Year-End Critics' Polls 2013

The Miley album is kind of 60% limp and 40% terrific fun but I'm hoping it's just a warm-up for the next record when she gets onto all the really banging cultural appropriation.

no way can you justify classing that percentage as limp unless you're just a ballad hater

i like "Adore You" but beyond that the whole project is just too obnoxious for me to handle.

Seeing The National on a lot of lists. Trying to get into it now. Not very successful as of yet.

Nah her ballads are largely just not good and a few of her bangers misfire as well. Let's stop pretending "ballads" are just a monolithic mass that one either likes or hates. Also one of the most fun tracks here, FU, is a ballad albeit a ludicrous theatrical one.

Adore You is shit though.

It's better than The National though.

Ha.

Dutch music mag OOR made their yearly round along journalists, bloggers, radio dj's etc.

1. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Push The Sky Away (MUTE/PIAS)
2. Kanye West - Yeezus (DEF JAM/UNIVERSAL)
3. Arcade Fire - Reflektor (MERGE/UNIVERSAL)
4. Arctic Monkeys - AM (DOMINO/V2)
5. Daft Punk - Random Access Memories (COLUMBIA/SONY)
6. Jacco Gardner - Cabinet Of Curiosities (EXCELSIOR)
7. Atoms For Peace - Amok (XL/BEGGARS)
8. Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold (WHAT’S YOUR RUPTURE/PIAS)
9. The National - Trouble Will Find Me (4AD/BEGGARS)
10. Kurt Vile - Wakin On A Pretty Daze (MATADOR/BEGGARS)

11. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - II (JAGJAGUWAR/KONKURRENT)
12. Holden - The Inheritors (BORDER COMMUNITY/NEWS)
13. Moderat - II (MONKEYTOWN/NEWS)
14. Mikal Cronin – MCII (MERGE/KONKURRENT)
15. Disclosure - Settle (PMR/UNIVERSAL)
16. Franz Ferdinand - Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action (DOMINO/V2)
17. Bill Callahan – Dream River (DRAG CITY/V2)
18. Jagwar Ma - Howlin (MARATHON/PIAS)
19. Laura Marling - Once I Was An Eagle (VIRGIN/V2)
20. Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires Of The City (XL/BEGGARS)

21. Boards Of Canada - Tomorrow’s Harvest (Warp/V2)
22. Phosphorescent - Muchacho (Dead Oceans/Konkurrent)
23. Gregory Porter - Liquid Spirit (Blue Note/Universal)
24. Queens Of The Stone Age - …Like Clockwork (Rekords/Matador/Beggars)
25. Janelle Monáe - The Electric Lady (Bad Boy/Warner)
26. Torre Florim & Roos Rebergen - De Tweede Speeldoos (Excelsior)
27. Deerhunter - Monomania (4AD/Beggars)
28. Ásgeir - In The Silence (One Little Indian/Konkurrent)
29. Jonathan Wilson - Fanfare (Bella Union/PIAS)
30. Savages - Silence Yourself (Matador/Beggars)

Franz Ferdinand! I remember them!

it sure seemed in the first half of the year that Savages were some kind of huge critical breakthrough band that was gonna dominate these lists

i mean WAS there a 'more indie than Haim' buzz band that really broke big in 2013? usually there seems like at least 2 or 3 that are a lock to do really well on Pazz & Jop, this year it seems like all pretty established acts.

Savages seem to be doing pretty well on these lists but they and Haim were pretty much the only indieish buzz bands at the start of the year, outside of shit like Palma Violets who nobody really expected to be good in the first place.

Atoms For Peace! I remember them.

Speaking of which (xp), does ILM like Haim more than most other places do? I figured it would be top-5-ing all over the shop.

Parquet Courts have made a little headway from last time round but not exactly broken big. Chvrches and Waxahatchee making a good few lists too but both kind of around the mid-twenties.

Gotta say that this Oranssi Pazuzu album off the Quietus list is fucking solid as hell, thank you Quietus.

Haim is definitely right up ILM's alley but it's not like this is ground zero for their buzz compared to a lot of 'ilm darling' type acts where nearly every critic writing about them posts here.

Seeing The National on a lot of lists. Trying to get into it now. Not very successful as of yet.

I tried back when friends were stanning for Alligator and it just left me completely cold, tried again w/High Violet still like "why? what's the appeal?" still don't get it & probably won't

The National usually has at least one or two songs on each album that I can say, "OK, yeah, that's a really good, catchy, well-constructed song," but I'm struggling to find one on Trouble Will Find Me.

i really dug high violet. with this one i was prepared for, and received, a letdown.

their stuff is bathos for the most part

kinda surprised to see arctic monkeys near the top of everyone's lists, i haven't listened to them since their first record, are they doing anything more interesting now or just more of the same and people just happen to really be digging it this time around?

They've only made one execrable album but this one, only marginally better than the last (good) one, benefitted from a couple of striking singles.

It's one of my favorite albums of the year; its sustained mood, held up by the tentpoles that were its four or five utterly standout tracks, makes it one that I keep going back to. (There were a lot of good ideas floating around in 2013, but many of them sagged in full-album form—three of the albums in my current Top 10 are by relative alt-rock lifers, and I have to think that's because they know how to edit their own ideas in a way that younger bands just don't.)

I still think their first album is the only good one they've done. It at least has some energy to it. Everything since then has been overstuffed with mid-tempo rockers that just bore the heck out of me. I've really wanted to like their various albums including AM, but the plodding grind just fails to grab my attention.

Kind of can't believe that nobody has listed the Paramore album, but I guess The National are just THAT MUCH MORE INTERESTING. (cough.)

flaws and such, Paramore's album is closing in on my #1 spot. When it's on, there's nothing better.

It's my #2. (My #1 has yet to be mentioned in any of the lists reposted here.)

Q: If Paramore has never clicked with me in the past, would this album change the game?

I liked them well enough until I heard "Still Into You" and "Ain't It Fun" and away I went

I remember trying out "Still Into You" earlier in the year and it failing to make an impression, but sometimes the curiosity of not getting into something other people really like makes me want to try harder.

re: The National, a friend just posted a link to their list on fb and commented "The next time I see a band excitedly talk about how Rolling Stone wrote about them, I will post a link to their top albums of 2013 and then we will both feel bad for a minute."

Possibly, sure. The old guitarist who co-wrote a lot of the old stuff and the other guitarist and bassist stepped up in a big way, and the whole thing has a much broader scope than the early albums. Xp

*Rolling Stone's list

The old guitarist left the band, I meant to say

Kind of can't believe that nobody has listed the Paramore album, but I guess The National are just THAT MUCH MORE INTERESTING. (cough.)

― maura, Wednesday, December 4, 2013 7:02 AM (14 minutes ago)

can't say what either might sound like, so my apologies x2

NME's list overall is surprisingly old. Only one debut, only three artists under 30.

― Deafening silence (DL), Wednesday, December 4, 2013 1:06 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

surely this isn't correct.

what about bands that have three 22-year-olds and one 60 year old?

i think that johnny marr has left the cribs now tbh

i like that national record a lot and it's definitely better than high violet (mostly because of the reinforced emphasis on groove i.e. their incredible drummer) but hoo boy @ its uniform placing here. alfred wrote a great review of it in spin though iirc

It's staggeringly competent, I'll give it that.

that's how I feel about the Vampire Weekend album

Oh yeah, totally. Lots of Solid B Albums this year.

what's your #1 maura?

marnie stern

she's just doing shit that nobody else is, and in this really impressive way that vaults over the heads of so many

i didn't hear it. everything she's done in the past has vaulted over my head, personally

I returned to that Marnie Stern album a ton this year. I think it would have gotten more critical love though if it hadn't been a step down from her previous album. That one was the high watermark.

i don't think it's a step down at all, and i love the way that kid millions' drumming loosens things up just enough

had no idea he played on her new one, I really need to check it out