ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2013

I like her music for a certain mood but I did not vote for this album. Glad it placed though.

What I've heard I've liked. There's a Cocteau Twins-y shoegazery thing which sets her apart from the likes of Josephine Foster or Joanna Newsom. I havent heard a full album by here yet though.

i think with acts like Barwick sometimes I kind of would just be happy with her doing the vocal thing only for a whole album. Same goes with people like Colin Stetson, Rodrigo Y Gabriela. Soon as they start adding extra shit, it feels like something's being taken away.

http://i.imgur.com/kWpd2hX.jpg?1

76 Fall Out Boy Save Rock and Roll (270 points, 11 votes)

Spotify

oops that should be

76 FALL OUT BOY Save Rock and Roll (270 points, 11 votes)

happy i made it one post before screwing up

is goon rock still a thing? srs question.

i think with acts like Barwick sometimes I kind of would just be happy with her doing the vocal thing only for a whole album. Same goes with people like Colin Stetson, Rodrigo Y Gabriela. Soon as they start adding extra shit, it feels like something's being taken away.

― he said, smarmily (dog latin), Monday, January 27, 2014 4:43 PM (42 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

First two JB albums are just her iirc

I also listened to this so that I would stop confusing her with Julia Holter

i did find it quite funny that julianna barwick, julia holter and julia kent all made albums that i loved to listen to in a certain mood last year. expect holter to place, kent wasn't even nominated though

great cover. if it wasn't for ilm i'd have been led to believe these guys split up ages ago. what's their steez now, they still playing emo rock?

i probably should have thought about "phoenix" as a top 50 track this year, it holds up pretty well

One of the albums I listened to most this year, but didn't love it enough to vote for it (as someone mentioned on the other thread, much of my attention got diverted to revisiting the last few albums). Glad to see it place though. It's a pretty successful attempt to update their songwriting to fit in with the contemporary radio climate.

revisiting discovering

There's a Cocteau Twins-y shoegazery thing which sets her apart from the likes of Josephine Foster or Joanna Newsom

There's a lot setting her apart from those two artists -- their music sounds nothing alike imo. I can see getting confused with Julia Holter though. Idk who Julia Kent is.

i love this album. it's a clear step down from their previous two and has too many clunkers for a relatively good album but the good stuff (alone together, where did the party go, save rock and roll) are as good as anything they've done.

too many clunkers for a relatively short album**

Barwick was #125 on Acclaimed, #38 NME, #3 Drowned in Sound.

Fall Out Boy was #483 on Acclaimed, #12 Onion A.V. club, #18 Kerrang.

Jordan and others are welcome to the Acclaimed poll roundup here (Excel format) if they can't be arsed to check those other polls.

i did not know there was a fallout boy album this year

I liked the FOB album but not enough to put it on my ballot (although I've started to regret leaving it off my year-end top 50 entirely). Considering their past stunt casting, it's amazing how perfect the Elton John and Courtney Love cameos are.

i did find it quite funny that julianna barwick, julia holter and julia kent all made albums that i loved to listen to in a certain mood last year. expect holter to place, kent wasn't even nominated though

Did you hear the Colleen album from this year Lex? That has similarities with all those three, though it is a bit wispier and delicate than any of them.

http://i.imgur.com/RhMIpEa.jpg?1

75 MELT-BANANA Fetch (272 points, 10 votes)

Spotify

no - i've heard (and liked) colleen in the past though. sort of assumed i didn't need another colleen album AND those three...

xp

#7 Decibel, its only placing elsewhere.

Too low!

ugh

what i've heard from Melt Banana's latest album is a lot more poppy than their earlier stuff.

#7 Decibel, its only placing elsewhere.

― disposable soma (Sanpaku), Monday, January 27, 2014 5:03 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not true! It was #8 in the ILM Metal Poll.

Oh yeah this was pretty good.

"The Hive" was excellent

feel free to post (not embed) youtubes of select cuts, fans. no idea where to start with melt-banana here or in general

All these things are getting loads of votes already

here, lex: http://youtu.be/BcqC8LSoBws

Record number of voters this year xp

Another "didn't vote for it, glad to see it on here anyways" album. It was on my long list but got pushed off my ballot.

Melt-Banana record is great, I voted for it. I do miss the live drumming a bit compared to previous records.

hmm it's just noise to me. guess i can admire the...energy? i do not know when in my life i would have cause to play this.

Energy is usually the first and only thing I respond to in most genres.

melt-banana have never been my thing and i don't see this swaying me

fair points, definitely not for everybody

http://i.imgur.com/Uu4VbfP.jpg?1
74 BILL CALLAHAN Dream River (273 points, 9 votes)

no spotify on that one

i do not know when in my life i would have cause to play this.

yknow just hangin out in the living room, in for the evening

Yayyy I voted for this ambrosia'd joyride, h8az I condemn thee to be plugged into Agata's fx board for eternityyyyy

xposts to M-B obvs, J bein' understandably quickfire w/ somethin' so noisy and punkish

Haven't kept track of Bill Callahan in a decade - would be keen to hear a selected song off this one.

had Dream River top 5, this feels like a poor showing for it actually. unreal good record

Never made my P&J ballot but I played it consistently through the fall. "Summer Painter" is a new high imo.

Oof now THAT'S too low, amazing album.

"The only words I've said today are 'Beer' and 'Thank you'"

Still haven't heard the Bill Callahan album, but I'm sure I'd like it very much.

here's a song, hope these dont embed still

http://youtu.be/jXae9Am_bJM

beyonce would possibly be my number one if I was revoting, but anyone who thinks Paramore and The 1975 is rockist presumably spent a lot of time not actually reading ILM all those years.

they're both practically death-metal acts!

Something about their alchemical relationship to the past - in each case it's clear they're reviving things but it's never obvious exactly what

This applies to some of these bands some of the time, but I'm not so sure it's generally true. I am just now listening to the Sky Ferreira album all the way through and I think that if you could somehow travel back in time and slip some of these songs onto college radio in the 80s, my 80s listening self would not bat and eyelid.

I also wonder if you are saying that you can't independently identify the various strands that are being revived by these bands. In other words, is it hard to pin down what is being revived because it's various things all at once (a little freestyle rhythm, a little 70s style songwriting, etc.), or is it something more mysterious than that?

I think Japanese bands might be ahead of the curve on this sort of thing (retro but what is it retro-ing?), but that's probably just my biases talking. Tokyo Jihen - Metro (That's quite pop incidentally.)

guys i've got a clever way of demonstrating why imago's patronising cleverness is beneath me, anyone interested in hearing my insights?

yes.

Would you like him in a box? Would you like him with a fox?

It's a crime that the final album from Jasper, TX (An Index of Failure) didn't make this list. Then again, only one of my nominations even made the Top 100 so.

(sorry -- excruciatingly long text-dump of basically all my >1-ns opinions ahead, plz skip if uninterested)

ok so i only voted for 3 albums on this poll (up from 1 last yr). basically i am still not a big albums listener and even the ones i enjoy generally end up in this territory where each listen is certainly rewarding in some way yet it's phenomenally difficult to force myself to proceed beyond the ~fifth full listen. the ones i voted for were the few that sort of broke free from that and got wholly under my skin. NONETHELESS i did hear a decent amount of the albums that made the list so here we go…

64 CIARA Ciara in the week leading up to this one's release -- with "body party" and a bass-heavy remix both burning up r&b airwaves, a fantastic performance on the bet awards, and the amazing "i'm out" video dropping -- there was pretty much nothing that could have excited me more than the thought of having this album. the full thing didn't quite live up to that excitement, but aside from the excellent singles, it also delivered plenty of nice jams like "super turnt up", "overdose" (or was that a single?) and "livin' it up". ciara feat ciara remains inspired.
51 ASHLEY MONROE Like a Rose this is an album i'd like to revisit soon now that i'm thinking about it. enjoyable for sure, but perhaps less accessible to newer country fans like me than the other albums along this vein from the year.
43 JON HOPKINS Immunity actually rather liked this one. wouldn't say it exactly encapsulates a 'story of a night out' like much of the press seemed to say, but it certainly has an appealing sonic arc to it. i found the ambient half more to my taste, with "abandon window" being my highlight and "collider" the closest thing to a stinker. "sun harmonics" which sort of combined the propulsion of the latter w/ the smoothened texture of the former was also v nice. album will prob be a minor incidental play fixture on reality shows or as tv spot background, which might make u laugh depending on whether you like or hate it.
34 MILEY CYRUS Bangerz haven't spent a whole lot of time with this but i have a feeling only about a half of it will connect in the end: the singles of course (just heard "adore you" on the radio the other night and it sounds great there) + other highlights like "drive". who knows tho! if not for a certain other album that came out last-minute last yr this would be one i'd point to as the 2013 pop-cultural artifact.
32 ARIANA GRANDE Yours Truly "the way" and "right there" were def some nice rhythmic radio jams. not everything has revealed itself to me -- could easily do w/o the last two tracks + maybe a couple of the more nauseatingly old-timey ones -- but lots of neat songs here. gotta love "piano". "baby i" is the best b/c she sounds completely gleeful, just letting herself go on the emotional ride even if it might pull her along too fast, her vocal appropriately both effortless and frenzied.
29 HOLDEN The Inheritors umm i guess this is for the dance/electronic music purists who are more 'connected to the tradition' or w/e and are aghast @ cute-n-cuddly stuff like jon hopkins getting mainstream crit love. i've only given this two full listens thus far but it seems like for each track that engages me there's another to match it that's just completely dull, plodding, meandering w/ all sorts of noodling that does nothing for me (except the saxophone in that one track which i like). thankfully many of the good tracks come consecutively so i might just delete the ones i don't like and pretend it's an ep or something.
28 TEGAN & SARA Heartthrob this is one of those weird albums for me where all the songs are good but none of them are great. still nice to hear "closer" or "i was a fool" come on shuffle or something tho.
26 TIM HECKER Virgins only recently heard this for the first time but have a feeling i'll really get into it!! only other one i'd heard from him before was mirages which was... nice, but in a completely forgettable way, so i was pretty surprised at how good this is. i never have anything resembling a clear idea what drone music is supposed to represent and my attempts to even describe why i do or don't like some of it thus feel like contrived crap, but i love what the sounds are doing here throughout: what sounds like footsteps creeping in some corner, the repeated piano line played with such intent but w/ tormented arrhythmic fumbles lurking in, the jarring compression-like start-stops. whatever it 'means' (it doesn't matter, b/c i don't know what my favorite ambient records mean), there's a lot there to thrill me and i'm excited to keep listening.
24 BOARDS OF CANADA Tomorrow's Harvest dull tbh, can't even really think of anything to say about it. only bought it b/c it was discounted one day and i had quite liked "reach for the dead" (and still do tbf).
22 BRANDY CLARK 12 Stories truly gorgeous at moments. i can't hop fully on board this one b/c there's something about her delivery that comes up ever so slightly short on some songs, however incisively they're all written, but when it all aligns, as on "what'll keep me out of heaven" and "just like him", it's magic. also i kind of don't like "take a little pill". like yes, the pill is a v powerful metaphor for the modern-day quick-fix that we are all-too-often eager to stack upon itself until the problems we're trying to remedy have ultimately transmuted to something unrecognizable and somewhat horrifying, but on the other hand... shit, people already face enough pressure not to treat or even acknowledge mental health issues. basically all press i've seen on that song favorably views it as being about addiction to prescription drugs, but every time i hear it it seems quite plainly to be about medication in general, so... no thanks, don't need that mess. still love ya tho brandy.
20 KURT VILE Walkin On a Pretty Daze i was super excited for this b/c smoke ring was probably my favorite album from its year, but i must say i was faintly disappointed w/ this. maybe it's b/c the sunny vibe of the first track didn't mesh totally (or at all) w/ how i was feeling, whereas smoke ring really tapped into what i was feeling @ the time -- but more likely it's that 2/3 of the tracks have an obvious analog from the previous album in sound and even occasionally lyrics (altho at least he didn't flat-out reuse lyrics like he used to do, or maybe he did and i didn't notice). i would have preferred something that felt like newer territory for him but it's still a good album.
17 CHARLI XCX True Romance it was hard for me to get too excited about this b/c so many of its tracks had dropped over the past couple of years (all of which were worse than "stay away" tbh) BUT this was still a worthwhile listen. i actually deleted a decent number of the tracks but there's plenty of good here too. i feel like "what i like" made me finally kind of understand the charli xcx aesthetic after all this time.
14 M.I.A. Matangi another recent listen for me. i was worried it'd be another mess like her 3rd album but it's good!! there are a few songs where i just totally tune out but then you've got "yala" and "sexodus" and the like so i'm pretty cool w/ it.
12 DAWN RICHARD Goldenheart i think i'm too stupid for this album? i bought it very excitedly but didn't end up listening to it much. "'86" was catnip for me last year prob partly b/c peter gabriel's so is one of my favorite albums -- and yet the "in your eyes" interpolation in the identically-titled next track sounded so labored. (i know people liked it! and the whole album! i just wasn't one of them? it was sad to admit.)
10 KANYE WEST Yeezus i know this has nothing to do w/ the album but parts of its promotion kinda bugged me, like the audience/press constantly had to be reminded that there were no radio singles and that there's no album cover (even tho oops, there were singles and that stupid omnipresent image of the blank cd in the jewel case with the red sticker IS effectively the album cover), like we were battered with the idea that 'this is reaching u authentically + ~organically~' forever before we even heard it all. BUT despite all that it was much better than mbdtf and i actually became somewhat interested in him again.
8 PARAMORE Paramore man this would be an amazing album if it were a bit shorter and scrubbed clean of "now" and the other forgettable ones. "ain't it fun" is a monster and it hit me really hard -- it's like a megadose of the feeling that pervades the rest of the album's runtime in digestible little pieces, growing up and feeling free but also/especially finally feeling the weight of having to find your own way.
7 THE KNIFE Shaking the Habitual i think i kinda said this in the tracks rollout but i got more enjoyment out of reading reviews that were basically apologies for not liking the album than i did out of listening to the album. "full of fire" is cool tho.

aaaaand the ones that were on my ballot (in 3-2-1 order)...

5 SKY FERREIRA Night Time, My Time
maybe it was inevitable that i was gonna like this? i've been a sky fan since "one" (it was my favorite track in 2010) and believed in her potential ever since, even if she dropped some occasionally patchy material. even so i never would have imagined that the album she'd ultimately release would be so well received, here or in the critical sphere. but despite everything that should have predisposed me to loving this on first listen, it was actually initially a fairly jarring experience -- i remember getting through the final crescendo leading up to that gasp that ends the album and feeling almost disoriented. yet i had to listen again.

so yeah, there are all those rough edges and that vaguely unfinished quality that ppl always mention, but they softened out within a few listens, and for me the thing that kept sticking out was how skeptical, distrustful, and self-deprecating she is on the record: even as "24 hours" sonically evokes the sheer overwhelming glory of young love ephemera, we've got her singing about how you could say she's a cynic; on the bizarrely infectious "kristine" (one of my favorite tracks), hanging out with her rich fashion buddies leaves her feeling like an empty fraud ("pretending i am, what's the point of saving? ... but i'm never working, i'm just spending"); on my other favorite, "i blame myself", she's placing herself at the center of all the transgressions she's endured as the room previously occupied by all the machinelike guitars gives way for the bubblegum synths and her own emotional space. it says a lot that all three of those, despite how different they sound, are just as catchy and compulsively replayable to me. she delivered.

9 KACEY MUSGRAVES Same Trailer Different Park
real talk! i guess. i mean, sure, there's plenty of it, but what i really loved about this album wasn't so much that she's just 'telling it like it is,' but rather how powerfully she creates her world's overwhelming sense of inertia as she, yes, rather deftly picks apart its uncomfortable realities. after the semi-optimistic one-two punch of the first two tracks unexpectedly leads her right into the thick of it with "merry go 'round", she's lost: lost and wanting movement but feeling like it's all hopeless ("dandelion"), finding movement but scared not to know where it's all headed ("back on the map"), relieved to get somewhere nice and yet still feeling empty ("i miss you"). the killer for me is "keep it to yourself", her delicate delivery only just revealing the depth of her feeling for this man; she tells him off and feels his pain in the same cold breath. "follow your arrow" probably does more for the pr angle than it does for the actual album, and i rarely ever feel like listening to it on its own, but it's actually quite lovable tucked toward the end the way it is, the last positive note before we watch her languidly accept the way things are on the at-first charming but ultimately devastating "it is what it is". my emotional-car-listening album of the year.

4 BEYONCÉ Beyoncé
first of all, lol at me for even believing the people who said that this album coming out late would favor its chances for #1 on the poll. i mean yeah, the surprise wasn't nothing: i've never been one who would instantly buy a beyonce album with little second thought, but there was just something about the way it dropped, the whole package, the way it was presented, that convinced me it could be something special that i just had to listen to right away. there may or may not have been a moment during my first listen/viewing when i legitimately pondered whether this would be one of the best albums i've ever heard; every track seemed like it was giving unexpected, inspired touches that completely electrified me: the satisfied giggle punctuating her incredible and seemingly effortless "drunk in love" verse, "xo" pulling hard on both end of my heartstrings just as she rides the crest of the rollercoaster, her delivery of "i'm just jealous / i'm just human / don't judge me", the expertly deployed chimamanda adichie sample used to jaw-dropping effect at just the moment when i was expecting something else entirely.

i guess i became somewhat more level-headed about it later on after the excitement of the release itself had diminished, the radios stopped playing the album in its entirety and the individual songs started taking on lives of their own. but despite all that, it still completely thrills me with every listen, and it demanded that i listen repeatedly. the videos are no fluff: they tell a cohesive story of a black woman painfully navigating the rules largely set by white men while pretending it's all painless, all for success she finds increasingly hollow; how she later revels in the joy of using sexuality for her own benefit and asserts her own personal power; how she copes with loss and finds relief, hope, and satisfaction in motherhood and community. the videos tie together all the disparate electrifying moments that the album's songs deliver -- and they makes the whole story, purchased by over a million people before the year even finished, even more explicitly about race and gender.

2013 was the year in which i, after having spent ~8 years relentlessly pursuing grades, academic awards, money, and other qualifications that i gradually began to view as meaningless and arbitrary, began a huge struggle with depression and suddenly dropped out of graduate school, only to start bouncing around aimlessly and wondering if i had just wasted my entire young life or if i'm even fit to do anything else other than what i had groomed myself to do. on the night when bey's album dropped and i was lying on my bed watching "pretty hurts" for the first time and i saw her plunge into that pool of water, clutching her head in pain as the echoes of "what is your aspiration in life?" rang through her mind like a rude awakening -- that was the first moment of many that hit me really hard. i have a feeling i'm not completely alone there. people often cynically dismiss pop music as an exercise in trying to create something that as many people as possible will interpret as being "for" them so that they'll buy it, but bey reminded me that it can be quite an amazing thing.

… ok, done now. thanks for everyone who put everything together and who voted etc. for making this such an enjoyable time to reflect. maybe i'll listen to some of these other albums sometime, esp the ones w/ tracks i loved this yr on them. i may be an album person yet.

good post dyl, keep yr head up

yeah nice work man.

booming post, was very pleased when i saw that dyl was my top neighbor in the tracks spreadsheet

really enjoyed reading that dyl post

yeah that way of giving someone a window into how things impact you is really hard to do well but that was really interesting & thoughtful

thanks for the kind words, really appreciate it

and some dude i was pleased too :)

i knew this after voting closed unfortunately and before it placed in the poll, but jeez that ashley monroe album is incredible.

she's playing a small club in april in nyc that I'm working; looking forward to it.