Top 50 Albums of 2013
30. Companion 'Companion'
After a four-album, two-EP solo stint, Pepi Ginsberg assembled Companion, a five-piece outfit, as marked career-change. The band's music is filled with compositional complexity and mid-song reinventions, and Ginsberg's once-Dylan-inspired storytelling has been consciously cut down to simple syllables. But for all its instrumental passages and scrawling guitars and contrapuntal harmonies, Companion's self-titled debut is still defined by Ginsberg's glorious voice and thoughtful lyricism; a song like "Only" brilliantly marrying Ginsberg's fondness for character-sketch with her new band's grandeur. "You take me for granted/every day/I can't stand it," Ginsberg sings, in a voice nearing a sweet, sweet sob, on "No Kid/Blast," quietly letting lose one of the most emotionally-slaying pop-song lyrics adrift amidst 2013's collective cloud.
29. Scout Niblett 'It's Up to Emma'
"I think I'm gonna buy me a gun/a nice little silver one," sings Scout Niblett, at the opening of her sixth LP. She's not worried about gun control, but indulging in scorned woman fantasy; dreaming of striking down the dog that done her wrong ("maybe you'll be holding her hand/or watching her shitty band"). The song immediately throws It's Up to Emma into the piques of irrationality that arise in the wake of a bad breakup; Niblett taking out her rage not with fire-arms, but guitars. Moving from skeletal and eerie to distorted and bulldozing, the songs have a dark, desperate edge to them; even a cover of TLC's bubblegum-feminism hit "No Scrubs" sounds furious. But It's Up to Emma finds its heroine also riddled by doubt, staring at 40, and wondering what being 'Scout Niblett' even is anymore; this a record about breaking up with both a past boyfriend and a past persona.
28. Merchandise 'Totale Nite'
Floridian punks who cut their teeth in DIY noise, Merchandise's evolution towards epic, Goth-tinged new-wave was already its own minor revolution. And revelation: their 2012 LP, Children of Desire arrived seemingly out of nowhere, armed with a CD booklet whose artwork showed more thematic thought than most bands do in their entire careers. Totale Nite, the band's third LP, completes the transition: Carson Cox's croon cast out out front and draped in cavernous echo; the band's misty, shadowy epics feeling ever more bold, more confident, more accessible. These still scan as swear-words to some punks, but here they merely suggest the joys of hearing Cox verily belt out "I guess I miss the old shit/but that's it/I'll never forget" at Morrisseyan tenor during the dark, dreamy, death-obsessed "Winter's Dream," the album's last —and best— song.
27. Savages 'Silence Yourself'
There's always the suspicion with buzz bands that, beyond the hype, there's little substance, much contrivance. Savages instantly vaulted to buzz-band status when their debut single "Husbands" dropped, but they are the antithesis of the archetype. They're thoughtful and meaningful, and treat the very act of performing in a group as something due reverence and seriousness. With their scratchy guitars, stalking bass, and unavowed politics, Savages have earned comparisons to countless post-punk legends. But they're anything but a nostalgia act. Instead, Silence Yourself is alive to the here-and-how, an album that, from the moment first salvo "Shut Up" is fired, suggests that the Twitter generation needs to rediscover restraint in regards to disclosure. Rockbands, on the contrary, should actually say something; a thesis that singer Jehnny Beth ably explicates on across an oft-thrilling debut.More »
26. Iceage 'You're Nothing'
In 2013, the traditional four-piece-rockband set-up —young men on two guitars, bass, and drums— is cultural kitsch; a coming-of-age cliché whose one-time tenor of rebellion is long forgotten. Yet, then you hear Iceage, Danish teens turning tired instruments into righteous tools of protest; their songs all wanton klang, molten rage, and coiled desperation. Their second LP, You're Nothing, loses none of the ragged passion of 2011's raucous New Brigade, even if the quartet are obviously in increasing command of their instruments, their sound, their fury. There's more of a sense of songcraft at play —"Morals"' minor-keys match lingering piano figures to an Elias Bender Rønnenfelt vocal trending soulful— but Iceage's great gift is an extension of their youthful passion. Here, more clearly than the first time around, they make anger, hostility, and darkness sound vital, alive, and somehow joyous.
25. Radiator Hospital 'Something Wild'
The '90s-revivalists of the Philadelphia-scene orbiting around the Crutchfield twins —Waxahatchee, Swearin', Great Thunder, Cayetana— earned plenty of acclaim in 2013, but the best LP of the bunch was turned out by Radiator Hospital. They're the one-time home-recording project of Sam Cook-Parrott, who, across something Something Wild, turns out a boisterous bunch of two-minute, power-pop tunes record in a hail of fuzz. Whether in-the-red or quietly-acoustic, the melodies are always big, the harmonies huge, the energy electric. But what makes it all hum is Cook-Parrott's wonky, sinusy voice, which he multi-tracks into a mutant choir of drunken Darnielles. "Your Boyfriend" effectively distils the Radiator Hospital sound: it's both spartan confessional and pop-punk explosion, and the lyrics are so sincere and candid they're near old-school emo.More »
24. Moonface 'Julia with Blue Jeans On'
Far from Sunset Rubdown’s mad tangles and Wolf Parade’s festival-rock, Spencer Krug’s Moonface LPs have been reductionist exercises: 2010's Dreamland: Marimba & Shitdrums and 2011’s Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I’d Hoped wearing their instrumentation on their sleeves; 2012’s Heartbreaking Bravery an album-long hook-up with krauty Finnish minimalists Siinai. Now Julia With Blue Jeans On finds Krug —"tumbler glass of whisky" in hand, perhaps— sitting down behind a solitary piano. But whilst Krug can tinkle the ivories with classic flourish, the lounge-bar vibe is louche; the stripped-down setting letting his lacerating lyrics loose. Krug calls these love songs; but from the metaphorically-biblical "Everyone Is Noah, Everyone Is the Ark" to the self-mocking domestic fantasies of "Love the House You’re In," it’s more about the notion of —and search for— ‘home.’More »
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23. Parenthetical Girls 'Privilege (Abridged)'
"Is this is tawdry as it sounds?" Zac Pennington asks, with a warble, mid-"Weaknesses." The answer is a resounding 'yes.' Indecency is Pennington's lyrical metier, and Privilege (Abridged) —the first PG LP since 2008's Entanglements— reads like some scandalous bodice-ripper. All misguided sex and stained reputations, it's a study in good-breeding-gone-bad told in lyrics one part period vernacular ("survived in score by prideful progeny"), one part pornography ("Jesus Christ, look at the size of it!"). Drawn from tracks originally strewn over a limited five-EP series numbered in members' blood, Parenthetical Girls —which is, to say, chiefly Pennington and composer Jherek Bischoff— have wondrously whipped the songs into a singular narrative; their sad synth-pop and sorrowful chamber-pieces sounding united by the one warped tenor.
22. Zola Jesus 'Versions'
Making an album of orchestral versions of your own 'hits' is the epitome of cheese: it's something Metallica does; inhabiting the same dubious discographical realm as the remix record or Christmas album. Any 'orchestralized' LP demands copious suspicion, which is why listening to Zola Jesus's Versions is one of the year's great musical joys. From "Avalanche (Slow)" to "Collapse," Nika Roza Danilova's forthright persona and forceful vocals are placed center-stage, with the foggy Goth-operatics and moody synth-pop stripped away. Jim Thirlwell (of industrial pioneers Foetus) tackles the orchestrations thoughtfully, and the swell of the stark, scraped strings taps into something in Danilova. She's always been a wailer, but here she hones in on the emotion —so often the pain— beneath the sentiments.
21. Austra 'Olympia'
Touring in the wake of 2011's Polaris-nominated Feel It Break, Katie Stelmanis and her Austra bandmates discovered something. Though their Gothy songs were assembled by Stelmanis in a darkened apartment, when taken to stage they radiated light. Austra shows suddenly bordered on dance parties, a feeling the Canadian combo wanted to capture on their second LP. With its meticulous production and influence drawn from old Detroit techno records, that spirit's at play on Olympia. But there's also a contrasting current of confession; Stelmanis inviting listeners into intimate spaces on songs like single "Home" and the lovesong "Annie." When delivered in her resounding, ex-chorister's voice, the result is a set of songs equally at home in the bedroom, the club, or the opera house.
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