best albums of 2013

It's nearly Super Bowl time and here I am finally getting out my best albums of 2013 list. Explanation: the first 4 and a half months of 2013 were spent in a near constant state of schooling to get out of law school. The summer wasn't much better as I contracted a month long lung and ear infection. Since then (and on into 2014), the crippling weight of unemployment continues to stagger.

So here it is at last, in no particular order...

1. Savages - Silence Yourself

When I heard the first single, She Will, back in March, I immediately preordered the album. After spinning the album once, I knew it would be one of my favorite albums of the year. I saw them at ACL and the stage was just too big for Jenny Beth. She kicked and punches to fill up the empty space but also spent a lot of time walking to the back. I said to myself then I need to see them in a more intimate venue. One week later they played The Parish in Austin and it was everything I'd hoped it would be. A confrontationally sexual album. Don't be surprised to hear Jenny Beth describe BDSM and kinky sex in her intros. A very sex positive album and a just plain fantastic collection of songs.

2. The Knife - Shaking the Habitual

Weird. Experimental. Beautiful. Haunting. Brilliant. Challenging.

3. Simple Circuit - S/T

I always include a local Austin band in my top albums of the year. Thanks to local radio station KVRX for introducing me to this garage punk band. Permanent Records in Chicago describes this self-released debut as

The Austin Texas onslaught continues with Simple Circuit's art damaged self-titled self-released debut!!!!! Fighting for notoriety in a city already overflowing with killer bands, Simple Circuit's brand of catchy fuzzed out, angular garage punk definitely puts them at the top of our lists of bands to watch out for. Fans of fellow Texans rock n rollers Video, Spray Paint, OBN IIIs and Gospel Truth as well as junkies for shop faves like Intelligence, Thee Oh Sees and Tyvek might've just found your new go-to record. Forget the second tier garage punker bands kicking around and grab this killer debut album now. "Simple Circuit" is SUPER RECOMMENDED!!!!!!!!

I concur. Highly recommended.

4. My Bloody Valentine - m.b.v.

Somehow I missed this release during the year and had a mini-breakdown in December when I finally learned about it. It was, what, more than 20 years since their last album release? I like shoegaze. So what? You want to fight about it.

5. Jagwar Ma - Howlin

6. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - II

7. Neko Case - The Worse Things Get...

8. The Oh Sees - Floating Coffin

9. Mikal Cronin - MCII

10. Waxahatchee - Cerulean Salt

best albums of 2012

To be fair, I can't really give my opinion of the "best" albums of 2012. After the first quarter, I kind of stepped away from listening to new music. My grandfather died as the spring semester wound down; this summer is a barely distinguishable haze. Then I disappeared to Singapore from August until December. Although I tried to keep tabs on release schedules, much of what happened in music after March has been lost on me. I did, however, get well acquainted with the back catalogs of both Big Star and Joy Division.

This top 5 isn't really a survey from January to December for the year's best albums. It's a more personal reflection on the songs and artists that made an impression on me through the dark times and the good that was 2012.

Before the countdown, here are my impressions of some other 2012 releases that I did hear but didn't make the cut.

Mentions

The xx - Coexist
I liked this album. I also loved 2009's self titled from this British band. Their sophomore follow-up didn't stray too far from the original formula. When the formula's as solidly good as this one, maybe mining it once more before moving on isn't a bad idea.

Jens Lekman - I Know What Love Isn't
Sounds like love letters to the one I fucked it up with ("the one that got away" disguises a blame that's fully mine) but somehow managed to still stay friendly with.

Grizzly Bear - Shields
When it was first available for streaming, I recall being particularly enamored with this album. A few months later, I couldn't even recall what a single song sounded like. Definitely plans to revisit it now that my turntable and I have been reunited.

Sufjan Stevens - Silver & Gold: Songs for Christmas, vols. 6-10
What can you say about a Sufjan Christmas collection? At moments alternately awe-ful and haunting. Lumberjack Christmas / No One Can Save You from Christmases Past was instantly a holiday classic for me.

The Top 5 (in no particular order)

1. Cloud Nothings - Attack on Memory

This one was released so early on (January 24) I almost forgot it was a 2012 release until I started perusing other best of lists. It's louder and darker than Dylan Baldi's previous outings. Screamer No Future/No Past and deceptively peppy Stay Useless accompanied me through some pretty bleak moods this year.

2. Japandroids - Celebration Rock

Follow-up to 2009's widely acclaimed Post-Nothing, Celebration Rock continued this Canadian duo's despairing glimpses at what lies beyond the party while continuing to rock twice as hard to put the inevitable off. Themes of aging and mortality sat well with me in the year I officially joined the mid-30s and family members continue to degenerate and shuffle off this mortal coil.

3. Twin Shadow - Confess

In 2009, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart totally rocked my shit with their eponymously titled debut LP. A year later, George Lewis, Jr., aka Twin Shadow did the same thing with Confess. It blended 80s elements of new wave and R&B but created a singular sound greater than the sum of its influences. Equal parts sleaze and saccharine innocence, George had at it again in 2012, refining and sharpening his formula, to create one of the most memorable albums of the year for me. It speaks to both my better nature and worst half.

4. Ringo Deathstarr - Mauve

An Austin band that wears their influences on their sleeve, Ringo Deathstarr is a shoe gaze slash noise pop trio the BBC dismissed as "shoegaze drone-noise from Texas, done well but done several times before." I saw them ring in the New Year at a little east side bar in Austin called The Frontier. They delivered. Loud, fuzzy guitars, and fun. Originality and experimentation are great, but never discount the value of having a good time. The atmospheric guitars often soundtracked my crowded subway commutes to SMU, lending the push through the daily sea of erratic human bodies a quaint disconnected unreality. The right album at the right time in my life.

5. Beach House - Bloom

Apparently this was the last album I listened to on Spotify before leaving the country as it and Donovan were affixed to my Facebook page for the fall and winter months. Ethereal and gravid with so many not quite fully formed, ambiguous feelings. Often the lullaby to soothe my complicated pains and longings in the wake of my grandfather's death and the great uncertainty facing me as graduation from law school draws near, I age, and romances bloom and wither.

To Listen, To Pick Up

Trailer Trash Tracys - Ester
Introduced to me by the rotation on local college radio station Album 88 in Atlanta. Heard a handful of tracks but need to pick up this debut LP from another British band.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
Almost positively would have made my top 5 favorites of the year if I had actually heard it in 2012. Looking forward to finally peeling off the shrink wrap and giving this legendary Canadian act's 4th studio album, the first in a decade, a twirl. Half these tracks were performed in their recent spat of shows so I'm sure to recognize a few after seeing them 3 times in 2010. Prominent on many critics best of the year lists.

Tame Impala - Lonerism
Another shoe-in for a top 5 slot if only I'd heard it in 2012, these Ozzies with a penchant for loud, guitar-driven psychedelia and vulnerable, introspective lyrics are among my faves. Listening to 2010's Innerspeaker always puts me in a better mood. Also making regular appearances on many critics best of 2012 lists.

Kingdom of Suicide Lovers - Distant Waves
Another Austin band. The album was released on CD as of August but I'm (not so) patiently holding out for vinyl in the near future. Tracks on the EP sold me on this "darkwave garage rock post-punk psychedelic" trio.

Best Coast - The Only Place
More songs about smoking pot, cats, body image issues, etc. set to snazzy surf rock tunes? Yes, please.

Teen Daze - The Inner Mansions
Don't remember how they showed up on my radar. Introspective electronic music (says the album description) from another Canadian group.

Cat Power - Sun
Supposed to be one of her best to date.

Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel...
Ditto.

Eternal Summers - Correct Behavior
Was really excited when I bought the vinyl but can't remember what animated it. Let's hope it doesn't disappoint.

Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo, Magellan
David Longstreth isn't so much the creative force behind Dirty Projectors or even the conductor of a rock and choral band as he is the engineer ensuring every piece of this well-oiled, well-honed machine is moving perfectly on its own and in sync with the other moving pieces. That's no mean feat when you have the guitar, bass, drums, horns and/or other strings, and 3 part vocals all happening at once. This one is supposed to be less technical but no less a masterpiece. Also on many best of 2012 lists.

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New Year's resolution for 2013: listen to more music.

best albums of 2011

Mostly dominated by foreigners, with only a trio of American artists (St. Vincent, Telekinesis!, and Girls) making the list, this year's top 10 albums underscores the Janus-faced trends in "indie" music this year: the look forward with the continuing rise of "indietronica," the so-called indie dance genre, and a look backwards with the revival of lo-fi sounds such as surf rock and 60s garage.

Destroyer - Kaputt

I put this on the list after a single listen. Seriously, it's that good. And it gets better with every listen. Dan Bejar (also part of the Canadian super-group The New Pornographers) creates a sound I shouldn't like by satirizing all the elements he pulled together to make it. The album is defined by a sort of lite jazz flavor with a full-fledged horn section and everything, very 80s and very much the sound of the suburban SUV crowd. But the lyrics aim a sharp, sardonic wit right at the heart of America's obsession with consumption and fame whores. In a year where the $25 million farce wedding of Kim Kardashian received more coverage than either the deaths of Gaddafi or Kim Jong Il, Destroyer hits all the right notes.

Cut Copy - Zonoscope

Oh, Cut Copy. How I love you guys. I think I saw them a total of 3 times this year. Maybe only twice. But every time was a booty-shaking good time. Not every song on the album hits but when they do, it's pure dance fun. It may just be the Australian accent, but something about them affects a very Men at Work vibe. They also win the first runner-up for cheesiest dance moves on stage behind Canada's Diamond Rings.

The Weeknd - House of Balloons

Man, this guy rounded out the year by releasing a third free, full-length mixtape. I don't know if the sleazy, sex and drug crazed persona portrayed throughout these 9 songs is just a character or these are autobiographical tales from a date rapist. I wouldn't want to run into this Canadian artist downtown at night but listening to him recount his exploits the next day set to r&b beats is pure bliss.

St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

What can I say, I love Annie Clark. She blends such muscularity on the guitar with deft lyrics. This time around, she's more overtly sexual. It's a great one.

Telekinesis! - 12 Desperate Straight Lines

This is the only band who breaks the "don't listen to them for 48 hours before the show rule." Michael Benjamin Lerner's "band" (he plays all the instruments on the album and only tours with others) is pop fun distilled into its purest form. Telekinesis! covers the same lovelorn, lovesick terrain as your basic top 40 crowd but without all the hackneyed cliches that make pop so boring and predictable.

Young Galaxy - Shapeshifting

Another indietronica album on this list. But whereas Cut Copy is mostly up and active and happy, Canada's Young Galaxy dwells on more introspective planes. Listening to Shapeshifting is like waking up to find yourself still moving around in a dreamscape thanks to Catherine McCandless' vocals. You know it's all still real but you're seeing things, love, friends, the party, the world, through a fog and haze that makes it both more alien and more familiar. For some reason, I can't help thinking his is what Stevie Nicks would have sounded like if she started recording 40 years later.

I Break Horses - Hearts

I can't quite put my finger on what it is about this Swedish duo that I like so much. Perhaps its the complex and rich digital soundscapes of the title track Hearts and Winter Beats. Or the more traditional gauzy shoegaze aesthetic of Wired. But whatever it is, it added up to be one of the biggest surprises for me this year.

Veronica Falls - Veronica Falls

The last album I added to this list is London's Veronica Falls. It's bizarre and poppy and goth and absolutely wonderful. From the silly, morose opener Found Love in a Graveyard, about an affair with an apparition, to closer Come On Over, which rattles and jangles with some of the same lo-fi moves that have been so popular both here in the States and across the pond in England in recent years, this debut album bristles with exciting electricity. Bad Feeling and Misery are both great cuts, too.

Dirty Beaches - Badlands

A Taiwanese-born Canadian now taking up residence in California, Alex Zhang Hungtai plays a kind of lo-fi, early rock n' roll that's immediately recognizable and yet wholly strange. I got the pleasure of seeing him, and it's just him, on tour in London over the summer. His guitar snarls, pounds, cries, and whoops with all the frenetic, blues-inspired energy of the year rock broke.

Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost

I didn't rank this list, but if I had, there's no doubt about the number 1. This San Francisco duo's album is unrivaled in its overall quality from beginning to end and sheer number of absolute ear worms that bury themselves deep into your psyche and emerge at random times as the tune you're humming while standing in line at the grocery store. In a year dominated by bands throwing back to the 1950s and 1960s with lo-fi, to the 1980s with synth pop textures and dance beats, and in the year that the Holy Grail of genius unreleased finally found a release date in Brian Wilson's SMiLE Sessions, Girls' Father, Son, Holy Ghost easily stands out. It's a kind of kitchen sink melange of an album, with everything from Pink Floyd-ish lush instrumentals to simple, quiet, soulful tunes like Forgiveness represented. There isn't a single dominating style except for evocation of other styles. An experiment like this often gets panned as being too loose, too unfocused but here it succeeds magnificently. The perfect album in the age of digital downloading singles instead of buying records and hitting shuffle on an iPod that contains everything from Lionel Richie to Li'l Wayne and Silver Apples to The Apples in Stereo.

Honorable Mentions

Neon Indian - Era Extraña

Explosions in the Sky - Take Care, Take Care, Take Care

Twin Sister - In Heaven

Honestly, I haven't had much exposure to the first full-length from Long Island's Twin Sister as an album proper instead of a collection of singles to rate it as an album. But what I heard I thoroughly enjoyed. We'll see in a few weeks if their formula translates well to the stage.

Washed Out - Within and Without

Cloud Nothings - Cloud Nothings

Wye Oak - Civilian