ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2013

hmm owl salt n pepper shakers!

Birmingham is So Bracing

i'm intentionally obfuscating my own understanding and going with my interpretation

Garth Brooks' "Friends in Low Places" is actually based on a Wodehouse short story

and Bertie Wooster actually did an early version of the "Boot Scootin' Boogie"

I started to listen to RAM again and got so annoyed that I made the conscious decision to play Damita Jo instead

(fyi Damita Jo is still terrible

but "All Nite (Don't Stop)" bangs)

you're embarrassing.

― |$̲̅(̲̅ιοο̲̅)̲̅$̲̅| (gr8080), Friday, January 31, 2014 5:11 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this possibility should not be counted out but still

am I the only one that sees the John Grant cover and thinks of this:

http://www.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/legacy/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/johnbult.jpg

hah good call

love those salt n pepper shakers on the grant cover

i listened to daft punk and i kind of admire it in theory but LORD it felt like WORK to listen to that whole thing

man how did I not buy the Grant album?? "Ernest Bornine" ("Errrnie") I've played a dozen times today.

m@tt did you post your ballot?

i forgot to save mine :(

http://m.soundcloud.com/doglatin/2014-numbers-on-the-board jamming out to this. Please ilxors this is your Friday night

:( xp

20-11

KURT VILE Walkin On a Pretty Daze - Was underwhelmed by the opening track earlier, so I'm starting with track 3, which is much better. MUCH better in fact, and considering that the album is 2 weeks long, perhaps he could have had this as the opener and just ditched the first two? Oh gosh this song has a REALLY GORGEOUS coda, dreamy where the opening track plodded! Clearly I gotta listen on. I mean, it's a simple trick, this sorta jammy dreamy dickery, and it won't blow my mind, but it's quite enjoyable in a backgroundy way. This is the laziest way to try and achieve transcendence, but it's presumably an album by for and about lazy people. Track 4 even lovelier, even lazier. :D I can get with this! I mean, there's so much else to listen to, but this has an elegant langour, like a sorta poppier Space Needle (anyone?) - the spirit of 90's indie that hasn't been put through a hip electro update. *time passes* Nothing's gotten me involved like tracks 3 and 4 and I'm through 7 now. This album is simply far, far too long. Like that Space Needle album, you could say, but that record's wilder, weirder and got more of a pop touch into the bargain. Hear it! It's great. Uh it's called The Moray Eels Eat The Space Needle. Track it doooown.

CHVRCHES The Bones of What You Believe - I heard about 4 or 5 songs from this earlier while preparing to leave the house. I hate all of you.

JANELLE MONÁE The Electric Lady - YES, at last, something's grabbed me by the gut. *straps self in for the ride* OH MY GOD YES!! Song was incredible enough BEFORE Prince busted out that solo. Janelle's the real star, though - her songwriting even more than her voice. She's a fucking gem and it seems she's getting better and better. No idea why I didn't listen to this earlier. Q.U.E.E.N. is a blazing arrow to the heart of the charts, we all knew this. *freaks* This is all great - Primetime brings the heavy cosmic bliss. We Were Rock And Roll was enormous. Haha, this is basically hit after hit! Dance Apocalyptic is such a goddamned thrillride. I also really love how this album's structured - 19 tracks, but so many stylistic change-ups and interludes that it stays fresh and never feels like a chore. OMG It's Code -> Ghetto Woman might be the highlight of the whole damn album so far. Still enjoying this so much as an album experience - the penultimate track is even harking back to the Tightrope bassline - Monae's crafted a funky, arresting and extremely well thought-out piece here.

CHARLI XCX True Romance - There's a massive disconnect between how much the instrumental is annoying me (not at all - it's quite edgy and gripping) and how much the vocal is (a lot). Some of the most irritating possibly vocal affectations ever devised in this opening track. Pattern implausibly continuing into the second track! I love the sampled vocal hook but her lead vox are just not rubbing me up the right way. Track 3, the music is really quite catchy indeed - those frantic tickytocky synths, that rolling low-end - and fortunately Charli herself is a bit more tolerable now. Was this the song on the traxpoll? If it was, I'm enjoying it much more now. Can imagine a stellar dream-disco remix. Track 4 even better - this album is getting more and more acceptable the longer I hear it for! Gorgeous chord-change into the chorus here. Track 5 is also really nicely-produced. However - I get the feeling that there's something just slightly...perfunctory about the production before - something stale. A bit of Googling tells me that this is a Rechtshaid production, which perhaps confirms the sentiment, seeing as he seems to have a finger in every other pie. The other relevant comparison - Marina and the Diamonds - makes perfect sense insofar as they're friends and both writing similar electropop, but I would STRONGLY argue that the first M&TD album has stronger songs and more distinctive sounds than this. And now, I tire of this music, after 7 songs...I really don't want to force myself through this any more. It turns to gloop; there's not enough variation. But a couple of the songs are kinda lovely.

DISCLOSURE Settle - I've listened to 6 tracks and over 20 minutes of this album and have literally nothing to say about it

THESE NEW PURITANS Field of Reeds - Mighty fucken brilliance abounds within, my number 12. Not every track is perfect - some of it runs the risk of being slightly drippy (if still atmospheric and interesting) nu-orchestral blether - but when it fires, holy shit, it's some of the best and most finely-realised modern 'indie' or 'avant-rock' I've heard in my life. I'm talking about the 17 minutes of V (Island Song) and Nothing Else, which combined make for a truly incredible trip, and one I'm not shirking right now despite the fact I've listened to those songs so often before. It's the middle of the night, and this shit is perfect. A dark, purposeful interpretation of some lambent darkness, whether of nation, soul or both, which is far more likely to cut you than at first seems, far more vicious and gnostically crazed than its placid horn and string drenched exterior. Dive in and fight for your life.

M.I.A. Matangi - This is not a five in the morning album. I've sat through and kinda enjoyed four and a bit songs of this but I feel a fresh start tomorrow will allow me to judge it better (starting from where I left off - let's summarise the first four songs as 'hectic' and 'fun'). OMG this fifth track just went bendymental bleurgh yay! O this is my favourite track so far, it bangs far too hard for my addled ol' brain in this state. 'Come Walk With Me' - super li'l song. Next one is kinda awesome too. Gosh, I'm getting into this. I'd better go to bed before it keeps me up! all! night! *goes to bed* *wakes* *resumes* Hahaha starting again halfway through aTENTion is so disorientating :D silence hath yielded to chaos, peace to atonality. MIA's pretty goddamn punk - there's an attitude of opposition integral to this music that endears it to me even before I can consider its 'craft' or its 'narrative'. Bad Girls is kinda huge, isn't it. I really didn't like Paper Planes but these songs are much more interesting. The tracks in the latter half of this are just as strong as the earlier ones.Ending a bit mellow for the rest of the album I feel, and I'm not completely won-over - little has made me go WOW (other than CWWM and aTENTion), but this is fine music and a necessarily oppositional voice.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER R Plus Seven - Starts strong. Massy, doomish dark-ambient organ yielding to syncopated Bladerunner arpeggios - this is good. It'll need to do more than this to really win me over - please don't let this bliss be cheaply-won and powderdust under inspection - and so I await for matters to develop further. Think I prefer the massy organ, so I'm happy it's returned. Second track...I'm enjoying this much more than first time around, a few weeks ago - it has a dreamy, frazzled modernist vibe to it, comes off like how they'd have imagined the music of 2050 would be in 1930. Doesn't appear to have much narrative logic beyond panic and disorientation - perhaps this is the painstaking construction of a new, brutalist language, at least within techno. Not that I'm fully conversant as yet - this is a bit jarring, elusive and cryptic - Zukofsky at his most obscurantist, perhaps, rather than gnomic and cohesive in Oppenish newness. The moments of this music trample together rather than cooperate and synthesise - perhaps we are dealing more with a postmodernist, deconstructionist take on modernism - each skyscraper is viewed through a thousand rapid-fire reflections before disappearing underground. Track 5, Zebra, the longest track, begins now. O I like this HEAPS. Much more synthesised, more of a narrative I can flow alongside - or am I simply getting accustomed to OPN's cycles? Think this track is more straight-modernist, more Autechre, if you will - it is an intelligible edifice, whose diversions and interruptions come in pleasing rather than confusing unpredictability - I'm minded of a collusion between machines which don't entirely suit one another's purposes, and end up retiring into the noise of the world, represented here by a stuttering, yet insistent sweet-sax groove. Great fucking song! Also, have I got my Pseuds' Corner nomination yet? You say no? I shall continue, then. Really, I was expecting more ambient dribble but this is way more than that - well, it isn't really ambient at all - the Modernist poetry comparisons were made in sincerity. Along is also really great. I think the *one* danger with this music is that I (horrible cliche alert) might admire it (in some academic sense) more than love it at this stage, but it's definitely going to get repeated in future, and I don't think it'll take much to get me to really fucking adore this stuff. And saying that, here comes Problem Areas to burn this album into my skull - infectious, catchy synth patterns once more yielding to that organ! Oh my! And this time, playing some really gorgeous chords. Followed by more goofy synth-bass jerking. :D OK, yeah, this is really great. It's getting better as it goes along, even! Epic musical conversion UNDER WAY. O GOD, Still Life is ENORMOUS, breathy synthpop recalibrated as Modernist epiphany I REALLY LOVE THIS MUSIC. Yep, final track is incredible too. This'd make my ballot EASILY - feels like an important & thrilling musical statement.

DAWN RICHARD Goldenheart - OK, this insane swirling organ on Return Of The Queen is MY SORTA JAM. This has begun brilliantly. Yeah, a few songs in now and this feels like contemporary chartpop R&B thrown into a mincer and given a seriously brutal remodelling. It's engaged, uncomplacent, determined to carve its own path. Pretty Wicked Things is one of the best 'suddenly, dubstep!' moments I've yet heard - really thrilling. Northern Lights is even better - appears to be folding in on itself throughout its running-time. Transition from Warfaire -> Tug Of War is magical. Really tensely-wound production, attention-grabbing, disorientating. My *one* concern is that Richard herself is somewhat of a subordinate presence in this (imo) and plays second fiddle to the instrumentals. But it barely matters - either way, this is her vision, and frankly if she wants be submerged in warring synths and harsh electronic percussion that's cool. Too much clarity can sacrifice the sort of ambiguity that induces alternative mindstates, and the likes of 86 and ESPECIALLY In Your Eyes are the sort of thrilling electropop that removes lyrical cares from one's consciousness. The autotune is also helping to 'reduce' Richard's voice to 'just another instrument' levels - again, not a bad thing, although typical of a lot of pop R&B. The likes of Larrieux and Monae have far, far more personality in their voices and performances than Richard, and I'd argue slightly better music, although this is still really, really engaging and its brilliance is especially located in its flow (as with Monae, I suppose) and sequencing; it works well as a piece. Its very musical mood is also very intense and liminal - it feels on the edge of violence or collapse, which is where it diverges from Monae's virtuoso mastery - it's a vulnerable, volatile mood, a rupture in purpose, a potential repurposing of pop-R&B into ambitious and expansive gestures. I think I prefer the Monae, MARGINALLY, with the cosmic Zen of Larrieux still in clear first-place, but this is superb. Although - the best track of all was still Return Of The Queen - Richard clearly knows that if you start strong, they will listen on...(oh my god what the fuck is with this British Airways advert music closer. I don't even care who composed it originally. Whyyyyyyyy Dawn why O I'm gonna have to pretend this album ended 1 song earlier aren't I)

CHANCE THE RAPPER Acid Rap - Here we go. This had better be funner than a fucking mile-high slide, it had better splat me to pieces better than reaching the end of that slide, or I'll be mad atcha, ILX. OMG what's going on?! :D Not liking Pusha Man so much, gonna persist tho. Hey, this song's cool. *checks* OMG this is STILL Pusha Man :D holy hell ok, clearly there's a lot more to Chance than I thought - this song's undergone all sorts of crazy mutations, gone to some dark places...legit much more interested now. As if to corroborate this, Cocoa Butter Kisses is fucking awesome, powering through into the hole of expectation the first two songs opened up. Love the modulation of his spoken rapping tone to heighten tension. Unless that was one of the guest spots, lol. Not such a fan of Juice, see if he gets it back. Yeesh, nah, starting to not get this - 'Acid Rap'? This is someone else's trip. To draw a parallel, Lil B's stuff is way more whacked-out and genuinely psychedelic in its conveyance. This comes off as hedonism-rap given a slight skew. But I'll keep giving it chances. Hey, the interlude is cool. Now it's cheeeesyyyyy. NaNa is better. I dig that bassline and the atonal vocal hook is heaps of fun. Especially when it falls apart at the end :D Processed horns on Smoke again str8 offensive, wonder if that's part of the game though. Acid Rain was much better, can get with that groove. Outro good too, dig the footwork beats. Not really for me, get why it was an event for others though - it's a pretty vividly-realised record.

imago I trust your taste more than ever with these write-ups

word

Even if oneohtrix point never is idiotic?

FTR never doubted his taste in music but come on that record is dumb

I haven't heard the new OPN. I don't like the two OPN records I've heard! I'm gonna listen though. I feel like I should love his music. I read the "here's how we made the record, track-by-track" for the last one and thought it was super interesting.

OPN is great

I think I'm misunderstanding his shit on a fundamental level tbh. Like it should be my favourite thing but the only thing I loved by him were the first Games EPS and then everything else has sounded like a really lazy artless take on art music. I don't get it at all. Is it supposed to be conceptual? Millennial? It's not pleasant to listen to. It's not particularly new or groundbreaking... why?

He's supposed to be the new aphex. The dorky mad genius with a PhD in post post modernism and a savage YouTube serrated twinkle in his giffy eye. So why does it sound like someone sampled an old magic carpet CD-ROM from 95 and started playing around on a midi keyboard with a few effects over the top? I hate to be the guy who says 'anyone could do it', but it's true. And James Ferraro did it a zillion times better a couple of years ago.

don't think you need theory to dig 0PN, he's not my favourite but the appeal is quite immediate ime

And James Ferraro did it a zillion times better a couple of years ago.

lol, no

Lol, no, indeed

I just. No it's not hard to listen to really... but what makes it special? Why was it ranked so high? It really sounds tossed off and inadequate to me. And I really liked Far Side Virtual which seemed to do this kind of thing a lot better and smarter than this.

it's like ascension

The first track is a bit like ascension haha. I liked the video I must say. And the album cover is a tribute to the frankenstein film (great film btw) but I still don't get this album or how it's meant to work. I feel like I need context or something.

O god I just reread that and the Charli XCX blurb is some str8 bad writing

Well, only two extraneous words but they kill it. Lemme re-up:

CHARLI XCX True Romance - There's a massive disconnect between how much the instrumental is annoying me (not at all - it's quite edgy and gripping) and how much the vocal is (a lot). Some of the most irritating possibly vocal affectations ever devised in this opening track. Pattern implausibly continuing into the second track! I love the sampled vocal hook but her lead vox are just not rubbing me up the right way. Track 3, the music is really quite catchy indeed - those frantic tickytocky synths, that rolling low-end - and fortunately Charli herself is a bit more tolerable now. Was this the song on the traxpoll? If it was, I'm enjoying it much more now. Can imagine a stellar dream-disco remix. Track 4 even better - this album is getting more and more acceptable the longer I hear it for! Gorgeous chord-change into the chorus here. Track 5 is also really nicely-produced. However - I get the feeling that there's something just slightly...perfunctory about the production before - something stale. A bit of Googling tells me that this is a Rechtshaid production, which perhaps confirms the sentiment, seeing as he seems to have a finger in every other pie. The other relevant comparison - Marina and the Diamonds - makes perfect sense insofar as they're friends and both writing similar electropop, but I would STRONGLY argue that the first M&TD album has stronger songs and more distinctive sounds than this. And now, I tire of this music, after 7 songs...I really don't want to force myself through this any more. It turns to gloop; there's not enough variation. But a couple of the songs are kinda lovely.

Also, my top 10 discoveries from the 77 so far:

1) DJ Rashad. Surely one of the most important artists working today, and I've heard one of his albums once (and then the song I Don't Give A Fuck on numerous repeats)
2) Amel Larrieux. Ditto and ditto.
3) Yamantaka//Sonic Titan. Indieprog just got brung like 'twere ne'er brung afore
4) Oneohtrix Point Never. Modernist poetry/music interface
5) Danny Brown. Fucking absolutely kills the mainstream/experimental rap crossover market, and knows it, which is how he can create such an opus as 'Old'
6) Burial. Always dismissed Burial before this - not any fucking longer, that was stunning.
7) Janelle Monae. Never listened to one of her albums all the way through before. Not making that mistake again.
8) Fuck Buttons. They play a mean guitar.
9) Dawn Richard. An artist of immense promise and ambition.
10) John Grant. A songwriter of subtlety and a sense of real theatre.

AND ONE FOR LUCK

11) f(x). *dances*

And now, I tire of this music, after 7 songs...I really don't want to force myself through this any more. It turns to gloop; there's not enough variation. But a couple of the songs are kinda lovely.

fwiw the final track on the album is my favorite ("Lock You Up").

Oh this is nice, you otm

*recalls mind-troops from the quantum borderlands of Shambhala*

Peace in our time.

*really* nice actually, best track on the album. Also most Marina-esque :P

Imago did you read my interview with a Rashad btw?

link

lol I only listened to half of the John Grant album, but it totally makes sense that it's an Alfred record

also lj is doing great

wait is lj into jaga jazzist if not why not

'what we must' was a staple listen of mine back in '05 m8

ha just went back & read the jaga jazzist thread and yes i see that now

iirc the band we both love is The Chap, also since '05 in my case. wonder what their next move is

yes! you know who's also a big u.s. fan of the chap is NA (a/k/a n/a)

ya i do recall. imo their most recent album was a lovely str8-pop record, not enuff love here

10-6

KANYE WEST Yeezus - Intriguing sonics in the first two tracks, although I can't entirely connect with this - as I've already said, Danny Brown does the experimental/mainstream hip-hop crossover more intriguingly, and there's something lacking behind the flashy surface - this music is predominantly front. I Am A God is much, much better. Playing with his own delusions (?) of grandeur until forced to confront his own deity/mortality (which is more scary?) and screaming in fear. Dig it as a nice li'l theatrical trick. New Slaves is probably the best track so far - it's much more fully-realised than the songs before it, has a great beat, some sweet sonic tricks, a genuinely arresting progression, some problematic lyrics (think the aim is to get people's attention, and he's succeeded - a professional troll, if y'will), and now two tracks later this is starting to annoy me. Strange Fruit sample entirely fitting with 'professional troll' status, shacking up with KKardashian ditto - the whole thing's a fucken act, and you know it, and I know it, and he knows it, and we all know it*. Next.

*Did I just delegitimate Kanye? P sure that makes me the Oppressor. HE WINS AGAIN

*3-minute autotune solo*

KACEY MUSGRAVES Same Trailer Different Park - Oh! Some fine pedal steel already, gonna say that that's a fairly quick way to endear y'self to me. Already liking this much, much more than Brandy Clark, and I think that's because I find the music to have more depth, both in terms of instrumentation and songwriting. Much more spacious, rangy. And - I think - more charm, more life. I could go on. *a few tracks pass and I kinda sink into it* This is actually....GREAT. I don't know how this happened? Blowin' Smoke was epic and then I Miss You and Step Off maybe even better? Let me find the words to articulate why this is so damn listenable...having now finished the album and gone back to I Miss You. (That last track WAS devastating! Whole second half probably superior.) Um...I guess it's just much more spry, much more alive? More unpredictable? I think the interplay between the instruments is really poised - it's full ensemble playing of a high standard, confidently rendered - musically reminiscent of the McGarrigles, with admittedly more poppy production and shall we say directly-aimed lyrics (country for the Facebook era ahaha, a very present ego but we shan't hold it against her; it's not Kanye-level lol). Yeah I really fucken enjoyed this, and it flew by. Great songs. Fairly classic record. If this is nu-country-pop then I'm in. If anyone can explain why I had such a superior reaction to this as Clark though, I'd appreciate it, because as you can see, I'm flailing!

PARAMORE Paramore - I've already listened str8 thru to this once and heard most of the other tracks since. I have about 9 hours' worth of Knife and Daft Punk to get through. Should I? Well, I doubt I'd have a *remarkably* different impression, although I will say that Part II and Still Into You banged from (more or less) the outset, and the opening track is kinda weirdly kickass too (those noises! "WE ARE TURNING THINGS A LITTLE BIZARRE") - all relevant comments of 'it feels like I just ate an entire bucketsworth of candy' are otm - it's a huge event album with tons of scope and ambition, but it's all within an emo-pop bracket that will always ultimately choose the path of least resistance. I have no problem with it, or with it being this high, but I can never love it and I hope you understand.

THE KNIFE Shaking the Habitual - This is surely gonna be enormous. I might as well say "brilliant album" and not listen to it, right? Ah, but that'd be a terrible cop-out! A Tooth For An Eye is kinda magnificent; I might even prefer it to Full Of Fire (spoken far too soon, of course) (yes) (hahaha duhh this song is brilliant, a total technostomp mindfuck to the skull of a CLUB NEAR YOU). O wow, A Cherry On Top is kinda...awesome, this vast, confrontational sound-world, getting into the guts of the album...jeez, this album's long, but I actually kinda like it that way - the longer this is, the longer before I have to listen to Vampire Weekend. Oh my GOSH Wrap Your Arms Around Me is STUNNING dark-electro...balladry? No idea. It's brilliant, whatever it is. AND NOW I veg out. Not a bad dark-ambient soundscape I guess. I liked it when the percussion came in. Oh - and this final ascent into the heavens is BEAUTIFUL! A payoff that almost made the other 18 minutes worthwhile ;) OK, right. Raging Lung was brilliant when I heard it in the traxpoll and hopefully brilliant again now. Yep! Although - I think that so far this album still works better as individual tracks than as a piece - it doesn't concentrate its intensity quite as I'd hope - it's huge and forbidding and doesn't really hold together - deliberately so, I'd wager - the forbiddingness is part of its identity. I think the reason I loved Tomorrow, In A Year so much is that it worked as two extended pieces - the first side especially, which I still regard as the Knife's pinnacle. That said, I'm not taking anything away from the individual songs here, which are great What concentration of intensity there is perhaps best demonstrated by Wrap Your Arms Around Me, which works through its ideas in under 5 minutes, but this is not to denigrate the longer songs, which work through their ideas splendidly and often thrillingly. OH! Networking is amazing, a frantic, delusory fever-dream, trying to escape itself in some monotonous labyrinth only to find its own tail at every turned corner, a game of Snake that's perpetually on the verge of exhausting itself...really quite psychologically disconcerting music. Right, though, Stay Out Here is just pushing this album, and I KNOW it's a deliberate move, into 'far too fucking long' territory, nor is it as interesting as the other songs. Fracking Fluid Injection is a great improvement (lol really) and an interesting exercise in sonic abrasion, I can dig it. Should have come earlier in the album, really. It's not like they've set up a cohesive soundworld for us to get lost in, it's a lot of very long tracks thrown together. OH YOU KNIFE BOZOS! This doesn't work like an album should, according to, idk, my EXPECTATIONS. But I know, Knife. They're outmoded. I'll have to just...deal...

VAMPIRE WEEKEND Modern Vampires of the City - ...with these fuckheads. Opening track not so bad if I tune out the vocals, really! Nice production, some pianos. Kinda boring but I'm not paying attention THIS IS THE ONLY WAY IT'S GONNA WORK FOLKS. Track 2 has some nice organ work, actually! I like that organ. Not much else at all, but hey, not subsumed in loathing just yet! Step has presentable harpsichord, but also has the first really disgusting tune/vocal combination. Getting edgy. And bored. Oh someone shut him uppppp, one of his many devoted fans go and sit on his face or something. I don't get why so many of you loved this so much, and I'm now 7 tracks in. Nothing's happened yet except my burgeoning annoyance! The bits I like most of this album are the kinda plinkyplonky harpsichord/piano riffs, apart from that I am finding nothing of interest. I know this isn't an original insight but what is WITH these chipmunk vox in Ya Hey? I mean, it's a brilliant conceptual decision! It uh brings out the...absurdity of writing an indiepop song to God! Yeah! Ten critic points to meeeeeeeeee