When it comes to albums, 2013 could be known as the year that Adele took a holiday and the mega-album died. Discs from bankable artists, such as Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, sold poorly relative to the superstars' track records, and reflected a further decline in album sales in general.
Not all was bleak, however. Justin Timberlake put on a suit and tie and got back to work with The 20/20 Experience, a commercially successful followup to his stellar FutureSex/LoveSounds from 2006. The disc, despite lukewarm reviews, debuted atop the Billboard 200 chart with nearly a million copies sold in its first week.
It's not all about the cash box, though. The album form thrives artistically, as the following dozen show. These works, my favourites of the year, represent breakthroughs, innovation, vision, fun and remarkable listenability.
Arcade Fire: Reflektor
Critics twisted themselves into contrarian contortions in their bid to dislike
the latest opus from the Montreal rockestra.
Don’t believe the doubters, though, for the Haitian-inspired double disc is a
towering, limber statement of voodoo boogaloo and
serious art-rock. Essential track: Here
Comes the Night Time
Califone: Stitches
David Bowie’s comeback album The New
Day received acclaim, but the best Bowie-esque sounds came from the experimental
roots-rock droners from Chicago. Less murky
than previous Califone works, Stitches
connects with focused energy, dynamic songwriting and a flannel-shirted sort of
Thin White Duke. Essential track: Frosted Tips
Chance the Rapper: Acid Rap
“I’ve been riding around with my blunt on my lips, with the sun in my eyes and
my gun on my hip.” The adventurous second mix tape from the young Chicago rapper
Chancelor Bennett is a trippy meditation on street life and paranoia. The
dude is extremely cognizant, and his chilled sway recalls the grooviness of the late hip-hop icon J Dilla. Essential track: Pusha Man/Paranoia
Daft Punk: Random Access Memories
Seizing the notion that you can’t spell dance without DNA, the helmet-headed
French conceptualists injected a measure
of humanity into an EDM genre gone giant-sized and programmed. Collaborator
Pharrell Williams handled the
vocals on a pair of irresistible singles (Get Lucky and Lose
Yourself to Dance) that greatly helped facilitate their own titular
suggestions. Essential track: Get Lucky
Elton John: The Diving Board
The rippled piano riffs, the barrel-chested vocals, the affecting chord
progressions, a band assembled by producer T Bone Burnett and the dramatic style
of the words supplied by lyricist Bernie Taupin – all the ingredients for a potent,
stripped-down album from the one-time rocket man were in place. Did it come
together? The proof of this pudding is in the listening. Essential track: Oceans Away
Janelle Monáe: The Electric Lady
In the words of the Isley Brothers:
Who’s that lady? She’s the dapper psychedelic-R&B sorceress whose spaceship
set its sights on a world of chic, sci-fi and
super-fly soul that functions as a funky thriller and a prequel to her acclaimed
debut from 2010, The ArchAndroid. Fellow adventurers include guests
Prince, Solange, Erykah Badu and
Esperanza Spalding. Essential track: Give ’Em What They Love
Jason Isbell: Southeastern
We’ve been waiting on you, Jason Isbell. On his
first three solo albums following his break with Drive-By Truckers, the southern
singer-songwriter and hellraiser
teased with his potential. He’s cleaned up now: Southeastern is a
redemptive victory of moving song and the occasional romp. After hearing his
scathing Super 8, that motel chain won’t be leaving a light on for
Isbell, but the rest of us are glad that we did.
Essential track: Songs
That She Sang in the Shower
Jonathan Wilson: Fanfare
Warmly and wonderfully decorated in the seventies tones of Shuggie Otis, Pink Floyd’s Animals, Dennis Wilson’s
Pacific Ocean Blue and various group and solo efforts from the CSNY
camp, the latest disc from the baked-golden American songster and multi-instrumentalist Jonathan
Wilson constantly pleases. Guest collaborators on the eminently diggable project include Jackson Browne, David
Crosby and Father John Misty. Essential track: All the Way Down
Kacey Musgraves: Same Trailer Different Park
Now that it appears Taylor Swift is never, ever getting back together with
country music, we can embrace the genre’s new crossover stars with no
distraction. In 2013, Kacey Musgraves, Brandy Clark and Ashley Monroe all
released albums that were accepted by indie-music fans, with Musgraves in particular earning fandom for her humour, open-mindedness and tuneful
commentary on rural-life hypocrisy. Essential track: Follow Your Arrow
Kanye West: Yeezus
Say what you will, but the boorish, irritated hip-hop extremist is cutting-edge
and impossible to ignore. On his follow up to 2010’s My Beautiful
Dark Twisted Fantasy, the unbearable maestro dabbles in electro-Mandingo music, monstrous
messianic proclamations and blunt social commentary. The going has gotten weird,
and the weird has turned pro. Essential track: Bound 2
Queens of the Stone Age: … Like Clockwork
Queer, menacing badassery
came from Josh Homme, the foreboding
singer-guitarist who came back from near death – knee surgery went wrong and
left him deeply out of sorts for months – to deliver the year’s best rock ’n’
roll album. Heavy is as heavy does. Essential track: If I Had a Tail
Valerie June: Pushin’ Against a Stone
Joan Didion wrote that a place belongs
to whoever claims it the hardest, remembers it the most obsessively, wrenches it
from itself, shapes it, renders it and loves it so radically they remake it in
their own image. This year’s prize for the reclaiming and reshaping of
moon-shown blues and deep-woods soul goes to Valerie June, the era-unspecific
Tennessean whose unshakable record is the musical equivalent of the film Beasts
of the Southern Wild. Essential track: Twined and Twisted
An additional 13 significant achievements in the art of the album, for the year
2013: AroarA’s In the Pines,
The Cowboy Junkies’ The Kennedy Suite, Donovan Woods’s Don’t Get
Too Grand, Foxygen’s
We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic, The Heavy
Blinkers’ Health, Laura Marling’s
Once I Was an Eagle, Lorde’s
Heroine, Moonface’s
Julia With Blue Jeans On, The National’s Trouble Will Find Me,
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Push the Sky Away, Shad’s Flying
Colours, Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City and William
Tyler’s Impossible Truth.