ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2013

this FB album is their least appealing imo, i couldn't get into it at all but enjoyed the prevs

why would anyone want to ask for a shit disco album

the Young Galaxy album has been a nice discovery for me. i would have definitely voted for it had i heard it before.

morelike alex in moanhatin'

xpost surprises me that no one ever talks about "Fall For You" on that album, it's easily my favourite.

I can't be around for roll-out and I had 20 thoughts to post so instead I'm gonna cheat

77 JULIANNA BARWICK Nepenthe - beautiful, I love this album, a friend produced this and I am proud for him
76 FALL OUT BOY - this is technically very nice, not my kind of music
75 MELT-BANANA Fetch - one of my favourite bands historically but I haven't yet heard this
74 BILL CALLAHAN Dream River - Beer. Thank you. Flute. No thank you.
73 LORDE Pure Heroine - Have only heard "Buzzcut Season" and "Royals" (for the first time at the Grammies), like both tracks, love her
72 THEE OH SEES Floating Coffin - I am still three albums behind on Thee Oh Sees but this is a band I prefer to see live
71 FÖLLAKZOID II - new to me, looking forward to it
70 GORGUTS Colored Sands - I can't get away from all the love for this record and I will listen to it tonight
(tie) 68. KELELA Cut 4 Me - Best best best, love this record
(tie) 68 CUT COPY Free Your Mind - I have never heard this band or met anybody who likes them
67 f(x) Pink Tape - some days for simplicity I imagine that I like shiny pop music but today is not one of those days
66 DANNY BROWN Old - I am still actively listening to XXX and haven't heard this
65 FACTORY FLOOR Factory Floor - I wish I liked this more, this is one of my favourite bands but I think I like them for their potential energy (imagining their records-to-be) than anything else. I love Carter Tutti Void.
64 CIARA Ciara - I cook to this record, I love Ciara
63 PARQUET COURTS Light Up Gold - have for the last couple years maintained irrational hatred for all things Brooklynite (mostly as an effort to get my friends out of that Rube Goldberg machine, and it's working), but this band doesn't even do New York slacker well, it's bad guitar solos, bad drumming. Would tomato.
62 K MICHELLE Rebellious Soul - I was ready to like K Michelle but "Coochie Symphony" is such a piece of shit that I deleted this record.
61 ARCTIC MONKEYS AM - I love Alex's songs and love this record
60 DONATO DOZZY Plays Bee Mask - oh hello I have not heard you or heard of you
59 JOHN GRANT Pale Green Ghosts - CAD otm about this guy and Xiu Xiu, but in a deeper, id way. This guy is totally great but not my jam.
58 RHYE Woman - I wrote an "every decade gets the Postal Service they deserve" thing on Facebook about this album but then realized that a friend was in this band and hastily deleted
57 YOUNG GALAXY Ultramarine - like Lex I've been cool on this band but this record is great
56 KA The Night's Gambit - I listened once but need to give this another shot
55 DJ SPRINKLES Queerifications and Ruins: Collected Remixes by DJ Sprinkles - <3 <3 <3
54 NEKO CASE The Worse Things Get - I'm a couple albums behind on Neko, I loved Fox Confessor to death, I love Neko's refusal to write hooks on that record, all mood and lyrics. Wasn't into "I'm A Man" at all.
53 CARCASS Surgical Steel - this is awesome, one of my favourites of the year, I put it on whenever bf goes out
52 SAVAGES Silence Yourself - I saw them live at NXNE and they blew me and the room away, best show of the year, I have been avoiding their album because people have such a problem with them and I would rather keep my positive experience with them intact
51 ASHLEY MONROE Like a Rose - I don't listen to this
50 WAXAHATCHEE Cerulean Salt - Stevie D has been telling me to listen to this so I want to listen to it properly and I haven't yet
49 WILLIAM ONYEABOR Who is William Onyeabor? - I am waiting for this album to surprise me
48 YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN UZU - this is everything I love and I listen to this album all the time
47 LAUREL HALO Chance of Rain - who is this?
46 QUADRON Avalanche - haven't heard but every Quadron post on ILM references Rhye so I'll pass
45 ARCADE FIRE Reflektor - I love "It's Never Over" from this album, but don't rate the rest. I rate "The Suburbs" highly.
44 MATMOS The Marriage of True Minds - a favourite, but I haven't heard this yet
43 JON HOPKINS Immunity - kryptonite. Hotel lobby music. This guy is a great musician though
42 MAYA JANE COLES Comfort - who is this.
42 FUCK BUTTONS Slow Focus - personally this isn't what I put on when I want to rock but these guys sell tickets and make noise so big respect

it's all so average, so not taking any risks, so not new.

this is bullshit fyi. not sure how you can say that about all THIRTY-SEVEN albums that have placed so far

Yeah it'll take more than "very cursory listens of a couple of songs" to get a sense of these albums.

ehh that's just his 'thing'

I feel like K. Michelle is on the verge of writing Chatterbox: The Opera

waxahatchee sounds a little like a toothless liz phair. i kind of like her songs but they seem pretty boring and previsible. i cannot imagine to listen to them more than twice.

xp it's a bold judgement, i know probably premature but it's how it is. i know i should try harder but there is still so much great stuff to discover why waste my time. like the amazing atmospheric slow motion music of bohren and the club of gore for example.

^he died listening to talk talk iirc, that's his ghost

cursory listens might not be enough to get a sense of these albums but they're damn well enough to know that "it's all so average, so not taking any risks, so not new" is nonsense

seriously, i'm shook

forgot to post this when Lorde placed
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/10433978/Lorde-interview-Dream-Teen.html

New Zealand teenager Lorde, who will perform live at the Grammys, has been hailed as the antidote to superficial lyrics and sexual provocation in pop

tempted to resurrect "even a cursory reading of Foucault should have told us that"

the antidote to superficial lyrics and sexual provocation in pop

FINALLY

you got it wrong matt p, talk talk saved my life!

i listened to a couple of cuts off the Gorguts album and that told me all i need to know about every one of these records

it's a little odd to see that onyeabor comp mixed in with all this new stuff.

Been meaning to check that out for a while. I'll do it now!

waxahatchee sounds a little like a toothless liz phair

I kinda agree with the Liz Phair part, not sure where the "toothless" is coming from though. I guess it depends on which parts of "Exile" you liked best. If you preferred the sarcastic smackdowns of hapless ex-es and wannabe scenesters, then I guess Waxahatchee might not be for you. But if you preferred the emotionally vulnerable dissections of failing relationships and breakups and such, you might like it.

Also, btw, I don't get all the people who say they would've voted for Parquet Courts but they considered it to be 2012. I could understand that if you voted for it in 2012, but I went back and checked the results spreadsheet and there was exactly one vote for "Light Up Gold" in 2012. One. So a lot of you are fronting, I think.

fronting? on ILM?

good thing we got o. nate to call it out

that most of those albums do not grab me has probably more to do with me than with the music. for quite a while i have had the feeling of being flooded with music. i am more into silence than music these days. just don't listen to my ramblings...

xp i preferred the sarcastic songs off exile, definitely.

Truly, truly, I tell you that one of you will betray Parquet Courts

loool

59 JOHN GRANT Pale Green Ghosts - CAD otm about this guy and Xiu Xiu, but in a deeper, id way. This guy is totally great but not my jam.

id is a v. good descriptor of what i mean here.

also bad drumming seems like an odd thing to call out re: parquet courts--drummer is v. snappy and economical imo!

Yeah, Parquet Courts can be faulted on many things, but I don't think the drummer is one. Much better than your average "slacker" band, that's for sure.

Retracted, then. I typed that with their Kimmel performance in mind but listening again yeah, drums are fine, omg at this "guitar solo" though

I could type for hours about my distaste for "busted living" and the romanticization of drug use + hunger + New York, throw out your copies of "Just Kids", people

kind of loving this William Onyerbike album right now. Very very groovy.

romanticization of drug use + hunger + New York

Its a funny kind of romanticization if that's what it is. They actually make being stoned & hungry sound kind of boring and pointless, or maybe I'm projecting. They seem pretty down to earth to me.

This last fact is a kind of icing on the cake for some, who have greeted O’Connor not just as the latest new pop star to appear freshly baked off the assembly line but as a kind of Trojan horse come to deliver us from the saccharine smiles and full-frontal sexual provocation clogging the charts. Lorde’s sharp narrative observations – on both the single, and her critically acclaimed follow-up album, Pure Heroine – have led to her being labelled the voice of her generation, and mentioned in the same breath as everyone from Joan of Arc to the heroic Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai.

just the other day I was talking to friends about Joan of Arc and suddenly we all couldn't shut up about burning Lorde at the stake

looool

What sort of person would compare a 15 year old girl writing a hit song to a young girl shot because she wanted to go to school?

A horrible, horrible person.

pedestals are embarrassing for everyone

http://www.teenvogue.com/my-life/2013-12/girl-year-in-review

#5 on teen vogue's top seven list of ways 2013 was a "Uniquely Awesome Year for Girls" (Just in case you were wondering who run the world):
A hilarious tampon ad goes viral.

juuuust edged out wendy davis

ew

dope. liking today's winners lots more than yesterday's.

i've set myself a helluva listening assignment, some artists are gonna have to get some short shrift

really the overall quality is high again tho

this William Onyeabor is great

Glad to see Yamantaka made it.

guys i'm really disappointed in you that your 48th favorite album of the year isn't a bold, risk-taking invention of a new genre, a new way of thinking about music