2013 Year-End List

Best Albums of the Year

1. Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
No other album transcended as many preconceptions as this one did this year. It turned casual listeners into music fans, taste-makers into radio listeners, radio listeners to music buyers and hardcore fans to music sharers. And it was all done by "getting back to the music" with meticulous attention to original sounds without ever losing focus on creating great dance music that happens to be infectiously catchy.

2. Majical Cloudz - Impersonator
At a time with so many artists making albums in their bedroom on a laptop one starts to either become desensitized to the sad and alone emotions on these records or you start to see past the mood lighting and can't help to feel like their plight is merely a hoax; inauthentic. Impersonator opens with woe-is-me crooning that rolls into an admission to the listener addressing just that: "See how I'm faking my side of it/I'm a liar/I say I make music". The delivery of the opening line ironically authenticates the art and also sets the tone for the rest of the album. It's a beautifully written opus about an artist's struggle with their medium set to complementary minimal and airy electronic melodies.

3. Autre Ne Veut - Anxiety
Arthur Ashin's vocal imagery is drenched in tears cried multiple times over for a love long lost. The album is a story about a love so deep that it created paranoia about the potential loss of it. The anxiety is felt in every song, but slightly differently as the story moves. The emotion goes from anxious fear to anxious loneliness. A perfect album for and about coping with love and all of the shades of anxiety associated with it.

4. Jim James - Regions of Light and Sound of God

5. Solange - True
Solange re-invents herself with the help of Blood Orange's distinct sound of future funk made from the sounds of 90's R&B.

6. Jessie Ware - Devotion
Though technically this came out in 2012, it was new to most of us in the States this year. Like Solange's album, what is most striking about the album is the cohesive sound of the album provided by producer and touring bassist, Dev Hynes.

 
7. Justin Timberlake - 20/20
Just like Daft Punk's return to the scene, Justin Timberlake filled an album with hits that never feel contrived. Every song is a perfect pop record that feels like it became a hit not by design, but because the process was pure. The only intention was to create feel-good jams that you want to dance to in your bedroom.

8. Disclosure - Settle

9. Holy Ghost! - Dynamics
Holy Ghost! proved that intelligent lyrics and infectious dance music don't need to be mutually exclusive.

10. Sampha - Dual
While there are many other new producers with a similar post-dubstep, bedroom-house sound, nobody does it better. Drake agrees as he has enlisted Sampha for a few tracks including the best track from Nothing Was the Same "Too Much".

11. Sango - North
The equivalent of The Weeknd's excellent House of Balloons but less gangster.

12. Jonwayne - Cassette 3
The third and final installment in the cassette-only releases via Stones Throw records. There were better records than this, but not a more original and honest hip-hop record.


13. Zomby - With Love
Dilla's Donuts in a electronic/dance context.

14. M.I.A. - Matangi

15. Chance The Rapper - Acid Rap

16. oOoOO - Without Your Love

17. DJ Koze - Amygdala

18. Jessy Lanza - Pull My Hair Back

19. Har Mar Superstar - Bye Bye 17

20. King Krule - 6 Feet Beneath the Moon