ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2013

lol wins

Worth having the poll for just that.

Sat ire

Pun of the year!

had promised myself to DDOS ILM and nailbomb all relevant voters if Beyonce didn't win, apologize for this, would like to offer best wishes for all the not guilty during the oncoming destruction

YOU DEAF GOTH CUNTS

CVNTS

chill out folks. maybe listen to some of Haim's empirically superior music to relax yourself

JFCYP

You wins some

omg that haim pun

Thanks to all involved. Loved the countdown, great stuff to be discovered and as much as i love chance that new biebs song is the best.

It's been emotional lets do it again sometime

Ps sorry to see no hookworms

Finishing off yesterday's albums:

MILEY CYRUS Bangerz - This has washed over me without leaving any impression, really, and I've heard over half the album. Not actively annoying or offensive - it's listenable - but it's not for me. Get as far as FU then give up I guess. LOL I forgot to turn this off and Do My Thang is the best track by a miiiile. A mile! I legit love this. Gonna kill it afterwards tho coz the rest is not gonna live up. Seeya Miley.

DARKSIDE Psychic - intriguing darkwave instru-hop ambient shit (like so much else in this poll!) that is showing signs of going crazy-ish midway thru epic opener. Not yet sold, but will keep going (I always like an opening track that's longer than anything else on the record). Oh this is getting kinda wonderfully off-kilter, thought this'd be a bit boring but it's OH LOL this was because I accidentally started MBV at the same time as this was playing ahahaha. Right, so. Track 3 much more like it. Ach, not really liking this much now. Too much bloody ambientttt for me. MBV was the best bit by far haha

ARIANA GRANDE Yours Truly - Oh this first song is uh...quite arresting! It's obviously modern pop through and through but has a few weird sonic tricks - they're trying to keep it fresh and interesting. The rhythm isn't stable, shifts pleasingly. Nothing too spectacular for me but...more chances. Haha, 2nd song getting dull? KEYCHANGE! I get the feeling, sad to say, that these are some fairly uninspiring songs, written without much craft or depth, getting gussied up in the production process. But I always was a bigot. :D Stuck around until Tattooed Heart and there was ANOTHER FUCKING KEYCHANGE

DEAFHEAVEN Sunbather - I actually dig Dream House, the way it seems to be getting quicker as it goes along. I don't think it's very good melodically, instrumentally, texturally or vocally and I can't hear the lyrics, but it has undeniable energy and momentum. Oh UGH that quiet/loud bit. NEXT

BURIAL Rival Dealer EP - I quite liked the title-track in the traxpoll. Second song is a really lovely sonic experiment that decides to drop a massive beat and then abandon it. The 1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be) sample keeps cropping up. It's a vast and disorientating soundworld. I like it a lot - much better than any Burial I've previously heard. It's weirder and wilder. Last track even more gorgeous - spectral synths in threnody to some crushed dream, as static crackles, a singer submerges...this is really, really good! The found-sounds field-recording aspect is what really pushes it over the edge for me. Holy shiiiit, Come Down To Us is *amazing*, such a sad, angry, beautiful piece. Think I might have slept on Burial, my god. This was a brilliant, brilliant little record and the track I'd already heard was the weakest. I'm listening to Come Down To Us again ffs, I need to get on and listen to the rest of these allllbumzzzz

HOLDEN The Inheritors - already heard the first few songs + Blackpool Late Eighties which is fucking brilliant. Rannoch Dawn also incredible. Seems to be some mush in the middle - this album is probably half an hour too long. I won't relisten now but am broadly in favour, with some editing (I know, I know)

TEGAN & SARA Heartthrob - do I have to? Ach, ok. Closer isn't so bad second time around, but god knows I'm tired of this particular pop sound. *time passes* Tracks 3 and 4 aren't bad, actually. Pretty driving. Nothing original or exciting here - it's big, dumb music and you can't persuade me otherwise - but I'm not overly repulsed and there are some pleasing synth-textures. Next.

AMEL LARRIEUX Ice Cream Everyday - I fucking LOVE the songs I've already heard of this. And hey presto - already in this opening track, the overlapping vocal lines have me in psychedelic soul heaven - this is truly brilliant stuff. O GOD track 2 is even better THIS IS SO SO GREAT! That beat! Every track has something different to recommend it, except the vocal layering is consistently amazing. Also the album cover is GREAT, wtf the h8erz. I DO TAKE OMG EVEN BETTER SECOND TIME AROUND?! How can you guys go fucken mad for Ariana Grande and this in the same goddamned breath, it makes noooo seeeeense. Put it down to the vagaries of taste, huh. This is a goddamned swirling cosmic fantasy-dream soaring over the emotional landscape of music itself and dropping bombs of painful love errywhere. Moment To Reflect is so weird, poppy, tart to the taste - it reminds me of nobody so much as XTC at their happiest, even tho it comes from a completely different soundworld. SO GOOD. Oh this LAYERING! Argh yes. ALSO, this is really playful as well as soulful. Case in point: Orange Glow. See Where You Are is *so bizarre* my goddd there's no point liveblogging this any more is there? It's just. all. so. fucking. great. Listen to this album! Everyday!

TIM HECKER Virgins - Begun really well! Nicely disorienting. Ohh, I should really be listening to this while lying in the dark. It's still lovely now, though. Music I just want to give in to, but not engage with on a close intellectual level, more subsume within. It invites a purely psychedelic state of absence. Not that it's a purely sensual experience - there's a lot of craft here. Lovely depth in the mix - so much background detail - overlapping moods, a cavern of semi-hidden treasures...it's losing my interest a bit now, though. This is a pattern with all of the ambient artists in this poll, except Burial, who isn't really ambient. Just as I say that, Live Room gets really noisy and jarring, which is a good thing (here is where the lex and I diverge) and I've decided to give this a few more tracks. Ah, but midway through track 6 I am compelled to turn it off. Sorry. *goes to turn it off, juicy melodic line creeps in* ANOTHER stay of execution! Ye gods. Lucky I'm in a patient mood. OK, that was nice. NEXT.

CLASSIXX Hanging Gardens - Is this 'house'? Built up really splendidly, shame that the drop was so telegraphed, so thuddingly obvious. It's much more boring now after the drop. I guess there was only ever going to be one way this went, which is a shame because I figured we might be in for a wilder ride. This just isn't for me, part-way into track 2. Doesn't bang correctly. Enough. *mutters something darkly about ILM's weakness for music that has a 4/4 beat and a house bassline*

BOARDS OF CANADA Tomorrow's Harvest - I've listened to this album probably 5 or 6 times in full, all during a weird and somewhat stressful long-distance car-ride. The leaked preview track, New Seeds, is easily the best thing here (I have time for Jacquard Causeway too). I just don't get the rest of the album and consider it another of the ambient albums here that I really don't get into, at least in terms of foreground listening. I think it's their weakest and least interesting album by an absolute street and I'm not going to listen to it again now.

JULIA HOLTER Loud City Song - :o whoa! This is completely unexpected! Utterly arresting opening layered-vocal gambit. Ah, right, so...HOLY SHIT, track 2 fucking EXPLODED omg :D yessssssssssss this is what I listen to music for :D that moment there, ye gods! Um, oh my hellbound angelblaze, Maxim's I is a bloody marvel. I think I might really like this album! It's disorientating, impossible to place or predict, vast, translucent and thrilling. Well, that song was. Two songs later and I'm less intrigued. Why can't this all be as good as the first two tracks? It's all frantic and mumblecore now. Have we not learnt the lessons of hipstery? Yeah, really suddenly I'm done with this and I can't really articulate why beyond 'it got boring'. Almost as if the album were a dream...

BRANDY CLARK 12 Stories - I've listened to 2 songs of this and it hasn't leapt out at me. I know y'all got severe economic and social issues, so why are you trying to rouse anger at the circumstances of the working-class poor with bland country-pop that doesn't pack any sort of original punch? Impeccable neat'n'tidy hooks? Dammit, I want righteousness, I want intensity! The lyrics to 'Get High' are making me angry but not in the right way. This isn't insightful, nor even witty. Next. Southern-states postcard music and I'm not afraid of the bigotry, there's better where that came from.

THE 1975 The 1975 - Why is this album 16 tracks long? It's...not as bad as I expected! I mean, obviously it's horrible overproduced electro-rock crap of some base and abysmal order, but...it's listenable, plenty of sonic texture. These are the worst track-titles in the history of music, though - that's inescapable. I seriously can't imagine what sort of a terrible, terrible person you'd have to be to call your songs by these titles, especially in aggregation. It comes off like a list of vacuous lifestyle tropes, a sort of consumer-catalogue of topics The 1975's shadowy record-label cabal told them to write about. "Write songs about...the city, money, sex, girls, clothing, maybe a sexual encounter, maybe settling down with a loved one...and keep the titles simple". Clearly these 1975 boys have the imagination of a breezeblock. Right, starting to really, really hate the music as well. I know it's IMPOSSIBLY NOW, and yet this knotty paradox compels me to rid myself of it before it might perplex me entirely! I shall listen until 'Sex' just to see if I really can rile myself up into some sort of homicidal rage. Oh Christ, dear God. I shouldn't be listening any more. This is utterly loathsome, the textures of 'The City' long forgotten amidst shambling priapic aural vomit. FUCK OFF. Jesus, this is the worst album in the entire list so far, just hideous. AND YET I still have to listen to 'Sex'. I will refrain from typing until it's done. *3 agonising minutes pass* This isn't about Poptimism. These cunts are Glasvegas remanifest. GLASVEGAS.

^worst stretch of the poll probably and I still flat-out fucking adored two of them

nordic people (including uk, germany, ireland and canada)

Nice one^

Every act/album mentioned itt sucks. Also it was sexist.

lj the Julia holter album returns to the feel of the opening tracks by the time it gets to the last few

BRANDY CLARK 12 Stories - I've listened to 2 songs of this and it hasn't leapt out at me. I know y'all got severe economic and social issues, so why are you trying to rouse anger at the circumstances of the working-class poor with bland country-pop that doesn't pack any sort of original punch? Impeccable neat'n'tidy hooks? Dammit, I want righteousness, I want intensity! The lyrics to 'Get High' are making me angry but not in the right way. This isn't insightful, nor even witty. Next. Southern-states postcard music and I'm not afraid of the bigotry, there's better where that came from.

lol love that slow-to-develop loathing in the 1975 blurb

Brad I just read your DiS article on The 1975 and HAIM and well all I can say is that I have an impressive adversary :D

That said, I'm not going to write 3000 exquisitely-chosen words on why those bands fail, because I'd be a cunt, so it's a free pass, really. I'll just have to keep liking what I do, praising it. We all praise differently.

I do wonder what filters I have that turn me away from those bands, and whether they'd be prime candidates for Branwell's '22 listens thread' (chuck in Brandy Clark too if you think I need that medicine ahaha)

Brad I just read your DiS article on The 1975 and HAIM and well all I can say is that I have an impressive adversary :D

lj we are both huge fans of blood inside we can coexist

ya I know, there's plenty we both love! just wonder why someone with your writing prowess, eloquence and thoughtfulness about music can devote your energies with evident affection towards two bands I simply can't stand. could it be that, as with Paramore, I just need to leap into the void and somehow disable my preconceptions?

climactic HAIM listenthru is gonna be an intense emotional experience for us all

so many things wrong w/that Brandy Clark post I don't even know where to start, thanks for your opinions about America dude who has never been here

lay it down and I'll recant - I fling this stuff out there as an initial impression

Haha I totally thought Yamantaka / Sonic Titan was a project of Boredoms dude.

― raggett neds of your summer dress (The Reverend), Thursday, January 30, 2014 6:05 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol i thought i was the only one

This and the singles polls thread were particularly annoying to read this year (and not in the "I want to fuck them" sense). Feel like there's this strain of vocal iconoclasm always obsessively reacting to whatever it perceives the taste of the typical ilxor to be.

Tell me where I'm wrong btw? I do know that quite a few friends-of-friends in the USA can no longer afford healthcare. Clark's lyrics appear to be slice-of-life social commentary - I listened to 3 of the songs, fairly carefully - I just can't get with the mode of delivery. I know that my perspective is very different to yours, and possibly I've projected onto Clark a sociocultural imperative she doesn't really profess to have, but the majority of that post is subjective and thus hardly 'wrong' - perhaps the impression I get would be modified by further listening/study? I don't like this complacent derision that doesn't feel the need to explain itself. I can take criticism so long as it's explained - do so, please.

imago it's not really a music analysis thing w/Clark, it just resonates culturally in 2013 USA? seems like you were expecting something out of the artist that wasn't there in the first place

OK xposts now yeah this is what I meant:

possibly I've projected onto Clark a sociocultural imperative she doesn't really profess to have

and yeah "wrong" is subjective for sure coming from me, so grain of salt etc.

Possibly the impression I get is that it's all far more fucked and desperate than it perhaps seems, so I'm probably better off just listening to Killing Joke or w/e

Will give Kacey M a proper, album-length listen when I get that far, btw - she seems to be the figurehead of this movement

that Rate Your Music list is horrible as always, Haim, who will probaly win the ILM poll, can't even make the Top 100.

― Bee OK, Friday, November 22, 2013 9:11 PM (2 months ago)

i knew it.

good job poll runners.

i definitely thought one of the older iconic acts (most likely mbv or daft punk) was going to beat out haim for #1. so this is a pleasant surprise even if haim doesn't exactly have aoty feeling to me (iirc on my ballot it had #3 or #4 aoty feeling).

mostly tho i'm psyched by the top 77--it's a good mix of records with only a couple things i really dislike.

Tell me where I'm wrong btw? I do know that quite a few friends-of-friends in the USA can no longer afford healthcare. Clark's lyrics appear to be slice-of-life social commentary - I listened to 3 of the songs, fairly carefully - I just can't get with the mode of delivery. I know that my perspective is very different to yours, and possibly I've projected onto Clark a sociocultural imperative she doesn't really profess to have, but the majority of that post is subjective and thus hardly 'wrong' - perhaps the impression I get would be modified by further listening/study? I don't like this complacent derision that doesn't feel the need to explain itself. I can take criticism so long as it's explained - do so, please.

― 141 Jute Gyte - Discontinuities 142 drake - nothing was the same (imago), Thursday, January 30, 2014 9:33 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thread is winding down and i'll hopefully soon go back to not running into you in threads very often so let me just say one big long heartfelt shuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup

i thought beyonce was a lock tbh though if you'd asked me 'what album will appear on most ballots' i might have guessed haim.

yeah i did get the sense that beyonce would just miss due to the reasons discussed re: availability and lateness. i had it at #4 or #5 but even a month from now it could easily by my #1.

i assumed beyonce would steamroll to no. 1.

makes me (slightly) more curious about the haim record (of which, one song sounded pretty good, until i realized the familiar hand-clapping was an homage to heartache tonight).

xp i still haven't heard the whole thing, but might've if it were on spotify

I wish I voted in this. After the electro dribble results a few years back I boycotted these year end polls, but this had good results. Deerhunter Monomania and Lightning Dust were robbed however.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ cosign

Disgruntled Beyonce loyalists discuss options, vow to make Haim a one-term AOY winner.

Don't blame me. I voted for Nader.

20 KURT VILE Walkin On a Pretty Daze - not as good as the first
19 CHVRCHES The Bones of What You Believe - this band just seems so lame
18 JANELLE MONÁE The Electric Lady - janelle monae always makes me think of that malcolm gladwell piece thats in blink about some aspiring pop star, sure this v worthwhile
17 CHARLI XCX True Romance - havent heard
16 DISCLOSURE Settle - havent heard
15 THESE NEW PURITANS Field of Reeds - havent heard
14 M.I.A. Matangi - did not know this existed, surprised by how little i care
13 ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER R Plus Seven - voted for this but a bit ambivalent, big fan of the video work he commissioned for this record
12 DAWN RICHARD Goldenheart - will give this another chance
11 CHANCE THE RAPPER Acid Rap - i start typing out thoughts and then just deleting them: ok, w/e, nvm
10 KANYE WEST Yeezus - havent heard
9 KACEY MUSGRAVES Same Trailer Different Park - i like how low income taylor swift this album title is, no interest in ever listening to her though
8 PARAMORE Paramore - seeing this here makes me genuinely happy, like glad that i waste any time at all reading/posting to this website
7 THE KNIFE Shaking the Habitual - havent heard
6 VAMPIRE WEEKEND Modern Vampires of the City - havent heard
5 SKY FERREIRA Night Time, My Time - on scale of 1 to clap your hands say yeah how embarrassing will placing this record at #5 be in like, three years?
4 BEYONCÉ Beyoncé - i started to really warm to '4' like this summer, so i am sure i will come around to this album's charms some day
3 MY BLOODY VALENTINE mbv - havent heard
2 DAFT PUNK Random Access Memories - sure
1 HAIM Days Are Gone - everyone compares them to fleetwood mac so i get this as a #1 - will give it another listen i guess

as always i really like this as list of records people liked in 2013, almost nothing i really care about placed but i respect the sensibility that emerges from thinking about this list as a whole. also sorry rev if i went too far on the 1975 fwiw they totally grossed me out, it was hard to make out the lyrics through the one dudes lindsey lohan playing harry potter on snl accent but they read kinda #deadgirlfriends to me, really sick of those dudes in general but thats not anyone elses problem

lastly man i wish that huerco s. record had placed

5 SKY FERREIRA Night Time, My Time - on scale of 1 to clap your hands say yeah how embarrassing will placing this record at #5 be in like, three years?

Among a lot of the voters, anticipation for this album had been building for three years, so in three years from now I don't suppose there would be much regret. CYHSY came and left with barely a footprint.

the huerco s. record was a disappointment

I know y'all got severe economic and social issues, so why are you trying to rouse anger at the circumstances of the working-class poor with bland country-pop that doesn't pack any sort of original punch? Impeccable neat'n'tidy hooks?

brandy clark is trying to rouse empathy, not anger, because unlike you, she understands that a simple, elegant description of how things are that rings true can be more powerful than noisy rabble-rousing

and as for original - brandy clark's been a professional nashville songwriter for over a decade; this album is mostly comprised of songs that established artists passed on because they were too risky, content-wise. she's in a strong tradition of female country artists who tell their truth and ruffle feathers, sure, but there's nothing hackneyed or unoriginal about her

Southern-states postcard music

Never heard the record but this sounds like a +ve description!

Just got round to listening to the Beyonce album properly for the first time and strangely enough it's the sexy slow jams like Rocket which I think I like best at this stage.

Surprised at how overjoyed I was at Haim winning this but only after I'd got over my NVesque rage at Beyoncé missing the top 3.