2013 Favorite Albums (20-11)

Almost to the end, here are my favorite records of 2013, Numbers 20 through 11:

20. Danny Brown - Old

Danny Brown's mixtape XXX was a messy record about drug-fueled desperation, and he warned that its follow up Old would only get deeper and more introspective. Split into two parts, Old is basically Brown's mind laid open bare, focusing on his past, present, and future selves, warts and all. Ruminations on his past drug use, dealing, and time in jail share space with more party-fueled, festival ready tracks. Brown shows that he is trying to distance himself from his past yet finds it clouds and colors everything he does. Sometimes he's able to get beyond it and sometimes not, all the while showing he is simply human and doing his best to not make the same mistakes. While this sounds dry on paper, Brown matches his lyrical ruminations with some of the most modern and edgy beats and backing you will hear today. Self-confessed to being influenced by records as diverse as Radiohead's Kid A, Joy Division's Closer, and Love's Forever Changes, Old is a rich, sonic tapestry that unfolds like a kaleidoscope, fractured against itself.

19. Beacon - The Ways We Separate

When I was growing up, the only way to hear music was over the radio, and radio stations were rigidly segmented in their own genres. You would rarely hear an R&B track on a Top 40 station and vice versa, and it was completely unheard of for a country song to appear anywhere but on a country station. In the Internet age, the ability in which to consume and absorb new music and genres is staggeringly easy, and it comes as no surprise that you get many new artists out there that combine different genres into one seamless whole. Brooklyn duo Beacon (Thomas Mullarney and Jacob Gossett) obviously benefit from this new found ease, as their first couple of EPs and now debut full length The Ways We Separate combine their love for future R&B, hip-hop, icy synthpop, UK bass music, and Warp-style IDM into a gorgeous mix of their own making. Thematically, The Ways We Separate explores how human beings separate themselves from each other, using a deliberately muted, minimal palate, that is not too far off from the debuts of acts like The xx and Purity Ring, which focus on a signature sound and walk around it like a sculpture, showing off different facets from different angles. The main complaints I have heard about this record is that it all seems one-note. While I understand that criticism, I think overall, it misses the point that the songs here are meant to flow together as a whole, and I appreciated the clean lines and surfaces that act as a foundation for the record.

18. My Bloody Valentine - m b v

I guess we need to see if hell has frozen over and pigs are now flying, as the unthinkable occurred: there is a new My Bloody Valentine record after a 22 year wait. There really is no objective way to review this album, as it comes loaded with so much backstory and history. Following the pretty much perfect record Loveless, there is absolutely no way any other music could even remotely hope to come close to it. Luckily, Kevin Shields and company realized this, and have don't what any rational band should do after creating their masterpiece, they made a record on their own terms. This is not Loveless II, nor is it a reinvention of the wheel. m b v is merely a new My Bloody Valentine record that is unmistakably them, but also has the balls to tinker with their sound in interesting new directions.

17. A$AP Rocky - Long.Live.A$AP

New York rapper A$AP Rocky has been riding a huge wave of hype ever since he released his initial mixtape Live.Love.A$AP and snagged a monstrous $3 million deal from RCA records. For whatever reasons, his debut studio album was pushed back several times leading many people to assume RCA wasn't pleased with the results and now have dumped the release into that purgatorial beginning of the year period. I didn't have high hopes for the record either, but it is actually a very solid debut album from a rapper that knows his strengths and weaknesses and, for the most part, leans towards said strengths. First and foremost, A$AP surrounds himself with top-notch producers that provide him with some of the most interesting and atmospheric backing tracks for his raps. While his mixtape basically highlighted his work with Clams Casino, who is featured on two tracks here, he ventures out to utilize Hit-Boy, Skrillex, Lord Flacko, and T-Minus to provide more diversity while still putting together a cohesive group of tracks.

16. Sigur Ros - Kveikur

Sigur Rós' seventh studio album Kveikur finds the band at a crossroads. Their sound, so distinctive after all these years, had reached somewhat of a rut. After lead singer Jónsi's more jubilant solo record, I was expecting a change in direction (or perhaps even a disbandment), however, last year's album Valtari found the band right back where the started from with more proto-new agey post-rock. While I found myself enjoying Valtari with more detailed listens, I was still disappointed that the band wasn't really charting new territory. When pianist Kjartan Sveinsson left the band, I really thought that would be the end of Sigur Rós as he was such an intricate part of the band's sound and direction. What could have been seen as a hindrance to most bands seems to have been just what they needed, sparking much needed life into what had become too familiar and stale. Kveikur is not a reinvention of the band, but more a shaking off the cobwebs and finding new inspiration in what made them so intriguing and special to begin with. Instead of the songs retreating into themselves, they live, breath, and occupy space with an intensity that I thought Sigur Rós had somewhat lost. While I hadn't necessarily given up on the band, the constant desire from them to something even slightly different and not getting what I needed was beginning to wear thin. With Kveijkur, the Sigur Rós spark is back, and hopefully will continue to grow.

15. Tim Hecker - Virgins

Canadian ambient/drone artist Tim Hecker's 2011 release Ravedeath, 1972 was a game changer for me. I had listened to a lot of minimalist ambient and drone work before but never felt any sort of connection with the music. It was pretty at times, annoying at others, but always kept me at arms length. Tim Hecker, on the other hand, provided such a visceral impact with his compositions, breathing life and fire into each piece. The intensity of some of his work on Ravedeath, 1972 was so palpable it was almost emotionally overwhelming. To me, that seminal record was his masterpiece, and I hesitated to even begin listening to his latest work Virgins, as I feared any loss in quality might somehow lessen the impact of Ravedeath, 1972. It appears I needn't have worried as, if anything, that work spawned a more focused and energized artist, with Virgins offering up some of his most beautiful and haunting work. While it lacks the utter shock of the new that Ravedeath, 1972 provided, Virgins is a more streamlined affair, with many of the tracks hovering around the 3-4 minute mark, and only a few tracks going over 5 minutes. It is a dense and heady work though, yet never feels oppressive or too overly challenging. How Hecker is able to keep all these multiple layers of sound in the air without seeming jumbled is nothing short of amazing.

14. Fuck Buttons - Slow Focus

Through two albums, Bristol noise merchants Fuck Buttons (Benjamin Power and Andrew Hung) have tinkered and tweaked their sound from the claustrophobic interiorness of Street Horrrsing to the skyscraping technicolor of Tarot Sport, and have even found some popular success when part of their track "Surf Solar" found its way into the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. If you were thinking that nod would have changed their focus, you would be sadly mistaken. Slow Focus neither reinvents the wheel nor sounds like a retread of their past records, though it is unmistakably a Fuck Buttons record. Slow Focus finds the duo amping up their sound to Herculean levels, showing a muscularity that was always in the background but never at the forefront. This is not a record to put on for leisurely listening, it demands attention and does not give you any respite from the onslaught like former tracks such as "The Lisbon Maru" or "Bright Tomorrow." This is 7 of the most in your face electronic music you will hear all year, and is mind-bogglingly brilliant.

13. Deafheaven - Sunbather

San Francisco based band Deafheaven are the buzz band of the moment in indie rock circles, as well as a highly contentious part of the black metal scene, getting dissed by their peers as being part of "hipster metal," for their combination of elements such as post-punk, shoegaze, post-rock, and alt-rock into their sound. I can't claim to be an expert on black metal or any metal for that matter (my friend Tradd, on the other hand, is my spiritual guide into such matters and gives me good recommendations and advice), but I generally know what I like and what I don't like. Traditionalist or not, Deafheaven's second record Sunbather is an exciting record that focuses on the band's almost innate ability to flawlessly juggle loud/soft, beautiful/harsh moments and create a record that straps you for a journey that lingers long in the memory. And truly is a journey through alt-rock/metal from the past 3 decades, taking metal and cloaking it with influences like The Cure, The Smiths, Joy Division (in fact, singer George Clarke bears a resemblance to Ian Curtis), My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive (their band name is a homage to them), Explosions In The Sky, Sigur Ros, and Godspeed!You Black Emperor, Mogwai, and even current buzz acts like Fuck Buttons. All these influences make for a more varied and interesting experience than the usual "pure" black metal record which tends to get caught up in the same dynamics over the course of a record, deadening the impact. On Sunbather, Deafheaven masterfully control where their sound is going, but never doing anything predictable. Where you think a song is going to explode, it descends into ambient washes, when you think it is going to fade out into gorgeous bliss, it erupts into pure noise and scrape. There are moments of acoustic metal folk, spoken word interludes, pure alt-rock sweep, surreal samples, and electronic experimentation. That all of these elements mesh into something so intricate and well thought out is a miracle. The production and pacing of Sunbather is practically perfect, its hour run time almost sliding by unnoticed.

12. Baths - Obsidian

From the album cover alone, you know that Bath's second album Obsidian is going to be a darker, more heavy affair than his warm, liquidy debut Cerulean. This record is not so much a startling leap than a culmination of what was already there to begin with. Cerulean alone displayed Will Wiesenfeld’s immense talent as a producer, and his ability to mix together fractured Brainfeeder beats along with glitchy electronics and marrying them to his own skewed pop sensibilities. While Cerulean was a brilliant debut, you always got the sense that Wiesenfeld was holding back, that somehow he was just testing the waters, waiting to see whether his sound could hold up. When he started writing the follow up to Cerulean, Wiesenfeld was felled by a bout of E. coli that left he practically debilitated for several weeks, and that period along with his recovery colors every corner of Obsidian, a fascinatingly dark, obsessive record about life and death, relationships, success and failure, everything a young person would obsess over in the face of a debilitating illness. Obsidian is Baths hitting on all cylinders, a definitive statement of purpose. Musically, Obsidian is not too far off the mark from Cerulean. It is still an electronic record for the most part, however, it is more widescreen and enveloping and less insular than its brother, and is breathtakingly varied and more muscular. Wiesenfeld's voice, a haunting falsetto, was used sparingly on his debut, and often filtered, twisted, and manipulated into something different that took away from its naked purity. Here, Wiesenfeld's voice is prominent in almost every track, wisely kept unadorned for the most part, giving these tracks a more human feel.

11. Nine Inch Nails - Hesitation Marks

Hesitation Marks, the title of the 8th album under Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails moniker, refers to preliminary wounds made before a suicide attempt, and here there are plenty of references to being on the brink, trying to pull oneself back. It is no secret that Rezor has faced his share of demons over the years, but now, nearing 50, he's married, with two kids, and an Oscar winner, he seems more grounded than ever and still able to put out some of his most vital work since his 90s hey-days. Over these 14 tracks, Reznor revisits his past in a way, but looking at it from up above and with a more critical eye, touching on many of the same themes he has always worked with, however, much more wiser and kinder to himself. The sound of the record too touches on every facet of his career, from the electro-EBM of Pretty Hate Machine, studio excess of The Fragile, glitchy/claustrophobia of Year Zero, and even his masterful industrial synthpop of The Downward Spiral. This is not Reznor trying to reclaim what he once was/had or simply an exercise in nostalgia, it is an natural progression and amalgamation of all his incarnations, and one of his most vital records in years.