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Home , After Dark 2, Came Back Haunted, Cerulean Salt, Days Are Gone, Field of Reeds, Full of Fire

And a Teenager Shall Lead Them Rules a Year-End List. By JON PARELES. December 13, 2013 1. Lorde “” (Universal) In hip-hop, keyboard-centered processionals ofte n accompany self-congratulatory boasts. “Pure Heroine,” the debut by Lorde — the and Ella Yelich-O’Connor, from New Zealand — commandeers those wi de-open spaces with her lustrous voice and angel-choir harmonies carrying seriou s thoughts. Lorde writes about suburban provincialism, peer pressure, insecurity , determination and — in the irresistible “Royals” — about pop-culture fantasies and cla ss-conscious realities. She’s 17. 2. “Once I Was an Eagle” (Ribbon Music) A seven-song suite that accele rates from folky contemplation to fierce East-meets-West strumming is the sweepi ng start to Laura Marling‘s fourth album. The songs could be the chronicle of a br eakup, but they lead her through legend and family memory, lament and accusation and hymn. Her nimble and her serenely knowing voice make every conundru m intimate. 3. “Modern Vampires of the City” (XL) Gravity and cleverness seesaw all the way through Vampire Weekend‘s third album. The characters in the songs now face grown-up responsibilities and questions of faith. Meanwhile, the tunes are full of manic invention and nutty juxtapositions: Baroque pomp and trash-can dr um sounds, rockabilly twang and digitally chopped-up vocals. Overthinking pays o ff. 4. “” (Null/Columbia) Restarting Nine Inch Nails for the first time since 2009, didn’t return to blasting and shouting. I nstead of guitars, pointillistic keyboards build the tension in many of the song s. The music makes every sparse syncopation matter, and it pulls inward instead of lashing out — just right for songs that are more a battle with himself than wit h the world. 5. M.I.A. “Matangi” (Interscope) M.I.A. brags a lot on “Matangi,” her full first name. A nd she earns it, not entirely for her lyrics — though she delivers some sociopolit ical zingers in her defiant singsong — but for the dizzying cross-cultural barrage that surrounds them, mashing up geography and technologies. Her sounds are shin ier than ever, her refrains are purposefully catchy and her attitude is newly ch eerful, which just lets her pack more jolts into each song. 6. Janelle Monáe “The Electric Lady” (Wondaland Arts Society/Bad Boy) This installatio n of Janelle Monáe‘s continuing sci-fi epic — about a fugitive android, power, discrim ination and rebellion — is actually a romantic prequel. That’s her opportunity to wr ite love songs and invoke strong female role models — her mother included — as she c ontinues to traverse pop history from hip-hop back to big bands, lingering at R& B and . Multiple agendas don’t hold back her exuberance. 7. “The Next Day” (Columbia) After nearly a decade, David Bowie re-emerg ed bleak and brittle with “The Next Day,” an album that confronts mortality with bit ter fury. The music looks back to his 1970s , with brusque drums an d bristling guitars; as he sees time ravage youth, idealism, love and hope, the lush moments are disconsolate and the glimmers of pop are sardonic. “Just remember , duckies,” he sings. “Everybody gets got.” 8. Tal National “Kaani” (FatCat) The repeating patterns of stay unpredictable i n the frenetic grooves of Tal National, a band from Niger. The music keeps leapi ng ahead with one surprise after another: parts that align and diverge an d reconfigure, drumming that pounces on offbeats. The patterns are crisp, comple x and tireless, but Tal National is no funk machine: It’s alive. 9. Laura Mvula “Sing to the Moon” (Columbia) Laura Mvula, an English singer and song writer, arrives like an emissary from an alternate pop timeline, where Nina Simo ne, Gil Evans, the Swingle Singers and epic film scores loom larger than anythin g plugged in. Her voice is deliberately modest, and her songs take eccentric sha pes; as she ponders her place in the world, and choirs materialize ar ound her, rising toward a purely sonic redemption. 10. The Haxan Cloak “Excavation” (Tri Angle) Bobby Krlic, who records as the Haxan C loak, plunges deep for the sounds of the ambient, austerely suspenseful “Excavatio n.” There are throbs aimed for subwoofers, depth-charge descents, crackles of stat ic and kick-in-the-head impacts. A beat or a pulse might appear and vanish. The tracks are amorphous and unmelodic, but too eventful and sometimes too brutal to recede into the background. This could be the sound of looking into the abyss a nd having the abyss look back. TOP SONGS featuring Frank Ocean “New Slaves” (Roc-a-Fella/Def Jam) “Follow Your Arrow” (Mercury) Atoms for Peace “Before Your Very Eyes” (XL) Danny Brown “Lonely” (Fool’s Gold) Kelela “Enemy” (Fade to Mind) Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Despair” (Interscope) “A Tooth for an Eye” (Rabid) The Blow “A Kiss” (Kanine) Phosphorescent “Song for Zula” (Dead Oceans) Robin Thicke featuring T.I. and Pharrell “Blurred Lines” (Star Trak) Songs That Transcend the Tricks Ben Ratliff’s Favorites of 2013 1. Cécile McLorin Salvant “WomanChild” (Mack Avenue) A young singer of radical ta lent, who teaches in her own terms — with high clarity and zero pedantry — that old songs has nothing to do with transmitting an outdated sensibility, a nd that jazz is necessarily part of a bigger and greater story of American music , and that American music is necessarily part of a bigger and greater story of m odern art. 2. Deafheaven “Sunbather” (Deathwish) Bitter, recessive, black metal melting togethe r with sweet, surging pop sentimentality. An everything-that-rises-must-converge kind of album, a young band’s argument against pop’s clear orthodoxies, but above a ll, a major pleasure. 3. Body/Head “Coming Apart” (Matador) Kim Gordon, of , in her first serio us post-Sonic Youth band: a two-guitars duo with Bill Nace. Improvised in sound and word but conceptually sturdy, it makes you wonder why it’s as good as it is, w hat holds it . It’s full of disquiet and indirection, but self-possessed. 4. ‘Mestres Navegantes: Edição Cariri’ An endlessly fascinating collection of field reco rdings in the continuing Mestres Navegantes project, this batch made in the Cari ri region of the Brazilian state of Ceará by the musical researcher Betão Aguiar. (I t’s all recently recorded, and discs were given to educators and NGOs through the sponsorship of the cosmetics company Natura; you can stream the music and watch video footage on Soundcloud and .) Here are cabaçal bands with wood flutes, b ass drums and cymbals; music of the traditional reisado parades the evening befo re the day of Epiphany; the vocal songs of religious penitents, etc. The idea is preserving folklore, but this is a folklore of immediacy, swinging and rowdy an d vivid. 5. Craig Taborn Trio “Chants” (ECM) In which Mr. Taborn, the jazz pianist, fully est ablishes himself as a rising greats, a bandleader for our time. There’s much going on in these tracks: along with the bassist Thomas Morgan and the drummer Gerald Cleaver, he’s delivering strong melody and rhythm without giving up any of his my stery and recondite structural games. 6. Black Host “Life in the Sugar Candle Mines” (Northern Spy) The drummer Gerald Cle aver formed a flexible and visionary free jazz- group, with grea t grooves, big melodies, distorted and processed guitar, waves of . It’s an unlikely mixture, better than what seemed possible, done so well it seems to answer a need. 7. “3.0” ( Latin) A sort-of return to salsa and old strengths by one of its great second-wave singers, full of momentum, sentimentality and c omplex, interleaved arrangements. 8. “Night Time, My Time” (Capitol) This young singer is working on a ne w mode of super-dark poutiness, excellent if limited. But the songwriting and pr oduction here are for all time, collapsing huge distances: between Phil Spector and ’80s girl-pop, between the throbbing miasmic scuzz of Suicide and the textures of current, post-Dr. Luke digital pop. 9. Tye Tribbett “Greater Than” ( Gospel) Mr. Tribbett, the gospel singer, soun ds like he’s able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and his hyper-charged songs race through pop as a great open field: deep funk and country-pop and tech no and light-crust R&B. 10. Rhye “Woman” (Republic/Innovative Leisure/Loma Vista) The nexus of smooth-pop an d minimal-indie, sophisto- and , with a male voice (Mike Milosh’s ) that assumes the sound and shape of a female’s — Sade’s, more or less. But the songs transcend the trick, repeatedly, and with multiple strategies. TOP SONGS “” (XO/Republic) Haim “Falling” (Columbia) Andy Bey “It Never Entered My Mind” (HighNote) Kvelertak “Spring Fra Livet” (Roadrunner) M.I.A. “Warriors” (Interscope) Bill Callahan “Javelin Unlanding” (Drag City) The Blow “I Tell Myself Everything” (Kanine) Sleaford Mods “Fizzy” (Harbinger Sound) “” (OVO Sound) Christian McBride Trio “Ham Hocks & Cabbage” (Mack Avenue A Mix of Sounds, Generations and Styles Craig Taborn, Wayne Shorter and Bill Callahan Achieve By NATE CHINEN 1. Craig Taborn Trio “Chants” (ECM) The deep, seductive intelligence at work in “Chant s,” Craig Taborn’s first trio album in a dozen years, suggests an ocean of inf luences distilled into an original potion. Unpacking his terse compositions in c ommunion with the bassist Thomas Morgan and the drummer Gerald Cleaver, Mr. Tabo rn gives each oblique maneuver a purpose, and a flicker of intrepid grace. 2. Wayne Shorter Quartet “Without a Net” (Blue Note) The postbop sage Wayne Shorter has made volatility a trademark of his quartet, to the extent that its concerts can feel like enigmas to be parsed. Here we only have choice moments that put hi s saxophone at the center of a drama shaped by developing insights from Danilo Pér ez on piano, John Patitucci on bass and Brian Blade on drums. 3. Bill Callahan “Dream River” (Drag City) On his strongest album (and there have be en some really good ones lately), Mr. Callahan applies his dark, dry baritone to a bundle of songs about love and death and luck and motion, using ordinary lang uage to extraordinary ends. His ruminative deadpan meets a deceptively simple ba ckdrop: some masterly guitar work, some drums and flute, all put together with s ly serenity. 4. Andy Bey “The World According to Andy Bey” (HighNote) Mr. Bey, a songbook savant now approaching his mid-70s, has already recorded memorably in the solo piano-an d-vocal format. But this album finds him in extravagantly fine form, not only em broidering standards but also singing his own perceptive and idiosyncratic songs in a still-limber voice that should be registered with the Smithsonian. 5. Ashley Monroe “Like a Rose” (Warner Bros. Nashville) A quiet stunner of a country album, full of traditional-sounding songs that refuse to recoil from uncomforta ble realities; the title phrase holds the implication of a survival badge. Ms. M onroe’s singing is soft and clear, subversive precisely in its sweetness. 6. Dave Douglas Quintet “Time Travel” (Greenleaf) The trumpeter Dave Douglas formed a smart new quintet last year, and along with a beautiful album of hymns, it cre ated this knockabout winner, capitalizing on the diversity of a roster with the saxophonist Jon Irabagon, the pianist Matt Mitchell, the bassist Linda Oh and th e drummer Rudy Royston. 7. Eric Revis, Kris Davis, Andrew Cyrille “City of Asylum” (Clean Feed) Three genera tions of improvisers from far-flung aesthetic coordinates — Mr. Revis, a bassist; Ms. Davis, a pianist; and Mr. Cyrille, a drummer — devoted most of their first al bum to a free-form expedition, testing every premise and taking nothing for gran ted. 8. Chris Potter “The Sirens” (ECM) Heroic proficiency has never been a problem for M r. Potter, the saxophonist. Impressively, this album, inspired by “The Odyss ey,” is more a study in reflection than exertion, with exquisite ballad work and p lenty of shifting texture, much of it conjured by a pair of brilliant pianists, Craig Taborn and David Virelles. 9. Earl Sweatshirt “Doris” (Tan Cressida/Columbia) Not the only painfully self-aware album this year by a rapper of intoxicating skills — just the least opportunisti c, and the most credibly human. The brisk wordplay, the stoner cadence, the styl ish production, the tightknit crew: none of it puts Mr. Sweatshirt at ease, and for now that’s just fine. 10. Cécile McLorin Salvant “WomanChild” (Mack Avenue) This American debut of an arrest ing young jazz vocalist allows for comparison to Abbey Lincoln and Sarah Vaughan (and for bonus points, Valaida Snow), but that’s not its end game. Ms. Salvant ha s designs on a trickster’s kind of traditionalism — and the right trio, led by the s cholarly pianist Aaron Diehl, to play her straight man. TOP SONGS Drake “Hold On, We’re Going Home” (Young Money/Cash Money/Republic) Lorde “Royals” (Universal) Brandy Clark “Just Like Him” (Slate Creek) Sky Ferreira “Nobody Asked Me (If I Was Okay)” (Capitol) “” (G.O.O.D./Def Jam) Kacey Musgraves “It Is What It Is” (Mercury Nashville) Kanye West featuring Frank Ocean “New Slaves” (Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam) “” (Matador) Jason Isbell “Cover Me Up” (Southeastern/Thirty Tigers) Savages “Husbands” (Matador)

Rolling Stone 50 BEST ALBUMS OF 2013 The past 12 months had more great music going on than any year in recent memory. Some of the most innovative artists of the last decade — Kanye West, , Q ueens of the Stone Age, Vampire Weekend and — all made watershed album s. Rock & roll greats like John Fogerty, Paul McCartney and David Bowie proved t hey could be as vital as ever. The EDM explosion kept blowing up thanks to artis ts like Disclosure and Avicii; old-school titans like Eminem and Pusha T pushed hip-hop forward alongside new-school innovators like , Earl Swe atshirt, J. Cole and Danny Brown; Kacey Musgraves and Ashley Monroe made country that was traditional and iconoclastic. But the most exciting news of the year m

ight ve been the astonishing number of breakout new artists, from retro-Eighties sister act Haim, to Brit-folk prodigy Jake Bugg, to indie-rockers Parquet Court s, to post-punkers Savages to chart-topping 17-year-old truth-bomber Lorde. Even

Miley Cyrus wrecking ball of an adult-oriented breakout album was kinda awesom e. Oh 2013, you gave so much and asked so little; 2014, get crackin . You ve got a lot to live up to. Contributors: Jon Dolan, , Christian Hoard, , and Simon

Vozick-Levinson

1 Vampire Weekend, Modern Vampires of the City The first two Vampire Weekend albums showed off a sound unlike any other in rock : a precocious mix of , African guitar grooves and wry, boat-shoe-prepp y lyrics that were sometimes too cute for their own good. But with Modern Vampir es of the City, they went deeper, adding scope and ambition to all the sophistic

ation. In 2013, no other record mixed emotional weight with studio-rat craft and

sheer stuck-in-your-head hummability like this one. It s one of rock s great al

bums about staring down adulthood and trying not to blink — that moment where, as singer Ezra Koenig puts it, you realize "wisdom s a gift/But you d trade it for youth." The music is sculpted and subtly bonkers, with orchestral sweeps balanci ng hymnlike beauty and dub-inflected grooves. Koenig earns those comp arisons thanks to vivid lyrics about youngish things in crisis — the unemployed fr

iend who can t find a reason to shave in "Obvious Bicycle," the weary couple sol

diering through the road-trip epic "Hannah Hunt." Then there s Koenig himself, f illing songs like "Worship You" with religious allusions, evoking the search for

meaning and faith with wit and skepticism. The album s fog-over- cover reminds us just how hard that search has become. The music makes it feel worth t

he heartache just the same.

2 Kanye West,

Kanye s electro masterpiece is his most extreme album ever, which is saying some

thing. No wonder the late, great embraced Yeezus, since it s basically the Metal Machine Music concept translated into futuristic hip-hop, all industri al overload and hypertense egomania and hostile vibes. The music is part Eightie

s synthblitz , part Jamaican . But it s all Kanye, taking you on a guided tour of the dark shit inside his brain. He rages about racial politi cs ("New Slaves"), he demands his damn croissants (""), he comes on li

ke a robot sex machine ("I m in It"). He kibitzes with the Lord, who agrees Kany e is the shit. And he ends with the Seventies-soul send-up "," maybe the

most audacious song he s ever written, not to mention the most beautiful.

3 Daft Punk, Now that the pop world has caught up with what Daft Punk were doing 15 years ago , naturally the French electro pioneers decide to rip it up and start again. So they spend most of Random Access Memories doing lush Seventies-style studio funk fusion, not at all unreminiscent of or Average White Band. Is it a s trange move at the height of the EDM era? Yes. (Any album that can fit in appear

ances by , German disco godfather and Seventies shlock-pop king Paul Williams is working on its own terms.) Is it awesome? Mais oui. And for all the lovingly detailed live-band touches, Daft Pu

nk prove they re still pop fans at heart with "Get Lucky" — an instant disco class

ic where Pharrell and the great raise their cups to the stars.

4 Paul McCartney, New The sound of a 71-year-old Beatle getting back in the ring. McCartney plays to h is strengths: Wings-like glam rock, Little Richard howls and, yep, some remarkab ly Beatlesque pop tunes and George Martin-ish arrangements (thanks partly to Mar

tin s son, Giles, who produced several tracks). "Early Days" challenges lingerin

g misconceptions about McCartney s role in ("I don t see how they ca

n remember/When they weren t where it was at"). Sir Paul also engages 21st-centu ry pop with sharp ears, bringing in young-gun producers like , and . He even rocks a quasi-rap flow and some giddy, Gaga-styl e stadium chants on "Queenie Eye." As Macca understands better than almost anyon

e, rock & roll is fueled by a hunger for good times and an ageless exuberance.

5 Arcade Fire, Seventy minutes of wide-screen rock co-produced by LCD Soundsystem retiree James Murphy, the Grammy-grabbing, high-aiming, arena-filling, indie-earnest fa mily band does what , and so many before it have done: re connect rock to its dance-floor soul. There are flashes of glam, punk, disco, el

ectro, dub and Haitian rara. Being Arcade Fire, there s also emo dramatic

s and cultural critiques (staring at screens: don t do it!). Of course, the hate

rs hated; the chin-scratchers debated the politics of the album s Caribbean unde rcurrents. But that ability to provoke actual feelings is what makes this great. And no release this year had a more entertaining rollout brouhaha. Stephen Colb ert called them pretentious to their faces; they laughed too. And then the party

started.

6 Queens of the Stone Age, …Like Clockwork came back after a life-threatening illness, called up some rock-star pals (, Trent Reznor, ) and revived his mordantly arch-metal outfit to kick out creepily torrid, darkly suave Camaro rock like only he can. Homme combines menacing riffs and glammy refinement, sounding like Bowie reborn as a winking dark lord of the underworld. "Fairweather Friends," featuring Grohl and Sir Elton, is a grunge-grease bitchfest. On "," Homme cru shes riffs and mellows out with "a potion to erase you." Yet for all the awesome ly negative vibing and genuine twistedness (see "If I Had a Tail"), Clockwork hi

t with an everydude heaviness that s getting rarer and rarer these days. Plus, t

he king of Queens still has the best hard-rock falsetto of his generation.

7 Lorde, Pure Heroine

"We don t care/We aren t caught up in your love affair," declares 17-year-old Ne

w Zealand pop savant Ella Maria Lani Yelich-O Connor on her hit "Royals," a bitc h-slap to status-driven music culture on behalf of every cash-strapped kid (and

grown-up) exhausted by it. Lorde s debut album ended up ruling the pop charts an

yway, thanks to a sultry, swaggering, hip-hop-savvy, fully grown voice and stark

synth jams as earworm-y as Miley s or Katy s splashiest hits. Set against the m usic s minimal throb, Lorde s languidly aphoristic lyrics balance rock-star swag

ger and torqued-up teenage angst, so lines like "We re hollow like the bottles t

hat we drain" or "We re so happy, even when we re smiling out of fear" have a ra

ttle-nerve pathos and power like nothing else going in 2013.

8 The National, Trouble Will Find Me These guys have spent the past decade building their rep as the most re splendent sadsters in , a band whose ornate music matches -siz e heartache of singer . But on the best record of their career, th ey pare back that richly ornamental sound to reveal its black-candy pop core. Be rninger moans his afflicted romantic entreaties like a man drowning in too much merlot and just enough , over tensely coiled rhythms and hazy guita

r shimmer. The National s fast songs have never had such immediate surge, and th eir slow ones have never had such elegiac power. "If you want to see me cry, pla y Let It Be or Nevermind," Berninger sings on "Don t Swallow the Cap," nailing t

he album s ambition to make mood-swing rock with old-school gravitas.

9 , AM On its fifth album, this quintessentially British band moved to L.A., took inspi ration from old hits and glam Bowie, and made a spiky, slinky beast of a record, perfect for that moment in the evening when you just realized that mayb

e that seventh drunk text you sent to your ex-girlfriend wasn t such a hot idea.

The album was reportedly inspired by s breakup with model and TV ho

st Alexa Chung, and songs like "Why d You Only When You re High" and the achingly slow "Do I Wanna Know" are full of slow-simmering heartache. The caree ning "chip-shop rock & roll" (as Turner called it) of previous records was repla

ced by a creeping desert-rock paranoia. And the frayed party s-over lullaby "Mad

Sounds" might ve been the sweetest Velvet Underground echo of Lou Reed s final

year.

10 John Fogerty, Wrote A Song For Everyone The songs Fogerty wrote in Creedence Clearwater Revival are as embedded in the A merican grain as any in rock & roll. But this collection of recut CCR hits and s olo tracks — recorded with fans like Bob Seger, My Morning Jacket, , Mi randa Lambert and — shows how vital and relevant his songwriting rema ins more than 40 years after it owned the radio. Fogerty updates his Vietnam War missive "Fortunate Son" for the Iraq-Afghanistan era backed by the Foos, belts out "Born on the Bayou" alongside Kid Rock, unspools the ballad "Someday Never C omes" with roots rockers Dawes, and gets locked in a guitar duel with Brad Paisl ey on the underrated solo gem "Hot Rod Heart." The result is a wonderful convers

ation of an album — not to mention a damn good time.

11 , Light Up Gold

The songs on Parquet Courts breakthrough are fast, brief and laugh-out-loud fun ny. These Brooklyn dudes take inspiration from the Nineties vibe of Pavement or Archers of Loaf, hitting their slack-ass glory in the climactic guitar groove "S toned and Starving," where picking out snacks in a bodega feels like an epic que

st.

12 Jake Bugg, Jake Bugg Nineteen-year-old U.K. singer-songwriter Bugg is an acoustic revivalist with the

guts to shake up the traditions he loves. On his debut, Bugg gave 62 Dylan, Bu ddy Holly and the Everly Brothers a cocky Oasis charge, while packing his songs with sharp observations about street-fighting strife and coming-of-age confusion

.

13 Disclosure, Settle This U.K. brother duo may still be too young to get into some of the clubs where

their music is bumping. But they re steeped in disco history ("White Noise" cou ld be an old-school classic). Settle sounds like an anthology of great cl ub singles, using guest vocalists and stylistic jumps to flow like an expertly c

urated party tape.

14 Drake,

With Kanye breathing fire in rarified air, Drake is the people s rapper, a smart kid conflicted about his fame, heart, family, everything except his mic potency . But what makes his lonely fantastic voyage matter is its emotional weight, whi

ch gets crucial amplification from Noah "40" Shebib s whirlpool beats.

15 Atoms for Peace, Amok

Thom Yorke s side band moves your body, even as it does Radiohead-ishly unnatura l things to your mind. Joined by and Radiohead producer , York

e has rarely sounded so freewheeling vocally, and the music s marriage of live i mprovisation and studio mixology gives him a rich, shifty palette to play off of

.

16 David Bowie, The Next Day

Bowie s first trip in 10 years gets more fascinatingly weird the longer you list en (see the sly Leonard Cohen parody "You Feel So Lonely You Could Die"). But it

s the naked emotion of "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" that sums up The Next Day — loud, melodic, intense, with the man pushing his thin white voice into the strat

osphere.

17 Danny Brown, Old

The year s most gripping hip-hop street-life narratives came from a crazy-coiffe d Detroit native with a gift for vivid introspection and a taste for wild beats, from the of "" to the avant-trap of "Side B (Dope Song)."

It doesn t get much more disturbingly real than the raw-sex chronicle "Dope Fie

nd Rental."

18 Ashley Monroe, Like A Rose This Knoxville girl gave us a juicy old-school honky-tonk set wrapped in pedal s teel, full of characters as real as your neighbors and sung with Dolly Parton so

ul and sass. But when Monroe suggests ganja and whips and chains to her man on "

Weed Instead of Roses," it s clear this isn t your grandma s .

19 Nine Inch Nails, Hesitation Marks On the first Nine Inch Nails album in five years, Trent Reznor threw a dance par ty at of oblivion. Songs like "" and "All Time Low" co mbine the gnarled-gear drive of vintage NIN with the ice-storm atmospherics that

Reznor has brought to his recent soundtrack work.

20 Laura Marling, Once I Was An Eagle Marling is the most compelling singer-songwriter of the U.K. roots-revival scene , with a voice that conjures young . Kicking off with a heart-surgi cal seven-song opening suite, her fourth LP is the record Carey Mulligan in Insi

de Llewyn Davis might have made after kicking Justin Timberlake to the curb.

21 Sky Ferreira, Night Time, My Time

Ferreira s Eighties-weaned diva pop recalls no-nonsense Nineties alt-rockers lik e PJ Harvey and , setting love-wracked disclosures to grungy guita r static, electronic gauze and computer-groove churn. When she sings about her "

heavy-metal heart," she s not kidding: The woman works well with machines.

22 Phoenix, Bankrupt!

The French indie-pop group didn t come through with hits on par with "1901" or " Lisztomania." Phoenix did something even cagier, rolling out sleek, savvy songs that took apart fame, fashion and coolness from the inside, without scrimping on

their space-rock whoosh, surging melodies and wry New Wave pout.

23 My Bloody Valentine, MBV

It s the noise-rock — 22 years in the making and utterly throttl

ing just the same. MBV s third LP echoed their landmark Loveless with new shapes and colors, but the same deceptive tunefulness. And "Nothing Is" is nothing les

s than the art-rock equivalent of crazy-strong hash.

24 Eminem, Marshall Mathers LP 2 On the sequel to his 2000 masterpiece, Eminem taps the maniac genius who first s

cared America into submission — Stan s little brother even came back to murder Mr.

Mathers. But on "Headlights" he made peace with his estranged mom in what s got

ta be Slim Shady s huggiest moment ever.

25 Elton John, The Diving Board Sir Elton reunites with rock & roll curator and old writing partn er Bernie Taupin for a return to classic piano-man form. Mixing singer-songwrite r balladry, music-hall storytelling, corner-church testifying and parlor-room no

stalgia, it s the sound of a legend with his showbiz guard dropped.

26 Chance The Rapper, Acid Rap The second mixtape from this 20-year-old Chicago MC is the ultimate in psychedel ic hip-hop. Chance spins -meets-Hendrix language swirls punctuated by t

he real-life observations of a kid who grew up in a world where "it s dark a lot

. . . easier to find a gun than it is to find a fucking parking spot."

27 , Amid all the foam-finger hub-bub, Miley made an excellent pop record. Bangerz is full of country-flavored slow jams and dirty beats like "Do My Thang" and the a

ce duet "My Darlin ." She drops top-shelf electro hooks and navigates com

ing-of-age conundrums, bringing depth and vulnerability to one hell of a party.

28 Kacey Musgraves, Same Trailer Different Park This charmingly matter-of-fact 25-year-old Texan makes commercial country sound

artistically fertile again. Singing about a friend with benefits ("It Is What It

Is") or weed smokin and same-sex kissing ("Follow Your Arrow"), she s ballsy,

traditional and pop. Call her the millennials Loretta Lynn.

29 Bombino, Nomad For this raw cross-cultural jam, Omara "Bombino" Moctar — a hot-shit guitarist fro m Niger — hooked up with Black Key , who produced the LP with a crate-

digging R&B/psych vibe. It s full of hypnotic fuzz, and the cosmic country of "T

amiditine" conjures Workingman s Dead – if it d been made in the Sahara desert.

30 Tegan & Sara, Heartthrob After a decade-plus making smart folk pop, this duo of Canadian twins took a lea p into radio-hungry dance beats. Their songwriting stayed sharp and revealing as ever, and on "Closer," they show up all the billion-dollar divas with a disco b

urner about "how to get you underneath me" that is one of the year s sweatiest s

ingles.

31 Haim, On their debut, these three harmonizing sisters found an elusive art -pop sweet spot between TLC and — and won over indie kids and teenyboppe rs alike. "" plays like a great lost Eighties radio hit. But "My Song 5,

" with its broken beats and snaky flow, is the hook-mad high point.

32 , The Bones of What You Believe On their debut, this trio made indie-weaned synth-rock that hit with as much big-box thwump as Rihanna or "Roar." Singer Lauren Mayberry throws herself into stalker-pop come-ons, and nearly every song is bright and cutting and almos

t scarily impassioned.

33 Pusha T,

The cockier half of the didn t choose to go solo — he had to after his brot her found God. Pusha, in turn, found Kanye West, whose stark and twisted product

ion helped make My Name Is My Name feel like a more lyrically focused companion

piece to his own Yeezus. It s the year s sharpest hit of street philosophy.

34 Neko Case, The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the

More I Love You

The country-rock firecracker s sixth LP is full of bold arrangements and hot gui

tars (courtesy of My Morning Jacket, among others). It s also a tour de force of intense, big-chorused songwriting. In other words, plenty more than just a big

voice. But, damn: That s one knee-bucklingly magnificent voice.

35 Best Coast, Fade Away EP

It s just seven songs but still felt like a breakthrough, mixing the noise-pop b

uzz of Best Coast s 2011 debut with the swarming melodies and emotional payoff of

last year s The Only Place. It s where Bethany Cosentino s love of Patsy Cline

meets her love of My Bloody Valentine, and it suggests she s growing as a songwr

iter by the month.

36 Waxahatchee, Cerulean Salt

In a year of great Nineties-indebted, female-fronted indie-rock albums (see also

: Swearin , Speedy Ortiz), Katie Crutchfield s stood out. It s full of rubbed-ra w heart-to-hearts about hanging with other miserable young people, waiting for t he fun part to begin, and starting to get the suspicion this might be the fun pa

rt.

37 The So So Glos, Blowout The So So Glos are Brooklyn kids — the kind who actually grew up there, a band of brothers brimming with boyish energy and burn-down-the-house exuberance. Even wh en the songs on their third album are full of darkness and doubt, they jump to t he pogo-punk style of Rancid or Green Day, but with a Clash-style sense of missi on.

38 , Wakin on a Pretty Daze The fifth LP from the resplendently mellow Vile is a beautiful sinkhole of medit ative guitar mysticism. The meandering tunes roll along on craggy, ambling licks and the wisdom gleaned from whiling away his days in a "shame chamber" — quite co

ntentedly, it would seem, judging by how pretty these songs are.

39 Keith Urban, Fuse

The amiable country dude s latest is called Fuse for a reason — only has done so well synergizing dance-pop drive and countrypolitan pump. Urban yoke s Eighties guitar flash and Euro beats to tight-crafted Nashville songs about ca

rs and girls and girls in cars — classic given a fresh polish.

40 , Lightning Bolt

Pearl Jam s 10th album is a brooding, pissed-off set — great news for fans. Lots o

f Lightning Bolt s best moments are , including "Sirens," their own hau

nted take on the PJ-inspired power-ballad subgenre. But let s be clear: The kill

er punk-metal rant "Mind Your Manners" should be played extremely loud.

41 J. Cole, Born Sinner Releasing your major-label rap record the same day as Kanye took balls. So did s

taying true to hip-hop s vaunted edutaining tradition with a set of hypersmart, excellently self-produced tracks that recall, well, vintage Kanye in their abili ty to dramatize the tension between Hov-size career ambition and post-Pac truth

saying.

42 Earl Sweatshirt, Doris

Odd Future s brightest cult star lives up to his reputation as an unholy verbal wizard on his long-awaited debut album. He also upends it — pushing past the amora l bomb-lobbing that won him notoriety with a newly introspective style, perfectl

y suited to third-eye-opening beats courtesy of Pharrell, RZA and Earl himself.

43 Savages,

"I m cold and I m cold and I m cold and I m stubborn," Savages info

rms us on the band s debut. With the repetitive insistence of a howitzer and the

urgency of an air-raid siren, these four women made some of 2013 s scariest, mo st thrilling noise, finding new worlds of terror and stress in Eighties U.K. pos

t-punk.

44 Valerie June, Pushin Against a Stone

This New York-via-Tennessee singer mixed blues, soul, country, string-band folk

and gospel while the Black Keys Dan Auerbach added old-school ambience. It s th e sound of a rookie doing her own thing like no retro-soul singer since Amy Wine

house.

45 Avicii, True Hey, you got Mumford & Sons in my EDM! Swedish producer Avicii slyly celebrated

s stateside boom by combining vintage roots music and energetic

house beats. It s an exuberant cross-cultural good time, and thanks to anthems

like "Wake Me Up," it never lets up.

46 Franz Ferdinand, Right Thoughts Right Words Right Action After four years away, the mod Scottish boys jump back into the game swinging ha rd. Right Thoughts has many of their friskiest tracks ever, long on witty high-e

nergy blasts of rhythm-guitar lechery.

47 M.I.A., Matangi Once again, the avant-R&B rebel proved the raw power of her global-cauldron danc e beats and hater-blasting lyrics. Matangi takes on her bird-flipping 2012 Super

Bowl scandal and even has a tender lover s jam in "Come Walk With Me," finding

revelation by living out contradiction.

48 , Slow Focus

This duo s third set of psychedelic gets pretty dark, but its wo

rdless tension-and-release journeys are no less majestic. It s filled with tsuna mis of corroded noise and industrial beats — like the soundtrack to a

dystopian sci-fi movie, or real life in 2013.

49 , The Terror The Lips return to the apocalyptic acid punk of their Eighties albums, with monk

ish meditation, darkening-plains rumble and scouring electronics. It s what happ

ens when psych heroes find the hard-won honesty in whoa-dude revelation.

50 , Song Reader

There s old-school, and then there s "Man, it would rule if someone would invent

electricity" old-school. Beck s "album" of turned out to be a sly c

ollection of folky swing tunes, steeped in Beck s absurdist wit. One ukulele bal lad, "Old Shanghai," even became a YouTube hit.

NME s 50 Best Albums Of 2013

1. Arctic Monkeys - AM ‘AM’ felt like a genuine evolution for the Monkeys, and one that wasn’t without risk. Its success, however, rested on the two things that had always made them special : Alex Turner’s wry way with words, and his way with a tune. ‘AM’ boasted an embarrass ment of riches on both counts. ‘AM’ is the album against which everything else will

now be measured.

2. Kanye West - Yeezus

Two schools of thought when it comes to Kanye West. One is he s an egotistical f

ame-gobbling ignoramus. The other is he s all of that, but also a genius. Yeezus was his most sonically challenging album to date. His impeccably selected colla borators would ensure that – , Charlie Wilson and Daft Punk. And som

e of it ranked among Kanye s best work.

3. Queens of the Stone Age - …Like Clockwork

…Like Clockwork became Queens of the Stone Age s highest-ever charting album in the UK. It was the band’s most accessible work to date, featuring appearances from Elton John, Alex Turner, Jake Shears, Dave Grohl and . None of that

diluted the essence of what Queens Of The Stone Age were all about, though.

4. Foals - Holy Fire

‘Holy Fire’ was another giant stride forward for Oxford s Foals. It proved they’re a b and capable of being wildly diverse at the same time as still sounding like them selves. A number two chart placing, a Mercury nomination and their first festiva l headline slot at Latitude followed. ‘Holy Fire’ was the record that tipped Foals i

nto the big leagues.

5. Savages - Silence Yourself

‘Silence Yourself’ almost never happened – Savages early management put them in a pos ition where splitting up seemed more appealing than compromising any further. Of course, the quartet’s unfuckwithable nature prevailed, and they fired their manag ers and channeled their ire into these 10 songs that are as much indebted to abs

urd metal as post-punk.

6. Daft Punk - Random Access Memories This year, Daft Punk returned as robotic superheroes. Their album has since caus ed a significant upturn in vinyl sales, created a cult of audiophile fans discus sing its headphone moments online and made a hit DJ of 73 year-old Giorgio Morod er. And the most improbable thing? They did all this while barely putting in a p

ublic appearance.

7. Arcade Fire - Reflektor It was a heart-in-mouth moment, the release of Arcade Fire’s fourth. A finely judg ed masterstroke hung on the perfect pairing between a dancier Arcade Fire, inspi red by the carnival spirit, and rock scholar and beat maestro James Murphy. They may well be the most important band of their generation and they’re gonna have fu

n doing it.

8. & The Bad Seeds - Push The Sky Away

The band s first album since Cave’s longest collaborator left the band saw violinist take a more prominent role. The band created an unch aracteristically eerie and ethereal sound of terse guitar throbs and twitchy ele

ctronic warbles. It was a lesson in how to experiment by a band at their peak.

9. Laura Marling - Once I Was An Eagle If the basic premise of Once I Was An Eagle - another failed relationship goes u nder the folk-rock microscope – felt overly-familiar, the results were often surpr ising. It was an album about self-examination and empowerment, on which Laura Ma rling refused to let herself be defined by the man she’d just ushered out of her l

ife.

10. David Bowie - The Next Day 2013 socked us in the face with a surprise David Bowie album that probably was h is best since ‘Scary Monsters’, eschewing concept and reinvention for the sheer joy of solid, poppy, classic songwriting in the company of prime-era producer ‘Tony Vi

sconti’. Oh ill health rumours, up yours, said Dame Dave, in so many words.

11. Jon Hopkins - Immunity He kicked off with the noise of him opening-up his own studio, and finished by r ecording the street sounds from his own road at 3am. ‘Immunity’ was Jon Hopkins tryi ng to get beyond the abstract colour-wash of pure techno to build something brai ny that also reached out into the imperfect real-world of real emotion, and actu

ally touched you.

12. MIA - Matangi

There was a lot riding on MIA s fourth album. Mantangi proved proved that one

of music s most fearless and playfully intelligent provocateurs was still as ful

l of ideas as she ever was.

13. Drenge - Drenge The dark bubbling underneath the predominant paisley wash of this year’s new bands came from Drenge, whose debut heaved with the lurching energy of prime grungers like early Nirvana. Drenge’s take was bratty and witty rather than angsty. Smart and slightly surreal in interview, brilliant live, their debut showed a duo with

potential beyond a swift namecheck.

14. Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires Of The City In an experiment-or-perish year, Vampire Weekend served their innovation with cr acking great tunes on. Their masterfully restrained third album sounded like it was played on wooden chests, antique synths, icebergs and cash registers. But at its core was some of the most consistently artful and intelligent songwriting o

f the year.

15. Peace - In Love Peace were the first of Birmingham’s new wave of talent (see also: Swim Deep, Trou maca, Superfood) to release a debut album. In doing so they justified the hype s urrounding the city and themselves. With songs such as the psychedelia of ‘Higher Than The Sun’, they marked themselves out as a band full of spontaneity, hormones

and natural talent.

16. Jagwar Ma - Howlin’ According to , “the future of the galaxy” depended on Jagwar Ma’s debut album. No problem: the trio melded beats baggier than Ian Brow n’s trousers with a sleek, contemporary aesthetic that went way beyond mere pastic

he. The result was an album that was next to impossible not to dance to.

17. Waxahatchee - Cerulean Salt Katie Crutchfield’s second album using the Waxahatchee moniker was a breakout inde pendent hit this year – a soulfully scuzzy, bare bones grunge-pop triumph. It coul d have been plucked from the mid- racks of Empire Records, but was also ver

y now, with Girls creator amongst the record s champions.

18. Hookworms - Pearl Mystic The DIY punk and hardcore that inspired Leeds quintet Hookworms to make music ma y not be obvious in their tranced-out, glowingly psychedelic garage rock, but it’s essential to their ethos. This unexpected smash of a debut album offered repeti tive riff monolithia and reverbed tenderness akin to a less pompous Spiritualize

d.

19. Disclosure - Settle Settle helped introduce underground to a generation of clubbers more familiar with David Guetta than genre pioneer Ron Hardy; it mixed that sensibil ity with the 2-step swing of ’90s UK garage; and managed to be so glossily chart-f riendly that the brothers scored a Number One album in June. Clean club beats ne

ver sounded so cool.

20. The National - Trouble Will Find Me The National’s summer release was decidedly unsunny, a tearjerker of a record that should be hidden well out of sight of the recently broken-hearted. Delivering u

nadorned, Merlot-infused passion alongside asymmetrical time signatures, Troubl

e Will Find Me was busy and Sea Of Love was awash with rolling waves of uncert

ainty.

21. Iceage - You’re Nothing If the songs of Iceage’s 2011 debut ‘New Brigade’ felt veiled and cryptic, there would be no confusing the contents of ‘You’re Nothing’. Across 12 tracks, Elias Bender Rønnen felt wrang his soul dry. We also heard a band evolving beyond the m oves of their debut, adopting a new heaviness and vigour. Magnificently abrasive

.

22. - Monomania ‘Monomania’ was an ugly record about ugly feelings - of inadequacy, of desperation a nd, above all, of betrayal – that wasn’t so much a break-up album as a falling-to-pi eces one. Don’t let that put you off, however: Cox brought some remarkable songs b ack from his personal abyss. ‘Monomania’ was searingly honest and brilliantly uncomp

romising.

23. Chvrches - The Bones Of What You Believe Chvrches managed to deliver on the early hype with a debut album full of heart,

attitude and - above all - massive tunes. Here s was a synth pop band you could

hold close to your heart; intimate and endearing, but also stuff full of hooks.

24. Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold So evocative of New York that sewer steam seemed to vent through the speakers wh enever you played it, Parquet Courts’ debut was low in fidelity, but high on every thing else. These 15 tracks were imbued with a wit and charm of Pavement, REM an d Television that instantly endeared itself. Andrew Savages lyrics were laugh ou

t loud funny.

25. Haim - Days Are Gone The pressure was on Haim sisters Este, Danielle and Alana to deliver an album as good as their raucous gigs. Six years of work was condensed into 11 tracks that

weren t the raw rock their gig-goers had come to expect. Instead the record bri mmed with bright ideas and pop hooks – a twist in their narrative that became anot

her reason to go Haim mental.

26. Factory Floor - Factory Floor While Daft Punk and Arcade Fire yoked their wagons to opulent disco to make a st atement about how accomplished they were, Factory Floor’s long-awaited debut album got inside the genre’s nerves and bones. Their intense arpeggios seemed to irradi

ate the fleshy parts of your body – less catchy than utterly mind-controlling.

27. Earl Sweatshirt - Doris ‘Doris’ confirmed sleepy-eyed Thebe Kgositsile as Odd Future’s most talented wordsmith , a man capable of twisted and wickedly funny wordplay. Owing a large debt to th e surreal rhymes of MF Doom, the ingenuity of tracks such as ‘Whoa’ and ‘Hive’ suggested

a student on the brink of overtaking teacher.

28. - Released three years after NME’s album of 2010, ‘Hidden’, These New Puritans’ third albu m featured 40 musicians, a Portuguese fado singer and a hawk. It was also a brav e slice of game-changing from the Southend-On-Sea band. On ‘Fra

gment Two’, ‘V (Island Song)’ and ‘Dream’ they sounded like no other band on the planet.

29. My Bloody Valentine - m b v

After 22 years, many had all but given up hope of Kevin Shields finishing My Blo

ody Valentine s third album. Yet m b v was a worthy successor to Loveless an

d then some, wandering off into a murky drum n bass hinterland.

30. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Mosquito With its unchristian gospels, swampland treks and ballads built around the real- life rattle of underground trains, ‘Mosquito’ was a malevolent neon monster intent o n spiking the pristine buttock of pop and sucking it dry. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ fou rth album took , Nick Zinner and Brian Chase’s funk-punk to previously unex

plored extremes.

31. Merchandise - Totale Nite Merchandise drew inspiration from everything from eastern philosophy to the expe

rience of coming of age in a post-boom America tearing at the seams when making

Totale Nite . Not bad for a group that notionally, at least, you could categori

se as a punk-rock band.

32. Palma Violets - 180 Recorded during two weeks of party sessions, Palma Violets’ debut was a snapshot o f a band who made you want to be in their gang with every hedonistic howl. The a lbum teetered on the edge of chaos, but rescued itself with songs as heart-warmi ng as opener ‘Best Of Friends’ that were catchy and bright enough to shine through t

he madness.

33. - Heartthrob producer ’s influence shone through on the twins’ seventh alb um. It saw Tegan and Sara Quin ditch their usual new wave sound for sugar-rush s ongs influenced by “great contemporary pop”. It was golden moments like the Gwen Ste fani-indebted ‘Drove Me Wild’ that helped the pair outgrow their cult status after 2

0 years of trying.

34. Janelle Monae - The Electric Lady Received wisdom goes that Monáe is a better concept than popstar, but on her secon d studio album, she dropped her guard to confront her personal limits and sounde d more fully realised than ever for it. ‘The Electric Lady’ was funky and glittering

, and slipped out the odd humanising tear. Power up.

35. Bill Callahan - Dream River Newly engaged and following the serene path laid out on 2011’s ‘Apocalypse’, Callahan’s 15th album was stunning for its simple contentment: “I really am a lucky man,” he sa ng on ‘Small Plane’. The only advance singles were two dub – but the genre’s war

ped lope permeated the gentle Americana Callahan whittles here.

36. Deap Vally - Sistrionix This debut from LA duo Lindsey Troy and Julie Edwards was bold and fearless. It

wasn’t just the riotous rock n roll clatter that was gutsy, though. It was also t he messages within the music: an assault on misogyny and sexism in the music ind ustry that sat alongside storming jams about peace, love and understanding. 37. Kurt Vile - ‘Wakin On A Pretty Daze’

Kurt Vile s the kind of guy you can imagine strumming a steel-string guitar on a porch somewhere. This album, bookended by two monstrous tracks (‘Wakin’ On A Pretty Day’ and ‘Goldtone’) that hovered around the 10-minute mark, distilled his ability to

take a single, simple musical idea and stretch it into hypnotic mega-jams.

38. - The Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas

The lyrics on Barnett s debut saw her eking out a whole song from a gardening-in duced panic attack and another one about penning "the best song ever written" th

en forgetting it.

39. The Julie Ruin - Run Fast The fluorescent, punky spit of ‘Run Fast’ was Kathleen Hanna’s first release since rec overing from Lyme disease, an experience that made her confront her mortality an d reputation as riot grrrl’s de facto leader. There are still radical feminist sta tements on ‘Run Fast’, but it’s more complex than that: the sound of one woman celebra

ting survival.

40. Fuck Buttons - Slow Focus Fuck Buttons’ music was beamed all over the world in the 2012 Olympics Opening Cer emony, but ‘Slow Focus’ didn’t sound like a victory lap, exactly. Fuck Buttons’ third lo ng-player was a moody and truculent beast. Benjamin John Power and Andrew Hung t oning down warm waves of bliss in favour of snarling synth and synapse-searing c

rescendo.

41. The Strokes -

After 2011’s Angles vanished in a cloud of inter-band uncertainties and drug hab

its, few things seemed less likely than a new Strokes album this year. Then came

Comedown Machine . No interviews, no tours, no festival slots, barely any cove

r art – just 11 gleaming tracks and Julian Casablancas high-pitched vocal among t

hem.

42. Cate Le Bon - Mug Museum There was a slow-burning, rural air to Cate Le Bon’s first two albums, perhaps bec ause of her upbringing on a west Wales farm. For ‘Mug Museum’ she moved to LA and re corded with producer Noah Georgeson, who Cate described as “the perfect combinatio n of calm and brutality”, but her music retains its blurry, out-of-time psychedeli

c wonder.

43. The Knife - Shaking The Habitual They may as well have called it ‘Shaking Off The Hipsters’, so effective and bracing was The Knife’s fourth album in scaring off fairweather fans and of hea rt. Yet for all its hellish terror, it also contained the sorrowing, chilly beau ty of ‘Raging Lung’ and the sexy fury of ‘Full Of Fire’. Never predictable, always compe

lling.

44. Speedy Ortiz - Major Arcana Speedy Ortiz’s debut album drew eyes and ears to Massachusetts, where Sadie Dupuis , Mike Falcone, Matt Robidoux and Darl Ferm were channeling the discordant groov es of Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. The enchanted guitars were layered with Dupuis’ sa ccharine snarl, and the poetry lecturer’s remarkably eloquent and detailed stories

.

45. Future Of The Left - How To Stop Your Brain In An Accident Their relationship with the has often been fractious, so Future O f The Left bit the bullet and asked fans to fund their fourth album via Pledgemu sic. The result more than rewarded the generosity. A pop sensibility was constan

t, but ‘How To…’ was the Cardiff band’s heaviest and most acerbic work.

46. - More Light The most important music chimes with the times, and no 2013 record did that with

more impact and insight than Primal Scream s barnstorming 10th. Arabian horns a

nd demon beats illuminated ’s trawl through throttled culture, poli

tical atrocities and domestic abuse, and built to the redemptive finale of It s

Alright, It s OK .

47. King Krule - 6 Feet Beneath The Moon Archy Marshall’s debut was released on his 18th birthday, and listening to it was like pushing open a teenager’s bedroom door and being hit by a smoke fog of dub, s

oul, hip-hop, jazz and . Also in there was Marshall s vocal, an unmis

takable growl lamenting the peaks and troughs of life.

48. Pusha T - My Name Is My Name

Executive produced by his G.O.O.D Music boss Kanye West, My Name Is My Name wa s the moment Clipse member Pusha T finally hit the home run he promised for so l ong. The beats snapped hard, the guests including , and

2Chainz glittered and the overall vibe was dirty but triumphant.

49. Daughter - If You Leave Daughter’s first triumph came in 2012, when their track ‘Youth’ soundtracked Channel 4’s Tour de France coverage. ‘If You Leave’ was their second, and marked the London tri o out as a band capable of injecting heartbreak and defiance into their lyrics, and shining a progressive light on modern folk with their delicate music.

Rolling Stone | 20 BEST DANCE ALBUMS OF 2013

01 Daft Punk, Random Access Memories A monumentally ambitious, old-school concept LP filled with wonderfully WTF mome

nts, from Julian Casablancas soul to Paul Williams robo-schmaltz fantas ia, this is a fantasy-baseball-style idealization of the sort of cratedigger dis

co that first inspired Daft Punk s sample-driven, game-changing house music. The

record hot-wired Nile Rodgers radio-ruling rhythm guitar, rebooted Pharrell s

irresistible hip-hop soul, and basically did the time in a high-wire act of

reverse engineering. (Daft Punk s work on Kanye s Yeezus, meanwhile, was anothe r triumph.) You could say they stayed up all night to get lucky, and boy did the

y. But in truth, luck had nothing to do with it.

02 Disclosure, Settle

That of s "Running" put them on the map. But on their debut LP

, the brothers Lawrence (Guy, 21, and Howard, 18) brought house music s yin to d

ubstep s yang and effectively declared themselves heir to the tradition of The C hemical Brothers, Basement Jaxx and Daft Punk – marquee EDM duos as devoted to voc al-driven songcraft as to get-out-on-the-floor beat making. Highlights include t he echo-warped Cockney flourishes of "White Noise," their buoyant collab with fe llow newcomers AlunaGeorge (who also made a great dance-pop LP), and "When The F

ire Starts To Burn," the year s best motivational club banger.

03 Fuck Buttons, Slow Focus

Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power s last set of gargantuan, uncompromisingly t rippy electronic dance-rock was selected as part of the soundtrack for the Londo n 2012 summer Olympics. Their third LP is way darker, but its journeys in tensio n and release are no less awesome, filled with tsunamis of corroded synthesizer noise and industrial beats (see the brutal opener "Brainfreeze"). These wordless

anti-hero anthems may not impress the next Olympic Committee. But they d make a perfect score for dystopian sci-fi films – and for life at the moment, which feel

s like roughly the same thing.

04 Jon Hopkins, Immunity

These gorgeous, glitchy, sexy, somber jams were the year s most addictive bedroo

m beats – EDM for those evenings when you d rather curl up at home with a vapor pi

pe and your boo. Hopkins drifting sense of melody recalls both Eno and the pian o minimalism of Erik Satie. But he also likes forward motion and the sly schaffe

l beats of German techno. By the time the 4/4 kick drums materialize, you ll be

dancing on the couch.

05 , Beautiful Rewind

Four Tet s Keiran Hebden had a hand in two of the year s best dance sets, produc

ing Omar Souleyman s latest alongside this lushly kinetic set. Having just celeb rated the 10th anniversary of his folktronic Rounds with a deluxe reissue, he fo cuses squarely on the dancefloor here, but without compromising his deeply psych edelic loops and timbres. "Kool FM" turns house music hollers and turntable rewi nds into a fractal of old-school reverie; "Buchla" is a smeary datastorm over a

whirlpool of dubby beats. This music sent bodies pinwheeling at New York s Elect

ric Zoo in September. But it works just as well through headphones on the bus.

06 Omar Souleyman, Wenu Wenu A revelatory set of Syrian electro-pop by a veteran wedding singer-turned-cultur al emissary/Bjork remixer, Souleyman pitches R&B woo with fierce Arabic fricativ es and the occasional invocation of Allah. But for lay fans, his hookah-bar synt hs and digitized hand-percussion translate perfectly as top-shelf EDM danc

e music. Produced by Kieran Four Tet Hebden, it s a hot, matter-of-factly radica

l sound.

07 The Field, Cupid’s Head A dark pleasuredome of submerged club beats, aching phonemes, and droning loops

that distend and morph with the awesome intractability of crumbling glaciers, th

is was the year s most magnificently hallucinogenic EDM set. It s mostly about t he bliss of beats, but not entirely: see "No. No…," a nine-minute trip into wildly

abstracted negativity. And even that one is pretty positive.

08 DJ Rashad, Double Cup

This breakout set from the ambassador of Chicago s club scene was one o

f the year s freshest-sounding dance LPs, ominous and decidedly futuristic. Yet

the style shows deep ties to early house and Detroit techno, and echoes of 70s

R&B and soul-jazz abound – just compare the analog keyboard vibe of "Pass That Shi

t" with that of Kool & The Gang s "Summer Madness," and you ll feel Rashad s roo

ts. Then pass that shit, like the man says.

09 Darkside, Psychic The bandname seems no accident: The new project by avant-techno savant Nicolas J aar and multi-instrumentalist pal Dave Harrington works in colors conjuring mid-

period . EDM posing as prog-rock, or visa-versa, it s driven by humano id drum grooves, handclaps and some surprisingly bluesy licks – "Paper Trails" sou nds almost like a JJ Cale remix. Meanwhile, their free-download remix of the ent ire Daft Punk record was a bold act of shotgun digital impressionism. Together, the duo made a convincing argument that the Cold War between and roc

k is ancient history.

10 , The multi-tasking Montrealer behind Chromatics (whose recent opene

d with a hushed take on s "Hey Hey, My My [Into The Black]" before mo rphing into trippy synth-pop) dons his dance rock alter-ego for a set of hook-st udded Euro-trashy jams that can get Daft Punkier than the latest Daft Punk recor d. And unlike so many trigger-finger EDM producers, dude knows when to hold a gr oove and when to cut. Note to Arcade Fire: your homeboy could bring the remi

x fire.

11 , OutRun Good dance music needs a beat more than it needs a concept, but OutRun, thankful ly, is the rare example where the latter strengthens the former. Daft Punk pal K

avinsky s retro drum machines and pop-metal guitars are, on their own, enough to make butts and EQ needles wiggle. An attached teen-movie storyline about a thri llseeker resurrected from a fiery car crash who speeds around in a supernatural

Ferrari Testarossa adds a layer of ridiculous fun.

12 Avicii, True Hey, you got Mumford & Sons in my EDM! Swedish producer Avicii slyly celebrated

electronic music s stateside boom by combining vintage roots music and energetic

house beats. It s an exuberant cross-cultural good time, and thanks to anthems

like "Wake Me Up," it never lets up.

13 Party Supplies, Tough Love

In his production work for Action Bronson s Blue Chips mixtapes, Party Supplies

(real name: Justin Nealis) uses Eighties MOR samples to add pop snap to Bronson s blunted storytelling. On Tough Love, with help from multi-instrumentalist Sean Mann, Nealis eschews swagger for swooning rhythms, winsome melodies and bubbly

beats. It s dance music for introverts.

14 Rudimental, Home

Where other dance mavens compel a sweatily physical loss-of-self, Rudimental s H ome lifts listeners to a more spiritual plane. Graced by soulful vocal guest spo ts by the likes of John Newman and Ella Eyre (on, respectively, standouts "Feel

the Love" and "Waiting All Night"), the London DJ-production collective fuses gl

owing house and propulsive drum n bass with sanctified pop melody. If heaven is

a dance party, this is what s playing.

15 Factory Floor, Factory Floor

If James Murphy s major innovation was bringing the burdens of an aging hipster

s heart and curator s brain to bear on dance music, his DFA dudes in Factory Flo or get over by adding an alluringly icy, metallic sheen to their post-punk influ

enced grooves. Throughout, Vocoder d vocals intone gnomic questions ("Did you fe el like you were going to/fall on the ground?") while industrial synths and disc

o drumwork move the music towards the singularity.

16 The Haxan Cloak, Excavation

Bobby Krlic s psychedelic beat canvases are 50 shades of black — and considering t heir glacial tempos, it might be rhythmically misleading to use the term "beat." Yet they are gorgeously bass-y, bulbous and fascinating. Ambient EDM to disappe

ar into your hoodie by.

17 , Tomorrow s Harvest

The long-brewing fourth album by the revered, elusive Scottish duo is to 70s am

bient prog rock (see Tangerine Dream, etc.) what Daft Punk s Random Access Memor

ies is to 70s disco: a loving, evocative nostalgia trip decidedly framed by 21s t century technology. Full of glittery analog textures and looping melody fragme

nts, it s like watching the movements in a murky fish tank, flashes of beauty fi

ghting their way through the gunk, and more moving for it.

18 Holy Ghost!, Dynamics

Something like New York s answer to Phoenix (the band, not the city), these LCD Soundsystem associates focused their pop lens on their second LP, the upshot bei ng a delicious balancing act of club-beats and song hooks. Inspirational low-ren

t New York lyrical shout-out: "This bodega s got a lovely basement!

19 DJ Koze, Amygdala An elegant mix of streamlined Teutonic techno beats, hip-hop jump cuts, oddball

instrumentation, and warped vocals, including Rhye s Mike Milosh (swimming in a bubble bath of bells on the title track) and the late German actress Hildegard K

nef (whose reading of Rodgers & Hart s "I Could Write A Book" suggests the tripp

iest Pal Joey revival ever).

20 Classixx, Hanging Gardens

The fizzy, elegant L.A. remixers (Phoenix, , Passion Pit) channel the thr

ow-your-hands-in-the-air pleasure principles of 80s dance pop. "All You re Wait

ing For," with LCD Soundsystem s , conjures Madge s rubber-bracelet d

ebut; elsewhere there s the conga-handclap magic of vintage Latin freestyle. But the helium-balloon builds, primordial-ooze bass lines and thick-waisted beats a re all 2013, just minus the stadium EDM overkill.