Top 10 Albums of 2013

So that was 2013. A year that, for me, saw a lot of change - leaving Germany, heading into the final year of my studies and somewhere along the line deciding that being a music critic wasn't the one for me. One thing that didn't change, however, was my obsession with making lists, an inherent part of human nature that I just couldn't resist partaking in at least one more time.

With that in mind, here are the best moments in music of the past year. A year that, like 2012 before it, saw music go from strength to strength. Once again, there are countless artists that should have made this list, only to find there wasn't space for them. On one side, it was the year of great comebacks - bands from Black Sabbath to Alice in Chains to The Fratellis released albums that came close to their prime. On the other, hip hop cemented its position as the dominant force in music, with Eminem, Jay-Z and Danny Brown all releasing exceptional works that had to be dropped from this list to avoid congestion.

The song of the year was Nick Cave's Jubilee Street, a track so outrageously brilliant that it was accompanied on the same album with another song titled Finishing Jubilee Street, describing the depression he felt when he realised he would never sound this good again:

Video of the year is this wonderful slice of surrealist silliness from Duck Sauce:

Onto the top 10:

10. Childish Gambino - because the internet

Part-time screenwriter and rapper Donald Glover's second album positively rumbles out of the blocks, the colossal beats of crawl and WORLDSTAR booming incessantly as Glover's Georgian drawl meanders around in the foreground. However, this is more than just another moderately intellectual rapper jumping on the big beat bandwagon: what follows refreshingly eschews self-glorification in favour of a sprawling exploration of the bizarre world that the internet has become transposed into a Bible-style narrative. From illegal downloading to viral videos, Glover's lyrical prowess ensures the listener is treated to a genuinely ingenious dissection of these particularly modern phenomena, while the music is more than diverse enough to keep it interesting. The accompanying 75-page screenplay should probably be avoided, though.

9. Brendan Benson - You Were Right

The Raconteurs' guitarist's fifth solo work is comfortably his strongest to date. Staying largely within his realm of country-tinged '70s-style rock, Benson still manages to sound fresh without going overboard to be different. Simply put, every one of the 15 songs that make up You Were Right is just about perfectly formed from a songwriting perspective, with the occasional quirky moment thrown in to mix things up a bit. She's Trying to Poison Me adds some nicely-arranged brass, The Fritz is as charming a 90-second break up lament as you'll hear, and Diamond blends swirling psychedelia with hoe-down vocals. Ultimately, the signs are good ahead of a third release for The Raconteurs rumoured to be in the works.

8. Nine Inch Nails - Hesitation Marks

Trent Reznor took a break from winning Oscars for film scores to record the first Nine Inch Nails album since 2008, and it paid off. Being far less concerned with gimmicky release methods and more with the music than other releases meant that Hesitation Marks was Reznor's most consistent work since his 1994 masterpiece The Downward Spiral. It will never be as groundbreaking as that album was - music has changed too much since then - but from the college rock of Everything to the anthemic chorus of I Would For You, the album toes the line of self destruction before drawing back to level out in a much more controlled manner than might be expected. All in all, it's a step in the right direction for Nine Inch Nails: Reznor may have dropped the image of a tortured genius crying for help, but it doesn't matter because we know he never really was, and his music is entertaining enough on its own. A brilliant return to form in just about every way.

7. R. A. the Rugged Man - Legends Never Die

New York-based rapper R.A. the Rugged Man finally ended a nine-year hiatus in 2013 by releasing his second studio album. From a technical point of view, R.A. is among the best rappers of his generation, and this album is testament to that, often delving into rhyming that moves faster than the brain can handle. Yes, most of it is the typical self-promotion that has always been a part of rap, but the way in which in which R.A. achieves this is just too entertaining to dislike. He even reverses this with the brilliantly self-deprecating Shoot Me In The Head and also isn't afraid to go deeper - Still Get You Through the Day and the title track, a eulogy for his father, are as lyrically touching as it gets. An eclectic approach on the musical side, delving into jazz, soul, Beyoncé and Mozart, means there isn't a single weak track on the album.

6. Earl Sweatshirt - Doris

Of all of the members of the Odd Future hip-hop collective, Thebe Neruda Kgositsile (better known, for obvious reasons, by his stage name of Earl Sweatshirt), has always been the most objectively talented as a rapper. Yet, despite having released a mixtape back in 2010 at the age of just 15, he suddenly disappeared from the limelight, having been sent to a boarding school in Samoa to keep him out of harm's way in the music industry. Doris is the culmination of those three years spent in the wilderness, both fiercely introspective and meditatively dark. Earl vents his isolation over an increasingly bleak musical backdrop, from the blurry opener Pre to the cathartic double closer of Hoarse and Knight. Guest appearances from Mac Miller, RZA and Frank Ocean, among others, help to break up the gloom but this remains one of the more intellectually challenging works in the Odd Future catalogue, and one that is ultimately a rewarding listen.
Be warned, the following video is disturbing in just about every way:

5. P.H. Fat - Happiness Machines

The second full-length release from the Cape Town electronica trio would at first glance to be the pinnacle of hipster stubbornness - recorded exclusively on analogue synthesizers and drum machines salvaged from second-hand shops around South Africa and released for free online, without the support of any kind of record label, it seemed to be willfully rejecting all of the concepts that modern music tends to expect of a new release. It was, thankfully, an attitude that failed to stand up when listening to Happiness Machines. Far from being a mess of lo-fi noodling, the group manage to tweak sounds out of their tech that are generally consigned to '70s experimental music - and then made them sound good. House of Clashes bristles with juddering bass and drums, EGODETH flows and pulsates and there are a fair number of instrumental tracks where the music takes control. For their part, rappers Smooth Mike and Disco chip in with weird and entertaining lyrics, ensuring the album doesn't get caught up in the pretension of its concept.

4. Kanye West - Yeezus

In any year when Kanye West or Jay-Z release an album, the works in question will end up near the top of the list. In 2013, fans were treated to a taste of both artists at their best, with West's Yeezus being released two weeks before Jay-Z's Magna Carta Holy Grail. But despite the rappers' close connection, comparing the two is like comparing a Constable landscape to a Jackson Pollock canvas - yes, they're both works of art, but they couldn't be much more different. This time round, it was the hack and slash technique of West's borderline insane production that won through. On first listen, Yeezus is an appalling mess - a confusing mash of random samples, wonky beats and bizarre sound effects. But like many works of art, you simply need to stand back to appreciate it properly: listen a few times and everything falls into place; it works precisely because of its lack of coherence. Throwing together samples from sources as diverse as Gary Glitter and Nina Simone, it weaves a rich tapestry of sonic creation that descends to dark depths before clawing its way out again. Lyrically, it's not quite on the same level - a line comparing the social pressure of being seen at basketball games to slavery received the most attention but is really only the tip of the iceberg - but West was always a producer rather than a rapper, and the production of Yeezus is his most inventive yet. Shame about the video for Bound 2 though.

3. Rizzle Kicks - Roaring 20s

The Essex duo followed up to their outstanding debut effort with more of the same - while other British artists walking the tightrope between rap and pop have headed towards a highly polished, American-style sound, Rizzle Kicks have maintained an ethos that is distinctly multicultural Britain. Ranging from Midlands ska to London funk, with more than a nod to the sunshine beats of Fat Boy Slim, Roaring 20s sounds as English as its lyrics make it out to be. From the opening This Means War, which decries the petty nature of knife crime, to Lost Generation, which led to legal involvement with its jibes aimed at John Terry and Jeremy Kyle, the album starts off in a rather intellectual manner. Fortunately, the sense of fun that defined their earlier work is not lost: Skip to the Good Bit is pure feel good fluff, Put Your Twos Up is just outrageously catchy and I Love You More Than You Think is a truly charming declaration of feeling. Ultimately, it was the ideal soundtrack to a summer that was actually, for once, not too bad - a sunny, carefree blast through whichever sounds worked together. And work it did - nailing the second album is definitely a positive sign of things to come.

2. Tyler, the Creator - Wolf

 The second member of the Odd Future collective to appear on this list, Tyler, the Creator followed up his 2011 album Goblin with a far stronger effort. While Goblin seemed groundbreaking at the time, it hasn't quite stood up to the test of time - getting through the whole thing in one sitting is actually quite a challenge as its mid section descends into somewhat murky territory, both musically and lyrically. Wolf suffers no such problem, its backing tracks being musically spectacular throughout: a voiceover on the opening title track even  jokingly comments on how Tyler must have been practicing in that area. This means that, even when it gets lyrically self-indulgent, the music is more than capable to pulling it through. And when it does work lyrically - in particular on heart-wrenching breakup song IFHY - it's nothing short of genius. As a few keen writers noticed, Wolf actually forms a prelude to Tyler's other two albums, which in this context can now be linked as one story arc examining the rapper's childhood issues that eventually lead him into therapy and concluding, presumably, on his fourth LP due in 2015. Like all good concept albums it drifts from the point at times - Colossus and Domo23 are, respectively, wince-inducingly frank and hilariously defiant dissections of the trappings of sudden fame but cause the story to lose its way, while 7-minute centrepoint PartyIsntOver/Campfire/Bimmer is as ponderous as its name would suggest. Put these issues to one side, however, and Wolf is as complete a concept album as any genre is likely to produce. And, as usual with Odd Future members, the accompanying videos are well worth a watch.

1. Queens of the Stone Age - ... Like Clockwork

The haunting sixth studio album from alt-rock titans Queens of the Stone Age comes complete with a haunting back story. In 2011, main man Josh Homme was suddenly bedridden for four months after dying on the operating table during a minor knee surgery, and spent the following period completely off the map. Confronted so dramatically with his own mortality, he decided to go back to the very beginning. The band re-released their debut and rehearsed the songs afresh, performing the work live in its entirety. Two years on, ...Like Clockwork is a defiant progression from that first album: lacking the grimy riffing of their 2002 magnum opus Songs for the Deaf, it instead embraces the tuneful blues-rock of their first album, and then expands into a realm that far surpasses that. The opening crawl of Keep Your Eyes Peeled gives way to the creamy psychedelia of I Sat by the Ocean. The Vampyre of Time and Memory is a beautifully arranged piano ballad, while My God Is The Sun harks back to the desert-influenced jamming of their earlier work. Trent Reznor adds his touch of ethereal electronics to Kalopsia, Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner adds vocals to If I Had A Tail and Elton John, of all people, makes an appearance on Fairweather Friends. It's also no coincidence that Homme sounds best in the company of long-time collaborators Dave Grohl, Mark Lanegan and Dean Fertita, but ultimately this is an album that feels like the brainchild of the frontman alone, a defiant statement that talent should not be kept in reserve because you never know when you might lose it all. By not holding back, Homme has produced what will probably be the best album of his life.

TJGreenwood.