Jon Krol

David Bowie - The Next Day
Bowie disappeared for nearly a decade before returning with the best album he's released since the 70's. A dynamic, familiar-yet-still-reaching, piece of work that only adds to an already great legacy. Bowie is the representation of all things great and powerful in music. His is art, pop, love, loss, thrill and despair. This album, like Bowie's best, somehow manages to straddle the line between mainstream bubblegum and seedy-city sleaze without compromise. And "Valentine's Day" is one of the best songs he's ever released. Period.

I am going to flip-flop what I said earlier in the year. Though I admire Modern Vampires of the City and Push the Sky Away about the same artistically, and both albums have resonated for me throughout 2013, I have to give a slight edge to Vampire Weekend that I granted to Nick Cave a few months ago only because of this: I listened to Modern Vampires more times. The music remains as devilishly catchy as it is profound.

In the end, what I dub the greatest album of 2013 barely matters. But the bold existence of Modern Vampires of the City seems meaningful. Not only did the album turn a good band great, it brought spiritual questions to the forefront of the alternative and indie music scene in a playful but ultimately sincere way. Vampire Weekend did not simply name-drop biblical references for poetic cred: they dealt with contemporary religious crisis as if their very souls were on the line. When the market gets hip, the hip get hungry for something more than merely being cool.


Runners-Up: Push the Sky Away, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds; Reflektor, Arcade Fire; Perils from the Sea, Mark Kozelek & Jimmy LaValle; AM, Arctic Monkeys

Janelle Monae - Electric Lady
This was not an easy choice -2013 had a ton of albums that could have taken the top honors in a lesser year, but no album in 2013 could match Monae's Electric Lady in terms of sheer ambition and creativity. Imagine if Prince, Outkast, ELO, and Funkadelic all made an album together, and you'd have a rough idea of what were dealing with. Anthems like "Q.U.E.E.N." and the title track manage to be political while not losing anything in danceability, while "Dance Apocalyptic" might be the most purely fun song since "Hey Ya." Really, though, there isn't a weak track on this album. With 19 tracks and a run-time over an hour, the album never drags or ceases to be interesting. A brilliant record from an artist who is probably just getting warmed up.



Nick Sessanna

Pity Sex – Feast of Love
Almost all of my favorite albums are “growers…” That being said, Feast of Love is an excellent album that I really wasn’t expecting to grow attached to. Looking back, had I not given this album the chance it truly deserves, I really would have been missing out. Between the blissful shoegaze of lead single “Wind-Up” and the more subdued bass fuzz of “Keep,” this is an album truly appropriate for all moods. Call it “emogaze” if you will; it’s dirty enough to get you excited when you are happy and moody enough to satisfy any level of deep depression. The true strength of this album comes from co-lead singer Britty Drake – you’ll never hear her belting it out gospel-style, but her delivery on gems like “Hollow Body” is one of the saddest and unreasonably beautiful things I have ever heard. Recommended for fans of noisy shoegaze like My Bloody Valentine, straightforward fuzz rock like Smashing Pumpkins, or pretty much anything emotive you’d expect to hear at a basement show.



Ailsa Forlenza

Unknown Mortal Orchestra - II 
Ever twist in circles while sitting on a swing? So tight that it seems the ropes are about to break, and then when you release, the whirred rush of the world undoes itself and perception ceases for a blissful moment. The release is what this album feels like to me. Guitar riffs that blur and swish a daydream paintbrush across a sonic page, and lyrics that push the boundaries of this album into a psychedelic realm. II lifted my subconscious and implanted a sweet reverie that I can access as soon as I hear "I wish that I could swim and sleep like a shark does/ I'd fall to the bottom and I'd hide til the end of time…"




Tom Etu

Tomahawk - Oddfellows
A "supergroup" of musical weirdos, Tomahawk had been silent for years until throwing this rock in the faces of music lovers who like their experimental rock with a side of fucked up. Oddfellows is not the best album of 2013, but it was widely overlooked and light needed to be shed on its grotesquely deformed underbelly. The lyrics take you into the regret of a jailbird and the patience of a sniper, with a few sprinkled references to kinky sex. It almost follows a deranged plotline. Duane Denison can still rock out with his Jesus Lizard out, and Mike Patton can still roar and then croon like a gentleman quicker than you can have a heart attack. The addition of bass player extraordinaire Trevor Dunn to the line-up gives this album a slinky jazz vibe. Sexy and repulsive. 


For Part 2, click here.

Travis Kowalski

Lorde - "Team"
Even if you overlook the worldwide hype and praise New Zealand teenager Ella Yelich-O’Connor aka Lorde has received this year, it’s easy to see why her music has made it into countless international playlists. Her first single “Royals” introduced everyone to an amazing vocal ability and perceptive writing style that was inherently missing in the pop landscape, but it was her second single, “Team,” that instantly became my favorite song this year. Within the first few seconds of the song, Lorde demands your attention with a soft whisper of “Wait ‘til you’re announced. We’ve not yet lost all our graces.” Swirling synths and polished vocal work only add another dimension to Lorde’s limitless musical capabilities, which really aim to prove how she’s looking to not only inch her way into pop music, but instead swiftly move all the way to the top. Amidst newfangled pop classics like “Team” that goal seems very possible. 



Ailsa Forlenza

Beats Antique - "You The Starry Eyed" (ft. Lynx & Sorne)
On their album A Thousand Faces Act I, Beats Antique musically explores the hero's journey, from the initial call to crossing the threshold into the underworld. "You The Starry Eyed" is a beacon of hope, urging the hero to plod forward. Lynx's angelic wavers glide over a sonorous synth landscape in a gentle duet with Sorne. It's inspiring, with lyrics like "Push on through the night/ like the ones who came before you," and an epic dance groove, verging on the edges of electro-glitch. 



Scott Mancuso

The National - "Pink Rabbits"
This is my favorite song of the year. I think it gets everything right in order to be a good song. It has a well-written melody, it’s well-sung, the instrumentation is varied and interesting to listen to, the music builds on itself in a way that sounds natural and not-at-all forced and expands and contracts in proportion to the emotional tenor of the song’s narrative, and the lyrics are extremely clever and poetically repetitive and subtly tell a story that is painfully sad in a way that is not maudlin or dramatic or self-pitying but that is humble and honest and feels exactly like the hollow, insignificant ache of being a “white girl in a crowd of white girls in the park.” It gets exactly right the ways that physical and emotional distance can play tricks on each other and make the person in your head "sitting in a fainting chair drinking pink rabbits" feel like they're stabbing you with a voodoo doll while the person you're dancing with (the same person, whom you're now holding "way too high off the ground") feels like they're a million miles away as you listen to Bona Drag on repeat, take another swallow of whiskey, and listen to the sound kick out.

You're in a time portal that's caught between the 1960's in San Francisco and a drum circle in West Africa. The leg of your crotched bellbottoms rips and flies away and falls into a tranquil river, as the other part of you holds steadfast to a canoe. It's pleasant in this between state. On one end you hear the hiss of a hi-hat and a growling guitar-shred, and the other a mystical ebb of the kora. These notes blend into one ultimately relaxing beat. This is a little bit what it feels like to experience Toubab Krewe, a genre-bending band tearing it up since 2005. Heavily influenced by their teachers and time in Mali, Guinea, and the Ivory Coast, they create a sound stemming from traditional rhythms and songs, while simultaneously bleeding in classic rock n' roll. This evening, Toubab Krewe will be funking it up at Nietzsche's at 8 p.m. for $13 buckaroos.

This past Monday evening, Elephant Revival serenaded the halls of the Ninth Ward for a sold out show, debuting many songs off their new album These Changing Skies. Babeville is a solid venue for their delicate, mesmerizing tunes. The stage was lit with scented candles (a touch of popcorn, a touch of strong herb) that provided a luminescent and comfortable ambience.

Around 8 p.m., Bridget Law came out onto the stage, barefoot and glowing, to announce that her long-time friend Lindsey McGuire would be reading a few poems to kick off the night. McGuire read from three, the first titled, "I Fucking Love You," the second "Economy," and the third, pulling memories from a shared dream, "Bird Chest." Her lyrics spanned time, comparing her lover to an ancient sylvan jungle, the strength in Michelangelo's precision when he made the statue of David, and recalling how our lives are so small in lieu of the giantess, Mother Nature. She read with ease and precision directly from memory, emphasizing the lines we needed to hear, such as "spirituality was freed from the confines of religion," and "By the time I die, existence will have spent 36,750 pounds of rainfall, sunshade, soil, plant, and creature to keep me alive, so I think it's fair to say I indeed am in debt." McGuire's words urged the listener to think about balance, in love and in nature.

Bonnie Payne made a comment during the show about how uncanny their new album's title, These Changing Skies, certainly reflected the unexpected flooding that is happening over in Boulder, Colorado and the surrounding area. They came back one day to find their homes collapsed and destroyed, thousands of dollars of studio equipment lost. Elephant Revival's lyrics and songs seem to be in tune with the cycles of the seasons, slow and entrancing, or staccato and riveting. The first half of the evening, they pulled mostly from their new repertoire, with songs such as "Birds & Stars," "Remembering a Beginning," and "The Pasture." Compared to their studio recordings, I insist that their live pitches are equally as perfect, if not more enchanting. Each song built off the other, weaving a spell of inspiration.

Throughout the evening I noticed Sage Cook, Daniel Rodriguez, and Dango Rose switch on and off between double bass, electric banjo, and guitar. The shift in instruments seemed to show the bones of their composition process and varied the performance for me. Since Bridget's family from the area, was in town, the band made a few comments that in their honor they would play more "Irish" tunes. One is "Currach," sung at an andante pace, with haunting moans from Bridget's masterful fiddle and Bonnie's pensive washboard heralding a rising storm. Elephant Revival's intriguing range of harmonies and styles captured my steadfast attention the entire evening. Peace radiates from their aura. For their encore, in honor of the harvest moon, they sung "Ring Around The Moon." This featured Bonnie on the musical saw, an instrument that croons high-pitched wails with the smallest vibrations from her bow.

As they finished their performance, I noticed a few stickers on various instrument cases like "Fractivist" and "Ban Fracking Now." For sure they are conscious about what is happening on the Earth, especially concerning a controversial issue such as hydraulic fracturing. Coming from a musical act that is gaining in popularity as the moons wane and wax, I consider it reassuring and brave.

Sage Cook was kind enough to offer me the setlist: