Slant Magazine's 25 Best Albums of 2013

There are deftly wielded forces of darkness and light at work on Vampire Weekend’s third record. Elegiac, alive with ideas, and coproduced by Ariel Rechtshaid, *Modern Vampires of the City* moves beyond the grabby, backpacking indie of its predecessors. In fact, whether through the hiccuping, distorted storm of “Diane Young” or “Unbelievers”—a sprinting guitar-pop jewel about the notion of afterlife—this is nothing less than the sound of a band making a huge but sure-footed creative leap.

At just 16 years old, New Zealand pop singer Ella Yelich-O’Connor—d.b.a. Lorde—captured the top of the pop charts with the smart and wise-beyond-her-years single “Royals,” where she trashes modern pop and hip-hop’s obsession with materialism in favor of a world of love, friendship, and ideas. It’s the best Morrissey song he never wrote. Her earlier *The Love Club EP* primed audiences for what they’d be hearing, but nothing could prepare one for the actual excitement of her debut album’s best cuts. Lorde’s co-conspirator/producer/writer Joel Little ensures that songs like “Tennis Court,” “Ribs,\" and “Buzzcut Season” never lose their way. This is sharp, inspired pop music that knows how much fun it can be to play up to type and then spin things on their heads for a new conclusion.

Crisp drums, juicy chords, irresistible hooks—Disclosure’s debut album couldn\'t have sounded fresher. Brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence were just kids when their favorite styles were last in vogue, and they bring the right balance of innocence and insouciance to swinging drums and plunging organ basslines, while vocalists like Sam Smith and AlunaGeorge lend a soulful shine to the impeccably polished productions.

Recorded and Produced by Paul Laxer. Mixed by Jeff Stuart Saltzman

Since The National\'s 2001 debut, the world-weary baritone of frontman and songwriter Matt Berninger has become one of the most compelling voices in Brooklyn’s well-groomed indie scene, begging comparisons to darkly tempered rock outsiders like Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen. The follow-up to 2010’s celebrated *High Violet* is a set of beautifully produced contemplations on shadowy love, self-destruction, and urban ennui. Chipper? Hardly. But songs like “Demons,” “Heavenfaced,” and “I Need My Girl” are impossible to shake.

In January 2012, following a twenty-two month tour to promote the band’s previous record, High Violet, guitarist Aaron Dessner returned home to Brooklyn, where the fitfulness of his newborn daughter threw Aaron into a more or less sustained fugue state—“sleepless and up all the time,” as he puts it. Punch-drunk, he shuffled into the band’s studio (situated in Aaron’s backyard), where he amused himself writing musical fragments that he then sent over to vocalist Matt Berninger. Recalls Matt of Aaron, “He’d be so tired while he was playing his guitar and working on ideas that he wouldn’t intellectualize anything. In the past, he and Aaron’s twin brother, Bryce would be reluctant to send me things that weren’t in their opinion musically interesting—which I respected, but often those would be hard for me to connect to emotionally. This time around, they sent me sketch after sketch that immediately got me on a visceral level." From beginning to end, Trouble Will Find Me possesses the effortless and unself-conscious groove of a downstream swimmer. It’s at times lush and at others austere, suffused with insomniacal preoccupations that skirt despair without succumbing to it. There are alluring melodies, and the murderously deft undercurrent supplied by the Devendorfs. There are songs that seem (for Matt anyway) overtly sentimental—among them, the Simon & Garfunkel-esque 'Fireproof', 'I Need My Girl' (with Matt’s unforgettable if throwaway reference to a party “full of punks and cannonballers”) and 'I Should Live In Salt' (which Aaron composed as a send-up to the Kinks and which Matt wrote about his brother). While a recognition of mortality looms in these numbers, they’re buoyed by a kind of emotional resoluteness—“We’ll all arrive in heaven alive”—that will surprise devotees of Matt’s customary wry fatalism. Then there are the songs that Aaron describes as “songs you could dance to—more fun, or at least The National’s version of fun.” These include 'Demons'—a mordant romp in 7/4, proof that bleakness can actually be rousing—and the haunting 'Humiliation' in which the insistent locomotion of Bryan’s snarebeat is offset by Matt’s semi-detached gallows rumination: “If I die this instant/taken from a distance/they will probably list it down among other things around town.” Finally there are songs—like 'Pink Rabbits' and the lilting 'Slipped' (the latter termed by Aaron “the kind of song we’ve always wanted to write”)—that aspire to be classics, with Orbison-like melodic geometry. In these songs, as well as in 'Heavenfaced', Matt emerges from his self-described “comfort zone of chant-rock” and glides into a sonorous high register of unexpected gorgeousness. The results are simultaneously breakthrough and oddly familiar, the culmination of an artistic journey that has led The National both to a new crest and, somehow, back to their beginnings—when, says Aaron, “our ideas would immediately click with each other. It’s free-wheeling again. The songs on one level are our most complex, and on another they’re our most simple and human. It just feels like we’ve embraced the chemistry we have.”

With her second full-length album, Janelle Monáe continues the imaginative narrative of her futuristic alter-ego Cindi Mayweather. This storyline started on Monáe\'s debut EP, *Metropolis: The Chase Suite*, and continued though the acclaimed 2010 full-length *The ArchAndroid*. The richly detailed tunes on *The Electric Lady* continue the story of Mayweather—a femme android superhero—through a funk-infused power struggle in the city of Metropolis. And even though Monáe’s concept is elaborate, hard-grooving tunes like “Q.U.E.E.N.” (feat. Erykah Badu), “Electric Lady,” and “Dance Apocalyptic” are undeniably magnetic and stand on their own merits. Tracks like “We Were Rock n\' Roll” and “It\'s Code” demonstrate Monáe’s gift for weaving influences of classic soul and exploratory funk (think Funkadelic and Nona Hendryx) with crisp neo-soul production and rock guitar flourishes. Prince makes a guest vocal on an album highlight—“Givin Em What They Love”—while reflexive ballads like “PrimeTime” (feat. Miguel), “Can’t Live Without Your Love,” and “What an Experience” feature some of Monáe’s most personal songwriting to date.

On her sixth studio album, the incomparable Neko Case returns to the exquisitely dark, structurally complex, yet unfailingly lovely songwriting that made her 2006 landmark *Fox Confessor Brings the Flood* so transcendent. “Night Still Comes” is Case at her most achingly gorgeous, even while singing tormented lyrics reminiscent of Fiona Apple’s “Every Single Night” (“My brain makes drugs to keep me slow… but not even the masons know what drug will keep night from coming”). “Bracing for Sunday” finds Case singing matter-of-factly about murdering the man responsible for a friend’s death. “Nearly Midnight, Honolulu” is an appalled a capella lullaby to a child Case witnessed being viciously berated by his mother, while the darkly baroque “Afraid” gives us the gift of Neko covering Nico, the former Velvet Underground muse. Still, the album is not without lighter moments such as plaintive love song “Calling Cards” or the resilient, horn-swirling closing track, “Ragtime.”

A talent on the mic and behind the boards, J. Cole crafts smart and emotive hip-hop. Guest verses on Cole\'s second studio album come from 50 Cent (\"New York Times\") and Kendrick Lamar (\"Forbidden Fruit\"), but it\'s the R&B touches that imbue the project with its defining soul. TLC\'s T-Boz and Chilli bring a summer sheen to \"Crooked Smile,\" Miguel helps turn \"Power Trip\" into a melancholic lament on love, and the Dirty Projectors\' Amber Coffman graces the dramatic \"She Knows.\"

There’s an audacity to the way the Arctic Monkeys\' fifth album gathers disparate musical threads—West Coast hip-hop, heavy ’70s rock—into something that feels so assured, inevitable and outrageously enjoyable. From biker-gang stomp of “Do I Wanna Know?” to the bouncing G-funk of “Why’d You Only Call…”, they turn the sounds of their adopted Californian home into a set of can’t-miss instant classics. Seductive, slinky and brimming with nocturnal attitude, *AM* is the sound of a band locating a sonic sweet spot no one else thought to look for.

Britain\'s Charli XCX can be regarded as the power behind Icona Pop\'s fantastic girl-power anthem \"I Love It\" (she cowrote it with two producers). And that song\'s considerable muscle and sass easily set it apart from music by scores of other female pop artists. While the 20-year-old professes a love for classic Spice Girls and Britney (and, we suspect, Madonna), she\'s nurtured a slightly edgier vision that puts her more in the camp of artists like Marina & The Diamonds. Synths, drums, more synths, pounding dance floor beats, and a husky voice capable of both withering heat and alluring warmth turn what could be humdrum dance pop tunes (like \"Take My Hand\" and \"Black Roses\") into something bigger that rattles more than your ankle bones. The sultry, winsome \"Nuclear Seasons\" rings with the memories of Talk Talk\'s \"It\'s My Life\" and murkier memories of Duran Duran, while the snarl of \"You (Ha Ha Ha)\" hints at the power of \"I Love It,\" though it sparkles and pinwheels on a sweeter bed of synth notes. Watching Charli XCX stretch out into new pop spaces is guaranteed to be a fun ride. 

The British duo F\*\*\* Buttons are probably suffering—to some degree—from the downside to having a name that requires asterisks for certain media outlets. *Slow Focus*, the duo’s third full-length release, shows again that the Buttons—what with all the permutations the name is subjected to—are incredibly good at what they do. Rhythmic machinations push and pull squealing, pinging, whooshing, humming synths and brittle, staccato percussion into a myriad of shapes and forms, and their instrumental prowess shows a keen awareness of how critical it is to put something fresh into each track. Two guys (Andrew Hung and Benjamin Power, who met in art school in England) use a bunch of electronic gear—and other odds and ends—to make some utterly entrancing music, all without lyrics or anything like a “hook.” You can headbang to “Brainfreeze,” zone to “Stalker,” and get robot funky on “Sentients.” You won’t sing along or hum a melody in the shower, but the Buttons have made sure you\'ll remember.

Laura Marling’s questing nature reaches its zenith on album four, the 16-song epic *Once I Was an Eagle*. It kicks off with a hypnotic four-track suite of songs tied together by a raga-like drone and hand percussion, sucking the listener into her existential headspace. Further in, there’s classical guitar (“Little Love Caster”), tender devotionals (“Love Be Brave”), and Dylan evocations (“It ain’t me, babe,” she affirms on “Master Hunter”), all stirred by her steely interrogations.

With technology making it cheaper and easier to record hours of sonic experiments, it\'s no wonder musicians often have side projects to accompany their main groups. Vancouver\'s Amber Webber and Josh Wells still keep commitments with their other band Black Mountain while they explore vintage synthesizers and cheesy electronic beats on their third studio album as Lightning Dust. The warm melodies of previous LD albums are still heard on tunes such as \"Mirror,\" but the beats here will sound familiar to anyone who owned a cheap keyboard back in the \'80s. That Webber and Wells can take those less-than-optimal sounds and turn them into something interesting says much for their arrangement abilities, as there\'s nothing cheap about the results. \"Moon\" brings an acoustic guitar to make contact with their alternate selves, but \"Fire Me Up,\" \"Loaded Gun,\" and \"Never Again\" thrive in electronic spaces, with \"In the City Tonight\" capturing a warmth within the somber tones and graceful harmonies.

The main feeling that Kevin Shields felt upon the release of *m b v* in 2013 was relief. The process of making his band’s third album—and first since 1991’s era-defining *Loveless*—had begun almost two decades before, and, after a last-minute race to complete it before a planned tour, it was done. “We had a six-month tour in front of us and we literally just finished it in time,” Shields tells Apple Music. Continuing a theme begun by *Loveless* and 1988’s *Isn’t Anything*, Shields compromised nothing on *m b v*. This time, though, it was a totally independent production, all on him. “I spent about £50,000 mastering it,” he says. “If we were with a record company, they would have been going absolutely crazy, but we paid for it ourselves and we put it out ourselves and we made a lot more money than we would’ve made if we’d put it out on a label.” *m b v* began back in 1996. The band’s classic lineup had started to disintegrate, with drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig and bassist Debbie Googe departing. Perhaps in a reflection of this unsettling period, Shields began to approach songwriting in a much more experimental manner. “I went on this process of recording a lot of ideas in a purposely abstract way,” he says. “I wasn’t trying to write a song with a beginning and an end. Instead of writing a part in a song, I’d record it and then record another part. I was doing the writing process and the recording process at the same time but in different ways. It might be weeks between a verse and a chorus…well, I don’t do choruses.” The idea was that eventually these ideas would form a coherent whole that would be a new my bloody valentine record, but the project stalled in 1997 when Shields ran out of money. “And then I started hanging out with Primal Scream and I kind of drifted into that world, which was fun for quite a while.” It wasn’t until Shields was remastering the band’s back catalog in 2006 that he listened back to the unfinished sessions. “I realized it was actually better and more relevant than I thought it was,” he recalls. “I’d kind of forgotten about the more melodic parts of it and realized they were quite strong. I thought, ‘I should finish this and make it into an album.’” It was a freeing process, Shields says, filled with lots of “crazy shit.” At one point, they paid to fly people from England to Japan with proofs of the artwork because they didn’t trust just seeing it on a computer. “We were literally throwing money at it to make sure it was as good as possible,” he says. “Every single penny was justified.” By the end, Shields felt vindicated. “We did it our way and it was perfectly good.” No my bloody valentine record ever sounds of its time—they all sound like the future. But there is something especially reinvigorating about listening to their third album, perhaps because of how unlikely its release seemed at points. To hear Shields still erecting signposts on where guitar music can go on the sensational closer “wonder 2,” which sounds like a rock band playing drum and bass from inside the engine of a 747, or the slo-mo sway of “if i am” is to be reminded that this is a visionary at work. One of the central themes of *m b v*, says Shields, was a strong sense of everything coming to an end. He thinks that’s why it still resonated when he listened back in 2006, the feeling growing as he recommenced work on it in 2011 and even more so now. “We’re in a cycle of the world of things coming to an end and moving into a new phase,” he says. “The record is more relevant as every decade goes by.”