ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2013

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.

Also I fuck with the MBV album but come on, "sonically inventive" it ain't. Maybe in 1992 it might have been.

I was genuinely surprised Beyonce didn't make number one. I was convinced that was going to be the clear winner. Haim had so much backlash on ILM but I Guess it goes to show that sometimes the complainers are just a bit louder than the boosters sometimes. Don't think MBV really deserved third, I mean it's a nice enough record but I understand, this is ILX etc. Same for DP - Get Lucky was a great single and I like the groove on every track but as an album it feels disjointed, it hangs together very awkwardly and a lot of the tracks go on a bit too long without really progressing. But still, this is ILM etc.

feel like in some way it might be for the best that i didn't sit thru that live

Lots of third-rate songs on mbv as much as I like the sonic treatment they were given. And yes I realise the sonics are 99% of the point, but for me the transportive power of them was as much due to the effects of nostalgia as it was to do with any psychedelic potency.

The MBV might not be sonically 'inventive' in a formal, breaking-new-ground way, but it's pretty radical-sounding in terms of how it's mixed and mastered in the current climate.

XD

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

this is otm

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.

also...scritti politti are...r&b? rather than just arch 80s "smart" indie?

nah i think it's fair to say that by Absolute you can think of Scritti as a genuine part of 80s R&B, sharing musicians, production techniques, having some influence back into the genre i think

arch R&B, sure

anyhoo

am agnostic about Haim but can see the appeal, altho from what i've heard they have some duff non-songs alongside the winsome soft rock bangers

have defended the Daft Punk often enough, i like it, i'm not listening to it much, i don't think it should be a top 10 on anybody's album list from last year and i say this as somebody who probably hasn't lived properly with 10 new albums last year

MBV yeah i'm sure it's lovely, i got no interest tbh any more than i was interested in hearing Bowie and both of those acts made stuff that mattered to me in their pomp. got to say i detect something in the tone of the people praising it that says to me that deep in your hearts you know it is not. all. that.

some of you don't deserve Yoncé, she's above this shit no matter how much i was looking forward to pasting BOW DOWN BITCHES on a loop

yoncé's blank entry in the "other lists" section of the spreadsheet was like a badge of honour. above this shit, indeed

i was looking forward to pasting BOW DOWN BITCHES as well :(

interesting that Omar Souleyman didn't place (as far as i can see) here but he did in the tracks poll, i couldn't really single out an individual track from his albums, they feel like one huge track/mix/vibe to me

that's my fault

I'm pleased it was a debut and not some old ILM staple which got to number one.
People talk about the music of the '70s,'80s, '90s and have an idea of what "eighties music" sounds like, for example, but it's rarely so clearly defined as that. In retrospect there's a fair bit of overlap between what is thought of as the 'typical' music of a given decade, and to me, for quite a while, it hadn't felt like there'd been much of a marked difference between 2010-2012 music and what had been happening in the noughties. Essentially, I've been waiting for the 'teens to kick in, make the jump, move on a bit.
There's a thread on ILM that talks about 1994 and its (possibly false) portrayal as a banner year for new music in the press (particularly in Britain). While I'm sceptical of such rose-tinted eulogising, there's a case towards '94 being a pivotal year in many respects, with multiple sea-changes occurring across genres, many innovations and a lot of tropes hanging over from the previous decade being left behind. Feels like this is starting to happen here too. Dubstep is definitely definitely over, for example. What I'm enjoying most about this year's poll is that for the most part the music here sounds extremely fresh, very vital, very now. There's a smidgen of retromania opening up here and there, but even Haim, Fleetwood Mac-isms aside, don't really sound like they could have come out at any other time really. It's great to see things moving on, brand new things being boosted (compare this year to 2009 GAPDY) and some fresh blood to get excited about.

There's no such thing as moving on

For individual artists maybe but not in general

so you're saying popular music hasn't moved on since the days of Scott Joplin?

OTOH it's also a bit weird that half the top ten were artists that could easily have featured in EOY 2003.

(that is, if MBV had chosen to release an album ten years ago)

change isn't the same as "moving on", the latter has a kind of Whig-ish idea of progress attached to it?

which is even tied into "the new", maybe

i think there are more interesting and possibly more accurate ways of mapping culture. "mapping" for example, implies spatial relationships rather than temporal ones, and kind of takes notions of cause and effect out of the equation

Yeah, some stuff just happens at the same time and retrofitting movements isn't helpful. Actor-network theory needs considering too; modes of production and distribution etc etc. Software packages. Cheap processing power.

Also, ILM, as broad as it is, is still populated with a very specific type of person.

I don't even know if ILM-ers love MBV or not. A fan of MBV would hate m b v!!

no.

I can't make head or tail of that post, julio.

I'm not sure you can draw any conclusions about ILM from the established artists that did well this year. They did well because they came back with good product. If an old favourite returns with something sub-standard, we're gonna call them out.

e.g. this 'we used to like you' section of the results:

205 The-Dream - IV Play 118
206 Low - The Invisible Way 116
[...]
209 The Field - Cupid's Head 115
[...]
211 Camera Obscura - Desire Lines 114
[...]
213 Phoenix - Bankrupt! 113
214 Iron and Wine - Ghost on Ghost 112

See also Jay-Z and the Y of GAPDY getting no votes at all.

Also, ILM, as broad as it is, is still populated with a very specific type of person.

― the drummer is a monster (Scik Mouthy), Friday, January 31, 201

Um.

I think "type" is doing just way too much intellectual lifting in this sentence to be of any meaning at all.

Jeff - I was just annoyed that m b v was highly rated, I found it really poor.

<i>I think "type" is doing just way too much intellectual lifting in this sentence to be of any meaning at all.</i>

Yeah that's true, and obviously massively generalising. But I think, broadly speaking, that the way discourse here exists and procreates, lends itself to people with certain traits - such as a deep analysis and understanding of / interest in cultural motivators, often recoiling from received wisdom, amongst other things. Massive, pedantic geeks, basically. It's very much not like any other music discussion community I've ever come across.

Again I fee a wee bit guilty about not voting, as I would've pushed QOTSA and possibly Run the Jewels into the top 77.