Our Best of 2013 albums lists by genre continue today with our staff picks for the 20 best of pop and rock music this year. We're beginning with albums 20-11 today; you'll have to wait until Monday (December 9) for 10-1.
Click next to read through the albums one by one, or use the list below to skip ahead to your favourites.
Top 20 Pop & Rock Albums of 2013, 20-11:
To see more of our Year-End Top Tens, head over to our Best of 2013 section.
20. These New Puritans
Field of Reeds
(PIAS)
What with the labels broke, the critics in crises and listeners increasingly impatient, it's hard to believe the world has kept a niche, or at least a habitable squat, for These New Puritans. And yet, with favours from a few admirers, the British savants have made a rich, expansive third album, and it's a masterpiece.
While the immaculate production and weaving structures have an immersive quality, Field of Reeds is less a record of depth than of height, an alpine trek encompassing tall views of such clarity and intensity that the listener is not quite a listener but a fellow traveller. Jack Barnett's vocals are reluctant guides, the verses narrow valleys. The crescendos — for there are no choruses — represent summits that both captivate and confound.
Key is its centrepiece, the fifteen-minute brace of "The Light in Your Name" and "V (Island Song)." Throughout, Barnett's vocal, a shaky sing-speak that seems in awe of its blanketing folds of music: careening drums, resonant piano and mournful brass that evoke kingdoms falling.
There follow collisions of country and metropolitan imagery, beside unsettled passages that drift in aural purgatory, woodwind and lyrics grasping for a spiritual rhythm. When the title track arrives, an elegiac finale with ambiguous tones of redemption, the record rises from its own ashes and plants in the listener a renewed sense of physicality, of the interconnectedness of everything — along with an irrepressible desire to return to the beginning. (Jazz Monroe)
19. Atoms for Peace
AMOK
(XL)
When it became apparent that Thom Yorke was teaming up with Flea from the Chili Peppers, Joey Waronker (Beck and R.E.M.'s drummer), producer Nigel Godrich, and Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco, it seemed like another expensive pie crammed with too many contrasting ingredients. Who knew it would actually turn out so palatable?
Aside from being consistently solid throughout, Flea reminds us just how melodic he can be when he keeps that overzealous thumb in check. His prowess shines through on Amok, in a poignantly subdued way on "Stuck Together Pieces" and as the driving force on "Dropped." With that solid foundation to build on, Thom Yorke then takes the nervous, scattered rhythms of his 2006 solo album, The Eraser, and hands them over to Waronker and Refosco, who add all the percussionist beef that was previously missing. Then, with beef, bass, and harrowing vocals all lined up, Godrich dovetails all the elements and just makes everything sound beautiful.
More than just a stab at making electronic music sound organic, Amok is a fluid waltz through the varying styles of each band member, with rock and electronica weaving in and out of the crowd seamlessly. Listening to single "Default" and you can hear the influence of each individual, who all come from easily classifiable backgrounds, yet the song itself belongs to no specific genre. This trick is repeated throughout Amok, to great success; the synergy of varying musicians has culminated into this intriguing grey area. (Daryl Keating)
18. The Courtneys
The Courtneys
(Hockey Dad)
The Courtneys' self-titled 12-inch may have been short, but it was most definitely sweet. Following their K.C. Reeves cassette, the Vancouver trio hit all the right musical sweet spots on their first "proper" release, doling out sing-along-worthy melodies, scuzzy '90s alt-rock grit and guitar hooks classic Flying Nun acts would kill for. And best of all, they did it in the most laid-back slacker fashionable possible.
Made up of singer/drummer Jen Twynn Payne, guitarist Courtney Loove and bass player Sydney Koke, the ocean-obsessed Courtneys radiated the West Coast's mandate of maxin' and relaxin', skipping out on grand-scheme rock'n'roll reinvention for something much more simple and down to earth. With childlike rhyme schemes, duelling harmonies and endearingly straightforward melodies, tracks like "Dead Dog" and "90210" would cycle, repeat and then repeat again, becoming punk rock mantras of sorts as the band drove into your skull lines like "Slow down / Chill out / Breathe in / Breathe out / Kick back / And have a rest / Don't forget / To take a breath."
But beneath the surface of it all, the Courtneys revealed a lot of depth, twisting up and mingling themes that were both light and dark, fun and angry, and everyday and far-out. It all became so much more than just another record of '90s-geared slacker pop, with the Courtneys giving you a little something more with each listen. (Brock Thiessen)
17. Waxahatchee
Cerulean Salt
(Don Giovanni)
Katie Crutchfield released her second album as Waxahatchee this year, taking the mostly-solo project another step forward from her 2012 American Weekend debut. On Cerulean Salt, the Birmingham, AL-born, Brooklyn, NY-based songwriter forgoes the obvious influences of her punk roots and continues to show her softer, more introspective side.
With an air of nonchalance, Crutchfield delivers honest, heartbreaking lyrics about drinking and love and existential crises that strike at the heart of not-teen-anymore angst, switching between the accompaniment of sad acoustic strumming and fuzzed-out, lo-fi guitars. Occasionally backed by Keith Spencer and Kyle Gilbride on drums and bass, it's a more collaborative effort than the first Waxahatchee record, but manages to maintain the self-recorded charm that makes Crutchfield so endearing and relatable.
Despite the instrumental back-up, there's never any doubt that this is a collection of very personal songs from what seems to be a pretty dark place. And while her storytelling technique shines through in her observations of other people on tracks like "Dixie Cups and Jars" or "You're Damaged," it's lines like "I had a dream last night/ We had hit separate bottoms/ You yell right in my face/ And I poison myself numb" ("Lively") that capture Crutchfield's own brilliant, confessional songwriting skills. It's raw and melancholic, but no one else makes sadness sound so comforting. (Sarah Murphy)
16. Justin Timberlake
The 20/20 Experience
(RCA)
If anything, Justin Timberlake's disappointing second volume of The 20/20 Experience only served to emphasize the greatness of the first. While The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2 was the sound of aggressive, club-ready libido, the original waxed sentimental about the comfort and leisure of a Sunday afternoon spent in the company of true love. Amid woozy strings, chimes and spacious production, Timberlake coos about getting high on love, pledging his devotion and seeing only his object of affection when he looks around.
To critics of the album, it might sound like newfound romance has quelled the ambition that birthed sprawling FutureSex/LoveSounds, but 20/20 is the sound of a man confident enough to let a groove ruminate and sink in, even if it's more bedroom- than arena-sized.
Which isn't to say that The 20/20 Experience doesn't have grand ambitions — on single "Mirrors," Timberlake turns a lyrical ode to symbiosis into a multi-layered epic — but overwhelmingly, it's about smaller, more intimate moments: the sparse, ticking "Strawberry Bubblegum" is boyishly lusty, playfully teasing a girl about popping the titular candy, while the gorgeous "Blue Ocean Floor" brings the album to a gentle, sparkling denouement.
On The 20/20 Experience, Timberlake proves that big budget pop music, ever the domain of ham-fisted club bangers and teary piano ballads, can be executed with a fine brush, too; all he needed was love. (Stephen Carlick)
15. The National
Trouble Will Find Me
(4AD)
In Saturday Night Live's Wes Anderson parody, The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders, a faux New York Times review reads, "You had me at 'Wes Anderson.'" Similarly, when it comes to year-end best-album lists, the National tend to enjoy predictably favourable treatment. Nevertheless, sixth studio record, Trouble Will Find Me, certainly deserves the honour, pedigree aside.
On late-act highlight "Pink Rabbits," when Matt Berninger sings, "I love a storm, but I don't love lightning," he does a great job of distilling the combo's latter-day ethos. This collection of songs may lack the urgency of "Mr. November" or "Abel" and the comic violence of "Conversation 13," but Berninger keeps things plenty dark; he's just more comfortable with it; it's why he stays down with his demons ("Demons"), why his recognition of his own limitations never makes him inert ("Graceless") and why his apologies come with a "…but" ("Sea of Love").
Of course, this being Berninger, inner conflict still abounds, and his cohorts do an exceptional job of underscoring it with deceptively complex arrangements. While cuts like "This is the Last Time" and "I Should Live in Salt" opt for assuredness rather than insistence, they're still filled with voltas and sonic fake-outs.
Yes, Trouble Will Find Me exudes casualness, yet repeated listens betray its erudition. Approachable records — and there are many ways into this one — don't typically ask much of their listeners, though this one is simultaneously inviting and nuanced, making it wholly addictive. (Scott Tavener)
14. Dirty Beaches
Drifters/Love Is the Devil
(Zoo Music)
Dirty Beaches' 2011 breakout album Badlands had two distinct sides, with the first half made up of percussively fuzzy jams and the flip-side dominated by softly meditative compositions. On Drifters/Love Is the Devil, project mastermind Alex Zhang Hungtai takes a similar approach, but ups the ante by splitting the two halves into separate albums.
First up is Drifters, on which he overlays hypnotic art-rock grooves with jagged shards of guitar noise and sinister, effects-soaked vocals. Inspired by Hungtai's touring experiences, the album explores the neon-lit hedonism of traveling musicians. In keeping with this theme, the songs were extensively road-tested and then recreated by the singer and his touring bandmates Shub Roy and Bernardino Femminielli.
Love Is the Devil, on the other hand, is all about quiet reflection and downcast wallowing, and it largely consists of instrumental arrangements ranging from avant-jazz ambience to atmospherically sprawling guitar sketches to cinematic orchestrations. These wordless dirges were recorded in the dead of night while alone in a Berlin studio. The melancholia on display here can be seen as the fallout from the pleasure-seeking indulgence of Drifters, and Hungtai's talent for setting a skin-crawling mood makes this double-LP a brilliant chronicle of the ups and downs of life on the road. (Alex Hudson)
13. Queens of the Stone Age
...Like Clockwork
(Matador Records)
There was a six-year stretch between Era Vulgaris and Queens of the Stone Age's latest LP, ...Like Clockwork. That mighty gap may not seem so long when you factor in how leader Josh Homme spent part of it honing his chops in Them Crooked Vultures, but it was time spent going under the knife for knee surgery, and almost never coming back, that informs the band's most haunting and surprisingly subtle offering.
Songs For the Deaf these aren't: there's the masterfully menacing slink and spiritually off-the-rails lyricism behind slow and eerie opener "Keep Your Eyes Peeled," for instance, or the almost Flamingos-informed "shoo bop, shoo bops" laced around the kaleidoscopic psych-out of "Kalopsia." "The Vampyre of Time and Memory" hazily plays out as a percodan-popping, '70s-striving goth-glam fantasy, while Elton John sprinkles pearly piano lines alongside Homme's guitar leads and effortlessly sexy, oak-aged vocals on the inner-circle questioning "Fairweather Friends."
The one-two finale of "I Appear Missing" — despite its hallucinogenic, octopus-armed mid-song drum fills — and strings-assisted ballad "...Like Clockwork" bring things to a ruminative, spacey, and ultimately soul-damaged close. "Not everything that goes around comes back around you know," Homme theorizes in the most heartbreaking of falsettos on the latter; "One thing that is clear: It's all downhill from here."
Make no mistake, the Queens can still crush it when the amps sear amber-alert red (see the sky-cracking "My God Is the Sun," or the down and dirty funkiness driving "Smooth Sailing"), but the veteran desert rockers' newest masterstroke champions their famously moody melodies at all volumes. (Gregory Adams)
12. Foxygen
We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic
(Jagjaguwar))
The ambassadors of this infectious thirty-five-minute psych-rock romp through 1967 are Sam France (vocals) and Jonathan Rado (keys, guitar), a couple of L.A.-raised 22-year-olds with enough band drama in the past year to make beginner's progress on a rock and roll mythology all their own. It's fitting, considering the legendary material France and Rado draw from to deliciously saturate We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic.
The Kinks, Lou Reed, David Bowie and the Rolling Stones are on dead-ringer display here: France's Jagger-esque wails, joyous Hunky Dory-like choruses and a fuzzy melodic bounce akin to the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour all evoke past legends. But that's not to say the duo's second full-length release is an exercise in pure homage; Foxygen jangles and howls through their adopted era's themes with playfully mindful examination, always from the outside looking in.
On "San Francisco", France lingers on lyrics similar to a certain mid-sixties anthem, only here instead of wearing flowers in her hair, the love interest is "bored" and "born in L.A." It's not all sly wordplay, though; sometimes it's as simple and as fun as what France growls on "Oh Yeah": "My roller skates are bitchin'." (Sarah Bauer)
11. James Blake
Overgrown
(Polydor/Atlas)
No matter the era or style of music, we always thirst for artists who express our fragility and uncertainty. When it comes to the dubstep/hip-hop/R&B world that James Blake has made his neighbourhood, the rent is usually paid with swagger and braggadocio, and that makes his vulnerability and understatement all the more compelling.
Taking the stark minimalism of his debut a shuffled step forward, Blake unlocks the code for a soulful cycle of piano-driven torch songs in an age where the torchlight is provided by computer screens and smartphones. The beats flow slowly but with skeletal precision, and when RZA turns up for a guest appearance on "Take a Fall for Me" the Wu-Tang connection clicks on like a spotlight. Where autotune played a significant part on his last album, Blake here uses reverb, echo, and overdub, sometime entire choirs of overdub, to great effect. His voice, already a strong and mournful instrument, often is treated with a filter of distance, sounding like it's coming from a different time or space, eerily haunting the song and the singer in the present.
The lyrical strength of Overgrown is its open-endedness. Phrases repeat ("Everything feels like touchdown on a rainy day"; "And we lay nocturnal / Speculate what we feel") and then fade without attaching themselves to an explicit narrative, thus becoming part of our own narratives of uncertainty, connection and disconnection, and romantic ennui. (Eric Hill)
Look for pop and rock albums 10-1 on Monday (December 9).
Click next to read through the albums one by one, or use the list below to skip ahead to your favourites.
Top 20 Pop & Rock Albums of 2013, 20-11:
- 11. James Blake - Overgrown
- 12. Foxygen - We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic
- 13. Queens of the Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork
- 14. Dirty Beaches - Drifters/Love Is the Devil
- 15. The National - Trouble Will Find Me
- 16. Justin Timberlake - The 20/20 Experience
- 17. Waxahatchee - Cerulean Salt
- 18. The Courtneys - The Courtneys
- 19. Atoms for Peace - AMOK
- 20. These New Puritans - Field of Reeds
To see more of our Year-End Top Tens, head over to our Best of 2013 section.
20. These New Puritans
Field of Reeds
(PIAS)
What with the labels broke, the critics in crises and listeners increasingly impatient, it's hard to believe the world has kept a niche, or at least a habitable squat, for These New Puritans. And yet, with favours from a few admirers, the British savants have made a rich, expansive third album, and it's a masterpiece.
While the immaculate production and weaving structures have an immersive quality, Field of Reeds is less a record of depth than of height, an alpine trek encompassing tall views of such clarity and intensity that the listener is not quite a listener but a fellow traveller. Jack Barnett's vocals are reluctant guides, the verses narrow valleys. The crescendos — for there are no choruses — represent summits that both captivate and confound.
Key is its centrepiece, the fifteen-minute brace of "The Light in Your Name" and "V (Island Song)." Throughout, Barnett's vocal, a shaky sing-speak that seems in awe of its blanketing folds of music: careening drums, resonant piano and mournful brass that evoke kingdoms falling.
There follow collisions of country and metropolitan imagery, beside unsettled passages that drift in aural purgatory, woodwind and lyrics grasping for a spiritual rhythm. When the title track arrives, an elegiac finale with ambiguous tones of redemption, the record rises from its own ashes and plants in the listener a renewed sense of physicality, of the interconnectedness of everything — along with an irrepressible desire to return to the beginning. (Jazz Monroe)
19. Atoms for Peace
AMOK
(XL)
When it became apparent that Thom Yorke was teaming up with Flea from the Chili Peppers, Joey Waronker (Beck and R.E.M.'s drummer), producer Nigel Godrich, and Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco, it seemed like another expensive pie crammed with too many contrasting ingredients. Who knew it would actually turn out so palatable?
Aside from being consistently solid throughout, Flea reminds us just how melodic he can be when he keeps that overzealous thumb in check. His prowess shines through on Amok, in a poignantly subdued way on "Stuck Together Pieces" and as the driving force on "Dropped." With that solid foundation to build on, Thom Yorke then takes the nervous, scattered rhythms of his 2006 solo album, The Eraser, and hands them over to Waronker and Refosco, who add all the percussionist beef that was previously missing. Then, with beef, bass, and harrowing vocals all lined up, Godrich dovetails all the elements and just makes everything sound beautiful.
More than just a stab at making electronic music sound organic, Amok is a fluid waltz through the varying styles of each band member, with rock and electronica weaving in and out of the crowd seamlessly. Listening to single "Default" and you can hear the influence of each individual, who all come from easily classifiable backgrounds, yet the song itself belongs to no specific genre. This trick is repeated throughout Amok, to great success; the synergy of varying musicians has culminated into this intriguing grey area. (Daryl Keating)
18. The Courtneys
The Courtneys
(Hockey Dad)
The Courtneys' self-titled 12-inch may have been short, but it was most definitely sweet. Following their K.C. Reeves cassette, the Vancouver trio hit all the right musical sweet spots on their first "proper" release, doling out sing-along-worthy melodies, scuzzy '90s alt-rock grit and guitar hooks classic Flying Nun acts would kill for. And best of all, they did it in the most laid-back slacker fashionable possible.
Made up of singer/drummer Jen Twynn Payne, guitarist Courtney Loove and bass player Sydney Koke, the ocean-obsessed Courtneys radiated the West Coast's mandate of maxin' and relaxin', skipping out on grand-scheme rock'n'roll reinvention for something much more simple and down to earth. With childlike rhyme schemes, duelling harmonies and endearingly straightforward melodies, tracks like "Dead Dog" and "90210" would cycle, repeat and then repeat again, becoming punk rock mantras of sorts as the band drove into your skull lines like "Slow down / Chill out / Breathe in / Breathe out / Kick back / And have a rest / Don't forget / To take a breath."
But beneath the surface of it all, the Courtneys revealed a lot of depth, twisting up and mingling themes that were both light and dark, fun and angry, and everyday and far-out. It all became so much more than just another record of '90s-geared slacker pop, with the Courtneys giving you a little something more with each listen. (Brock Thiessen)
17. Waxahatchee
Cerulean Salt
(Don Giovanni)
Katie Crutchfield released her second album as Waxahatchee this year, taking the mostly-solo project another step forward from her 2012 American Weekend debut. On Cerulean Salt, the Birmingham, AL-born, Brooklyn, NY-based songwriter forgoes the obvious influences of her punk roots and continues to show her softer, more introspective side.
With an air of nonchalance, Crutchfield delivers honest, heartbreaking lyrics about drinking and love and existential crises that strike at the heart of not-teen-anymore angst, switching between the accompaniment of sad acoustic strumming and fuzzed-out, lo-fi guitars. Occasionally backed by Keith Spencer and Kyle Gilbride on drums and bass, it's a more collaborative effort than the first Waxahatchee record, but manages to maintain the self-recorded charm that makes Crutchfield so endearing and relatable.
Despite the instrumental back-up, there's never any doubt that this is a collection of very personal songs from what seems to be a pretty dark place. And while her storytelling technique shines through in her observations of other people on tracks like "Dixie Cups and Jars" or "You're Damaged," it's lines like "I had a dream last night/ We had hit separate bottoms/ You yell right in my face/ And I poison myself numb" ("Lively") that capture Crutchfield's own brilliant, confessional songwriting skills. It's raw and melancholic, but no one else makes sadness sound so comforting. (Sarah Murphy)
16. Justin Timberlake
The 20/20 Experience
(RCA)
If anything, Justin Timberlake's disappointing second volume of The 20/20 Experience only served to emphasize the greatness of the first. While The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2 was the sound of aggressive, club-ready libido, the original waxed sentimental about the comfort and leisure of a Sunday afternoon spent in the company of true love. Amid woozy strings, chimes and spacious production, Timberlake coos about getting high on love, pledging his devotion and seeing only his object of affection when he looks around.
To critics of the album, it might sound like newfound romance has quelled the ambition that birthed sprawling FutureSex/LoveSounds, but 20/20 is the sound of a man confident enough to let a groove ruminate and sink in, even if it's more bedroom- than arena-sized.
Which isn't to say that The 20/20 Experience doesn't have grand ambitions — on single "Mirrors," Timberlake turns a lyrical ode to symbiosis into a multi-layered epic — but overwhelmingly, it's about smaller, more intimate moments: the sparse, ticking "Strawberry Bubblegum" is boyishly lusty, playfully teasing a girl about popping the titular candy, while the gorgeous "Blue Ocean Floor" brings the album to a gentle, sparkling denouement.
On The 20/20 Experience, Timberlake proves that big budget pop music, ever the domain of ham-fisted club bangers and teary piano ballads, can be executed with a fine brush, too; all he needed was love. (Stephen Carlick)
15. The National
Trouble Will Find Me
(4AD)
In Saturday Night Live's Wes Anderson parody, The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders, a faux New York Times review reads, "You had me at 'Wes Anderson.'" Similarly, when it comes to year-end best-album lists, the National tend to enjoy predictably favourable treatment. Nevertheless, sixth studio record, Trouble Will Find Me, certainly deserves the honour, pedigree aside.
On late-act highlight "Pink Rabbits," when Matt Berninger sings, "I love a storm, but I don't love lightning," he does a great job of distilling the combo's latter-day ethos. This collection of songs may lack the urgency of "Mr. November" or "Abel" and the comic violence of "Conversation 13," but Berninger keeps things plenty dark; he's just more comfortable with it; it's why he stays down with his demons ("Demons"), why his recognition of his own limitations never makes him inert ("Graceless") and why his apologies come with a "…but" ("Sea of Love").
Of course, this being Berninger, inner conflict still abounds, and his cohorts do an exceptional job of underscoring it with deceptively complex arrangements. While cuts like "This is the Last Time" and "I Should Live in Salt" opt for assuredness rather than insistence, they're still filled with voltas and sonic fake-outs.
Yes, Trouble Will Find Me exudes casualness, yet repeated listens betray its erudition. Approachable records — and there are many ways into this one — don't typically ask much of their listeners, though this one is simultaneously inviting and nuanced, making it wholly addictive. (Scott Tavener)
14. Dirty Beaches
Drifters/Love Is the Devil
(Zoo Music)
Dirty Beaches' 2011 breakout album Badlands had two distinct sides, with the first half made up of percussively fuzzy jams and the flip-side dominated by softly meditative compositions. On Drifters/Love Is the Devil, project mastermind Alex Zhang Hungtai takes a similar approach, but ups the ante by splitting the two halves into separate albums.
First up is Drifters, on which he overlays hypnotic art-rock grooves with jagged shards of guitar noise and sinister, effects-soaked vocals. Inspired by Hungtai's touring experiences, the album explores the neon-lit hedonism of traveling musicians. In keeping with this theme, the songs were extensively road-tested and then recreated by the singer and his touring bandmates Shub Roy and Bernardino Femminielli.
Love Is the Devil, on the other hand, is all about quiet reflection and downcast wallowing, and it largely consists of instrumental arrangements ranging from avant-jazz ambience to atmospherically sprawling guitar sketches to cinematic orchestrations. These wordless dirges were recorded in the dead of night while alone in a Berlin studio. The melancholia on display here can be seen as the fallout from the pleasure-seeking indulgence of Drifters, and Hungtai's talent for setting a skin-crawling mood makes this double-LP a brilliant chronicle of the ups and downs of life on the road. (Alex Hudson)
13. Queens of the Stone Age
...Like Clockwork
(Matador Records)
There was a six-year stretch between Era Vulgaris and Queens of the Stone Age's latest LP, ...Like Clockwork. That mighty gap may not seem so long when you factor in how leader Josh Homme spent part of it honing his chops in Them Crooked Vultures, but it was time spent going under the knife for knee surgery, and almost never coming back, that informs the band's most haunting and surprisingly subtle offering.
Songs For the Deaf these aren't: there's the masterfully menacing slink and spiritually off-the-rails lyricism behind slow and eerie opener "Keep Your Eyes Peeled," for instance, or the almost Flamingos-informed "shoo bop, shoo bops" laced around the kaleidoscopic psych-out of "Kalopsia." "The Vampyre of Time and Memory" hazily plays out as a percodan-popping, '70s-striving goth-glam fantasy, while Elton John sprinkles pearly piano lines alongside Homme's guitar leads and effortlessly sexy, oak-aged vocals on the inner-circle questioning "Fairweather Friends."
The one-two finale of "I Appear Missing" — despite its hallucinogenic, octopus-armed mid-song drum fills — and strings-assisted ballad "...Like Clockwork" bring things to a ruminative, spacey, and ultimately soul-damaged close. "Not everything that goes around comes back around you know," Homme theorizes in the most heartbreaking of falsettos on the latter; "One thing that is clear: It's all downhill from here."
Make no mistake, the Queens can still crush it when the amps sear amber-alert red (see the sky-cracking "My God Is the Sun," or the down and dirty funkiness driving "Smooth Sailing"), but the veteran desert rockers' newest masterstroke champions their famously moody melodies at all volumes. (Gregory Adams)
12. Foxygen
We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic
(Jagjaguwar))
The ambassadors of this infectious thirty-five-minute psych-rock romp through 1967 are Sam France (vocals) and Jonathan Rado (keys, guitar), a couple of L.A.-raised 22-year-olds with enough band drama in the past year to make beginner's progress on a rock and roll mythology all their own. It's fitting, considering the legendary material France and Rado draw from to deliciously saturate We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic.
The Kinks, Lou Reed, David Bowie and the Rolling Stones are on dead-ringer display here: France's Jagger-esque wails, joyous Hunky Dory-like choruses and a fuzzy melodic bounce akin to the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour all evoke past legends. But that's not to say the duo's second full-length release is an exercise in pure homage; Foxygen jangles and howls through their adopted era's themes with playfully mindful examination, always from the outside looking in.
On "San Francisco", France lingers on lyrics similar to a certain mid-sixties anthem, only here instead of wearing flowers in her hair, the love interest is "bored" and "born in L.A." It's not all sly wordplay, though; sometimes it's as simple and as fun as what France growls on "Oh Yeah": "My roller skates are bitchin'." (Sarah Bauer)
11. James Blake
Overgrown
(Polydor/Atlas)
No matter the era or style of music, we always thirst for artists who express our fragility and uncertainty. When it comes to the dubstep/hip-hop/R&B world that James Blake has made his neighbourhood, the rent is usually paid with swagger and braggadocio, and that makes his vulnerability and understatement all the more compelling.
Taking the stark minimalism of his debut a shuffled step forward, Blake unlocks the code for a soulful cycle of piano-driven torch songs in an age where the torchlight is provided by computer screens and smartphones. The beats flow slowly but with skeletal precision, and when RZA turns up for a guest appearance on "Take a Fall for Me" the Wu-Tang connection clicks on like a spotlight. Where autotune played a significant part on his last album, Blake here uses reverb, echo, and overdub, sometime entire choirs of overdub, to great effect. His voice, already a strong and mournful instrument, often is treated with a filter of distance, sounding like it's coming from a different time or space, eerily haunting the song and the singer in the present.
The lyrical strength of Overgrown is its open-endedness. Phrases repeat ("Everything feels like touchdown on a rainy day"; "And we lay nocturnal / Speculate what we feel") and then fade without attaching themselves to an explicit narrative, thus becoming part of our own narratives of uncertainty, connection and disconnection, and romantic ennui. (Eric Hill)
Look for pop and rock albums 10-1 on Monday (December 9).