And a Teenager Shall Lead Them Lorde Rules a Year-End List. by JON PARELES
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And a Teenager Shall Lead Them Lorde Rules a Year-End List. By JON PARELES. December 13, 2013 1. Lorde “Pure Heroine” (Universal) In hip-hop, keyboard-centered processionals ofte n accompany self-congratulatory boasts. “Pure Heroine,” the debut album by Lorde — the songwriter and singer 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. Laura Marling “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 guitars and her serenely knowing voice make every conundru m intimate. 3. Vampire Weekend “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. Nine Inch Nails “Hesitation Marks” (Null/Columbia) Restarting Nine Inch Nails for the first time since 2009, Trent Reznor 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 soul. Multiple agendas don’t hold back her exuberance. 7. David Bowie “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 Berlin albums, 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 funk 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: guitar 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, orchestras 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 Kanye West featuring Frank Ocean “New Slaves” (Roc-a-Fella/Def Jam) Kacey Musgraves “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) The Knife “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 jazz singer of radical ta lent, who teaches you in her own terms — with high clarity and zero pedantry — that singing 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 Sonic Youth, 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 together. 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 Vimeo.) 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-progressive rock group, with grea t grooves, big melodies, distorted and processed guitar, waves of polyrhythm. It’s an unlikely mixture, better than what seemed possible, done so well it seems to answer a need. 7. Marc Anthony “3.0” (Sony Music 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. Sky Ferreira “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” (Motown 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-disco and dark ambient, 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 The Weeknd “Kiss Land” (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) Drake “Worst Behavior” (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 piano trio album in a dozen years, suggests an ocean of inf luences distilled into an original potion.