31 albums I loved this year
1. Tegan and Sara: Heartthrob: About the only case I could see against the album is that individually they’re not outstanding singers, but I'd counter that they play off each other better (the Shakespearean as in Marcella-and-Siobhan contest between “go” and “please stay” on “Now I'm All Messed Up”) than any other vocal duo at the moment, what with Brooks & Dunn splitting and all. Clearly, they sing in service to their songs rather than vice versa. Take Tegan's rising final syllable in “Closer.” It's a hook in itself, one too shameless for her to have sung three albums ago, but it also emphasises that the song conveys an attraction that’s very college-freshman, a time of not only freedom from parents but also freedom from one’s own adolescence -- it’s physical, not just physical. I’m not saying that all of this consciously goes through Tegan’s mind when her “errrrr” turns into a yelp, but with countless good decisions like this on the album, i wouldn't rule it out. And then there are the pre-choruses that build logically from verses and are effortlessly topped by giant choruses; the abundance of telling details (“where you're leaving your makeup”); the Greg Kurstin million-little-hooks production job that finally proves he has talents beyond knowing the limits of plagiarism law (though he certainly still has that). All this lets T&S engage in the human-scale drama that's their bag; the overall effect is edifyingly melancholy. If this makes Heartthrob sound like a better-written Carly Rae Jepsen album, (i) as everyone on Tumblr knows Kiss was pretty good darn it, and (ii) the only 2013 album I've heard that might have more consistent songwriting than Heartthrob is Modern Vampires, and really, T&S know more about break-ups than Ez & Ros know about the Lord.
2. Brandy Clark: 12 Stories: Worst you can say is the lyrics are the only way to tell the songs apart, but why wouldn’t you listen to these lyrics? She’s a smart singer who understands how narrative and melody works, and she has as many angles on her chosen milieu as Lives of Girls and Women-era Alice Munro -- and Munro took decades to get jokes down.
3. Rilo Kiley: Rkives: After spending a few plays moaning about how it didn’t flow, i gave in and accepted that song for song, it was their second-best album after More Adventurous, which flows. If the break-up has been harder on him than her, it’s not like rock’s best singer (listen to the way she places the adverb “aimlessly” in “A Town Called Luckey”) has written five songs as good as the median Under the Blacklight outtake since.
4. Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba: Jama Ko: The tightest and most professional live act i saw all year. Kouyate arrived with this tiny instrument which looks like a kid's toy, and then got all kinds of tones out of it, often at blazing speed but also sometimes laying back and letting his family show off. And here i acknowledge i wouldn't know an ngoni from a kora if it weren't for (still) our greatest reviewer of Afropop championing a plethora of the music while insisting on the resemblances between its pleasures and those of, say, rap. Get that book done, Christgau.
5. M.I.A.: Matangi: I would say we’re taking our greatest creator of fight songs since Public Enemy for granted except i found the abrasions on Maya weren’t much fun, exceptions like “Born Free” aside. Here, the abrasions come with tunes, her singing is tougher, and her ideas on everything besides reincarnation are pretty much right. If you think this is how political music should work then occupy Pitchfork.
6. Roswell Rudd: Trombone for Lovers: A metric shitload of fun for the four Steven Bernstein tracks alone, esp. the evolutionarily-paced “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” the best version of the song possible at this point in history (no lyrics). Then when the NYC Labor Chorus show up (with lyrics) it's righteous.
7. Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City: It’s impossible to not be annoyed by something on this; me, i find “Hannah Hunt” as deadfishy as the worst of Noah Baumbach. But if staring into the abyss isn’t too tough, the arrangements and Koenig’s singing continually play tricks on the words, throwing an ambiguity party because they R who they R.
8. Pet Shop Boys: Electric: Just when Random Access Memories made you wonder if disco really did suck, these guys came out from behind the cricket pavilion and made their most danceable record in decades. Both bourgie and bolshy, like the best of the old New Left.
9. DJ Koze: Amygdala: Michael Tatum jibed that “we’re all sensitive people” wouldn’t be his “Let’s Get It On” quote of choice, but this fucking year asmidgen of sensitivity was worth a million sledgehammer licks. Koze’s psychedelic minimalism punctuated by song snippets and Motown lifts seemed exactly right during a spring addled by unrecreational cough syrup.
10. Home Brew (2012): The best-written rap record since XXX, sez i. They're Aucklanders and I don't know how much home field advantage I'm giving them (though it’s not like i liked Pure Heroine), but if you value clarity, a lot of cheek, and occasional honest-to-goodness wisdom you might agree. What I like best is how well the first disc evokes the classic milieu of New Zealand musicians -- the dealings with the officers of the welfare state, the substance abuse, the smorgasbord of music coming from all sides (Yellow Moon! Voodoo! Eric Clapton ft. Babyface! The music absorbs these influences (well, not “Change the World”) while anchoring itself the present) -- before the second disc gets analytical and resultingly enraged in a way that your favourite Flying Nun band would never dare -- hard to imagine Martin Phillipps telling the Prime Minister to suck his dick as in “Listen to Us” or make an argument for atheism as vituperatively as in “Good God.” Still, it's the first disc that's more replayable -- try “Benefit,” which shows that while the social safety net has developed holes since all those Dunedin bands lived on the dole, the doledrums remain.
11. Chance the Rapper: Acid Rap: It’s Kendrick’s era, but the Black Hippy has still yet to make a full-length as compelling as this reminder that rap can be light and serious and witty and heartbreaking.
12. Big Bang: Alive (2012): U.S. critics treat K-pop as cultishly any other kind of teenpop, so G-Dragon, the guy with the abs, and the other three will have to settle for massive sales and huge acclaim in Asia, the poor fuckers.
13. Jeremy Denk: Ligeti/Beethoven (2012): The notoriously difficult Ligeti etudes are played with precision and panache. Beethoven 32 is Beethoven 32.
14. Oneohtrix Point Never: R Plus Seven: Distancing himself from the “my vintage Moog is moogier than yours” arms race, he embraced MIDI and squashed and stretched like he was Bob Clampett. This ’trix is for kids.
15. Parquet Courts: Light Up Gold: Why do these millennials draw comparisons to pre-Pitchfork mainstays like Pavement and the Fall? Because i’m not the only one who misses bands that give a shit about musicianship.
16. Rachid Taha: Zoom: Rai king teams with the other last rockers standing -- Mick Jones and Eric Cantona -- and makes another outstanding album, ho-hum.
17. Le Grand Kalle: His Life, His Music: The first disc is Kabasele creating a musical identity for a new nation if not a continent. The second disc has some good songs too!
18. Eric Revis Trio: City of Asylum: Bassist with Cecilians old and young Andrew Cyrille and Kris Davis try to be everywhere and everywhen, sound best doing Monk like everyone else does.
19. My Bloody Valentine: m b v: In a wretched year for guitars, they cared about beauty as much as ever. Only a bit worse than Loveless!
20. Epik High: 99 (2012): Aging K-rappers make their seventh-yes-seventh album in the tunetastic YG house style, pre-emptively saying fuck-the-haters.
21. Future: Pluto 3D (2012): Mike Will Making the Same Beat Over and Over hit diminishing returns months before Miley, but that doesn’t stop this collection from sounding like last year’s future.
22. The Group: Live (1986/2012): Billy Bang triumphant! A crazy-hot rhythm section! A twenty-five minute version of a Miriam Makeba song! No really, a fucking great twenty-five minute version of a Miriam Makeba song!
23. Khaled: Liberte (2009): After a summer of rai, he became my distant second-favourite (see #16). These hits recycled with the help of a proper Egyptian orchestra are what i’ll play when i want to hear him.
24. The Knife: Shaking the Habitual: It clicked when i learned “Fracking Fluid Injection” was made from a bedspring: it’s a Tom Ze album! I still skip the nineteen minute one though.
25. Ciara: If cunnilingus, undersinging, and Nicki’s guest swag make this the rockist’s R&B album of choice, they’re welcome to be late to the body party if they bring dessert.
26. Evoken: Atra Mors (2012): Let the eloquent-not-grim Deafheaven play for collegiate respectability. Having visited Jersey this year, i can say that if i lived there, i'd make funeral doom too.
27. Mostly Other People Do the Killing: Slippery Rock!: Vies with Forty Fort as their most party-rocking set. Peter Evans needs to have a late-night brass duel with Steven Bernstein for jazz MVP.
28. Ashley Monroe: Like a Rose: If having the biz behind you gets crack session musicians and production, then it's worth putting up with Blake Shelton, though Miranda might no longer agree.
29. Kevin Gates: Stranger Than Fiction: His redneck twang ("Careful") and fake patois ("Tiger") illustrate the multitudes in his interior life -- amidst the bullets and programmed orchestras, he's loyal, introverted, needy. "The worst thing you can give any nigga or bitch is rejection," he says, before denouncing men who crave the attention of other men as hoes. He's working on the border between masculine and feminine codes, dangerous territory for a rapper. Gates isn't worried about sleeping with the fishes. He's worried about ending up as alone as Michael Corleone.
30. G-Dragon: Coup d'Etat: Appropriating American sounds (chief beatmaker Teddy can fake anything from pop dubstep to Blood Orange) and language (guap guap guap) without scruple, all he got for his efforts was a Complex Magazine digital cover and a U.S. #161 album. He'll never be a trans-Pacific star even after he passes his TOEFL. Off-peak Missy shows up and cuts him, and he lacks the expressive range to become a go-to foreign weirdo like Robyn. But top 40 listeners who realize they deserve better than 2013 Timberlake should try "Crooked," in which he gets over a broken pinky promise by rocking eyeliner and a whole can of hairspray.
31. Ryan Maffei: Country Town: Christgau-approved termite made this solo teaser on his way to a better-dressed, better-tuned collaborator. I miss the Pozniaks' shredding, but the sound is fuller thanks to keyboards and, just once, ersatz strings, and it's more assured, not least because this time he doesn't sound like he's about to burn his last bridge or die of tuberculosis. The Stephen Foster lift is the best melody, but not by much; the best hook is the obscene one on old favourite "Every Single Test". It's the Heartthrob to Pozniak Street's Sainthood!
