ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2013

really like the Boards of Canada album. it reminds me of the quiet serenity of a nuclear missle silo out in the desert right before the button gets pushed.

Oh yeah, The Knife for sure. Maybe instead of Bowie (an album I don't personally like much, but people who do seem to REALLY like).

I dont think Earl is making it?

Blondes?

are you saying My Dick mightn't be as big as you thought?

I'd hate to think that My Dick is just a small fry.

QotSA more likely than Bowie.

I actually will be very surprised if M.I.A. places

The 1975 album is frontloaded w/singles if you're listening on Spotify &c, but deeper into the tracklisting:

° Robbers is p.lush in a Blue Nile way.
° For the Amel Larrieux fans, Menswear is the album's "Trapped Being Human".
° Girls is fantastic Scritti Politti-meets-Fall Out Boy froth.

yeah the 1975 thread was a blast in that there are like 75-100 otm touchpoint comparisons in there. Also fun to read as familiar users trickled in with their thoughts. some predictable and some not.

did janelle place already?

Settle Down is my jam on there now I think, after all the singles anyway.

i think everything else on that 1975 album pales in comparison to "chocolate"

janelle not placed yet

The 1975 is one of the few albums so far on the list that I just couldn't stand at all (though I'm not listening to any of the country albums at all; if that makes me an awful person than so be it).

Oh yeah, she'll be here surely.

new to me albums that i have really enjoyed so far: k michelle, carcass & goldfrapp

xp Ha, Blackpool Late Eighties is one of my favourite tracks on The Inheritors. Free synth strings ftw.

The 1975 is one of the few albums so far on the list that I just couldn't stand at all

just listened to them for the first time and i got nothing making me want to listen again.

I think everything on that 1975 album pales in comparison to music

Keep pretending like you've actually listened to it!

On the positive side, Holden is today's "I hadn't even heard of this and it's pretty cool" album.

"I think everything on that 1975 album pales in comparison to music"

Correct.

i really liked the guitars on sex off the 1975 record, you could have those on the cheesiest song ever and it would still sound beautiful to me

they have a song called 'sex'

sorry spottie but between that and the 'IMPOSSIBLY NOW' adverts all over the london underground i'm gonna find it incredibly difficult to hear these guys with a fresh conscience

v interested to see if you can pull it off tbf

fully expecting a quality slagging tho

found a real dealbreaker in trying to put people onto the 1975 is the dude's voice so sorry guys

I can't possibly imagine being of the mindset that is put off an act because they have a song called "Sex"

yes the dude's voice is THE WORST

I did write ‘Blackpool Late Eighties’ in a hotel. I was flying back from the States and it snowed here so we got re-routed to Amsterdam and I was gutted because I don’t really like being away and I was really homesick. I went into Amsterdam and bought a big bag of weed, downloaded some free soft synths and made that track in the hotel room, off my tits.

best layover ever

i like his voice but i understand

I can't possibly imagine being of the mindset that is put off an act because they have a song called "Sex"

― raggett neds of your summer dress (The Reverend), Wednesday, January 29, 2014 9:10 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

comes off like a cynical marketing move rather than a coherent artistic decision. but WE SHALL SEE, maybe they rock it

I officially like this Holden album but I'm not exactly hearing the "krautrock" -- Blackpool Late Eighties would be fun to dance to!! I also love the aforementioned caterpillar song.

Ezra Koenig's voice doesn't bother me yet 1975 dude's does.

The singing's definitely part of it but the whole package is just so cheesy and not in a good, fun way, just in a very annoying way. It sounds very "modern rock radio."

Brad otm

the voice also makes me really dislike the 1975's lyrics. i've no idea whether i'd find them good sung by someone else but those words out of that mouth just repels me, makes them seem creepy or gross rather than real or resonant. i mean historically i have had nothing to say about emo, just shudder and move on, but a lot of people who share my taste were bizarrely into this last year so it was harder to do that

the single has been doing better on pop radio than rock radio in the US, which makes sense, i guess. that "GUNS HIDDEN UNDER OUR PEH-YCOATS" refrain is pretty off-putting thoguh.

my #3 in the end - bumped it ahead of kacey at the last min. just absolutely incredible songwriting from start to finish, including a few that could reduce me to a total wreck. had been worried b/c ilm seemed not to pick up on this as much as kacey...i get why kacey is the more charismatic performer, the more commercial persona, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with brandy's journalistic insistence that none of what she documents is about her, she's telling other people's stories.

Brandy is a fantastic songwriter but really it's gonna be on the songwriting level that you're gonna click with her, her voice is so self-assured that I think you need to be paying close attention to get the same emotional kick-to-the-guts that Kacey (or Ashley, when she's in serious mode) can deliver quite easily (there is a certain irony at work here of course - I suspect Brandy's easy confidence as a singer might make her harder to fall in love with, a bit). The arrangements are fine but their relative conservatism contributes to this dynamic.

wait the 1975 is emo? nae gonnae bother

"Sex" is the only title that song could have, really. One of the best "relationship" psychodramas I can think of.

dude from The 1975 has like the most innocuous 2010s rock voice you can possibly have

I feel like people coming to The 1975 through the album and/or the singles only are gonna get a really partial and skewed notion of them (this is not listeners' fault - can't expect people to listen to everything).

You could make a playlist of EP material especially that felt like the work of an entirely different band, and singer even - esp. stuff like "Haunt / Bed" or "Mine" or "Fallingforyou".

listen i am oriented toward all things emo but i also like things that sound as if they were produced by immaculate machines so when i first heard "sex" i was like IT'S AS IF SOMEONE MADE THIS FOR ME, all this distinctly teenage drama emanating from a bed of smoke. the remainder of their eps are slow uncoiling electronic pieces which didn't make a lot of sense to me until months later when i thought "oh, of course, the blue nile, and maybe to a degree tweet's 'drunk'" less maybe their intended references than what i hear them inadvertently unearthing. proper album betrays real intensely embodied r&b and new wave influence, on "settle down" those 808 hits paired with keyboards revolving through crystalline forms is straight out of the jam/lewis playbook, very resonant of scritti politti to in the collagist subrhythms of "talk!" and etc. etc. etc. THEREFORE, i am in love and i am elevated by this love into an ignorance of other people; sorry again

Brandy is a fantastic songwriter but really it's gonna be on the songwriting level that you're gonna click with her, her voice is so self-assured that I think you need to be paying close attention to get the same emotional kick-to-the-guts that Kacey (or Ashley, when she's in serious mode) can deliver quite easily

yeah, i understand this but the irony is that the biggest emotional kick-to-the-guts any of them gave me last year was...brandy clark, on "just like him". i don't think you need to be paying close attention for a lyric like "they say love's like coming home / and i came from a broken one" to send you reeling

NB. any references to "R&B" w/r/t The 1975 need to be understood as rather more organic - e.g. really mid-80s Scritti Politti etc. - than the typical 2009-2013 "we love R&B" press release posturing.

the first 16 seconds i heard of the 1975 ("chocolate") sounds like the music they play when they remind you to turn off your phone at the movies
totally cannot stand this guy's voice -- it's like UK third eye blind or something?

dude from The 1975 has like the most innocuous 2010s rock voice you can possibly have

so yelpy and whiny, like even more than the usual awful yelpy whining, it's like every single syllable has a yelp in it. and so nasal. oh god, these buzztooth guitars, really can't take this, can't care what the song's about when i can't take more than 30 secs of the sound

dude from The 1975 has like the most innocuous 2010s rock voice you can possibly have

not to UK ears i don't think

*reads LL's post*

okay it's not just us

"Chocolate" sounds a lot like Third Eye Blind but nothing else they've done does.