Year-End Critics' Polls 2013

i actually think the first half of the k michelle album is stronger, and the coochie interlude is too r kelly-esque ridic to hate on. (pro-tip, bonus track "the right one" is AMAZING). i don't really have any complaints about the album at all now, not even the sequencing gripes like i have with fantasia

thirty years ago a child would kick a big daddy kane 12 in the street.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUUCHDD06TI

^ Dunno why I didn't check this out sooner but this Katie Gately stuff is great, like a brutalist Julia Holter or something

68. Tal National - Kaani (Fat Cat)

My fave of the Quietus guitar bands from Africa. This group from Niger put on a wild show as well live (with a Chicago based producer echoing and feeding back aspects via the soundboard)

I don't usually like any EoY lists, but that Quietus list does look pretty good to me, honestly.

Though... Chrome Hoof released an album this year? How did I not know this?

Also The Blow album isn't making any lists but is really good... I guess nobody likes wimpy electropop any more (I really like wimpy electropop).

^otm, i've been meaning to either start a new thread for The Blow s/t or to post about it to one of the rolling threads. i'm completely smitten by it.

So I finally got round to listening to Yeezus and after four tracks I was all "why on earth didn't I listen to this before" and by the end of the album I was more "ah, that's why".

this is so OTM, lol

otm he just cant help himself

despite being an avid Quietoid, i can't really get into the Grumbling Fur album at all I'm afraid to say.

"Black Skinhead" has been growing on me each time I hear it on a different year-end playlist, but I'm still afraid to touch the album.

i wish the quietus wrote some new shit for their year-end list, because it's gonna take a lot more than "this makes me want to take drugs" to explain to me why this grumbling fur album is the best album of the year.

^^^

I assume that's a side-effect of only having 4 of them compile it.

ok fair but we can't even get one lil essay for the album of the year?

I like solo Alexander Tucker much better than Grumbling Fur but that's just me.

It's a pretty terrible blurb but the bit after the drugs bit On their second album Glynnaestra, the duo of Alexander Tucker and Daniel O'Sullivan conjure up a wonderfully evocative and distinctly British kitchen sink psychedelia, an intimate shared space where the whistle of a kettle and the clatter of pots and pans can sit seamlessly alongside heavily reverbed 80s pop synths, expansive rural landscapes, delectably ludicrous choruses and invocations to imaginary deities gives a pretty good idea of what to expect, no?

yeah, i guess i wanted it placed in a larger context of some kind, idk

it's neo-druidic drone pop

Stereogum:
http://www.stereogum.com/1567541/the-50-best-albums-of-2013/list/

01. Kanye West - Yeezus (Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam)
02. Deafheaven - Sunbather (Deathwish)
03. Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires Of The City (XL)
04. Disclosure - Settle (Cherrytree)
05. My Bloody Valentine - m b v (Self-released)
06. Sky Ferreira - Night Time, My Time (Capitol)
07. Danny Brown - Old (Fool's Gold)
08. HAIM - Days Are Gone (Polydor)
09. Daft Punk - Random Access Memories (Columbia)
10. Arcade Fire - Reflektor (Merge)
11. Volcano Choir - Repave (Jagjaguwar)
12. Run The Jewels - Run The Jewels (Fool's Gold)
13. Kurt Vile - Wakin On A Pretty Daze (Matador)
14. Savages - Silence Yourself (Matador/Pop Noire)
15. Kvelertak - Meir (Sony Music Scandinavia/Roadrunner)
16. Waxahatchee - Cerulean Salt (Don Giovanni)
17. Windhand - Soma (Relapse)
18. Chance The Rapper - Acid Rap (Self-released)
19. Tegan And Sara - Heartthrob (Warner Bros.)
20. Blood Orange - Cupid Deluxe (Domino)
etc

a rare sighting of the Field @ #33

I lost interest in Run the Jewels after August. It's due for another spin.

So it looks like a KDeDaHV kind of year? As opposed to that GAPDY year. I'm seeing Kanye, Deafhaven, Daft Punk, Haim and Vampire Weekend pop up on pretty much every list.

20 best cassette releases of 2013 http://www.factmag.com/2013/12/02/the-20-best-cassette-releases-of-2013

awesome, thanks!

seems like tape ppl mostly listen to drone & noise stuff. my 2 fav tapes of 2013 were by reg old bands needle gun and deformity

This is a weird way round of doing things - Magnet haven't published their list yet, but they're already running this poll online:

http://www.magnetmagazine.com/2013/12/03/what-record-didnt-deserve-to-make-our-top-25-albums-of-2013/

Wonder why the deafheaven album is getting non-rock/metal crit love over say Ghost or Asg , In Solitude, Kylesa or Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats?
Those seem more like what they would normally pick than a shoegazy black metal album on Converge's label. ( is that why? Converge got a lot of crit love the past few years.)

What a boring list. However, everyone should flood that poll with votes for Foxygen.

it has nothing to do with converge

it is because it is shoegazy

and has buzz

MAGNET’s Andrew Earles picks the best metal releases of the year.

1 Kylesa Ultraviolet (Season Of Mist)
2 Deafheaven Sunbather (Deathwish, Inc.)
3 Carcass Surgical Steel (Nuclear Blast)
4 Innumerable Forms/Blessed Offal split LP (Painkiller)
5 Jesu Everyday I Get Closer To The Light From Which I Came (Avalanche)
6 Windhand Soma (Relapse)
7 ASG Blood Drive (Relapse)
8 Red Fang Whales And Leeches (Relapse)
9 Moss Horrible Night (Metal Blade)
10 Subrosa More Constant Than The Gods (Profound Lore)
- See more at: http://www.magnetmagazine.com/2013/12/03/best-of-2013-metal/#sthash.FMzoIv56.dpuf

I need to get that Moss album. Forgot to buy it. Hardly bought any music this year.

For all the dichotomy people have drawn between the first four tracks on Yeezus and the rest, I listen to "I'm In It" and "Bound 2" and "Send It Up" way more than any of the opening tracks these days.

The first four are certainly noteworthy, but I like the whole record. ymmv

Also, that Magnet poll has already been yanked.

Are Wolves in the Throne Room the main crossover precedent for Deafheaven? Seems like it has something to do with pulling off the right inversions, like eco themes or a pink cover.

possibly? wittr's rise felt a lot more organic to me....deafheaven seems like they have a good publicist.

Liturgy perhaps also a precedent: "hipsters", Williamsburg, on Thrill Jockey, silly pronouncements etc. all "inversion" tropes mentioned above

Also, that Magnet poll has already been yanked.

Ha, I did think it might be a mistake

that Moss album is really good and I totally just forgot about it. though I don't like it as well as Tombs of the Blind Dead.

Maybe because Haim were running away with it and their label complained?
xp

why would a magazine take down a poll because the label of the winning act complained? why would the label complain? you have such weird ideas of how the world works.

erm did you see what the poll was?

but carry on with your weird ideas

(It was a poll of which album shouldnt have made our list and Haim was walking it, but lets be honest the reason its pulled is because it was meant to go up after the list was published)

i think deafheaven is more of an alcest thing (though the graphic design helps), as far as that goes.

I love the album and the one before it but it still surprises me that its this years token crossover album.

that Moss album is really good and I totally just forgot about it. though I don't like it as well as Tombs of the Blind Dead.

― combination hair (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned),

I really like the fact Olly is singing now. As with Electric Wizard, it really opens them up to new styles by having actual singing instead of shouty vox all the times. It stops them treading the same old ground.

Before it was pulled down, Foxygen had taken a commanding lead (of 10 votes to 6 for Haim).

did Foxygen really happen this year? that feels like it was a million Hipster Runoff years ago by now

Haim had 27 votes when I saw it. Never heard of Foxygen

17, i mean