Al Bedsitter's Best Albums of 2013: Part 1 of 3 : I Legitimately Want to Know What the Fox Says

It is that time of year.  Time for my selection of the 20 Best albums of the year. Of course, the selection is hardly scientific and is a list of the 20 albums that moved my needle the most.  2013 was a good idea with a lot of 'returns and 'return to form's but also some new stuff as always.  I had a hard time whittling down my list, which means it was a good year.

So, here's the list- Part 1

Arcade Fire Reflektor (Merge)- The divisive fourth album had plenty of fans and detractors.  For me, it’s a mixed bag- definitely on the bottom half of my Top 20 but still worthy of inclusion.  Critics liked to compare it to Achtung Baby a pivotal point for a well-established band, though surely Kid A  or even Speakerboxx would be more accurate- an album released to expectations any buzz band would have trouble with or maybe The 2^nd Law – an album by a band trying to straddle commercial and critical expectations.  Reflektor still reminds most of all Sandinista – an album too ambitious, too long, and too inaccessible.  There’s dub reggae, rockabilly, prog, and glam.  Still, if you complain of quantity, where do you cut?  The best parts of singles “Here comes the Night Time” and “Reflektor” don’t occur until nearly five minutes in, as they build into a grand crescendo .  It’s easy to criticize this effort, but there’s a lot here to like.

Bad Religion True North (Epitaph) – While conventional wisdom asks why you need more than one Bad Religion album in your collection, the band has spent the 21^st Century at a high level. True North continues that trend with another helping of their particular style of hardcore punk informed by the same attitude found in the Occupy! Movement.  Single “F*ck You” seems simplistic by half, but is the outlier.  This is Bad Religion at their finest, and sort of worrisome that the best punk in 2013 were bands fronted by Greg Graffin, Jello Biafra and Keith Morris.  Step it up, youngsters.

David Bowie The Next Day (Columbia) – What hasn’t been said about this album.  Bowie returned with one of the finest album in 2013- an album whose cover aspired to be among his best, and the contents inside doing just that.  My biggest problem with the album was  that it seemed to obscure the fact that Bowie’s recent work is actually really good (Heathen especially).  At an ambitious 14 songs, the album isn’t quite perfect but songs like “The Stars are Out Tonight” , it does fulfill the promise of being some of the best music of the Dame’s career.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Push the Sky Away (Bad Seeds Ltd)- The latest Bad Seeds album is the first without Mick Harvey, the first since Grinderman broke up, and shows a great influence from Cave and Ellis’s recent soundtrack work.  While it falls on the other side of the ‘most accessible’ of Cave’s albums, songs like “Higgs Boson Blues” and “Jubilee Street” show Cave is still the best songwriter in the world.

Crime and the City Solution -  American Twilight– (Mute) Plenty of late 80s/early 90s bands reunited and recorded in 2013 that you never would have expected (Top of the list are My Bloody Valentine, the Replacements and the Pixies, but also bands like the House of Love, the Wonderstuff, the Ocean Blue, and Kitchens of Distinction).  Crime and the City Solution fall on the list of ‘unlikely’ but sure they have re-emerged less as a reunion and more of a goth country supergroup with Jim White (Dirty Three) David Eugene Edwards (16 Horsepower) and Troy Gregory (Dirtbombs, Prong) joining.  The band always were a bit hidden under fellow Australian Nick Cave’s shadow, but here they amp it up a bit (not unlike Grinderman), and bring home an album that shows their unique talent.

Steve Earle & the Dukes and Duchesses - The Low Highway (New West)- Someone who has successfully reinvented himself at least once, recent years have been slightly disappointing for those who were anticipating the next stage of Earle’s career.   The ideas behind Earles’ last decade of recording have been more interesting than the songs himself (an album of Townes van Zandt covers, ethic influences absorbed from time spent in New York and New Orleans, some Tom Waits style exploration).  Here those exercises finally pay off with an album that is his best since2004’s The Revolution Starts Now.  The songs everyone talked about (“Calico County”- a bit of a sequel to “Copperhead Road” and “Oxycontin Blues” and “Burnin’ it Down” which targeted Wal-Mart as the victim of its artistic arson) are the weakest on an album that gives some standout tracks, whether they be Springsteen-style ballads like “Remember Me” or classic Earle rambling songs like “Love’s Gonna Blow My Way”

Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside -Untamed Beast  (Partisan) – An excellent piece of music based in Rockabilly with soul, garage rock, and riotggrl influences.  20 years ago, this might have started a revival like those that ska and swing saw.  Indeed, surely, this piece of vinyl would have propelled them  among the ranks of Squirrel Nut Zippers and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.  Ford is a real vocal talent, and although this band called It quits in 2013, 2014 looks promising for ford who promises a new album with an all-female backing band.

To be continued...