#100:

Colleen Green - "Sock It To Me"

Colleen Green has a method of songwriting that is near and dear to my heart; she combines a guitar, a drum machine, and a bag of weed. Her first full-length is a smoky ode to Southern California, a moody batch of poppy, melodic punkish tunes that owe as much to the Ramones as they do to contemporaries like Wavves and Best Coast. It is the furthest thing from original work that I can imagine but there's an endearing quality that Ms. Green brings that wins out in the end. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3ijKpQkHNA ("Time In The World") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnSfoGC-bTo ("Yr So Cool") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeVHdLaXn8Q ("Taxi Driver") #99: Jello Biafra & The Guantanamo School of Medicine - "White People And The Damage Done" Punk legend Jello Biafra returned for the third time with his new(ish) band, the Guantanamo School of Medicine. Like Keith Morris (whose new OFF! project has been ripping it up of late), he sounds as vicious as he did in the heydays of the Dead Kennedys, taking aim at suburban lifestyle, the rapacious greed of the financial industry, and general American culture. It's punk rock that feels timeless, as easy to imagine in the septic days of the early 1980s as it is to place today. There's probably something deeply depressing in that. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjKO1Paw5oo ("Werewolves of Wall Street") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6EvnWlRqak ("Road Rage") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LAkWkC_pV0 ("White People & The Damage Done") #98: The Pastels - "Slow Summits"

The Pastels have been making music since I was born, although this is their first proper album since 1997. It takes up where that album (Illumination) left off, gently molding choral folk songs into pieces that fill every inch of the sonic space allowed. Slow Summits is a warm, beautiful, affirming album, an understated collection of sweetly heartfelt songs. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icqc5-bIcDg ("Secret Music") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjxYLFWxR6E ("Check My Heart")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smwsb4nCkD8 ("Kicking Leaves") #97: Iron & Wine - "Ghost On Ghost"

Sam Beam's last album, 2011's Kiss Each Other Clean, felt like a misstep, reaching as it did for a big, arena-ready sound. The pursuit of the gigantic sacrificed the intimate moments that made albums like The Creek Drank The Cradle and Our Endless Numbered Days such affecting sets. Ghost On Ghost is a step back to this former place, a reaffirmation of the power of smoky, candlelit indie-folk. It's kept from being a retread by the seething power of some of the songs, an evolution in his songwriting that takes chances and brings a different type of emotional intensity to the forefront. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR_jh8_a-_Q ("The Desert Babbler") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06HsyFhYUaw ("Singers And The Endless Song") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFlCUEZ0C5g ("New Mexico's No Breeze") #96: No Joy - "Wait To Pleasure"

Existing at the intersection of doom rock and shoegaze, the Montreal duo weave fuzz and noise into gorgeous melodies and expansive song structures. They pick up right where their influences (Joy Division, My Bloody Valentine, the Jesus And Mary Chain) leave off, building upon the sounds of the past and bringing the concept of what it means to be "shoegaze" into the 21st Century. They are by no means the only band currently doing this but they are certainly among the very best. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBSeEF6UJqc ("Prodigy") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk585bNnYyk ("Blue Neck Riviera") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1sWbcgBe1g ("Lunar Phobia") #95: Wavves - "Afraid Of Heights"

The self-proclaimed "King of the Beach" seems a bit less sun-and-surf on his fourth album. In fact, he sounds more like he's been lying around moping to Weezer and Pixies albums which, nearly twenty years out from the Blue Album, is honestly just fine. It's much more studio-processed than his previous breakthrough as well; while it doesn't live up to the heights that King Of The Beach brought, the studio professionalism and the obvious influences make it a great album to hook that older brother that stopped listening to new rock sometime around 2000. Links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgHZwrwM9jE ("Demon To Lean On") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQlSBPsRJTg ("Beat Me Up") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL3qmWk-Cdk ("Gimme A Knife") #94: Autre Ne Veut - "Anxiety"

Like How To Dress Well, New York artist Arthur Ashin takes contemporary R&B and pop and turns it into something noir and nearly sinister. It's lush and stark all at the same time, an homage to radio music that still has the occult grit of the dense urban streets clinging to it. Where most modern R&B exudes overly heavy self-confidence, Ashin revels in his own doubt, making implied insecurity sound like the sexiest thing going. Anxiety is the perfect soundtrack for neurotic urban dating in the wilds of the early 21st Century Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFiupWwIZMY ("Play By Play") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5RMZ-4KeqE ("Ego Free Sex Free") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5htMIy_ahI ("I Wanna Dance With Somebody") #93: Los Campesinos! - "No Blues"

Consistently one of the most underrated bands in indie rock, the Welsh group comes back from the relative muddle that was their last album and plays to their strengths: solid, chaotic tunes with wry, darkly funny lyrics about love and loss. Their sugar highs and subsequent crashes have mostly subsided since their debut(s), leaving a more mature effort that sticks to the center but still manages to make you smile in the middle of a Dear John letter. It doesn't quite manage to replicate the frentic energy of their early work, but it certainly comes close. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXfC9N-zm04 ("What Death Leaves Behind") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrHmYvhPNAE ("Avocado, Baby") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvCQMftpS0Q ("The Time Before Last Time") #92: Tyler, The Creator - "Wolf"

Bastard was a slap in the face, the opening salvo in what looked at the time to be the next Wu-Tang style revolution in hip hop. Goblin was a massive step back in this movement, a messy collection of adolescent neuroses that only bore a couple of great tracks amongst a sea of mediocrity. Since then a lot has changed in the Odd Future world: Frank Ocean has become a bona fide star, Earl Sweatshirt has returned, and the focus has shifted off of the OF centrepiece for the time being. Wolf is

much more consistent than Goblin ever was, and it shows a more mature side of it's, uh, creator. Like Earl, he has more or less done away with the don't-call-it-horrorcore shock-rap of his early work and replaced it with something that isn't maturity, but feels like it in comparison to the usual serial-killer pastiches. Like the man says, it's more of a showcase for Tyler's signature production style than it is a lyrical album, and in this is succeeds admirably. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BE-M3xmFV4 ("Cowboy") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4czp7KV2j4 ("Awkward") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4OD3IHs5jU ("Domo23") #91: Mark Kozelek & Jimmy Lavalle - "Perils From The Sea"

A meeting of obscure indie giants, Perils From The Sea juxtaposes the hushed, sonorous drone-folk of Sun Kil Moon mastermind Mark Kozelek with Album Leaf frontman Jimmy Lavelle's midnight electro bedroom pop. The music itself has a very retro feel, where Casio/Atari synths play around dusty vintage drum lines. It provides a very solid alternative bedrock for Kozelek to do his thing, which serves to bring the classical guitar and storytelling of his latter-day work into the modern era. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SItvsZbQr70 ("What Happened To My Brother") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJCxCqVK3AI ("1936") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DreXOfsV10 ("He Always Felt Like Dancing") #90: Superchunk - "I Hate Music"

One of the key players in the underground indie rock scene in America in the 1990s, Superchunk returned to the fold in 2010 and showed that growing up doesn't necessarily mean giving up the high-flying energy that made them such household names. I Hate Music, their second 'comeback' album, continues in this tradition, whipping out fire-laden indie-punk with both class and abandon. It sounds just as good as No Pocky For Kitty ever did, and considering the Pixies' own excerable return EP from this year this is about as good as it gets for classic bands. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUxkZreYiQs ("Me And You And Jackie Mitoo") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZmnOsqHhEs ("Trees of Barcelona")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk2MnAz7lcM ("FOH") #89: Jackson Scott - "Melbourne"

Ty Segall disciple Jackson Scott's debut album is a kaleidoscope trip back through time, touching on Elephant Six, shoegaze, Black Sabbath, Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, and Sixties garage-psych. It's most definitely a lo-fi album, sounding very much like it was recorded in a clothes-strewn bedroom with the lights down low, but the hooks and sheer songwriting prowess carry the album through to the end. Dazed and psychedelic, it unfurls hazily into jangly chord heroism. A rather auspicious debut for a 20-year-old college dropout. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdtMR5WBLqA ("Evie") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh_UIIcsvr8 ("That Awful Sound") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_KbafLJqNE ("Together Forever") #88: Bass Drum Of Death - "Bass Drum Of Death"

The 2010s have brought a resurgent interest in heavily pyschedelic garage rock, channeling the 13th Floor Elevators, Monks, and Sonics and bringing them deep into the modern age. One of the foremost advocates of this movement have been Bass Drum of Death, whose frontman John Barrett comes off like a denser, skuzzier Jay Reatard. Their self-titled second album kicks out the jams in a big way, improving greatly over their 2011 debut's songwriting offerings. This becomes a lot more impressive when you realize that Barrett does pretty much everything, handling most of the instrumental tracks in-studio, singing, and carving out fuzzy hook after fuzzy hook. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLRHcDo0I38 ("I Wanna Be Forgotten") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsUB7XFiFr8 ("Bad Reputation") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWc7Jo0AieM ("Way Out") #87: Still Corners - "Strange Pleasures"

On their second album, the London band abandoned swampy psychedelic rock in favour of slick synths, chiming guitars, and drum machines. The move to a more formal modern/retro sound works well for them; Strange Pleasures is an album of Cocteau Twins-inspired synth-rock that swaps lofi for hi-fi but keeps the soaring voice of Tessa Murray. Her vocals are the centrepiece of the band's efforts, and in the swanky new setting they come across as nothing less than gorgeous. Links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWK8Z62Q5zk ("I Can't Sleep") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahgsog97v1Q ("Fireflies") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCD9g1pH6BA ("Berlin Lovers") #86: Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - "Mind Control"

The best Black Sabbath album released in 2013, hands down. UA have no pretensions about being cutting-edge, hip, or original. Instead, they deliver psychedelic sludge like it's 1973 all over again, walloping the listener with one hard-edged fuzz riff after another. They envison an alternate universe where the hippies were all drowned in blood by an evil, Manchester version of a Beatlesesque rock band fronted by Charles Manson. The bloody frontier of doom rock in the 21st Century. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_k5YFo5lEI ("Mt. Abraxas") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds-Fg445tfw ("Poison Apple") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg5sWhzzDVk ("Desert Ceremony") #85: John Grant - "Pale Green Ghosts"

The former Czars frontman goes solo for the second time, putting out an album that takes Grant and picks him apart, gazing into the navel for the entirety of the album. Thankfully it's also hilarious, as on the tonguein-cheek self-aggrandizing "GMF" (featuring backing vocals from Sinead O'Connor). The album is singer-songwriter pop mixed with a modern touch of electronic, a strange mixture of classic pop chops and modern production, like the Seventies with a house synth. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux1fglC0aT0 ("Pale Green Ghosts") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekFWPsXXcg0 ("GMF") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc91Cx3ZaB0 ("Why Don't You Love Me Anymore?") #84: Unknown Mortal Orchestra - "II"

The neo-psychedelic movement continues on in top gear, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra continue to be one of the key players in it. A sunny, funky psych album, II remembers how well Hendrix could shake your ass at the same time as he blew your mind; the drums here shuffle in the pocket like no others, and unlike previous efforts their now live drums. Gone are the days of breakbeat samples forming the base for jangly, trippy guitars; the result is a lot more punchy, and while it's still mainly a lo-fi affair, it's one that gets a lot more up in your face than their debut or early releases ever did.

Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6Niqxw_Yz0 ("Swim And Sleep (Like A Shark)") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PERf5un2nC0 ("So Good At Being In Trouble") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G6S6dMslqc ("Faded In The Morning") #83: Pantha Du Prince & The Bell Laboratory - "Elements of Light"

Bells are not really a standard instrument in popular music, owing mainly to the inherent difficulty in wresting melodies out of them. Friends of mine in university lived across from a church, and someone would climb the bell tower of that church every Saturday and perform selections from musicals on the bell (Phantom of the Opera was always particularly well done). Thus, bells *can* work well if you take the proper approach, and the same is true of electronic up-and-comer Pantha du Prince's latest experiment. Originally a live spectacle, the success of the stage show gave rise to a studio reenactment, which manages to get the live intensity across with near-faithfulness. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q3usGBLi6I ("Wave") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_RD3kTpX6c ("Particle") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eZfaNDmpTU ("Spectral Split") #82: Black Milk - "No Poison No Paradise"

From Detroit to Dallas: Black Milk has been around. His 2010 album (Album Of The Year, unfortunately released in the year of the Dark Twisted Fantasy juggernaut) was on point, soulful and confident. No Poison No Paradise is denser, darker, funkier. It's much less accessible than Album Of The Year, and will likely stick the veteran MC right back into the underground that he came from, but it's sonically more fulfilling and lyrically deeper than anything he's done since the first Obama inauguration. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pGN2BKdsag ("Interpret Sabotage") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVOz6kxpzp8 ("Ghetto Demf") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKcDjT04yTQ ("Perfected On Puritan Ave.") #81: M.I.A. - "Matangi"

Sometimes I feel like the only person on Earth who liked MAYA, M.I.A.'s wilfully noisy, difficult 2010 album (the same one that called out tech companies being part of the U.S. government's spy network, was ridiculed for it, and later turned out to be accurate). Matangi is more of a return to form, in a sense; it brings back the more traditional dance beats that characterized Arular and Kala, her first two albums, and while it does not reach the heights of those triumphs it manages to hold its own well. As is usual, it's a heady stew of R&B, hip hop, electronic, and global pop, and while it feels like a retreat of sorts it's also an affirmation of the skills that brought her here in the first place. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTOADPPywq8 ("Matangi") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uYs0gJD-LE ("Bad Girls") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ2lsG3I8IU ("Y.A.L.A.") #80: Of Montreal - "Lousy With Silvanbriar"

After breaking through in 2007 with the demented Beatlesesque pop wonder of Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? Of Montreal dished out three increasingly impenetrable albums that layered on heavy dollops of R&B, skewed psych-funk, and a series of escapist characters sketched out by bizarro sexed-up frontman Kevin Barnes. Lousy With Silvanbriar flips the script, using Seventies rock tropes to breathe fresh air into a band that had been on the verge of suffocation. There's a lot of Basement Tapesera Dylan and The Band on here, plus big greasy helpings of Neil Young and Exile On Main Street. It's easily the best album they've done since Hissing Fauna, and hopefully points towards an era of rebirth for an often-amazing, often-frustrating band. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77FVmfSO1CE ("Fugitive Air") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W6xjJ1iN7s ("Belle Glade Missionaries") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS3hmSH37zI ("She Ain't Speakin' Now") #79: Action Bronson - "Blue Chips 2"

There are moments when Action Bronson gets into his flow that you can close your eyes and mistake him for Ghostface Killah. It makes sense, in a way: this year marks the twentieth (?!) anniversary of 36 Chambers, and all the up-and-comers grew up after the Wu Revolution. Bronson is a lot less dour than Ghost ever has been, though, and he makes it clear on pretty much every track that he just came to the party to snort a couple of lines, bang a couple of chicks, and maybe cook you something succulent with olive oil and lemon. The former chef brings his partying A-game and his cooking tools to a stellar mixtape that shows off his sinuous, distinct flow.

Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiOd7kUbeEM (Full Mixtape) #78: Low - "The Invisible Way"

The veteran Minnesota band peddles in minimalism, having defined the scope of slowcore for nearly two decades. The Invisible Way takes off from this formula a little, letting more of the sunlight into their candle-lit hymn sessions than they have before. Part of this is the producer, legendary Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, who has made a whole career out of letting a bit of sunlight into heavy places. The hushed choral songs sound more uplifting this time out, and Alan Sparhawk's lyrics have evolved into more complicated affairs. A solid entry by a band that continues to keep themselves modern even after twenty years. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfNLtUUEiGI ("Plastic Cup") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5vpN3hhbkY ("Holy Ghost") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rAdzJ1U0RU ("Just Make It Stop") #77: The Haxan Cloak - "Excavation"

A creeping, dread-filled drone exploration of what comes after the moment of death. The sort of eerie album that will have you looking to the corners as the shadows creep inward on you. I made the mistake of listening to it while dungeon-delving in Minecraft; I can no longer explore the inner reaches of the server without becoming anxious. Morbidly gorgeous in the vein of Nurse With Wound or Sunn O))), it will slither around you ankles in the dark hours before dawn and draw you down into the earth. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pERyi2btdyM ("The Mirror Reflecting, Part Two") #76: Bonobo - "The North Borders"

The British downtempo producer watches the sun go down and plans his sounds accordingly. A little darker, and a little colder, than 2010's Black Sands, it nonetheless outlines the real strengths of his style: namely, sinuous organic interplay with very eerie moments happening between the notes. It's an album that's a perfect fit for English weather: cloudy, rainy, and shrouded in shadows. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62Z4ibZFA6c ("First Fires")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YrvzRN-U2c ("Heaven For The Sinner (ft. Eyrykah Badu)") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hIQDavRD54 ("Ten Tigers") #75: Autechre - "Exai"

A monolith of glitched-out, acidic electronic music that lasts for two hours, Exai is an easy album to get lost in. You can put it on shuffle and not notice a difference. There are a thousand different things happening beneath the surface at any given moment on the album, and all of them seem vaguely hostile. It's a somewhat more abrasive album than is typical for their catalogue, but is still very much an Autechre work, in that it sounds like each individual sound was pored over and considered before the whole work was considered complete. Great background music if you're slowly collapsing into madness. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmwW5kBfltk ("Irlite (get 0)") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wfshIunrvU ("T Ess Xi") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiRLb8AYgIc ("Bladelores") #74: Cayucas - "Bigfoot"

Unabashedly fun, Cayucas gets a lot of distaste from people who think that all music has to be original and cutting-edge. Sometimes you just want to let loose and not have to think a lot, though, and as far as that goes you can do a lot worse than Cayucas. A LOT worse. There's a certain amount of worship of Beck and Vampire Weekend here that makes for a breezy, easy summer-day album, perfect for the beach, the deck, or anywhere that features drinks and good times. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deeq8HcWzzk ("Cayucos") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io8PqddrRIs ("High School Lover") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1dN-TTW2jk ("East Coast Girl") #73: Bent Shapes - "Feel Weird"

Slashing, upbeat, frantic Boston garage-punk that comes off as Jonathon Richman on an amphetamine binge. Lyrically deeper than most of their lofi contemporaries, the album is highly sarcastic and at times can be quite vicious. At the same time, though, there's a personal, intimate quality in parts (especially on "Bites and Scratches" and "Hex Maneuvers") that shows that even the dirtiest, scuzziest punk rockers have a heart. Links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-emAzOZfB9M ("Behead Yrself, Pt 2") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uFCQlxAXCg ("Boys To Men") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVatqJYEzjY ("Hex Manuevers") #72: The World Is A Beautiful Place And I Am Not Afraid To Die "Whenever, If Ever" Whenever, If Ever is the meeting point of classic emo (Jawbox, Sunny Day Real Estate, Texas Is The Reason) and the sweeping vistas of explosive post-rock. The yelping, longing vocals and dynamite guitar work will be familiar to anyone who grew up on those aforementioned bands (or Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, and Brand New) but the lengthy passages will appeal to fans of Explosions In The Sky, *shels, Russian Circles, or the rockier parts of Thee Silver Mt. Zion. A gateway drug of sorts, the band replaces the cold observatory status that mars a lot of crescendocore with raw emotion and a yearning for the intangible things that can never be replaced. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68GruRH19Lc ("Heartbeat In The Brain") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYYQn2zWhYQ ("Picture Of A Tree That Doesn't Look Okay") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bns8VScN5Wg ("Getting Sodas") #71: Eleanor Friedberger - "Personal Record"

Friedberger's day job, as one-half of the brother-sister duo Fiery Furnaces, is a wildly inventive band whose songs take influence from the Seventies but set off on weird day trips across the surface of the sun rather than dwell on those influences. Friedberger's second solo record keeps the influences at home, letting them form the core of her songs; the result is less inventive, perhaps, but definitely more accessible. A journey through the artist's own relationship with her chosen medium, the album resonates on many levels to devastating effect. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74-iyAoMa6Y ("Stare At The Sun") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgDMXR5jUD8 ("Echo Or Encore") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxbcrk0S_Pc ("She's A Mirror") #70: Ghostpoet - "Some Say I So I Say Light"

The British MC's second album confirms that his name is exactly correct: he melds hip hop and UK electro together in subtle ways to craft poetry that seems to slither out of the shadows of abandoned storefronts on

aging high streets. More cohesive and coherent than his Mercury Prizenominated debut, it nonetheless takes the street-breath sigh of UK dubstep and turns it inside-out, making something lyrical and affecting from the remains. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmktlXz7BPs ("Cold Win") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpzWhHvgsqM ("Plastic Bag Brain") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3JiH-oGvIg ("MSI musmiD") #69: Dirty Beaches - "Drifter/Love Is The Devil"

A sprawling double album of lo-fi Suicide-worship, film noir, and brokenjazz soundtracks, Alex Zhang Hungtai expands on his previous work to craft something chaotic and riveting. Haunting, death-stalking drones play around neo-industrial rhythm work and see-saw back and forth, creating a blurry, drugged-out vision of the neon lights of the modern urban landscape that floats in the haze as much as it revels in the streets. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfm5fB-JtCM ("Night Walk") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsSnNjp-Tvg ("I Dream In Neon") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHQa70ujg_Y ("Alone At The Danube River") #68: The Flaming Lips - "The Terror"

2009's Embryonic introduced everyone to a Flaming Lips built less on whimsical, world-embracing psychedelic pop and one built more on wilful, pulsating noise. The Terror, by contrast, is that embryonic band cut loose, drifting through the terrifying void of modern existence. It's an album built around the wailing of the modern human, scared stiff by the prospect of life as we know it. We've all been born, and the basic fact of existence is that we're all going to die. You, me, and everyone we both love. They all have the same destination - rot, decay, entropy. Sit down and really think about that for a minute, and then put on The Terror. You aren't alone. It's okay. We're all just as frightened as you are. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehndmRDT2WU ("Look...The Sun Is Rising") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7xGD--8XF4 ("You Lust") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyIxZbsSBlA ("All You Need Is Love") #67: Phoenix - "Bankrupt"

The French band broke out big time in 2009, scoring hits like "1901" and "Liztomania" on the mainstream radar. Their follow up, Bankrupt, follows the same formula that made Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix such a big hit, but with more minor-key flair, more pan-Asian keyboard tones, and an even greater emphasis on the synth-pop glory days of the 1980s. They've been crafting these sorts of keyboard rockers for thirteen years and it's only been for the last two or three that the indie underground has caught up with them; if Bankrupt seems familiar in a sea of chillwave, remember that Phoenix was doing this long before it was cool. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OePvsCfKHJg ("Trying To Be Cool") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBsRvthVhdw ("Entertainment") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhQAzyA7TiU ("Don't") #66: Chelsea Light Moving - "Chelsea Light Moving"

Fresh out of the breakup of both Sonic Youth and his marriage to Kim Gordon, skronk-meister Thurston Moore bounces back with an album that shows off the core factors that he brought to the former alt-gods; namely, heavy guitar work, feedback, harrowing songs, and a near-metallic disregard for pop comforts. Harkening partially back to Sonic Youth's early days as part of the art-damaged NYC no-wave scene, it strips any sort of sheen from what might have been and soaks everything in gain. If you like the harder parts of the Sonic Youth catalogue, then Chelsea Light Moving will be right up your alley. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7OyoWgUTX4 ("Sleeping Where I Fall") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oEzKk61eKU ("Groovy And Linda") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qmIvFuF8r4 ("Burroughs") #65: Iceage - "You're Nothing"

The supernova of the Copenhagen punk scene released their second album, another set of blistering, chaotic, edge-of-destruction tracks that blow by in a wounded howl. The band's sound (and quality) stand easily beside such forebearers as Wire, Rites of Spring, or Pere Ubu, and they sound at once familiar and bracingly, utterly modern. They're a young band that has proven that they can rework a hoary old genre into exciting new ways; the future can bring anything. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coVPmp3lmKk ("Coalition") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdjXw4q_nBg ("Everything Drifts") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DSKlJPM-18 ("Wounded Hearts") #64: King Khan & The Shrines - "Idle No More"

The first Shrines album in six years finds a successful return to the band's particular brand of neo-psychedelic soul music - Idle No More indeed. Dripping with big organ and horns, it harkens back to the Motown and garage movements of the 1960s with the touch of a long-time lover. Wah-driven freakouts are back, baby - His Supreme Genius King Khan and the Sensational Shrines have returned. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3f9q7Liv8k ("Born To Die") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtZccp4vtLQ ("Bite My Tongue") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp1L12GsQsU ("So Wild") #63: Waxahatchee - "Cerulean Salt"

Cerulean Salt is an album that sounds like it was born out of the musical building blocks of the riot grrl movement of the 1990s, but instead of using those blocks to build a Sleater-Kinneyesque howl of righteous fury, Katie Crutchfield turns inward to craft a crunchy album of personal revelation. The approach brings another Nineties throwback songwriter to mind - namely Liz Phair - but without Phair's gift for stumbling awkwardly at the worst moment. An album that will sound comfortingly familiar for those of a certain age. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmEaIveGJzs ("Dixie Cups And Jars") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykjkZaL9RLk ("Misery Over Dispute") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoDhmH66CoI ("Peace And Quiet") #62: Ghostface Killah - "Twelve Reasons To Die"

Just when you think Ghost has fallen off, he'll come back from behind to knife you from the shadows. Fishscale came after half a decade of postSupreme Clientele doldrums; afterwards, he put out some so-so work, fought with RZA, and bottomed out on the terrible Ghostdini: The Wizard of Poetry. Apollo Kids was a return to form of sorts, but it felt like a retread, the kind of faithful-to-the-fans album that classic rock bands put out before tours. Twelve Reasons To Die, then, is a real treat: it hits like a sucker punch, and has enough depth to keep you coming back for more. Based on a gangster film from the Fifties, it's a concept album that traces the fall and rise of a deadly assassin, which is, of course, named "The Ghostfaced Killer". Ghost was always the best of the Wu MCs - this is still further proof as to why. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_nKtNSz-H8 ("I Declare War (ft. Masta Killa)")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p75oTDVYbQM ("The Center Of Attraction (ft. Cappadonna)") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFcCGqFvNpg ("Revenge Is Sweet (ft. Masta Killa, Killa Sin)") #61: The Men - "New Moon"

Four albums in four years - no one can ever accuse the men of The Men of being slouches. New Moon finds them largely shying away from the abrasive, Buzzcocks-inspired punk rock of their breakout Open Your Heart and affecting a serious classic rock groove that borrows from Neil Young just as much as it does Dinosaur, Jr. The result is a real step towards maturity, which is rich for a band that just released their first album in 2010. They just grow up so fast, these days, don't they? Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj_ke-B7Fv0 ("Half Angel Half Light") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX4lEIDg2ZU ("I Saw Her Face") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyXSyBZy3SQ ("The Brass") #60: The Sadies - "Internal Sounds"

Now that neo-psych garage rock is truly a "thing", perhaps it's finally time for Toronto's The Sadies to get some wider recognition. The band has held court at the Horseshoe on New Years for a long time now, and a good chunk of the general Canadian music scene points to them as friends or inspirations, but aside from a brief foray in the U.S. Country charts a few years ago they remain largely unknown outside of their comfort zone. Internal Sounds is a good bet to change that, maybe: it has the wistful, yearning nostalgia that is Canadian country-rock's stock-intrade, but it also busts out a real appreciation of the Byrds and the 13th Floor Elevators that might play well with the Thee Oh Sees/Jay Reatard/Bass Drum Of Death crowd. Regardless, it's a high point in the catalogue of a long-running, near-institutional band. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7BeMl-rCJg ("The First Five Minutes") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_knIQC8x7UM ("The Very Beginning") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v99-WEQ682s ("Another Tomorrow Again") #59: Queens Of The Stone Age - "...Like Clockwork"

It's been six years since Era Vulgaris and even that album was only *decent*, by QOTSA standards. ...Like Clockwork finds the band back on solid, familiar ground, however: Dave Grohl is back on drums, Nick Oliveri is back on bass, and the lineup of guest spots studded here and

there throughout the album is nothing less than impressive. Frontman Josh Homme's wife (Distiller's venom-spitting singer Brody Dalle) is present of course, but also Mark Lanegan (of Screaming Trees fame), Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys, the again-ubiquitous Trent Reznor, the guy from the Scissor Sisters, and even Elton John show up in places. The album itself is pure QOTSA: eerie, desert crunch-rock that is as sexy as it is unsettling. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOXaUjGk-yY ("I Sat By The Ocean") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21pJ2m45P0I ("If I Had A Tail") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5GiG7SqcAo ("Fairweather Friends") #58: Pure Bathing Culture - "Moon Tides"

Chillwave has reached it's Cocteau Twins moment, and Pure Bathing Culture is leading that particular charge. Soaring and intimate all at the same time, Moon Tides is a beautiful collection of synth-pop, chiming, frozen guitars, and an otherworldly sense of ethereal abandon. The dreamiest kind of dream pop, the one that shimmers on the horizon of the dream just as you awaken into a sense of relaxed confusion. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m12N3uqDZHk ("Pendulum") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xW1LGdQZ_g ("Only Lonely Lovers") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylFHgmn9CXA ("Temples Of The Moon") #57: Inter Arma - "Sky Burial"

A stunning trifecta of black metal, noise rock, and good old fashioned hard rock, Sky Burial hits hard and with apocalyptic weight. The dynamic rise and fall of their songs shows a real passion for the craft of songwriting, which can sometimes be a hard thing to find in the evermore-brutal world of the metal underground. There is a loneliness to the tone in a lot of these tracks, a vague feeling of emptiness that could soundtrack such despairing epics as The Road or The Dog Stars. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSbbUPTdc0I ("'sblood") https://soundcloud.com/relapserecords/inter-arma-the-survival-fires ("The Survival Fires") https://soundcloud.com/relapserecords/inter-arma-westward ("Westward") #56: Camera Obscura - "Desire Lines"

The long-running poster children for twee-pop have, by their fifth album, perfected their style to scientific precision. Desire Lines shows off all of their strengths: wistful, educated lyricism, the faded longing of deceased romance, and a very dry, urbane sense of humour. It's pop at it's most precise, a confident outing of songs that bring the cold back to cool. It's very rare that heartbreak sounds this self-assured. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p44ERc5Kks ("Troublemaker") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2DQz_9p1nw ("William's Heart") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHryk07Rs_k ("Do It Again") #55: Beach Fossils - "Clash The Truth"

Dustin Payseur recorded his second album with a real producer, in a real studio, with a real live drummer - all of which serves to bring out the best of his eponymous band's raw energy and frentic chops. Soaked in reverb and preferring to surf than work, Clash The Truth is punchy pop with rock n' roll flair, with more clarity and dynamics than the debut. Sometimes a sweet caress and sometimes a swift slap, Clash The Truth is above all never boring. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87SLspET3L0 ("Generational Synthetic") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz0oJH3KQv0 ("Careless") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ImPwEpLHA ("In Vertigo") #54: Youth Lagoon - "Wondrous Bughouse"

Wondrous Bughouse is a headphones album. The sheer density of sound that Trevor Powers has stuffed into the clamshells of his songs is beyond the comprehension possible through a set of laptop speakers, or even a good set of external stereo speakers. Only the close intimacy of headphones will allow you to pick out every heart-gripping piano plink, every wash of hazy sound, every match of drone to vocal. At it's heart, it's psychedelic pop, but it's psychedelic pop of such expansive vision that the term does not really do it justice. At the same time, it's amazing how standing in the middle of such a sonic cathedral will make you feel lonelier and more anxious than you ever thought possible. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSXyr6im7kk ("Mute") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XpNwKPTA8 ("Dropla") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EcoAziISwI ("Raspberry Cane")

#53:

My Bloody Valentine - "m b v"

So, twenty-some-odd years after releasing what is considered to be one of the top 3 albums of the 1990s, Kevin Shields finally releases the follow up. The joke, of course, is that it took this long because Shields had to wait for vaccuum technology to catch up to his ideas. While it fails at being Loveless, it does succeed admirably at being My Bloody Valentine - waves of ethereal guitar noise crafted into wistful, hazy songs that give shape and form to the nebulous idea of shoegaze. It's louder than Loveless, owing to much more modern production methods, and in a way it resembles more a logical followup to their 1988 debut Isn't Anything. It's rare that a band can come back after two decades to anything resembling this level of quality. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocaTt0ILPWY ("She Found Now") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gH6UOatmAM ("Is This And Yes") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWyRfqfEC2s ("Wonder 2") #52: Bill Callahan - "Dream River"

Formerly the man behind Smog, Bill Callahan has developed a name as a purveyor of fine, folk-influenced indie Americana. 2011's Apocalypse expanded beyond his typical interior gaze but Dream River returns, creating an American impressionism of realist characters and textured sensory memories. Soulful at times and resembling a laid-back, less awkward Neil Young at others, Dream River captures a certain sense of what the American southwest - Texas, in particular - still means in this day and age. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96xpXS3hbec ("The Sing") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwduqHbBAN8 ("Spring") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJL-kmywsws ("Seagull") #51: Sigur Ros - "Kveikur"

Aggressive - it's not a word often used to describe Sigur Ros (or postrock in general), but here we are. For years the band has been the watchword in gentility, creating fragile structures of complex sounds, sounds that have gotten increasingly more orchestral and bright since the days of () or Takk. Kveikur reverses that direction, bringing their seventh album into a much darker place, and thus into a much less commercial place. For most bands this would be a head-scratcher but for Sigur Ros it makes sense. They've become, if not mainstream pop fodder, at least a type of a household name. They were at risk of being eclipsed by their own notoriety, and Kveikur makes a perfect antidote to this. "As soon as they like you, make 'em unlike you", as a certain high-

placing album this year states, and it's along these lines that Kveikur is drawn. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc6zXSdYXm8 ("Brennisteinn") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NxG6hKAfRw ("Yfirboro") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcECR_W3XCw ("Var") #50: Vampire Weekend - "Modern Vampires Of The City"

The indie darling's third album is a change in direction; it sacrifices the youthful energy of their legendary debut and the great followup Contra and replaces it with a more considered, mature approach. The closest comaprison point to a major band would of course be U2: like Bono and Co., Modern Vampires of the City takes a stance on wide, generalized issues. Aging, existence, and of course a relationship with spirituality are the broad-ranging topics here, and while the journey to spiritual arena band loses something along the way, it has also cast a large net to gather a wider audience. Maturity doesn't fit every band but it seems to fit Vampire Weekend well. Also, it's my three-year-old daughter's favourite album of the year, so I guess that counts for something. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG6lTQNW04I ("Diane Young") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mDxcDjg9P4 ("Step") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-BznQE6B8U ("Ya Hey") #49: Chelsea Wolfe - "Pain Is Beauty"

Chelsea Wolfe drapes herself in gothic imagery with black metal stylistic flairs but at the heart of it her music is heavily baroque. Her voice is ghostly but powerful, the sound of an ancient banshee singing hymns to the darkness in a crumbling castle on the edge of civilization. The music itself blends modern electronic flourishes with traditional organic instrumentation (dulcimer, piano, guitar) to create a dense, blackened stew for Wolfe's vocals to brood over. Sweet acoustics and sweeping epics: the sort of songcraft Chelsea Wolfe was meant to handle, blown up into cinematic proportions. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwT3DIIXWNA ("Feral Love") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiwBe8GX-HU ("The Warden") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjpc9KE-kW0 ("The Waves Have Come") #48: Neko Case - "The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You"

The Worse Things Get is a trip through the more adventrous side of the New Pornographers singer, cobbling together a emotionally intense collection of mid-tempo rockers, taut, minimal arrangements, and any number of interior cuts and bruises. She hovers above it all with a careful, almost casual aplomb, a cool sense of collection that marks her out as an old-soul type of songwriter, a Dusty Springfield or Patsy Cline kind of rocker. In all, it's a rich album that shows off exactly why she has become a regular chart entry: there isn't a weak song amongst the bunch. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhnFl3Y2FVI ("Night Still Comes") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unNa-9qGkfI ("Man") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCGNQxPIjxQ ("City Swans") #47: Milo - "Things That Happen At Day/Things That Happen At Night"

Wisconsin rapper/nerd Milo first came to my attention on his Milo Takes Baths EP, where he refashioned the highlights of Baths' 2010 album Cerulean into atmospheric hip hop beats and laid a distinct voice of geeky concerns overtop. Things That Happen At Day/Things That Happen At Night is a pair of EPs that make up a full LP, and are honestly more engaging than his proper 2013 LP, Cavalcade. The beats are airy, more atmosphere than typical hip hop pomp and bass, and his flow cuts in and out of them with a newfound precision. It's still the same topics, though: wanting to get laid, wondering why he can't get laid, and then referencing Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z like it doesn't have anything to do with it. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwGwD-0OYuM ("Sweet Chin Music (The Fisher King's Anthem)") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17VXELU8KBg ("A Lazy Coon's Obiter Dictum") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dv_wT6Dnmo ("Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc (For Schopenhauer)") #46: A$AP Rocky - "Long. Live. A$AP"

The breakout star of A$AP Mob continues his blazing-star, next-level thuggin' on Long. Live. A$AP, which features his now-familiar blend of hard hip-hop and reverb-laden witch-house-style bass. There are several Clams Casino contributions on here that rank as some of the best beats the man has ever done. Even the Skrillex collaboration ("Wild For The Night") comes off well, although more through sheer bravado than anything else. Two albums in and A$AP Rocky is a star, furnished with a $3 million contract, guest spots on hot tracks, a performance at the 2012

MTV Video Awards - this despite his druggy, thuggy songs full of UGK grime and chopped-n-skrewed beats. Looks like the Dirty South shall rise again. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWgJQb_EtzU ("Goldie") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHvr2e5MtHE ("LVL") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTVgkH5K0eo ("F**in Problem") #45: Mount Kimbie - "Cold Spring Fault Less Youth"

A brief history lesson: dubstep (bear with me) first emerged out of the massive UK garage scene in the 00s, being an amalgamation of dub bass music and 2step garage (dub+step). The emphasis was on the bass, a massive, world-shaking frequency that filled so much of the sound that hollow, harrowing drums and ghostly vocals became the only way to fit them around it (see Burial's seminal Untrue for further information). When the music finally crossed the Atlantic, American producers decided that it would be fun to make something only tangentially related to it while keeping the name (hence why we have Skrillex et al. pretending they make "dubstep"). So, Mount Kimbie. The British duo deal in what has come to be termed "post-dubstep", which takes the old UK edition of dubstep and mixes it back into trip-hop, soulful samples, and shattered splinters of other electronic movements. They are the best at what they do, and Cold Spring Fault Less Youth adds more vocals into the mix, which works quite well here. The vocals are never delivered completely straight; there is always a process, a melting, a coming-together, that makes them part of the overall sound rather than a focal point. Ignore the brostep: this is the future. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbIt7zoq0BE ("Home Recording") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DboLHD4Tzg ("So Many Times, So Many Ways") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HnZ7FgZb8I ("Meter Pale Tone (ft. King Krule)") #44: Mikal Cronin - "MCII"

Mikal Cronin - best known as a member of neo-garage guru Ty Segall's band - is a juggernaut of garage rock in his own right. His second album shows off his sharp differences than his better-known band leader; where Ty Segall goes in for feedback-soaked neo-psych-punk freakouts, Mikal Cronin has a keen ear for Seventies power pop and the indie rock heroes of the Nineties who took it and ran. It runs the dynamic gamut - raveups, mid-tempo numbers, ballads - but it feels fresh and delivers the hooks no matter the form. People of a certain age (mine) may listen to

it, hear the influences of bands like Sloan, or Nineties sweetheart-peprocker Matthew Sweet. Then, they'll feel old. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S2eTV2v3V0 ("Weight") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDK02AVEh4o ("Peace Of Mind") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVt7ActrcaE ("Turn Away") #43: The Knife - "Shaking The Habitual"

The Knife's previous album, 2006's critical choice Silent Shout, deconstructed the hoary old sounds of Europop and rebuilt them into something new and unsettling. Shaking The Habitual (taken as a quote from a piece by Michel Foucault) takes this reconstructed sound and throws it into a nuclear reactor, allowing it to mutate beyond conventional pop sounds into something deeply primal. With this new focus on mutating things beyond recognition comes a new sense of political purpose; after steeping themselves in readings based around environmentalism, feminisim, and queer theory, they designed the album to be a critique of the traditional heirarchy, the patriarchy, the endless search for and abuse of fossil fuels, the nuclear family, and neoliberalism. It can be considered, to a certain extent, an Occupy album, in its fierce critique of the system that allows gross concentration of wealth in the hands of a very few. It's also the most musically adventrous thing to come out of European electronic music this year. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W10F0ezCTIQ ("A Tooth For An Eye") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoH6k6eIUS4 ("Full Of Fire") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD3NygpaWq0 ("A Cherry On Top") #42: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - "Push The Sky Away"

After the sublimely garage-rocking Dig Lazarus Dig!! and two albums of buzzsaw-guitar work in Grinderman, Nick Cave returns with the Bad Seeds and offers a quieter, more contemplative album. This is not to say that it is a gentle album; unlike 1997's floating The Boatman's Call, Push The Sky Away offers vicious bite with a velvet mouthguard, rage masquerading as eerie piano and violin. It's also the first album from one of Nick Cave's day jobs that hasn't featured Mick Harvey, leaving the main focus on Cave and erstwhile sidekick Warren Ellis; the result feels somewhat more like the recent movie scores the two have done, although still within the framing context of a Bad Seeds album. It's more drawn-out, for one thing, and more reliant on spare, minimalist string loops and atmosphere. It's a very strong effort, and one that shows that, aside from the occasional misstep (Nocturama, mainly), Nick Cave has one of the most impressive runs of great albums in rock history.

Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kBl86cIV3g ("We No Who U R") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__KhZ4ZHWrE ("We Real Cool") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQud7EFQ3zQ ("Higgs Boson Blues") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbGJgrBsgng ("Push The Sky Away") #41: Danny Brown - "Old"

Danny Brown, half ghetto and half hipster, is one of the most manic, heartfelt presences in hip hop today. Old finds him taking his chirpy voice and his hood voice back to Detroit and making what amounts to a hybrid double-album: one part nostalgia trip through his Michigan days (wearing jackets in the house) and one part future-ready beatcraft that takes his previous breakthrough, XXX, and mutating it even further. Edmonton synth-heroes Purity Ring show up to make beats and sing hooks at one point, and it's such a smooth connection that it becomes emblematic of the post-witch house production style that is slowly and insidiously taking over hip hop through Danny Brown, Odd Future, A$AP Rocky, and the like. On "Float On" he wonders how future hip hop heads will view his work, but for right now, he's on top of his game. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdJckzlrkT8 ("The Return (ft. Freddie Gibbs)") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkytRz29bE0 ("25 Bucks (ft. Purity Ring)") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpaHyvmIUjA ("Dubstep (ft. Scrufizzer)") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWGrUaPGdE4 ("Float On (ft. Charli XCX)") #40: Drake - "Nothing Was The Same"

"Wu-Tang Forever", the Toronto rapper states as the title of the lead single from this album, and it shows. The Wu's influence grows in obviousness every year, and on Nothing Was The Same the eerie, gloomy loops that form the backbone of the beats bear ghosts of the RZA like whispers in dark corners. Those whispers echo in Drake's lyrics, on which he finds his dad, frets nervously about his mom, anguishes over breakups, and boasts about how he "started from the bottom" (Come on Drake, Degrassi wasn't THAT bad). Still, in a milieu dominated by hype beats and boom bap, Drake bucks the trend and covers you in gloom like you just stepped into a goth bar, and that's not really a bad thing at all. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wadS0AFcmjA ("Wu-Tang Forever")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxgqpCdOKak ("Hold On, We're Going Home (ft. Majid Jordan)") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brohj_JZ1Cg ("305 To My City") #39: California X - "California X"

They come from Amherst, MA, and they trade in fuzz-heavy, swampy protogrunge with a serious bent towards guitar heroics. They are literally the Second Coming of Dinosaur Jr., which in this case is only a problem because the actual Dinosaur Jr. lives and continues to kick ass right up to the present day. In the hands of a lesser band, their obvious influence would come off as hokey and derivative. These guys mean every moment of it, though, and their heart and will to power show through the faded, ripped concert posters from 1990. The smell of denim and weed comes off of the songs themselves, and by the time "Mummy" comes to a close (speckled with laser-precise lead riffing) you'll wonder why more bands don't try to sound like J. Mascis and Co. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vhXIEkTd5U ("Sucker") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG28j4EAHVE ("Hot Hed") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANBrS6kTlBg ("Mummy") #38: Joanna Gruesome - "Weird Sister"

Welsh noise-poppers Joanna Gruesome fashion a solid blend of a wide range of classic influences into one roller-coaster of a debut album. Weird Sister intersperses mile-a-minute rhythms with softer, more wandering passages that bring to mind Veronica Falls. There's something for everyone here: punk rock, shoegaze, riot grrrl, noise, sugar-rush melodies, frantic drum work, and twin guitars. The sugar is reminiscent of the early work of fellow Welsh band Los Campesinos! but Joanna Gruesome comes off as being even noisier, in the end. Also like Los Campesinos!, the band members have all taken "Gruesome" as their last name, which is always a good indication. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ53mojVaK8 ("Sugarcrush") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMHbn8fQLlk ("Secret Surprise") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eToAenmw_R0 ("Graveyard") #37: Califone - "Stitches"

Roots-rockers Califone have been around for a long time, and they've released some stellar albums, but this is their first album to be recorded outside of their home city of Chicago. For Stitches, they

decamped to the American Southwest, and the result is a sparser, more arid album of dry desert folk-craft. It sounds like a cracked highway through the desert night, and it breathes new life into the band's usual repertoire of experimental rock and blues. It's Americana for people who've been suckered into bearded folk-rock by the bland stylings of Mumford & Sons and Of Monsters & Men - the lively, burbling underground beneath that friendly pop sheen, folk-infused blues music that won't be sandwiched between Nickelback songs on the Edge. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9Apitn2DLA ("Stitches") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG7rT0463bg ("Frosted Tips") #36: Janelle Monae - "The Electric Lady"

The Metropolis story - and it's android heroine - rolls on through The Electric Lady, which offers Suites 4 and 5 as a continuation of the 2 and 3 which were outlined on 2010's world-destroying The ArchAndroid. It's high-concept pop music, a science fiction opera that shows no fear when it comes to genre; R&B, funk, soul, and rock n' roll all vie for attention here, held together by the entrancing storyline and the radiofrentic interludes that are as fascinating as the songs themselves. The spirits of Prince, Stevie Wonder, and Michael Jackson all come into play throughout the album, although it's very much Ms. Monae's own voice. There's a very large part of me that hopes that this story never ends. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21X7ALvwN8Y ("Givin' Em What They Want (ft. Prince)") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOui_ftQkVE ("Electric Lady (ft. Solange)") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaMBagakSdM ("Dance Apocalyptic") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JugqJnLulmw ("Ghetto Woman") #35: Okkervil River - "The Silver Gymnasium"

After twin albums of the wearying nature of life on the road, and one road-weary album (2011's I Am Very Far), Will Sheff changes gears and takes a nostalgia trip back through his hometown of Meridian, New Hampshire in the 1980s, a trip that is as much muscle cars as it is classic arcade games, as much J. Geils as it is New Wave. Sheff's real strength has always been in communicating exhausted nostalgia for something that you maybe shouldn't be all that nostalgic for, and The Silver Gymnasium plays to those strengths in a big way. It makes it affirming rather than heavy - as far as suburban nostalgia albums go, it leaves you less drenched in sweat than Arcade Fire's The Suburbs does, and it hits all the same inner notes.

Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjLP1n3h7Vc ("It Was My Season") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0iSoyw_btI ("Down Down The Deep River") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEnucEqBP_s ("White") #34: Volcano Choir - "Repave"

Before Justin Vernon nabbed himself a "Best New Artist" Grammy he managed to put out two major albums: his Bon Iver debut, For Emma Forever Ago, and the first Volcano Choir album, 2009's Unmap, which cracked the Billboard Top 100 in the U.S. Besides the fact that this makes the award the Grammy committee gave him completely absurd, it also presents a big pair of shoes for the second Volcano Choir album to fill. The second Bon Iver album, 2011's ubiquitous self-titled, and the unrelated demise of Collections of Colonies of Bees (the other half of the Volcano Choir supergroup), made it so that a large set of eyes were present on this effort. In the end, it comes off as Bon Iver redux, primarily because it's a forward-thinking indie folk album helmed by Vernon. This is completely okay, of course; Vernon has been on fire as of late, between his own work and his strange new home singing hooks on the odd Kanye track, and this album gathers strength from his increased presence. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acji8-Rlk3U ("Alaskans") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5D9UnBcDjM ("Dancepack") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-wcu3kfTcY ("Almanac") #33: Earl Sweatshirt - "Doris"

In 2010 Earl - inarguably the most talented member of edgy hip hop collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill 'Em All - dropped his self-titled debut mixtape. It was warped, weird, and blackly hilarious, a perfect example of the horrorcore that the group adopted and just as quickly dismissed. It was a showcase for Earl's very obvious talent with both flow and wordplay, but it scared Earl's mom enough that she sent him off to a boarding school across the world. After he turned 18 he returned to L.A. and recorded Doris, which shows off a much more mature man, albeit one that still knows his way around a well-crafted rhyme. It's still gritty, and still hits as hard as OF ever does these days, but it's much more personal, and obsessively introspective at times. It gets messy at times, but that mess is part of its charm; it's like Earl throws the door to his inner bedroom open and invites us all in, despite the clothes heaped on the floor, the scraps of food on the desk, the blunt smoldering in the ashtray, and the LCD screen displaying some /b/. It's an honest marker of progress, and it's actually exciting to consider what he'll come out with next. Links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyVSe9EdTVI ("Sunday") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FcDXL5Aw0o ("Hive") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCbWLSZrZfw ("Chum") #32: Disclosure - "Settle"

A runaway success for the duo, "Settle" was ubiquitous for most of the year, whether you were in a nightclub or listening to indie radio. It was a #1 hit in the UK and even cracked the Top 40 Stateside (#2 if you go by the electronic charts). The Lawrence brothers used to do dubstep, back before the Americans ruined the genre, and they turned to more laptop-inspired sounds for their debut: deep house, UK garage, 2-step, and bass. Rather than take on British microgenres like purists, they blend it into a contemporary casual mixture, inviting even those that haven't been following the UK electronic scene for the last decade to come along to the party. While there aren't many outright club bangers, there's enough grooves on here to fuel a generation's worth of chemical nights and bad decisions. Congratulations, rapture-seeking ravers - your new soundtrack has arrived. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nsKDJlpUbA ("When A Fire Stars To Burn") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ncxk88jZ0A ("Latch") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTwCgK-zTEs ("White Noise") #31: Follakzoid - "II"

Sacred Bones is a hot record label right now, producing some very cutting-edge indie bands, including a heaping pile of post-punk revivalists. Follakzoid only kind of fits into this category; what they really play is a sticky brew of space rock, Krautrock, and neopsychedelic. II sounds like the proggy epics of the 1970s, from the lengthy tracks to the delayed drones to the drums lifted off of Future Past. Even the star-strewn cover brings the age of expansive spaceiness to roaring life. This is rock and roll that is long on atmosphere and texture, rock and roll that doesn't play by pop conventions so much as it plays with them, mixing big, expansive movements into chilled electronic sequencing. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRgsp6J_97E ("Trees") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz1jEsPWTUE ("9") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oiWySIpwCU ("Rio") #30: Oblivians - Desperation

The Oblivians were the premier garage-punk band from Memphis in the 1990s, the searing, crude muse of the late, great Jay Reatard. Like Reatard, they made nuggets of punk-shaped pop songs that sounded like singles in a bizarro world where you could swear and offend on the radio. They broke up around 1998 and left a legacy that inspired more than a few of today's neo-garage rawk bands. Fast forward to 2013 and they've reunited and put out Desperation, which is at it's heart a more mature version of the band that put out 1995's Soul Food. They don't aim to offend quite so much anymore, but they still bash out some of the best three-chord bangers you'll hear this side of Ty Segall. They still want to fuck and get fucked up, but they aren't as crudely overt about it now as they once were. They're still just as loud about it though, and Desperation is one of those rare reunion albums that serves to capture the magic of the band's glory days. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0LWKJ_XY78 ("I'll Be Gone") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw7nY1v-5Fk ("Call The Police") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zEzGATRX3A ("Come A Little Closer") #29: Savages - "Silence Yourself"

Post-punk, that great wave of art-damaged bands who took their cue from the take-no-prisoners, give-no-fucks bands that stormed out of Britain in the wake of the brutal recessions of the late 1970s, has been a constant fixture in modern alternative/indie/whatever rock. The Strokes were heavily indebted to the grandaddys (Television, et al.), The Rapture and Franz Ferdinand dealt in Gang of Four, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were an obvious stand-in for Siouxsie Sioux, Interpol worshipped at the altar of Joy Division, and so on into infinity. All of those bands have since descended into an abyss of comfort and relative mediocrity; there is no sense of danger in them anymore. Post-punk, to be effective, requires an intersection of art and confrontation - it needs a certain seething fire to really connect. Silence Yourself has this burning core, and it marks a fiery, celebratory debut. Silence Yourself has the same spark that made all of those other bands such relatable acts in the first half of the 2000s, but it channels it into artistic confrontation, like the Slits, like Rites of Spring, like Gang of Four. It gets in your face and challenges your assumptions about the nature of your own life. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kebq-cENNn0 ("She Will") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuIB8HEmnoY ("Shut Up") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy8a_on3dbw ("Husbands") #28: Var - No One Dances Quite Like My Brothers

Var are a "Copenhagen supergroup", by which I mean they have a member of Iceage as well as members of a bunch of other band's I've never really heard of. I have, however, heard of their influences, which they blend into an icy, bitter drink of longing and dystopian regret. There's Joy Division here, to be sure, and the textured skronk of the no-wave end of post-punk, but there's also a heavy dollop of solid Krautrock here as well - Faust, Can, Tangerine Dream. These are cold, synth-rocking songs, tracks that conjure up the ghosts of early goth music as well as the vestiges of pre-Pretty Hate Machine industrial. It's morose and abrasive, but there's also a real sense of catharsis and joy embedded here - it's nihilistic post-punk that you can actually dance to at times, in amongst all the distorted drones and ambient textures. If Iceage is the firebrand, punch-in-the-face, march-in-the-streets punk rock side of the Copenhagen scene, then Var are the scuzzy, heroin-numbed PiL side of the equation. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BBQp7vNm6E ("The World Fell") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeunLoMviD4 ("Motionless Duties") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2INOPBSd2sc ("Pictures of Today/Victorial") #27: Thee Oh Sees - "Floating Coffin"

The San Fransisco garage rock band has become a major player in the neogarage movement, piling vintage Sixties pyschedelic overtop of a more modern, punk-inflected base. The band has been floating around Orange County since the late 1990s but has only been recording under the Thee Oh Sees moniker since 2008, when they released the seminal The Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending A Night In. They have been nothing if not prolific, dropping seven LPs as well as a glut of EPs and 7-inchers over the last five years; 2013 has actually been a bit slow by comparison, with only one EP (the sublime Moon Sick), a live album recorded last year, and this album. Floating Coffin is a little heavier than previous TOS albums, and by frontman John Dwyer's own admission, a little darker. Dwyer claims that it's a reaction to a world obsessed with war, and a lot of that doom-laden cynicism bleeds into the work. First single "Toe Cutter - Thumb Buster" is a massive-sounding track, like a queen bee settling into the bass cone of a speaker and getting down to business. The rest of the tracks follow suit, punching out guitar heroics in spades with less jangly passages than were present on albums like Castlemania. It's a weighty knockout, perfect for anyone with even a passing interest in good old fashioned hard rock. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R44Qh2P7wo0 ("Toe Cutter - Thumb Buster") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrfBKJLG3UQ ("Strawberries 1 + 2") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTlOYvxZqdY ("Nightcrawler") #26: - Kurt Vile - "Wakin On A Pretty Daze"

Wakin On A Pretty Daze is Kurt's first album since 2011's Smoke Ring For My Halo, a breakthrough album that brought him to the forefront of the indie world's consciousness. Stylistically, Wakin' follows in its predecessor's footsteps, blending a horde of classic rock influences (Springsteen, Tom Petty, Neil Young) into a bedrock of Pavement-inspired slacker vibes. The major difference here is that Kurt takes the time to really stretch out his songwriting here, going for marathon sessions seven of the eleven songs go past five minutes, and the album is bookended by a pair of ten-minute tracks. They take their time to unfold, adding guitar riffs in a decidely unhurried fashion and running through a series of chord changes with a Zen-like singularity. Through it all Kurt's laid-back voice meanders, echoing good grace and sympathy like he just did a wake-n-bake. It's stoner rock for endless Sunday mornings, the kind where you just laze in bed and stretch out until you can't move anymore. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSh5ZJd7DnE ("Wakin On A Pretty Day") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq5sb6_W4LU ("Never Run Away") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGTwH8eCn5o ("KV Crimes") #25: - Grouper - "The Man Who Died In His Boat"

Liz Harris is a Portland musician who takes the ideas of rock and roll and sketches them out with ambient instrumentation and warm, comfy tape noise. Quiet guitar here, ambient sampling there, and through it all her hazy, almost eerie voice floating like the fog above a battlefield. The Man Who Died In His Boat can feel, alternately, haunted and embracing, depending on where you are when you listen to it. In the full light of day, it makes you want to stand on your balcony and absorb every last radioactive ray of light coming out of the sun. In the quiet of the still night, it sounds as though the ghosts in the walls are coming out of the pipes and flitting just out of the range of your sight. The title apparently comes from a time when Harris and her father happened upon an abandoned boat, the last relic of a man who had disappeared; it's just this sort of childlike reverence for the eerieness of disappearance and death that permeates the entire record. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi3bSG3jL_M ("Vital") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wH3Xg0RfrM ("Cover The Long Way") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8UFb4ZAA4g ("Vanishing Point") #24: Pissed Jeans - "Honeys"

On my way to Washington, DC this summer, my wife and I took a detour to visit a friend of hers in Allentown, PA. I rather liked my brief

overview of the place; it's a solid, blue-collar kind of burg, a steady meat-and-potatoes place. It's probably boring as all hell to grow up in, though, and in retrospect it's probably no surprise that Pissed Jeans hail from such an unassuming place. When there's nothing else to do, why not down some beers and bash out heavy, sludgy rock that sounds like a more frustrated version of 90s grunge heroes The Melvins. Frontman Matt Korvette spins out tales of the mediocre depths of daily life for office drones and factory men, circa 2013: going bald, drinking until you cry blood, getting fat, losing girlfriends, drowning in work. It's punk rock for middle age: Xers who grew up on Flipper, Green River, Mudhoney, and the Jesus Lizard can all relate to both Korvette's lyrics AND the band's propensity for syrupy violence. While Sub Pop has taken up the standard of bands as disparate as Fleet Foxes and Beach House, Pissed Jeans exists primarily to remind us of the label's roots in damaged, loud hard rock. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw-mAgrSg_0 ("Bathroom Laughter") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujPqaE6cVjQ ("Health Plan") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mQUcvtWXwI ("Male Gaze") #23: Tim Hecker - "Virgins"

Tim Hecker has long been an explorer of the austere corners of ambient music. He has spun out twelve years worth of eerie music that seems at home on the cobweb-ridden, abandoned sectors of your hard drive electronic music that loops and trips over itself in broken-down, out-ofthe-way places where people no longer go. Virgins changes this ideal by recording everything in a room with live instrumentation; electronic elements are present, but they fight for aural space with a variety of analog instruments, including the titular one-note harpsichord. The recording environment returns the idea of the space as a shaping instrument to the creation of music: the corners of the room are just as important as any other feature of these pieces. It's a primal album, a raw album, that taps into our own deep=seated feelings in an important way. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ83czAjAMU ("Virginal, Pt. 1") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k373c_kxBb0 ("Live Room/Live Room Out") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEqV5TqqogM ("Stab Variation") #22: Russian Circles - "Memorial"

Russian Circles rank amongst the hardest of post-rock bands, joining *shels and Isis in the realm of post-metal. Memorial takes their previous ideas (take crescendo-core, blast it with a shotgun, and crank the volume) and expands it to a world-encompassing stretch. For almost all of the album, the band manages to evoke cathartic sadness and rage

without breathing a single lyrical word, letting the wallop of their gathered power speak for them. Then, at the end, gothic chanteuse du jour Chelsea Wolfe steps in and brings the album to a close with a smoky, ethereal song that seems to quiver in the air, a hovering counterpoint to the albums worth of fireworks that preceded it; it seems much like the Voice of God that Vonnegut described in his intro to Breakfast of Champions. Links: http://grooveshark.com/s/Deficit/5fjjHJ?src=5 ("Deficit") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49figpiRcRU ("1777") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1m0aajQp48 ("Memorial") #21: Factory Floor - "Factory Floor"

Factory Floor, the latest triumph from NYC's DFA Records, is an album that moves in a hard-hitting and familiar way. The album grooves like the best early industrial, or the height of acid house: a slamming blend of stuttering drum-machine beats, robotic vocals, and deeply disturbing synth work. The group has a serious propensity for continuous movement, with one electric beat following the one before in a blur of sweat and dance. The album's sole breaks are the sparse, atmospheric "One", "Two", and "Three"; aside from these, it's percussion, percussion, percussion. It feels much of the time like the industrial/acid house version of Come Away With ESG (which had it's thirtieth birthday this year), which was as integral to the shape of post-punk (and, later, hip hop) as Factory Floor is to the future of hipster-stepping indie dance. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex-8nR6hK-8 ("Turn It Up") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YkjMeKZcA8 ("Fall Back") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4T2K-dkxA4 ("Two Different Ways") #20: Haim - "Days Are Gone"

The L.A. sisters exploded in 2013, resurrecting the ghost of Fleetwood Mac and filtering it through a lens of En Vogue-era R&B. They play Top 40 AOR that takes the opposite tactic to most of their contemporaries; instead of spewing out an endless parade of Joy Division and Cure rewrites, they go straight for the Genesis, reaching wide for that Mix FM ubiquity. Like Bon Iver with "Beth/Rest", they decided that the age of detached irony is over, and that it's okay to find comfort in big, sweeping pop gestures. Despite it's aged influences, it sounds fresh, modern; the glimmering synths and smooth, silky guitar work sounds like it was lifted directly off of the latest chillwave album, and their rhythm section is as punchy as any of their indie contemporaries. Their hooks are sassy and assured; Allmusic stated that it's one of the rare debuts that sounds like a greatest hits album. There's a lot to be said

for that; they have a knack for crafting great singles and there's virtually no filler on the album. It might not be art, strictly speaking, but you can dance to it. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIjVpRAXK18 ("Falling") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEwM6ERq0gc ("Forever") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiqIush2nTA ("Don't Save Me") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TffpkE2GU4 ("The Wire") #19: Jon Hopkins - "Immunity"

The former keyboard player for Imogen Heap is pretty much award bait at this point. His 2010 soundtrack to the film Monsters won an award for Best Original Score. His 2011 collaboration with King Creosote, a masterpiece of understated folk-electronic hybrid composition, was a Mercury Prize nominee. Immunity, this year's triumph of ambient electronic and acid house, follows in this tradition: it's already been nominated for the Mercury Prize ceremony for this year. There's good cause for its instant acclaim, too. Immunity is vibrant, a writhing force of nature filtered through the mastery of machine. When it wants to dance, it grabs you and forces you to dance until it's done with you. When it wants to sit and contemplate the rain, it does so in stunning fashion. It's an album that establishes Hopkins as a serious artist in his own right, outside of collaborations with Brian Eno and King Creosote, and as one with something very vital to say. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q04ILDXe3QE ("Open Eye Signal") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeBdrFMKTzM ("Collider") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ae4BxKC7cQ ("Form By Firelight") #18: Baths - "Obsidian"

Cerulean, Will Wiesenfeld's debut album, was a gorgeous blend of organic and electronic. It was widely hailed as a modern classic; indie rapper Milo used it as the sampling basis for his Milo Takes Baths album. Obsidian, this year's follow-up, is a darker, much more personal affair. Cerulean was fairly simple and vague when it came to lyrical content, a path that Obsidian eschews fairly early on. Birth was like a fat black tongue/ Dripping tar and dung and dye/ Slowly into my shivering eyes" he sings on the opening track, "Worsening", following it up with "Where is God when you hate him the most?". Wiesenfeld was apparently very ill shortly before Obsidian came together, and the miasma of that illness hangs heavily over everything. Death stalks these songs, even when they tread a careful balance between the light (such as the electro-gossamer arpeggios on "Miasma Sky") and the heavy (the denser-than-lead "Earth

Death"). The experience could be heavy-handed and oppressive, but Wiesenfeld chooses instead to make it life-affirming, glorious in its own despair. At the same time, the spectre of death gives rise to an anonymous, brutalist sexuality: with death nipping at his heels, Wiesenfeld seeks out intimate comfort with whomever happens along. "It is not a matter of if you mean it/ But it is only a matter of come and fuck me he sings on the powerful "No Eyes", and elsewhere he implores a faceless lover to "roll over and introduce yourself/nurse this erection back to full health". It's all very gripping, and it marks Wiesenfeld out as one of L.A.'s predominant electronic bards. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaZB3sL-dzE ("Worsening") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRc4yi_iOSM ("Miasma Sky") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zHleDQVBf8 ("No Eyes") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zTRnCP6Zxg ("Earth Death") #17: FIDLAR - "FIDLAR"

Fuck It Dog, Life's A Risk - this is both the mantra and the acronym behind FIDLAR, a band of neo-garage rock miscreants made up of secondgeneration L.A. B-list royalty. The Kuehn brothers, guitarist and drummer, are the sons of the keyboard player from punk-turned-glam legends T.S.O.L. Guitarist/vocalist Zac Carper's father is a famous surfboard designer. It doesn't mean much, though; at the end of the album there is a hidden track where Carper describes a period of time where he lived in his car. These are their influences though, as well as the circle of L.A. sun-and-surf punk that surrounded those long-ago days, and FIDLAR wears them on their sleeves. The album is a fun, breakneck record of having fun, getting baked, bombing cheap beer, and going surfing. There are distractions, of course: at one point Carper contemplates joining the army, and at another he gets dumped in the San Fernando Valley, but for the most part it's a straight run of buzzing, fuzzed-up fun. It doesn't take itself seriously and it asks you why you feel the need to take yourself so seriously. Don't take yourself so seriously. Max can't surf, and he still gets out there. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB8z08_8uhM ("Cheap Beer") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaacYYmDqZ0 ("Stoked and Broke") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jip6Fc-QO4 ("Max Can't Surf") #16: Daft Punk - "Random Access Memories"

The duo's fourth studio LP was a bit of a shock for long-time fans. They have long been known for being champions of deep house, crafting genre classics like Homework and Discovery out of heavy, saw-toothed synths and

urgent, club-level bass lines. Random Access Memories only holds one track that references those glory days, the closer "Contact". The rest of the album is steeped in neo-disco, feeling like an homage at times to James Murphy and his NYC DFA label that has brought disco back to the electronic forefront. Spearheading this effort was the massive, ubiquitous single "Get Lucky", which (unless you've been living under a rock) you've heard blasting out of every radio, everywhere, since the summer. It's not just "Get Lucky", though: there are hi-hats, handclaps, and rollerskate choruses everywhere on here. One whole track, "Giorgio by Moroder", is dedicated to Italian disco hero Giorgio Moroder, who has gotten a bit of a career renaissance out of the attention the album has brought to him. Pharell Williams and Julian Casablancas also take star turns, on "Lose Yourself To Dance" and "Instant Crush", respectively. The album has been deeply divisive in the music community, with some decrying the lack of deep house heroics on the album and others saying it shows an amazing skill at staying fresh and contemporary. I'm in the latter camp, obviously: disco is in revival, and no one is championing it harder than this Parisian duo. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NV6Rdv1a3I ("Get Lucky") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF-kLy44Hls ("Lose Yourself To Dance") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9BK3xcRH1g ("Instant Crush") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcuKxAvCSZ4 ("Contact") #15: Parquet Courts - "Light Up Gold"

This album barely counts as 2013 (the January release was a re-release of the album, which was originally released independantly in 2012), but dammit, it fits. The album is too good to ignore. The Brooklyn band cooks up mile-a-minute punk rock that takes its cues from Nineties indie heroes like Guided By Voices and Pavement as much as it does from postpunk icons like the Feelies or Jonathon Richman. It abounds in hooks, turning these three minute nuggets into remarkable mnemonics of rock n' roll purity. A lot of the time these hooks are lyrical. "Stoned and Starving" reinforces the image of walking baked through Ridgewood, Queens; the title track makes something as largely nonsensical as "Light up gold was the colour of something I was looking for" into an anthem; album opener "Master My Craft" leaves us with the amazing line "Socrates died in the fucking gutter". It also flows together with the touch of expertise; the opening salvo of "Master My Craft" into "Borrowed Time" is so smooth that it feels like it should just be one five-minute song. If you crave speed and don't mind songs that get stuck inside your head for days at a time, Light Up Gold is probably right up your alley. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UFzde_Y_t0 ("Master My Craft") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACj-F63GK_M ("Borrowed Time")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suwsj_qyEJg ("Careers In Combat") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq1LtxdpQEo ("N Dakota") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_X6FaHq9jQ ("Stoned And Starving") #14: Pink Frost - "Sundowning"

Chicago has become known for noisy, slashing rock n' roll, and Pink Frost are a standard-bearer for the modern movement. Sundowning is the first album under the band's new name (they were called APTEKA until a Polish band by the same name complained) and it clears away a lot of the drone and detritus that marked their old work. It's still urgent, crashing guitar rock, but it's much clearer, and for the first time you could imagine hearing some of these songs on the radio. Not, you know, Clear Channel radio, but on the indie stations that are springing up in the major urban centres now. They've been compared to fellow Chi-towners Smashing Pumpkins (for better or worse, depending on your opinion of the latter band) and there's a lot to be said for the comparison. The major difference, of course, is that Billy Corgan always skewed towards this high-flying concept of psychedelic rock by way of heavy metal, and Pink Frost just wants to crash out some punk rock. This time around, it just happens that said punk rock is just a bit easier on the ears. Links: http://pinkfrost.bandcamp.com/track/western-child ("Western Child") http://pinkfrost.bandcamp.com/track/ruins-2 ("Ruins") http://pinkfrost.bandcamp.com/track/dead-cities ("Dead Cities") #13: Ty Segall - "Sleeper"

Ty Segall has become the face of the new, raw neo-psychdelic garage movement primarily through sheer ubiquity. He releases music constantly, averaging two full LPs a year over the last five years, so it's been a bit of a surprise that it took until August for his first full album of 2013 to appear. Granted, he put out an LP with a new project, Fuzz, earlier, but under his own name it's been since last October that Twins, his final 2012 effort, was released. Part of this probably has to do with the circumstances that surrounded the writing and recording of the album. His father died, and shortly after he stopped talking to his mother (the song "Crazy" is directly about her). The album was written in a somewhat slower manner, relatively thoughtfully in its own way. The biggest change, of course, is that it is primarily an acoustic album, with only spots of electric guitar recorded here and there throughout. Segall became famous specifically for his scuzzy recreations of the vibe of the vicious garage rockers of the 1960s; fuzz guitar, lo-fi recordings, and howls were his stock-in-trade. Sleeper does away with this, instead presenting a more mellow side of the man. After stripping away the layers of gain, it turns out that Ty Segall really CAN write great songs, regardless of process or instrument. These are beautiful,

intimate, world-weary songs that prove the strengths of their writer more than a pile of slashed-out chords ever could. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfxGKsPdcQ ("Crazy") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQAl-oD9cB0 ("Come Outside") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH8fpKw-XHU ("Queen Lullabye") #12: Young Fathers - "Tape Two"

"Alternative Hip Hop" was a label that began with the best intentions. "This isn't about guns and drugs!" it screamed. "You can find deep lyrical subjects that aren't about bling and bitches!". The Roots, Dilated Peoples, Brand Nubian, Digable Planets, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul - these were the heart of "alt hip hop" as it was in the beginning. Anyone who knows the fate of the related term "alternative rock" can tell where this ended up, of course. Eventually, everything starts coming out as "alternative". You don't rap about gunplay? You're alt. You think chasing a relationship is worthy of lyrics but nailing hood rats isn't? You're alt. You don't have a Just Blaze produced joint on your album? You're alt. At a certain point, the term loses all meaning. Is Kanye alt? Is Kid Cudi? What about Drake? So here we are in 2013, considering the meaning, and whether it applies to, say, Young Fathers? They're a Scottish duo, although you might not know it from their sound, which is firmly based in California. They have Liberian and Nigerian backgrounds, as well as the culture of being raised in rainy old Scotland. They throw everything into the mix: tribal beats, druggy, Weeknd-esque R&B work, mile-a-minute rap, lo-fi production. The keyboards are numb, coked-out; there's hip-hop here, but there's also dark New Wave that brings with it the must and rust of NYC's Batcave club in the early 1980s. It's the flip side of 2011's Tape One, which was a much sunnier, American West Coast affair; it falls into step with recent releases by Drake and the Weeknd instead, evoking the darkness present in the urban experience while also bringing to light the diversity prevalent in the British experience. Is it "alternative hip hop"? I guess. Is it even hip hop? That I'm not really sure on. It takes some of the parts of hip hop, but it doesn't conform to even the standards of what "alternative hip hop" is considered to be. It's about as hip hop as labelmates Why? are - that is to say, only tangentially related. What it is, however, is exceedingly well put together. It's a definite product of this post-Graduation era of urban music, and it's a testament to the global nature that has come about as the result of this wave. With that, really, what more do you need? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcRKZkk79-w ("I Heard") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4aaH3thXFY ("Only Child") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo7-2KlBQoE ("Queen Is Dead")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnHuE5KRkoU ("Ebony Sky") #11: Foxygen - "We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors Of Peace And Magic"

Normally it's considered a bad thing to wear your influences on your sleeves. The word "derivative" gets thrown around, and accusations of having a dearth of creativity are made. The end of the Eighties brought us a deluge of sexed-up bands who really wanted to be Zeppelin, Aerosmith, and Deep Purple; the utter lack of originality sent so-called "classic rock" into a death sprial that it's never really recovered from. In a much more modern sense, every single post-grunge band these days is part of a homeopathic line stretching back to 1988: Nirvana was diluted into Bush, Bush was diluted into Creed, Creed was diluted into Nickelback, Nickelback was diluted into a thousand bands that just want to hit E5 power chords and growl about getting dumped by evil women. So it goes. Some bands, though, can take their influences, wear them obviously, and still create vital, exciting music. Zeppelin really wanted to be Willie Dixon. The Psychedelic Furs really wanted to be the Doors. The Strokes were really into Television, and Interpol held fond dreams of being Joy Division (with a bassist who really loved the Cure). Foxygen takes this latter strategy: amalgamate your influences and blend them until you sound like you could have been one of them. Rather than come off as a slavish copy of the bands they love, they put it together in such a way that it sounds as though they could have stood shoulder to shoulder with their idols. It helps that the bands they love had wide, diverse discographies to draw from: Bowie, Lou Reed, the Stones, the Band, etc. This is psychedelic rock, swirling, fey, and weed-scented. "No Destruction" is a Bob Dylan song that's been mugged in a San Fransisco alley by a slouching Mick Jagger. "San Fransisco" sounds like a lost relic unearthed from that city's mid-1960s revelry, filtered through the lens of the Kinks at the height of their creative power. "Shuggie" has the heart of the Velvet Underground's softer moments all over it until David Bowie sneaks in during the bridge to sprinkle glammer all over everything. Foxygen do something rare here: they update the sounds of their idols and make them sound as fresh and modern as they might have on those long-ago days nearly fifty years ago. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPmAO4xpQcE ("Shuggie") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87jIdvGPDj4 ("No Destruction") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtdWGGpvY1s ("San Fransisco") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq7aPbhTqdQ ("On Blue Mountain") #10: Run The Jewels - "Run The Jewels"

My producer gave me a beat - said it's the beat of the year. I said "ElP didn't do it, so get the fuck outta here". So it goes. Run The Jewels

is one of those rare duos in hip hop where both sides of the equation are at the peak of their game. Both El-P and Killer Mike are coming off of fantastic 2012s: El-P's Cancer 4 Cure was a smorgasborg of hot, hardcore beatcraft, and R.A.P. Music (also, interestingly enough, produced by ElP) was the world's real introduction to the persona of Killer Mike, an Atlanta rapper with a hardcore flow and a disdain for commercialized radio jams. Run The Jewels continues along the path of both, taking fist-pounding beats and running unapologetic rhymes over them; the balance here is immaculate, and unlike the Watch The Throne pairing of Jay-Z and Kanye, both El-P and Killer Mike come across as equals who can easily integrate themselves into a duo capable of ruling the world. Big Boi and Prince Paul show up, but you might not even notice. When Big Boi shows up near the end of "Banana Clipper" he almost feels like an afterthought, and when Big Boi is an afterthought you know that you're listening a rather special track. It amalgamates everything that has been bubbling out of underground hip hop in the last three years and brings it right up into your face. Plus, it's free - and you can't argue with that, really. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elafeeA3QFE ("Banana Clipper (ft. Big Boi)") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GAIkESrQr0 ("Sea Legs") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEmw5WXtkq4 ("A Christmas Fucking Miracle") #09: Arctic Monkeys - "AM"

2005 brought us the rise of MySpace-centered bands, that is to say bands that managed to gather big followings on the once-might social networking site and launch massive debut albums without having the traditional amount of radio presence/payola. There were two bands that exemplified this trend to the mainstream world: Fall Out Boy and Arctic Monkeys. One was a sugar-pop wannabe-emo confection with ridiculous song titles and a following built mainly on the good looks of their bassist/bandleader. The other was Arctic Monkeys. Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not was a watershed moment for British rock in general. After Britpop fizzled out around 2001, homegrown rock music was confined to the likes of Coldplay and Snow Patrol, which (as one critic unkindly opined of Coldplay's Rush Of Blood To The Head) was music for bedwetters. Meanwhile, the vital wave of American garage rock spearheaded by the Strokes and White Stripes crossed the pond and the kids were picking up on it in a big way. Arctic Monkeys were really the first band to gain massive popularity that took the lessons of the Strokes to heart. Their debut is the fastest-selling debut album in UK chart history, and concerns over their being a British version of Fall Out Boy were vanquished by virtue of both their recorded material and their intense live shows. Their following albums jettisoned the causal listeners but kept a very dedicated core following.

Enter 2013, when both they and Fall Out Boy have released albums. FOB's is an excerable, cheesy effort, predictably and amusingly called "Save Rock and Roll". AM, on the other hand, is a real treat. It's no longer as hyper-energetic and mile-a-minute as that storied debut, but the core components that made them great are still there in spades. Alex Turner's lyrical work is a great reminder that he's in the running for being his generation's greatest lyricist; he's still able to fit yards of descriptive wit into small spaces, even when the pace of those spaces has slowed considerably. The interplay between Turner and rhythm guitarist Jamie Cook remains as vital and affirming as ever, tightened to the breaking point by the clear, sharp rock n' roll revivalist work they began on 2011's Suck It And See. What AM really is is an amalgamation of all of the work that they've done since their debut: it has the partylife-gone-sour vibe of Favourite Worst Nightmare, the somber, surly guitar tones of Humbug, and the new love of classic rock that Suck It And See brought out (especially "Arabella", whose chorus is a dead ringer for "War Pigs"). "#1 Party Anthem" could be the drunken followup to "Flourescent Adolescence", while the opening one-two of "Do I Want To Know?" and "R U Mine?" will convert anyone into a band believer. Turner, predictably, has the best description of the album: it sounds like a Dr Dre beat, but they've given it an Ike Turner bowl cut and sent it galloping across the desert on a Stratocaster. One thing is clear: Fall Out Boy may have hubristically proclaimed that they were here this year to save rock and roll, but Arctic Monkeys stands amongst the bands that are actually doing it. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpOSxM0rNPM ("Do I Wanna Know?") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQH8ZTgna3Q ("R U Mine?") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoKd98AslF4 ("Arabella") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83hFiC-siDs ("#1 Party Anthem") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6366dxFf-Os ("Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?") #08: Boards of Canada - "Tomorrow's Harvest"

Their first album since 2006's Campfire Headphase EP, Tomorrow's Harvest detours into a much more sinister form of downtempo electronic than longtime listeners were used to. There was always a certain amount of paranoid dread present in Boards of Canada, overtly so on 2002's Geogaddi and even to an extent on the brighter, more pastoral Music Has The Right To Children, but Tomorrow's Harvest takes it a step further. Listen to "Split Your Infinitives", and try to feel settled and comfortable in the wake of that Burial-esque low frequency. "Reach For The Dead", the only single from the album to date, manages to go on a rollercoaster from just slight unease to active, creeping dread in the space of just under five minutes. There is no longer a focus on melody, either, causing these tracks to unfold in a much more subtle fashion; this is not the Boards of Canada of "Aquarius", and in fact it feels at times like a electronic

attempt to approximate early Krautrock, a la Tangerine Dream or Can. This dovetails well with labelmates Autechre's 2013 effort, which also leaves off the melody in favour of a much more mechanical creep. It's an experiment in texture over song, and it works brilliantly. The duo has indicated that movie soundtracks from the late 1970s and early 1980s were a primary influence here, so the emphasis on texture is perhaps not surprising. What is surprising is the overall strength of the album; even after seven years, Boards of Canada still sounds as fresh as they ever did. Hopefully we'll see them again before 2020. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jTg-q6Drt0 ("Reach For The Dead") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvCsPMyey9A ("Split Your Infinitives") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkYT277gESQ ("Come To Dust") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11SzQHWlDiE ("Nothing Is Real") #07: The National - "Trouble Will Find Me"

Much like the Architect from the Matrix, this is the sixth time that the National have crafted a sorrowful album of regret, loss, and broken love, and they have become exceedingly efficient at it. The interplay between the band's instrumentation - tastefully understated guitar, noir piano, and a hell of a drummer - and the rich, mournful baritone of Matt Berninger has, on Trouble Will Find Me, become an expert amalgamation, a mixture of simmering chemicals that threaten at all times to become something volatile and explosive. These are songs made to be listened to in a darkened office, with a half-filled bottle of Southern Comfort uncapped and illuminated primarily by the neon lights of the 24-hour pharmacy across the street. There is a woman involved, somewhere far off in the rainy night, who you've loved and lost, who is currently being squired around town by someone better. You should live in salt for leaving her, but you don't know what you'd say if she were to ever show up at your door. You're sorry that you hurt her, but they say that love is a virtue, don't they? It's the same things they said and did on modern classics like Boxer and High Violet, but even now it doesn't get old. The National have the rare talent of being able to mine a particular mindset for all it's worth and have it still remain as fresh and relevant as the day you first heard it. Perhaps it's because heart ache and regret never go out of style; you will always love, and many times you will lose, but there's a soundtrack for that, and it's pierced by the rich, instantly recognizable foghorn that emits out of Berninger's troubled insides. It's despondant, but never depressing, and this is likely the secret to their continued success. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK-EF9fAHIY ("I Should Live In Salt") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N527oBKIPMc ("Demons")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFnA-8H-5lo ("Don't Swallow The Cap") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwmtHqhbs9c ("Fireproof") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIWmRbHDhGw ("Sea Of Love") #06: Deerhunter - "Monomania"

The title is a reference to the mental state of the enigmatic frontman, Bradford Cox, who splits his time between Deerhunter and his own work with the more ambient-pop sounds of Atlas Sound. Cox described it in a Rolling Stone interview as his constant obsession with one thing, something that will solve all of his problems and make his life better. This time around, it's a bit of a 180 from where he was in the past. Deerhunter's last album, 2010's Halcyon Digest, was washed in hazy, comforting nostalgia, and Atlas Sound's 2011 album Parallax was brittle, fragile, and beautiful. Monomania, by contrast, is steeped in unabashed American garage rock. "Leather Jacket II" is the rawest, loudest thing they've done in years, and the reinvention is just getting kicked off at that point. In several places, the band sounds as though it's been spending a lot of time keeping company with the Grateful Dead, especially on the one-two punch of "Pensacola" and "Dream Captain". The rhythms and hooks are still pure Deerhunter, but the foggy haze that permeated Halcyon Digest and modern classic Microage have been burned off, and replaced with a much more rock n' roll strut. It's a rather bracing change from what's come before, but it was necessary; after all, when you've perfected your sound, where do you go but straight to a reset? The band's next move will determine what will happen with their career, but for now they've reinvented themselves in fine fashion, riding the crest of the rebirth of garage while making it their very own. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O9b_1F0z5Q ("Leather Jacket II") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-qxPBeBXRY ("Pensacola") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_kSnp0fGyQ ("Dream Captain") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9MsFaFrrps ("Back To The Middle") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYUENZQ84-E ("Monomania") #05: Oneohtrix Point Never - "R Plus Seven"

Brooklyn musician Daniel Lopatin's work has been bubbling around the experimental underground for a few years now, but R Plus Seven marks his debut with the venerable Warp Records label, home to pretty much everyone who's ever experimented with EDM: Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards of Canada, TNGHT, Prefuse 73, Broadcast (RIP), Bibio, Mount Kimbie, Nightmares on Wax, Squarepusher, Flying Lotus, Gonjasufi, et al. To mark his debut, he's completely changed his style. R Plus Seven sounds at first glance like a mad genius discovered an old Yamaha keyboard and went to town; it's chock-full of crude MIDI sounds scavenged from a hundred

employee instructional videos, workout VHS tapes, small business ads, and TVO/PBS intros. One of the first things an aspiring electronic producer will learn (and I'm acknowledging my debt to @PulpyFiction here) is that you should never use the pre-set functions of whatever synth you're using. You should always carve out your own sounds, twisting the cut and res around, altering the osciallation, tweaking the frequency. Lopatin discards this advice, as only an artist who's made peace with the rules can do. He uses the stock sounds of the late 1980s and early 1990s to craft a stunning set of electronic experimentation. He takes things that should be cheesy - snyth flutes, brass, ersatz sax, smooth jazz, new age synth pads - and turns them into something affecting and utterly modern. There are countless numbers of bands appropriating the sounds of 1980s New Wave, but only Lopatin (okay, and some 4chan-embedded vaporwave acts) is acknowledging the *real* sounds of the Eighties - the sounds that we grew up immersed in, wherever we went. The sounds of VHS hell are alive and well here, and while it's not the most conventional route for a big label debut, it's certainly in keeping with Warp's highly experimental philosophies. It's odd at first, but it hooks you early, and holds you close until the end. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvDzaQOSZ3E ("Problem Areas") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1QAM9rq1PA ("Zebra") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fJMiDHpXaY ("Still Life") #04: CHVRCHES - "The Bones Of What You Believe"

The Bones Of What You Believe is the best synth-pop album since Saturdays=Youth. Hell, I'll go further - it's the best synth-pop album since Violator. The Glasgow band did a textbook job of building up hype all year, releasing "The Mother We Share", "Recover", and "Gun" as singles before finally dropping the full LP in September. By the time album release day came, it was well-established that the band had a way with songcraft, effortlessly melding hooks and power together into smooth, sugary confections that still held centers of sour bite. The album confirmed all of that, and then some. Lauren Mayberry is an expert at throwing poisoned darts wrapped in soft, fluffy cotton candy: "I'll be a thorn in your side 'til you die" she sings sweetly on "We Sink", and "Hide, I have burned your bridges/Now I'll be a gun/And it's you I'll come for" absolutely soars as the chorus to "Gun". The singles themselves are instant classics, but the truth is that any track on the album could be released as a single and do well; they're all built on solid bedrocks of massive synths, perfectly tuned bass signatures punctuating pads of cloudy bliss. The week before it was released they did a sneak-peek stream on NPR and I was hooked - I listened to it four times that day and haven't stopped listening to it since. I challenge you to try. Mayberry has also proven herself to be an excellent frontperson for the band, a fiercely intelligent artist on the level of Kathleen Hanna. She has a Masters degree in journalism and penned an article for The Guardian

earlier this year taking aim at the acceptance of the culture of online misogyny that is prevalent everywhere, especially on the larger social networking sites such as Facebook, Reddit, etc. "What I do not accept, however," she writes, "is that it is all right for people to make comments ranging from "a bit sexist but generally harmless" to openly sexually aggressive. That it is something that "just happens". Is the casual objectification of women so commonplace that we should all just suck it up, roll over and accept defeat? I hope not. Objectification, whatever its form, is not something anyone should have to "just deal with"". Read the rest of it here: http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/sep/30/chvrches-laurenmayberry-online-misogyny - and listen to the album in the meantime. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mTRvJ9fugM ("The Mother We Share") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyqemIbjcfg ("Recover") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktoaj1IpTbw ("Gun") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZJ5KVDdNoA ("We Sink") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r1aFZUJFH0 ("Night Sky") #03: Kanye West - "Yeezus"

Kanye West catches a lot of flak from people for some profoundly silly reasons. "Oh, he's so arrogant". "He really thinks a lot of himself". "He thinks he's better than everyone else". Etc. We, as a society, seem to have some very dichotic desires for our entertainers. We want them to be constantly in the public eye, under the watchful gaze of the cultural panopticon, and we want them to continue to "deserve" to be in this diffused prison network. At the same time, we want them to engage in Christ-like levels of humility; they have to act as though they don't deserve the attention, as though they're nothing special. We take vicious glee in the times in which they fail, and at the same time we take a perverse collective pride in how they handle those situations. Stay humble, turn the other cheek? The public will forgive you. Pretend that you have no special talents and that it's just luck and the "Grace of God" that's given you your position? The public will love you. 'Ye will have none of it. Kanye gave an interview recently in which he stated that rappers were the new rock stars (which is, by any metric, the plain truth) and that he was the number one rock star (which is arguable, but only barely). People jumped all over this, claiming that he was trying to say that he was more important than the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Queen, et al. "HURR!" they cried, "you haven't sold a billion records! You aren't played on classic rock stations! You aren't Paul McCartney!". The truth is as plain as he stated it - there is an airtight case for claiming him as the number one musical entertainer on the planet right now, the hottest commodity who turns everything he touches to platinum. His albums have ALWAYS been

acclaimed. His experimental turn, 2008's 808s And Heartbreak, turned out to be the watershed moment for emotional rappers, giving rise to Kid Cudi, Drake, etc. 2010's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was far and away the critic's choice for Album of the Year - it wasn't even close. Yeezus continues on in this fashion, in that it refuses to play by the accepted rules of mainstream rap, it provides the perfect vehicle for 'Ye's unique mixture of outsized-ego and deep insecurity, and it's full of the sort of witty lines that he's been dishing out since The College Dropout. Kanye brings out a strange side in a lot of people. They will point out particular lines, like "Eating Asian pussy/All I need is sweet n sour sauce", or "Treat your friends like my Benz/Park they ass outside 'til the evening end", and say "See? How can he claim to be so good? These lines aren't profound". If anyone around them reminds them that Kanye has always laced his songs with tongue-in-cheek wit they'll plug their ears and scream "NO! HE'S FULL OF HIMSELF! HE HAS NO REASON TO BE! HE'S JUST EGOTISTIC AND STUPID!". It's like the reverse of the famous South Park episode: when it comes to the idea that Kanye spends a lot of time having a laugh at himself and everyone else, people flat-out refuse to get it. I guess I'll have to be Carlos Mencia here: why can't you guys just get it? Come on. Just get it, already. With Yeezus, though, it's not just the lyrics. Yeezus is a complete turn-around from the complex arrangements of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It's a blasting, overdriven affair, seeming to take cues from OFWGKTA, witch house, and trap music. "Black Skinhead" has been compared to Marilyn Manson; "Blood On The Leaves" samples trap stars TNGHT; breakthrough Chicago weirdo Chief Keef appears several times. It's dark, gnarled, and seedy, dwelling in the choked gutters beneath the cloudreaching acts of MBDTF. Which is a long-winded way of saying it bangs, hard. Which is not to say that there isn't subtlety: the way that the synths slowly creep in halfway through "Hold My Liquor" is absolutely sublime, and the rather surprising soul-sampling closer, "Bound 2", harkens right back to those original College Dropout tracks. Mostly, however, it remains angry, laced through with that bitter, biting wit that's become the man's stock-in-trade. The problem with Kanye has always been that he is exactly as good as he thinks he is, and Yeezus is not going to change this particular fact. I guess I'll never understand why people think false humility is somehow morally better than a cleareyed statement of one's own worth. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLx11xq6X7Q ("Black Skinhead") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT3swdCJrrg ("New Slaves") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0QcxWPB59o ("Blood On The Leaves") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x4jIryPCMA ("Hold My Liquor") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPxkp2F-nAQ ("Bound 2")

#02:

Deafheaven - "Sunbather"

While the merits of metal as art have been a mainstay in the genre since its inception (and will likely continue well into the future), and there may be one better album this year, it remains today to say that Sunbather is still the most important album of 2013. See, I've been listening to black metal for a long time. Sometime back in the rarefied days of the late 1990s, @Jesusitsjustjesus installed Napster on the high school computers and went to town, pulling out bands with cool-sounding names. Many of those - Emperor, Immortal, Mayhem, Darkthrone, et al. - were from that first wave of black metal that was made up of crazy Norwegians who murdered each other and burned down ancient churches. I was as entranced by the music as I was put off by the immature, self-indulgent "Satanic" anarchism and the disturbing undertones of National Socialism. Black metal didn't really evolve much over the years, either; the production values got better (by the time Dimmu Borgir came around it no longer sounded like bands were recording themselves through a wall in a parking garage), the music became more complicated, but the basic underlying philosophy of it was as static as it had been when In The Nightside Eclipse first came out. It remained mostly a European form of metal for the 1990s and for most of the 2000s; it took a while for the Americans to catch hold, but when they did, they ended up changing everything. Go figure. By and large, American black metal bands ditched the Satanic imagery and corpsepaint. Quasi-Nazi philosophies and seedy arrest records? Pass. Early entry/anomaly "Dead As Dreams", from San Fransisco band Weakling, forged a creative, atmospheric form of black metal in 2000, with 15minute-plus suites that blurred the lines of what black metal could be. Years later, Wolves In The Throne Room became a new standard bearer, crafting swirling black metal that drew not from the howling winters of demon-haunted Scandinavia, but from the green, wet environs of the Pacific Northwest. Out with Satanism, in with nature-connected paganism. Then, a few years ago, Liturgy happened upon the scene, bringing out Brooklyn hipster-in-chief Hunter Hunt Hendrix and his weighty, postmodern philosophy of "Transcendental Black Metal". It was black metal howling vocals, blastbeats, chainsaw guitars, and classical arrangements - but it was art, rather than mere entertainment. Purists hated it, with a very vocal passion. Ask a "true kvlt believer" about Liturgy, and he'll likely start to foam at the mouth. Enter Deafheaven. The San Fransisco band's second album, Sunbather, marries black metal to sweeping, cinematic post-rock in the vein of Russian Circles or Explosions In The Sky and crafts an emotionally affecting set of which, until now, black metal has only hinted at being capable. This is pyrotechnics in panorama, and it's anchored by George Clarke's chosen subject matter. Sunbather isn't about the power of Satan, or the death of Christians, or back-to-nature paganism, or postmodern philosophies. It's about class envy. It's about seeing how the other half lives, wondering what you would do in that position, and then going back to your own home, where your parents have no money and everything you see and do is framed in the gaze of poverty. It has a spoken word interlude lifted directly from The Unbearable Lightness of

Being. "Dream House" ends in a series of drunken texts between Clarke and a woman he was into, positing death as a dream. Even the cover sets it apart - pink is not a colour any true kvlt purist would be caught dead near, and the lettering style is inspired not by the spidery "Metal Font" that every other album seems to have, but by the layout on Pulp's brilliant swan song, "We Love Life". Sunbather is black metal in the same way that Paranoid was blues rock - that is to say, transcendentally different. It's an album that points the way forward, towards a day when black metal, shoegaze, and post-rock can be discussed easily amongst genre fans. The purists, as I've stated, HATE it - check out the comments on the links I've posted for further information (I know, YouTube comments...), but for the rest, who keep an open mind and aren't burdened by some sense of "metal propriety", Sunbather is a mind-blower, something you will look back on as a major turning point in heavy music and in experimental rock in general. Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWyVhIBmdGw ("Dream House") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-Dyaoq_oSA ("The Pecan Tree") #01: Arcade Fire - "Reflektor"

The Suburbs, Arcade Fire's Grammy-winning 2010 juggernaut, is the band's weakest album. Taken against pretty much any other album in the last five years it wins out against all but a very few. Stacked up against the baroque gang-chorus pop of Greatest Album Of The Modern Era-contender Funeral and the gloomy Springsteen homages of Neon Bible, however, it falls a little short; this is true in the same sense that winning a Pulitzer seems to fall a little short after you win the Nobel Prize. It's a great album, but it always felt a little toned-down; if you've ever seen them live, you know that they unleash a force that rivals the universe in scope and power. Still, the album left them at the top of the "indie rock" (see: alternative) heap, and most wondered where they might go to follow up such a ubiquitous album. The answer, of course, is "go bigger". Enter Reflektor, the band's fourth album, and their most divisive. Lead single/opening track "Reflektor" signalled the change: seven minutes of disco-infused musings on the illusive nature of the meaning of art featuring a brief cameo from long-time fan David Bowie. This merely opens the gates: inward, the disco tinge continues, tempered with synth pop, reggae rhythms, glam rock, and the same ghosts of the rock and roll era that haunted Neil Young's last great album, 1979's Rust Never Sleeps. If Neon Bible was a reflection of their love for the Boss, Reflektor is their not-so-gentle reminder to the neo-disco movement that there was more to the late 1970s and early 1980s than an alternating drum and hi-hat. The shreds of the past cling to these songs: "Flashbulb" bears the tatters of numb coke-pop just as much as it shudders in the rhythm of early country. "Here Comes The Nighttime" is the spirit of early post-Marley pop-reggae, filtered through the band's experience with doing charity tours of Regine Chassande's Haitian homeland. "Normal Person" is a muscular take on Neil Young; "You Already Know" is swamped in the early

Britpop of Madness; "Joan Of Arc" reclaims glam pop from the toxic legacy of Gary Glitter - and that's just Disc One, a disc that has been likened in many places to being like a "greatest hits" collection. Disc Two gets more esoteric, mixing the Beatles, Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins, progrock, and glam rock together with a two-sided examination of the Greek myth of Euridyce and Orpheus (who also grace the album's cover). "Afterlife", which is probably the best track you'll hear all year, serves as the triumphant orgasm of the set, an exuberant culmination of the lyrical and musical topography that comes before it; "Supersymmetry" brings everything to a relaxing denoument, a post-coital cigarette that fades out into comforting synth pads. Even that track has multiple dimensions to it; as the name suggests, playing the song backwards at the same time as you play it forwards reveals the track as it is meant to be heard, reflections of each other that are each lost without the other half. Euridyce. Orpheus. It's a dense album, to say the least: 85 minutes in length (although ten of those are in the reflected backwards-tape-run that opens the album) and possessed of the energy to keep that seemingly excessive length moving. A lot of this stems from their refusal to settle down. Ten years ago, on Funeral, Win Butler was singing as though the world was ending and he needed to fall on his knees and celebrate everything before it was too late. In 2013 he's still doing this, even if he expresses doubts about art ("it's just a reflection of a reflection") or insecurity about his chosen medium ("Do you like rock and roll music?" he asks as the band starts into a groove at the start of "Normal Person", "Because I don't know if I do"). That doubt, that insecurity, builds up the fervor that he expresses to a fever pitch, fuelled by the drums and the ghostly, thrilling harmonies provided by his wife Regine. Their relationship: one singing against the end of the world (or just the end of meaningful artistic expression) and the other filling in the gaps ripped by such fear and hope with a patchwork of gorgeous vocal spiderwebs. Orpheus. Eurydice. Arcade Fire.