2013 Year-End Round Up

Music books read:

• Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsiders the Classics, Jim DeRogatis and Carmél Carrillo, editors (Barricade, 2004)
• The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, Kelly Fisher Lowe (Bison, 2007)
• This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, Daniel Levitin (Plume/Penguin, 2007) 
• Chunklet Presents: The Overrated Book, Henry Owings, editor (Last Gasp of San Francisco, 2006)
• 33-1/3: Sign O' The Times, Michaelangelo Matos (Bloomsbury Academic, 2004)
• Enter Naomi: SST, L.A. and All That..., Joe Carducci (Redoubt, 2007)
• The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll, Robert Forster (Jawbone, 2011)
• Da Capo Best Music Writing 2002, Jonathan Lethem, editor (Da Capo, 2002)
• Back To The Miracle Factory: Rock, Etc., 1990s, Paul Williams (Forge, 2002)
• White Bicycles: Making Music In The '60s, Joe Boyd (Serpent's Tail, 2010)

Honorable mention... #25-11

25 ...Play Good Music, Yum Yums (House of Rock)
24 Feels Weird, Bent Shapes (Father/Daughter)
23 We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic, Foxygen (Jagjaguwar)
22 La Costa Perdida, Camper Van Beethoven (429)
21 MCII, Mikal Cronin (Merge)
20 Elvis Club, Del-Lords (Megaforce)
19 Silence Yourself, Savages (Matador)
18 180, Palma Violets (Rough Trade US)
17 Run The Jewels, Run The Jewels (Producto Mart)
16 Modern Vampires of the City, Vampire Weekend (XL)
15 New Moon, The Men (Sacred Bones)
14 Dig Thy Savage Soul, Barrence Whitfield and the Savages (Bloodshot)
13 Yeezus, Kanye West (Def Jam)
12 Wakin On A Pretty Daze, Kurt Vile (Matador)
11 Vanishing Point, Mudhoney (Sub Pop)

10 Personal Record, Eleanor Friedberger (Merge): While brother/fellow Fiery Furnace Matthew has spent the past few years chasing his own offbeat muse with the ambitious Solos project (eight albums, each dedicated to a different instrument/form of instrumentation), kid sister Eleanor cemented her solo reputation as a purveyor of sharp, fizzy, just-plain-likable singer/songwriter pop with her charming sophomore offering, Personal Record. Buoyed by the clever writing -- the album's opening couplet goes "I don't want to bother you, but there's something to say that I want you to hear" -- and keen observations ("When I Knew"'s "She was wearing overalls, so I sang 'Come On Eileen' [Digression: "When I Knew" was co-written with Wesley "John Wesley Harding" Stace. Check out his version here.]) that, to these ears, always fueled the Furnaces' best work, Friedberger effortless swans her way through Record's dozen tracks, her friendly voice couched by warm keys, flutes and guitars throughout. Whether confessional (album centerpiece "Echo or Encore"), cheekily unassuming ("I Don't Want To Bother You") or bold and brassy (the "Maneater"-nicking "She's A Mirror"), Personal Record is a fine take on the female singer/songwriter album for the hashtag generation.

09 Idle No More, King Khan and the Shrines (Merge): While King Khan (née Arish Khan) may be picking up the Shrines' mantle for the first time since 2007's What Is?!, he's hardly been sitting around twiddling his thumbs in the interim: the teamed up with carmaker Scion for an EP; collaborated with longtime foil Mark "BBQ" Sultan; toured a bunch... decent offerings all, but nothing that stacks up to his finest creative outlet, the Shrines. Long an adherent to the sillier side of soul and funk ("Took My Lady To Dinner"), there's a new-found maturity on Idle, notably on "Pray For Lil", "Of Madness I Dream", and falsetto/noir/torch song "Darkness". The latter proved divisive on the interwebz; I dug it, but if nothing else, ya gotta admit the horn section totally nailed the tune's lost-night-of-the-soul vibe. Of course, Idle is still chockablock with Khan's uptempo funk stylings: "Bite My Tongue", "Bad Boy" (somewhere, an alternate universe '70s sitcom is missing its theme song) and "Luckiest Man", a galloping slice of fun(k) that, as has been noted in a few places, has the good sense to borrow liberally from Cliff Nobles and Co's 1968 instrumental hit "The Horse". Here's hoping Idle No More is a long-term promise.

08 The Argument, Grant Hart (Domino): And the winner of the "Spirit of SST '84" award goes to... one of its inaugural winners! Kudos to Grant Hart for taking a shaky-at-best-idea-on-paper-premise -- a concept album based on William S. Burroughs' notes on Milton's Paradise Lost (with Harry S Truman standing in for God) -- and crafting one of the year's most unlikely triumphs. Despite the third-hand material, it all sounds undeniably Hartian: clever pop like "Morningstar" and "Glorious" as well as more garage-oriented bashers like "Run For The Wilderness" harken back to his Hüsker Dü days, and very nearly best his, uh, best solo work, 1999's Good News For Modern Man (which title, come to think of it, is the flip side of Paradise Lost). There's some experiments that work -- the Vaudeville/old-timey "Underneath the Apple Tree", the serpentine lyrical structure of the audacious title track -- and some that don't (the gunfire- and klaxon-based instrumental "War in Heaven" is a little on the nose), but that's to be expected on a 20-track, 74-minute opus, and never once is Hart in anything less than total control. Ambitious in scope, unique in concept and confident in execution, The Argument makes the case for Grant Hart as a top-shelf big-canvas pop craftsman.

07 Water on Mars, Purling Hiss (Drag City): Fans of Purling Hiss's early no-fi pools of psychedelic murk may have lamented the band's shift to Mudhoney/Dinosaur Jr-esque slacker fuzz attacks, but to these ears, Water on Mars boasted some of the year's catchiest indie rock nuggets. The move to clean up their sonic palette and expand their sound also calls to mind the Men, with whom PH toured this year), but tunes like "Mercury Retrograde" and "Rat Race", regardless of what other bands they sound like, are simply great fking songs that demand instant replay. And, so as not to make a complete break with the past, the band tosses in the titular seven-minute psych jam, putting old fans' (if there are any left) fears to rest that the old PH and the new one aren't that different.

06 AM, Arctic Monkeys (Domino): Can we please take a moment to remind anyone who claimed, either in joy or in sorrow, "The Arctic Monkeys are getting a second chance!" that they never really went anywhere? Yes, AM earned them more ink than anything since their world-beating debut, 2006's Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (which title feels less petulant and more assured with every passing year), but 2009's Josh Homme-produced Humbug and '11's Suck It And See were both worthwhile excursions deserving of your time if you missed 'em the first time around. All I'm sayin' is, Let a band explore, ferchrissakes. Ask a big band to get bigger and you run the risk of ending up with "Sex On Fire". (Zing!) But I digress. Frontman Alex Turner remains a keen-eyed observer of confusing romantic entanglements: "Do I Wanna Know?", "R U Mine?", "Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?", other song titles that don't end in question marks... all set to the noirish garage rock that they brought back with them after their desert session with Homme a few years back. Too, AM finds the band planting a flag (or is that thumbing its nose?) at the rock/pop continuum, with references to everything from Lee Hazlewood's "Some Velvet Morning" ("R U Mine?"), the Rolling Stones' "2000 Light Years From Home" ("I Want It All") and the Ronettes ("Knee Socks"'s great line, "Like the beginning of Mean Streets, you could be my baby"). But at the end of the cleverness and the allusions, Turner lays it all bare on the simple, grown-up closing statement: "I Wanna Be Yours". Wunderkinds no more, and all the deeper for it, the Arctic Monkeys have created that rare audio beast: the headphones records that looks and sounds like a party record.

05 The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, Neko Case (ANTI): One of this year's more grappled-with questions: Is TWTGTHIFTHIFTMILY (it's also a disease of the brain stem -- that's how I'll remember it!) better than Case's previous offering, Middle Cyclone, maybe even her best ever? The jury's still out on that -- and really, I'm not a good person to ask, as I'm the moron who thinks, 13 years on, that Furnace Room Lullaby is still the best thing she's ever done.  Of course, upper-tier Case (which is to say, ALL Case) is still better than 98% of what's out there and The Worse Things Get delivers gems like song-of-the-year candidate "Man", "Bracing For Sunday" and the amazing three-song album close-out "Local Girl", "Where Did I Leave That Fire" and "Ragtime". Long an old soul with a new eye, Case's takes on murder ("Bracing For Sunday"'s blunt admission, "He died because I murdered him"), parent-child relations (the harrowing, a cappella "Nearly Midnight, Honolulu") and unique turns of phrase ("Night Still Comes" chorus/admonition "you never held it at the right angle") make her feel timeless, wise and unknowable all at once, and her albums so rich and rewarding.

04 Long Island, Endless Boogie (No Quarter): Best enjoyed in your mom's boyfriend's 1974 Chevy Shitbox while driving 100 miles an hour through the desert, windows down, road soda in hand, towards the setting sun (but equally enjoyable in a Toyota Prius trapped in Mass Pike gridlock), Long Island, from unrepentant '70s rock enthusiasts Endless Boogie may be the most aptly named album of the year. "Long"? Dig the 13-minute guitar workout of opener "The Savagist" and "The Montgomery Manuscript". "Island"? These dudes, led by Paul "Top Dollar" Major, are out on their own, unmoored to any prevailing trends and rocking like punk and disco never happened. (The band's name, it should be noted, is also apropos.) With improvised vocals generally located somewhere east of Beefheart, some detours towards Morrisonian sprechstimme, beer-and-bong fueled, psychedelic (also) improvised jams ("We got torched on the porch!" boasts Major on "Taking Out The Trash"), and loping, noirish grooves ("The Artemis Ward"), Endless Boogie willfully and proudly takes lunkheaded hard rock to glorious new places.

03 Essential Tremors, J Roddy Walston and the Business (ATO): Guitar rock fans who parted ways with one-time would-be saviors Kings of Leon after that band lost the plot in a morass of drugs and "Sex on Fire" (two zings in one list!) were no doubt heartened when they heard Baltimore-by-way-of-Nashville quartet J. Roddy Walston and the Business: a Southern-accented (and occasionally mush-mouthed), piano-pounding wildman lead singer raising holy hell over greasy barroom riffs is everything great rock 'n' roll should be. 2007's Hail Mega Boys and 2010's self-titled offering both still hold up to repeated listens and serve as fine kindling for the band's incendiary live shows (after serving tours with the like-minded Shooter Jennings and Lucero, the band is finally headlining – catch ‘em when they come to your town). The opening one-two punch of "Heavy Bells" and "Marigold" -- all chunky riffs and barely contained yowling on the former and rollicking barrelhouse piano on the latter -- sets the tone, and the band proceeds to tear through barnburners like "The Immigrant Song"-rewrite "Sweat Shock", the strutting "Black Light" and the closing R&B-fueled "Midnight Cry" and tearjerkers like "Nobody Knows" and "Boys Can Never Tell". Aces, all. Conventional wisdom holds that rock and roll will never die; it's the fist-pumping, ass-shaking, lighter-raising efforts of bands like J. Roddy Walston and the Business that ensure that axiom remains true. It's no stretch to call these guys the Best Rock and Roll Band in America right now.

02 I Hate Music, Superchunk (Merge): If Superchunk's superb 2010 offering, Majesty Shredding, was a toe-dip back in the indie rock waters after a nine-year hiatus, then I Hate Music is a full-on cannonball into the pool. Deeper, yet every bit as immediate as the comparatively lightweight Shredding, Hate pretty much sums up life for any music fan who has ever lost a loved one on album highlight "Me and You and Jackie Mittoo": "I hate music / What is it worth? / Can't bring anyone back to this earth". Soldier on we must, though, and throughout Hate, McCaughan tries to find a way forward, whether it's the truthseekers of "Void"; musing "Do you think the answer is love?" on "Low F"; or standing on the precipice of an unknown future with a loved one, ready to take the next step on gorgeous closer "What Can We Do?" (And, of course, if you just want to rock out, there's power pop nugget nonpareil "FOH".) With nearly a quarter-century of existence to their name, Superchunk are lifers and on I Hate Music that means exploring life in all its messy, frustrating, wonderful forms.

01 ...Like Clockwork, Queens of the Stone Age (Matador): A glorious return from one of the best hard rock bands of the last fifteen years. Simultaneously slinky, menacing, sexy and funky, ...Like Clockwork was worth the wait and improves in every way over 2007's Era Vulgaris. (Is that the sound of EV's mascot-lightbulbs getting smashed at the outset of opener "Keep Your Eyes Peeled"?) Chief QOTSAer Josh Homme showed a commitment to studio craft heard too infrequently these days (seriously, don a pair of good headphones and you'll fall down this rabbit hole of an album); hell, it shows a focus he himself hadn't put on a record since Songs For The Deaf over a freakin' decade ago. It's all high points here: the textbook QOTSA rifffest "I Sat By The Ocean"; Homme's Jack Bruce croon floating over the moody piano ballad "The Vampyre of Time and Memory"; the hilarious, world-beating, window-rattling (sorry, neighbors) boast "Smooth Sailing" ("I got my own theme music, plays wherever I are!") and cathartic closing duo of "I Appear Missing" and the title track. Homme would've made a great '70s prog-era studio rat, but fortunately, we in 2013 get to reap the benefit of his talent. ...Like Clockwork is flab free, 40 tightly wound minutes of big, expertly-played hard rock.