat, I know) on here. Honestly, maybe a little more interesting than it is really enjoyable.
61. Logos – Cold Mission: Dark electronic stuff that I guess falls under grime? Nice grooves and textures on this.
60. Oranssi Pazuzu – Valonielu: Finnish black metal with kind of a psychedelic rock bent. I usually don't like black metal with synths, but this makes it work.
59. The Heliocentrics – 13 Degrees of Reality: Genre-bending, nominally jazz-rock (or rock-jazz) band. Their name and much of their sound is an homage to Sun Ra. At times they kind of remind me of "New Weird America" bands of the early '00s like Jackie-O Motherfucker and No-Neck Blues Band.
58. A$AP Rocky – Long.Live.A$AP: Say what you want about him being derivative or his lyrics being dumb or whatever, but I like A$AP Rocky. There's a charm here that I think is missing from a lot of current hip-hop. Also, I still love the Clams Casino production on this.
57. Ulcerate – Vermis: I first heard this New Zealand brutal/technical death metal band back in 2011 when their album Destroyers of All started showing up on year end lists. I thought their name was kind of funny, and the gutteral, cookie-monster-ish vocals were a little too stereotypical death metal for me to take them too seriously. There was definitely something going on with their music, though. Extremely dissonant, complex, and BRUTAL. So eventually I went back and heard their 2009 "masterpiece" Everything Is Fire, and then I started to take them seriously. These guys aren't playing around. I was really anticipating this album, and while it might be the weakest of the three I've heard, it's still a dizzyingly heavy sonic assault not quite like anything else.
56. The Besnard Lakes – Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO: I'm kind of a sucker for this band's big, widescreen sound. Big guitars, soaring vocals. It might seem kind of cheesy, but to me it's sort of like the best kind of escapist fantasy in music form.
55. The Thing – Boot!: Another Swedish jazz trio with Mats Gustafsson! They made a really cool album with Neneh Cherry in 2012 which is how I first heard them. Here on their own they're just as engaging. As far as what makes this better than or different than Fire!... I couldn't really tell you. I guess I just like some of the performances and compositions a little better here.
54. Wire – Change Becomes Us: I haven't listened to the last couple of Wire albums before this, but is a surprisingly good Wire album for being roughly 37 years into their career. Parts of it hearken back to their Chairs Missing and 154 proto-new wave sound. Age has made them sunnier and warmer than they were in their heyday, though.
53. KEN Mode – Entrench: Sort of straddling the line between metal and post-hardcore. Maybe just super heavy noise rock. I like.
52. Jar Moff – Commercial Mouth: One of the best pure noise albums I've heard in a while. Really engrossing from start to finish. Actually kind of musical and not particularly abrasive even though on the surface it seems like a bunch of atonal sounds.
51. Matana Roberts – Coin Coin Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile: One of the more interesting current jazz artists, her work - or at least this series - falls somewhat within the same realm as '70s spiritual and soul jazz. She mixes spoken word poetry in with occasional singing and weaves together imagery presumably from her family's past. I like Coin Coin Chapter One a little better, but this is definitely a good thing she has going here.

TOP 50

With pictures!

The Good (B-) Part 1


50. Forest Swords – Engravings
Forest Swords flesh their sound out into something meatier and more substantial. Before I felt like they were kind of low-stakes and boring-but-pleasant. Now there's a little more depth, weight, and variation to their atmospheric, dubby instrumentals.


49. Hair Police – Mercurial Rites
Hair Police have mostly felt like a lesser cousin to fellow noise bands Wolf Eyes and Sightings, but in 2013 they surpassed both of them. They're still bracing and abrasive, but there are moments of respite and subtlety that keep you on your toes. The vocals vary in approach, and are an especially effective addition in "Scythed Wide" where the plainly spoken "I like this color" gives a human, almost humorous counterbalance to a scraping, uneasy noise track.


48. Jon Hopkins – Immunity
Churning, addictive house music that manages to keep things interesting for its full duration. It's hard for me to explain - or really even understand - how something like this works so well while perennial critical darling The Field always leaves me so cold. I think compositionally this is a lot more sophisticated even if it does fall back on similar rhythmic structures. It's more varied and less repetitive.


47. Shugo Tokumaru – In Focus?
I'm not sure how I never knew about this guy until 2013. He's right up my alley, and some of my favorite bands are fans of his work. This album served as my introduction so I may like it more than a lot of longtime fans do. I first found out about it through the excellent video for "Katachi", and I was immediately intrigued by the sound as well as the visuals. An easy comparison to make, I think, is to Cornelius, another Japanese artist who takes a sort of omnivorous, everything bu the kitchen sink approach to making sunny, psychedelic pop music.


46. Deerhunter – Monomania
Deerhunter goes noisy, borderline-unhinged garage rock. Maybe Bradford's been listening to some Ty Segall? Some Oh Sees? A lot of people seem to be disappointed in this, but I think it's a good change in direction. The Lockett Pundt song "The Missing" really doesn't fit and kind of disrupts the flow of the first half of the album, but it's still a pretty good song. I love "Back to the Middle", and it's really a very solid album front to back.


45. Mark Kozelek & Desertshore – s/t
Mark Kozelek started to shift gears on his Sun Kil Moon project around the time of the album Admiral Fell Promises to writing more off-the-cuff, slice-of-life lyrics that forwent poetry and polish in favor of honesty. That album was pretty enough and still close enough in spirit to his previous work for it not be a very noticeable change. It's follow-up, though, embraced this approach whole-heartedly, and it made for a difficult, and frankly, mostly unsuccessful record that made Kozelek seem like kind of a lazy asshole with a disdain for his audience. 2013 saw him slowly start to recover from this with collaborative projects with Jimmy Lavalle and then on this album with Desertshore, pretty much a full return to form. Here, Kozelek has managed to turn on the charm with his newfound songwriting approach, bringing the listeners in on the joke as he takes stabs at Nels Cline and Derek Trucks and talks about buying the Satanic Bible at the mall. Most of these songs are genuinely touching, too, as Kozelek manages to make his sentimentality contagious by way of some great melodies and arrangements. Also, bonus points for mentioning Jason Molina even though that's an awkward part of the weakest song on this album.


44. The Knife – Shaking the Habitual
I was never a fan of this group, but the song "Full of Fire" has nearly made me a convert all by itself. This album is good all the way through, but it's definitely better without the droning 19-minute track in the middle. The standard version doesn't have that, and that's the version to listen to.


43. Run the Jewels – s/t
The best hip-hop album of 2013... is all the way down here at number 43? I guess that says a lot more about me than it does about the current state of hip-hop. Anyway, this is not quite as good as Killer Mike's R.A.P. Music from the previous year, but it's better than the El-P album from that same year. Whatever, I think it's awesome that these guys are continuing to work together, and I think this pairing could continue to yield high quality results.


42. Bob Ostertag – A Book of Hours
This album makes it just by virtue of being one of the weirdest things I've ever heard. I'm sure it's not without precedent, but it's undoubtedly a unique, strange beast. A mostly nonverbal vocal... jazz? record. Among Ostertag's collaborators is Roscoe Mitchell of The Art Ensemble of Chicago. This is one continuosly evolving, hour-long piece consisting primarily of human voices making all sorts of sounds, none of them actual words as far as I can tell. I guess technically this might make it "scat", but it doesn't sound like anything of that variety that I've ever heard. Anyway, the first 30 minutes or so a little ridiculous, but somewhere past that halfway point it starts to actually get kind of cool. Once a more rhythmic vocal pattern gets introduced and then, finally, the sax - presumably played by Ostertag - comes in, I'm honestly digging it.


41. Laura Marling – Once I Was an Eagle
Some really great songs on here - "Pray for Me", "Once" (not to be confused with that Glen Hansard thing), "Take the Night Off", and "I Was an Eagle". She's a legitimately good songwriter with a great voice and great ear for arrangements.

The Good (B-) Part 2


40. Tim Hecker – Virgins
Any new Tim Hecker album is pretty much a shoe-in as one of the best albums of its given year. This is no exception, and it's even a little bit of a nice departure for a guy with a discography full of fairly similar work. His recent collaboration with Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never) has clearly had an influence on him, and there's a slight touch of whimsy and weirdness that's mostly been absent from Hecker's previous work.


39. Phosphorescent – Muchacho
My first Phosphorescent album, and it won't be my last. A sound not dissimilar from a lot of other indie-country/folk stuff from the past ten years, but the songs are too just good to be denied, particularly standouts like "The Quotidian Beasts" and "A Charm / A Blade". Plus I guess this guy was probably a big part of establishing this sound in the first place. I remember getting a lot of recommendations for Aw Come Aw Wry - probably even downloading it - but never really listening to it for whatever reason. Going to rectify that soon.


38. The Haxan Cloak – Excavation
This sort of John-Carpenter-soundtrack, dark ambient stuff has become kind of a big thing lately, with other artists like Demdike Stare and Raime getting a lot of buzz and critical acclaim, and established electronic artists like Shackleton and even Boards of Canada moving into similar territory with their recent work. This might be my favorite thing to come out of all of that... with the exception of BoC which I'll get to in a little bit.


37. Grouper – The Man Who Died in His Boat
I think this is technically an archival release of material mostly conceived around the time of her best album, Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, and meant as a companion piece to that. As such, it's probably the second-best thing she's released. If you know Grouper, you know what to expect, and this will not disappoint. Hazy, ethereal folk with a homey warmth and melodies that slowly emerge from the murk and work their way into you. If you were looking for a departure or some kind of artistic development, you were looking in the wrong place.


36. Lumbar – The First and Last Days of Unwelcome
One of the more interesting doom/sludge albums that I've heard. Two things help it - the brief running time and the somewhat unusual vocals which are a blend of classic heavy metal singing and more modern, typically gruff doom/sludge vocals. And I don't know, it just doesn't sound like the same old doom metal. There's something a little weird, a little off, in the best way. I hope there's more to come.


35. Oneohtrix Point Never – R Plus Seven
Like Tim Hecker, Daniel Lopatin has clearly benefited from their earlier collaboration, but Lopatin had more to gain. Hecker has always had a strong emotional core to his music, and that's precisely what Lopatin has been missing up until now. Finally, an OPN album that makes me feel something and isn't just cool-sounding.


34. Peter Evans – Zebulon
I made a bigger effort to hear new jazz in 2013 than I probably ever have, and it paid off. One of my best discoveries in current jazz has been Peter Evans and the band Mostly Other People Do the Killing of which he is a member. There may not be anything particularly groundbreaking by his or that band's music, but there's definitely a distinctive touch to both. With this album in particular, Evans' playing is cut loose in several long solos, and his approach to the trumpet is not quite like anyone else I've ever heard. He's energetic and versatile and often favors rhythmic staccato playing, and each of these four, side-long compositions remain mostly thrilling for their durations, especially closer "Carnival".


33. Castevet – Obsian
I've seen Castevet labeled as black metal, but to me they feel closer to the tech/brutal death metal bands I've been really enjoying lately - Portal, Ulcerate, and Gorguts. I suppose it's the vocals that put them in the black category for most people, but in the end it doesn't really matter. They're a fantastic band that plays some variety of mathy, technical metal that's just really dense, dissonant, and awesome-sounding.


32. Ital Tek – Control
Ital Tek was a big discovery for me in 2013. I had read about them near the end of the previous year and had intended to check them out but never actually did until a close friend recommended them to me. I first heard their great EP from early in the year, Hyper Real, and one from 2012, The Planet. I really dug both of them. I haven't really kept up with the variety of electronic sub-genres sprouting up by the minute (and apparently sometimes dying just a fast), but whatever this is (footwork?), the important thing is that it sounds like the kind of electronic music I really like, basically late '90s/early '00s IDM with just a touch of some vintage '70s/'80s analog flavor. It's the restless percussion I really like, plus the general avoidance of obvious loops and clipped samples, a hallmark of electronic music of the past decade. Maybe things are swinging back my way? Eh, probably not.


31. Thee Oh Sees – Floating Coffin
How can you not love Thee Oh Sees? Sure they sort of do the same thing over and over, but they sort of don't. It's like that John Peel quote about The Fall that I'm too lazy to look up. This is another album of brand new vintage psyche rock that is unmistakably the work of John Dwyer but also sounds like it was salvaged from a time capsule buried on the very first Earth Day. It happens to be one of their better albums, too, and happily restores some of the grit that seemed to be lost on Putrifiers II.

Yay, Phosphorescent! Much too low to suit me, of course, but good to see it. If you're any kind of Willie Nelson fan, you have to hear Phosphoscent's To Willie.

Little yay for Lumbar.

Anyone who thinks the Arctic Monkeys album deserves an F- is a friend in my book.

Acid Rap is really good. I love that album despite having the same criticisms. There are only like what? 40 seconds of what you're complaining about? He should have also done something neat like coke but given my life it's hard to blame me for giving him youth bonus points.

Some of my friends and just a lot of people with good taste like that Chance album. I don't know though, it's his voice on the whole thing that bothers me. Not just when he sings or whatever. Who knows, I may get used to it. I'll listen to it again before long.

I want something called "Acid Rap" to be weirder than that, too. Don't just talk about drugs and stuff. Make crazy, strange rap. I feel like that's still kind of under-explored territory. Same goes for Danny Brown.

Eh I've done acid with weird people and agree. It didn't live up to the title.