For something different, I'll talk about music rather than public policy.
The thing about 2013, also true about 2012, and likely to remain true going forward, is there’s just so!! much music. This is largely technology fallout. Spotify and like-kind legal streaming music services put everything at your fingertip. Whether this is great for musicians is an open question. For the music consumer, it’s a brave new world.
To put this in concrete terms, adding songs here & there to my “favorites” playlist over the course of the year, I accrued 10 hours of music to sift through. The music I highlight herein fulfills one of several criteria: it is fun, interesting, moving, beautiful, or any combination thereof. It is a sampler of the year 2013, nothing more, nothing less.
The big music events of the year were—arguably—Justin Timberlake’s “ The 20/20 Experience” after a seven year hiatus from pop music, Kanye West’s “Yeezus” album, which had every critic chirping, Daft Punk’s overtly nostalgic “Random Access Memories,” and Beyoncé’s eponymous year-end surprise album, confounding all the music list makers who had already published their lists. Sorry Arcade Fire, yours was a near-miss.
At last look Beyoncé had sold something north of a 1.3 million albums in the U.S., so she wins marketing coup of the year award. To be honest I was never that big a fan, so I’m not prepared to drop $15.99 to hear her new stuff.
Regarding Kanye…I’m a fifty-something white guy. Hip-hop is not part of my musical vocabulary. However, for the record, I thought Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s 2012 hit “Same Love” was the most effective political song since the Vietnam era. (Yea, yea, I know it’s another example of white people co-opting black music and can’t gay people speak for themselves, but, hey, it works).
In any case I’ll let others speak for Kanye’s and Beyoncé’s albums’ merits.
My song-of-the-year is Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky.” Daft Punk hadn’t produced a studio album in eight years. While the group always had loyal fans, it was mostly within the world of electronic dance music (EDM). From the get-go, its 2013 album “Random Access Memories” caused a disturbance in the mainstream musical ether. “Get Lucky” became a fixture on everyone’s summer playlist.
“Get Lucky” is unapologetically retro. During the making of the song, the Daft Punk duo, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homen-Christo, reached out to Nils Rogers, half of the creative duo behind the 70’s disco group Chic. His distinctive rhythm guitar is a key element of this song’s wonderful groove. Bangalter and Homen-Christo also drafted the ubiquitous Pharrell Williams to provide vocals for the song.
[Remarkably Pharrell also lent his creative and vocal skills to Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” the year’s other big mainstream dance hit.]
Here’s the quasi-ironic twist: Daft Punk which achieved niche success making pure electronic (read artificial) dance music found mainstream success making a retro-disco album using flesh & blood musicians. Nevertheless, with the ascendency of Daft Punk to the top of the pop charts, I have the sense that electronic music in its multitudinous forms is pushing aside the guitar-based rock n’ roll of my youth (think Beatles and Rolling Stones).
Unless you spent 2013 in a sensory deprivation tank, you’ve heard “Get Lucky.” So feed your inner musicologist by first sampling Nils Rogers’s guitar on the 1979 disco hit “Good Times,” segue into “Get Lucky,” and then, for something completely different and a whole lot less poppy, test drive Darkside’s remix of the same.
[Darkside (Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington) recreated the entire album as “Random Access Memories Memories”].
Disclosure is the English brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence. Their first album, “Settle,” artfully straddles the line between club and pop worlds. Sam Smith supplies soaring vocals on the UK hit “Latch.” FYI the album was nominated for a Best Dance Album Grammy along with "Random Access Memories."
The Pet Shop Boys (Neil Tenant and Chris Lowe) are mainstays of the EDM world (since 1980s for God’s sake). In “Love is a Bourgeois Contract” they deliver the most literary & witty post-breakup song of the year. They manage to incorporate the German word schadenfreude into the lyric (and, yes, I had to look it up). Noel Coward would be proud of his countrymen. For your inner musicologist, the melody comes from a Henry Purcell opera by way of the contemporary composer Michael Nyman.
Every year the Brits help pump life back into soul music (think Amy Winehouse, Lianne La Havas, and Adele). This year is no exception. John Newman is a great new Brit soul export. Late this year I first heard his infectious “Love Me Again.” It reached #1 in UK but didn’t seem to get the same traction in the USA. It deserves better.
Justin Timberlake took a seven year sabbatical from the music business. Well sort of. Apparently Timberlake and his songwriting posse, notably Timbaland, T-Roe, and James Fauntleroy, wrote “Mirrors” in 2009 and then put it on ice while Timberlake pursued acting and guest appearances on Jimmy Falon. It’s a sweet eight-minute R & B jam inspired, Timberlake relates, by love for his wife and his grandparents (cue collective swoon from the women in the front row).
Lest you begin to wonder whether all the R & B I listen to is the blue-eyed version, I recommend the vocal stylings of Charles Bradley, born 1948, who began his musical career as a James Brown impersonator in 1996 (that’s 48 years later!). He possesses a remarkably powerful and textured soul voice. His is retro-soul in the best way possible. “Victim of Love” is a slow burner delivered full-voice against a spare acoustic guitar and doo-woppish background vocals.
Janelle Monáe’s “Electric Lady” is a concept album inspired by Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film “Metropolis.” (I can't make this up). Her album alter-ego is an android named Cindi Mayweather. Fritz Lang would likely be amazed to know his film still makes waves in the 21st century. “Ghetto Lady” is a heartfelt paean to working-class black women (and maybe Monáe’s mom). It would have fit nicely on Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life.”
Fitz and the Tantrums are variously described as LA-neo-blue-eyed soul or Philly-pop-soul Hall & Oates wanna-bees. The critics don’t seem happy with what they are. Whatever. “6 AM” off their 2013 album has a sweet groove. It’s about getting back what you lost.
Gregory Porter’s mellifluous baritone reminds everyone who hears it for the first time of Nat King Cole. Not surprising since his mom often played Nat King Cole when Porter was growing up. (Although I listened to Nat King Cole as a child and it didn’t help much). That was before Porter went to San Diego State on a football scholarship, got injured, and gradually discovered he could make a life making music. Porter straddles the line between R & B and jazz. His voice is uniquely rich and beautiful. His song “No Love Dying” is like sipping a good single-malt Scotch next to a warm fire.
I first heard Lucius’s four-song EP in early 2013. Ten months later their music still sounds great. Lead singers Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessis met at the Berklee School of Music, then migrated to Brooklyn where the band came together. “Go Home” is a spare alt-country number. When Wolfe and Laessig sing “I don’t need you anyway. I don’t need you. Go home…,” well, my heart melts.
[Every other musician today seems to call Brooklyn home. Is Brooklyn the new Nashville?]
Honus Honus is the frontman for Philly band Man Man. I guess that makes sense. The band is usually described as avant-rock or experimental, which translates they don’t get much FM air time. Not true of “Head On (Hold on to Your Heart),” an undeniably poppy tune that masks a somber lyric.
Dawes is a four-piece band out of LA. Geography is not destiny. Still, there is an undeniable Eagle-esque quality to their sound. “Most People” takes you on an emotional trip through the head of a female character whose alienation (or depression) doesn’t allow her to connect.
Country music has always tackled life’s bitter side. Jason Isbell, a former Drive-By Trucker, does this with incredible grace on “Elephant,” a song about two old friends in a bar. One is dying of cancer. If this song doesn’t break your heart, you don’t have a heart to break. Brandy Clark takes on children’s knack for repeating their parents’ mistakes on “Just Like Him.” Isbell and Clark possess extraordinary gifts for songwriting and singing. Get yourself in the right place and give their songs the listen they deserve.
Looking beyond the USA and UK…Machel Montano is Trinidad & Tobago’s singing ambassador for soca music. What…you are unfamiliar with soca? It’s the dance music that results when you mix calypso, cadence-lypso, and the traditional musical instruments of East India. as it happens Trinidad & Tobago has a significant ethnic Indian population. Need a soca sample? Try Montano’s “The Fog” and give yourself room to move about. As Montano sings “This one goin’ an’ fog up de place,” which, I believe, is a good thing.
Ballaké Sissoko is a Malian-born kora virtuoso. The kora? Yes, it is a 21-string traditional instrument of West Africa. On the lovely opening track of Sissoko’s album “At Peace”, he plays solo kora. The song’s title is “Maimouna.” I don’t know what “Maimouna” means. It should translate “oil on troubled water.”
Can anybody tell me what is in the ice in Iceland? I googled Iceland. It has 320,132 people. Yet it is producing an amazing number of great musicians—the prolific Björk, last year’s hitmaker Of Monsters and Men, and this year, Ólafur Arnolds and Sigur Rós. A true Icelandic renaissance.
Ólafur Arnolds began his music career playing in a series of metal bands, one of which was called the Fighting Shits. He has moved beyond the Shits, however, and crafted a lyrical art-rock (or maybe alt-classical) album “For Now I Am Winter.” Primarily an instrumentalist, on the track “Old Skin,” Ólafur added vocals by Arnór Dan to stunning effect.
Sigur Ros is a three-piece post-rock band almost twenty years making music. Notably their keyboardist recently left the band. The band sings in Icelandic. Even in translation their lyrics are a bit cryptic. “Isjaki” is off their 2013 album. It means iceberg. It’s a metaphor for some aspect of romantic love, but here I recommend just listening to the music (‘cause I can’t tell you what the words mean).
The words to Baths’ “Worsening” are largely incomprehensible until two-thirds of the way through you hear Will Wiesenfeld sing “Where is god when you hate him the most, when the mouths in the earth come to bite at my robes?” Clearly Wiesenfeld is exploring the darker themes of life. Baths is his musical project. He credits Bjork (Iceland again) and Kate Bush as musical inspirations. I hear Kate Bush, perhaps with a dash of Radiohead. Despite the dark lyric, his music is quite lovely, falling somewhere on the spectrum between electronic art rock and neo classical.
Bill Ryan is a music professor and composer in residence at Grand Valley University in western Michigan. He gained fame in new/classical music circles for a series of critically-acclaimed recordings by the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble, which he founded and directs. Prior to this Grand Valley University in western Michigan was the equivalent of musical Podunk. On his 2013 album “Towards Daybreak,” Ryan features his own compositions performed by his ensemble Billband. “Sparkle” is a delightful minimalist lullaby.
Critics struggle to name the new styles of music that breach the wall between modern classical music and the now 50-year-old rock tradition. I’ve heard prog pop, avant pop, art rock, chamber rock, experimental rock, future rock, post rock, neo classical, and alt classical (and I’m probably missing a few). No group demonstrates this more clearly than England’s These New Puritans. “Fragment Two” is a spare art song that would fit comfortably on the same program as Billband's "Sparkle."
Julia Holter is an LA-based electronic-experimental rock musician. Her latest album “Loud City Song” is inspired by or loosely based on (I’m not sure which) the 1959 MGM musical “Gigi.” In the middle of the album is a mesmerizing cover of Barbara Lewis’s soul classic “Hello Stranger.” Don’t ask me how it fits into the “Gigi” plot line, just listen to the music.
Jon Hopkins’s makes amazing use of aural space on his slower pieces. Your ear is as aware of the space between the notes as the notes themselves. “Abandon Window” is an elegy for the victims of the Japanese tsunami of 2011. In an interview, Hopkins spoke about the music representing the moment when the soul escapes the earthly body. The ghostly background sound that I first mistook as wind gusts recorded inside a building is actually the electronically-altered sound of distant fireworks recorded in London.
A persistent theme among my favorite music of 2013 is how the musical deck is constantly being reshuffled, generally to good effect. Archie Pelago is a 3-piece trio out of Brooklyn that merges elements of classical, jazz, EDM, and somehow makes it work. On “Sly Gazebo” the trio adds the female vocals of Becca Stevens.
Typhoon is a 12-piece (plus or minus) band from Portland, OR, another vibrant music scene. “Young Fathers” is a sprawling folk-rock anthem exploring the fear and hope of becoming adult and bringing someone new into the world:“I was thinking my life will get slower. That I will sort this shit out when I’m sober.” It grabbed me from the percussive intro guitar chords.
San Fermin is the project of Ellis Ludwig-Leone, a Yale music major, who headed off to the metaphorical woods upon graduation to write the seventeen songs that comprise this concept album about a man and woman stumbling towards love and life-partnership. “Sonsick” is the female character voicing her doubts about where this thing is going. Ludwig-Leone used Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessis from the band Lucius (see above) to sing vocals. The chorus will lift you off your seat.
James Blake slows a song almost to a halt and still keeps you reaching for the next beat. Listen to his 2011 “The Wilhem Scream” or, on the same album, his remarkable reinvention of Feist’s “Limit to Your Love.” On his 2013 hit “Retrograde” he uses less electronic wizardry and time-bending histrionics, but still casts a musical spell. You will not confuse James Blake with anybody else.
Laura Mvula comes to the singer-songwriter tradition from the Birmingham Conservatoire (as in Birmingham, England). Like her male compatriot, James Blake, she has a singular sound. “She” begins simply, notes played on a glockenspiel opposite Mvula’s rich voice, then builds and builds. It is a song about fortitude in the face of despair: “Every day she stood, hoping for a new life…”
Rhye is a duo comprised of the Danish Robin Braun and the Canadian Mike Milosh. On first hearing almost everyone mistakes Milosh’s high tenor for a woman’s voice. “Open” has an easy groove and a sensual, ambiguous lyric that likely make it a bedroom mixtape favorite. A lot of people first heard this tune when Victora’s Secret used it in a lingerie ad.
Arthur Ashin is
Autre Ne Veut. He kept his identity hidden from the musical world either as clever promotion—it seems the best way to create interest today is to be that musician of mystery—or to avoid future problems if his music career doesn't pan out and he has to make a living as a psychologist. Like many other musicians on my list, his music is a hybrid of EDM and R & B. “Ego-Free, Sex-Free” is
a line he overheard from a guy describing the most amazing party he’d ever been to. Like to hear more of that conversation, wouldn’t you?
In the free-floating world of EDM, DC-based Ari Goldman and Andrew Field-Pickering sometimes collaborate as Beautiful Swimmers and sometimes go separate ways. They are collectors of disco and house records. In Field-Pickering’s words, “We try not to sample from anything good…Mostly we try to save parts from bad songs.” “Running Over” is a hypnotic piece of pure EDM composed of the best bad bits.
You have probably noticed it is rare for a musician to go by his/her own name these days. Thus Matthew Houck records as
Phophorescent.
The opening lines for "Song for Zola" manage to reference both Johnny Cash and Bette Midler, quite an accomplishment: “Some say love is a burning thing. That it makes a fiery ring.” But the next line suggests an altogether different experience of love: “Oh but I know love as a fading thing.”
Daughter is a three-piece Brit indie group. If we accept that youth, broadly speaking, is a time of overwrought emotions—you know, before your highest priority becomes getting your kid to soccer practice—then “Youth” is a perfect portrait of the age:
“And if you're in love, then you are the lucky one,
'Cause most of us are bitter over someone.
Setting fire to our insides for fun,
To distract our hearts from ever missing them.”
There is an acerbic side to youth—no really—which The Front Bottoms wittily express in “Au Revoir (Adios).” It manages to be a kiss-off song and a rock n’ roll anthem at the same time. The accordion is a nice touch.
Vampire Weekend’s “Modern Vampires of the City” is on almost everyone’s top 10 album list. It’s full of clever wordplay and abstruse references. Generally it’s a lot of fun. “Steps” references the rap tune “Step to My Girl” by 90’s rap group Souls of Mischief, who sampled Grover Washington Jr’s sax cover of “Aubrey” by 70’s pop group Bread (phew!). It also mentions the town of Mechanicsburg, PA, near me, for what reason I cannot discern.
Veteran art rockers TV on the Radio put out two singles this year. “Million Miles” was the second single. It’s a slow rocker about love gone badly. When you’re listening to lead singer Tunde Adebimpe, the details don’t matter much.
Alpine is a 6-piece band from Melbourne (down under) sneaking onto the American scene. The group features two female co-leads Phoebe Baker and Lou James. If this sounds a bit like Lucius (see above)…well actually it sounds a bit like Lucius. Must be something in the air. Regarding their song “Gasoline,” to quote Baker or James (I’m not sure which), “It’s a song about lust, it’s a bit sexy.”
I’m not sure naming your band !!! and your first album “Th!!!er” are the greatest ideas. The !!! thing reminds me of Prince’s metamorphosis into “the artist formerly known as Prince” and any allusion to the album “Thriller” is bound to create challenging comparisons. In any case the NYC-based indie funk band !!! put out the infectious dance number “One Girl/One Boy” that I enjoyed throughout the year.
Kurt Vile is a diehard Philly guy carrying on the psychedelic-folk-slacker-jam-band tradition. Apparently he fed his guitar habit for years driving a forklift for the Philadelphia Brewing Company. I hope he doesn’t need to do that now. “Wakin on a Pretty Day” is like a long walk along the beach on the first day of vacation.
Moon Hooch is a trio of recent grads from The New School for Jazz in NYC—sax and drums. They displayed an entrepreneurial spirit, busking in various locations about the city, including the Bedford Ave station in Brooklyn. Reportedly they created near-flash mob conditions and thus earned the ire of the NY Police, who disinvited them from playing in this locale going forward. “Number 9” complete with ambient sounds from the subway may explain how they got in trouble.
Now to end this sampler with something completely different: Tom Waits and Keith Richards collaborated on the folk classic “Shenandoah,” part of an anthology “Sons of Rogues Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys.” The gruff and growly Tom Waits sings both lead and chorus (a choir of Toms if you will) with Keith Richard’s tenuous tenor floating above. The working theory is that “Shenandoah” was a popular work song among the flatboat sailors on the Mississippi, who carried the tune to New Orleans. By the late 1800s it was a popular sea chantey on the high seas.
That's it. If you prefer to listen to the entire playlist rather than each song individually, here is the link.
