Since this is the last issue of the Iron Warrior, I think that it would be apt to run down the list of my favourite songs & albums of the year. The rules I set for myself were only one song per artist allowed, and the album or song had to be officially released within the calendar year. Below are my two lists, with write-ups for the both the top ten albums and songs. I’m sure that anyone who reads this will disagree with more than one thing on the list, so feel free to leave comments on our website.
My 25 Favourite Songs of the Year
Honourable Mentions: Birds – Death Grips, Hood Pope – A$AP Ferg, Royals – Lorde
25. Bugatti – Ace Hood ft. Rick Ross & Future
24. Wake Me Up – Avicii ft. Aloe Blacc
23. Feds Watchin’ – 2 Chainz
22. IFHY – Tyler, the Creator ft. Pharrell
21. Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High – Arctic Monkeys
20. San Francisco – Foxygen
19. Control – Big Sean ft. Kendrick Lamar & Jay Electronica
18. You’re Not Good Enough – Blood Orange
17. Getting Sodas – The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die
16. Comrade – Volcano Choir
15. Song for Zula – Phosphorescent
14. Dream House – Deafheaven
13. Overgrown – James Blake
12. Here Comes the Night Time – Arcade Fire
11. When a Fire Starts to Burn – Disclosure
10. Do U Right (Bo Peep) – Shlohmo ft. Jeremih
Although most people only know Jeremih for his smash hit “Birthday Sex,” he sneakily released one of last year’s best mixtapes with Late Nights with Jeremih. That tape delved deep into the indie R&B sound made famous last year by the likes of the Weeknd and Frank Ocean. Although we are still waiting for the follow-up to that tape, this year he teamed up with bass producer Shlohmo to create a gorgeously creepy late-night anthem. Jeremih’s falsetto meshes perfectly with the off-kilter drums and minor key synthesizers to create his best stand-alone song yet, “Birthday Sex” included.
9. Bugs Don’t Buzz – Majical Cloudz
Although the band name sounds like a weirdo rap group, Majical Cloudz is a duo from Montreal that deals almost exclusively with sombre piano ballads. They released their debut full-length this year, and this is the best cut from the very good album. “Bugs Don’t Buzz” starts with crashing piano backing the lyrics “The cheesiest songs all end with a smile/This won’t end with a smile, my love” and spirals downward pretty quickly from there. The narrator and his lover are cockroaches in the apocalypse, among other things, until the song crumbles into electronic noise and a glimmer of hope appears: “The happiest songs all end with a smile/This may end with a smile, my love.”
8. Sunday – Earl Sweatshirt ft. Frank Ocean
Earl’s debut full-length, Doris, had a uniform aesthetic: murky, depressing, and dark. And although that worked nearly perfectly, the one song that broke the mold was the album’s best. Earl is in typical sad-sack form, bemoaning his inability to connect or care about the world around him and realizing that you can’t alter your perception of reality with drugs forever: “My dreams got dimmer when I stopped smoking pot/Nightmares got more vivid when I stopped smoking pot/Loving you’s a little different/I don’t like you a lot.” But then that great guitar line breaks through the clouds and Frank Ocean emerges, rapping instead of singing. He’s coming back to handle business, namely to set the record straight on his altercation with Chris Brown (of course Brown used homophobic slurs): “Forgot you don’t like it rough/I mean he called me a f*****/I was just calling his bluff.” He’s in Staples with his Grammy’s talking to adoring fans, Brown is dealing with community service stemming from his felony. It probably took a while for Brown to figure out the meaning of the song, and I can’t see him ever creating a meaningful rebuttal.
7. Too Much – Drake ft. Sampha
Drake raps best when he’s angry, as he’s proven again and again on songs like “Stay Schemin’,” “Pop That,” and “5AM in Toronto.” And now you can add “Too Much” to that list as well, except this time instead of taking aim at rivals and haters, he’s chosen a topic closer to his heart: his family. He feels that he’s being distanced because of his fame, that his mother has settled on his money and refuses to continue with her life. He performed in on Fallon before Nothing Was the Same was released, and he actually prefaced it with an apology. This is Drake’s most personal song, and also his most relatable, which is saying something when he spends most of the time on his albums pining over lost loves. Sampha provides the perfect amount of melody on the chorus to make it one of the most poignant songs of the year.
6. Instant Crush – Daft Punk ft. Julian Casablancas (of the Strokes)
Wait, didn’t he say that there was only a one song per artist rule? Doesn’t that mean “Get Lucky” won’t be on this list? Is he willfully rejecting it because of its ubiquity this year? The answers to those questions are: yes, yes, and 2 Chainz and Avicii are already on this list (and Lorde was damn close) so that argument holds no water. I truly feel like “Instant Crush” is a superior song. It is simultaneously the best Strokes song since “12:51” and my favourite Daft Punk song since “Digital Love.” The robots run Casablancas through both their famous vocoders as well as the signature tinny Strokes-filter to create a gorgeously longing melody that hangs forever over those chugging guitars. And when that chorus hits I dare you to resist the urge to dance. “Get Lucky” be damned, this should’ve been the jam of the summer.
5. The Mother We Share – CHVRCHES
The debut song on CHVRCHES debut album, “Mother” is also the purest distillation of the perfect synth-pop CHVRCHES deals with. Lauren Mayberry’s vocals soar effortlessly overtop of the swelling synths, the chorus is the catchiest thing you’ll hear all year, and the whole song pushes into arena rock territory without a single guitar. Mayberry’s voice is crystal clear in every sense of the phrase, and even if what she’s singing about doesn’t make much sense, you’re absolutely compelled to keep listening. And then listening again, and again, and again.
4. Chain Smoker – Chance the Rapper
“Chain Smoker” perfectly encapsulates Chance the Rapper’s M.O. in a glorious four minutes. He sings in his nasally voice, syllables tumbling over each other like he might never have another opportunity to get them out. He sounds drugged-out and perfectly clear-headed at the same time, with the production spinning and chattering around him to provide the ideal backdrop. He tosses perfect lines like “I seen the light, I lost my lighter/Bic flick, kick the habit and the bucket, f*ck your supplier” away like he could come up with ten a day. He sounds simultaneously like the 20-year-old he is, and a world weary traveller reaching the end of his journey. He’s chain-smoking, good-looking, Frank Ocean-listening. This part right here? This part’s his shit.
3. Hold My Liquor – Kanye West ft. Justin Vernon (of Bon Iver) & Chief Keef
Who would’ve thought Justin Vernon and Chief Keef would make such excellent duet partners? They play off of each other perfectly, with Keef playing the role of thoroughly anaesthetized conscious and Vernon the overarching narrator. In between, Kanye assumes the lead role of the drunken and broken man, slowly swerving into oblivion. It’s incredible to behold.
2. Hannah Hunt – Vampire Weekend
“Hannah Hunt” contains the most arresting moment to happen in music this year, which is saying quite something considering Vampire Weekend have a rather buttoned-up and reliable reputation. The song starts off quietly, with some bass plucks and Ezra Koenig whispering about his travels from “Providence to Phoenix” ostensibly with the eponymous Hannah. As they move across the country, they meet clairvoyant preachers, grow homesick, and grow tired of each other. Then, after two and a half minutes that contain enough detail to fill an entire book, Koenig lets loose: “If I can’t trust you then damn it Hannah/there’s no future, there’s no answer/though we live on the US dollar/you and me, we got our own sense of time.” The first time I heard it, it stopped me dead in my tracks. It’s truly a transcendent moment on an honestly transcendent album.
1. Play By Play – Autre Ne Veut
Purple Rain is my favourite album of all time, and maybe that’s the reason this song ended up on top. Autre Ne Veut channels his inner Prince, slowly inching his falsetto louder and louder, higher and higher. He holds off on the climax, pitch shifting his voice around and around until the song can’t be contained anymore. And when it breaks, the floodgates really open. He spends the last two and a half minutes of the song wailing “I just called you up/to get that play-by-play, by play, by play” realizing that he has somehow found this year’s most perfect melody, and instead of choosing to use it sparingly, cycles it endlessly while the listener looks on in awe. After it finishes, you’ll be physically exhausted by the sheer hugeness of it, but I can bet you’ll put it right back on again.
My 15 Favourite Albums of the Year
Honourable Mentions: The 20/20 Experience – Justin Timberlake, Wolf – Tyler, the Creator, Cupid’s Head – The Field
15. AM – The Arctic Monkeys
14. Woman – Rhye
13. The Bones of What You Believe – CHVRCHES
12. Reflektor – Arcade Fire
11. Settle – Disclosure
10. Overgrown – James Blake
9. Doris – Earl Sweatshirt
Who would’ve thought that the same person who built their name on rapping about extreme violence and reprehensible actions would make the most depressing and self aware album of the year? Earl is one of the deftest wordsmiths in the game, and Doris is full of endless labyrinths of assonance and internal rhymes. Take this line from “Hive:” “Desolate testaments tryna stay Jekyll-ish/but most n*ggas Hyde, and Brenda just stay preg-a-nant.” There are triple entendres, made-up words, barely-there slant rhymes and this is just scratching the surface. But the reason the album demands repeat listens isn’t the lyrical acrobatics, it’s the straight-forward views into Earl’s mind. He’s spent much of the last two years in Samoa, insulated from the hype surrounding his upcoming album. And now, he’s cracking under the pressure, not knowing where to turn. The opening lines of the album say it all: “Grandma’s passing/But I’m too busy tryna get this f*cking album cracking to see her/So I apologize in advance if anything should happen.”
8. Sunbather – Deafheaven
People spent the better part of the year trying to categorize this album: was it black metal? Shoegaze? Post-rock? A combination of all three with eight other buzzwords thrown in for good measure? Does it matter? Just sit back and let these seven tracks utterly consume you, because there is nothing else you can do.
7. Random Access Memories – Daft Punk
When this album was released, a lot of people were very upset. Instead of taking a step forward, pushing the envelope of what was considered possible with both 1999’s Homework and 2001’s Discovery, they seemed to have regressed. Random Access Memories saw the robots looking backwards into the 80s, even recruiting legends like Nile Rodgers and Todd Edwards to work on their songs. But then people looked a little closer, and they realized that Guy-Man and Rodanthony were looking forward, updating the sounds of the 80s for the current generation. And they were using all of the resources at their disposal to do it. RAM is the most expensive, luxurious, album of the year, and possibly of the millennium as well, and that allowed it to sound both human and alien, organic and meticulously assembled, an album which perfectly represents Daft Punk’s influence on music.
6. Whenever, If Ever – The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die
Ask me in private, and I’ll tell you this was my favourite album of the year. I grew up in the mid-2000s, when second wave emo bands like Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance dominated everything from the radio to edgy pre-teen iPods. Emo was my gateway into alternative music, and FOB and MCR still have a place in my heart (relisten to Infinity on High and you’ll see my point). So you can imagine my excitement when emo made a comeback this year, with TWIABP leading the charge. They have all the parts: the nasally guy, the screaming guy, the off-key harmonizing, the huge choruses and equally huge guitar riffs. I loved every minute of it. Go listen to “Ultimate Steve” and tell me you don’t miss “Sugar, We’re Going Down” so much more than you already did.
5. Anxiety – Autre Ne Veut
Anxiety is the perfect name for this album. Arthur Ashin creates paranoid R&B music using hyperkinetic production and histrionic falsetto. His voice holds nearly none of the qualities normally associated with R&B, but he gets by on pure force of will. It sounds like he is on the verge of a mental breakdown on nearly every song, his head filled with demons that he can only release through singing. Take “Counting”, which uses a warped children’s choir for maximum alarming effect: “I’m counting on the idea that you’ll stay alive.” It’s honest, it’s visceral, it’s frightening. It’s an album built on pure catharsis, with Ashin managing to translate his feelings perfectly onto the record. He has managed to create the feeling that, if only for the duration of the album, the entire world is collapsing around you.
4. Yeezus – Kanye West
How much more can really be said about this album? It was Kanye West’s boldest, bravest experiment. It simultaneously failed miserably and succeeded massively. He says it did everything he wanted, but something tells me he wanted more from it, a cultural shift that he would begin. He brought a giant Jesus onto the stage for his concerts. He used Confederate flags to sell his merchandise. You can tell he rushed it, it’s short, it’s messy, it’s ugly, and it’s a bigger and better statement than almost any other artist will ever make. In a year when all things were KANYE WEST, this was the most Kanye thing of all.
3. Nothing Was the Same – Drake
For about 3 weeks after this album was released myself and a few friends listened to it exclusively. I don’t mean like 75% of the time, I mean on repeat all the time without fail. It was the starting point for all conversations between us, and we quoted lines ad nauseum. It has already ingrained itself into my brain much like Take Care did in 2011, whether it’s that “Started From the Bottom” video, that line about Courtney from Hooters, the Drakiest Drake line ever on “Furthest Thing” (“I hate that you don’t think I belong to you…”), the lilting melody on “Come Thru,” or even that stupid popping noise Jay-Z makes with his mouth on “Pound Cake/Paris Morton Music 2.” Drake has become a centre of popular culture, for better or for worse, and has done it not by playing by the rules, but by bending them to his will.
2. Acid Rap – Chance the Rapper
Chance the Rapper came out of nowhere in 2013 and released the year’s best rap album and also arguably the most purely enjoyable album I have heard in a while. Chance’s style is freewheeling, reminiscent of Andre 3000, Lil’ Wayne and most of all, fellow Chicagoan Kanye West. He alternates singing in his faux-jazz way with nasally rapping, punctuating nearly every line with his trademark adlib (IGH!). The production is warm, soulful, drug-addled. Chance’s thoughts are also the product of a spaced out mind, but he can be straight-forward if he needs to. When discussing the regrettable gun violence rocking Chicago on “Pusha Man/Paranoia”, he is has a sense of clarity uncommon for a 20-year-old: “I hate crowded beaches/I hate the sound of fireworks/And I ponder what’s worse between knowing it’s over/And dying first.” Or on the next track “Cocoa Butter Kisses,” he’s putting “Visine inside my eyes so my grandma will f*cking hug me.” It’s an incredible album, uplifting at times, and sobering at others. In a year where most hip-hop releases were uniformly angry, cynical and depressing, it was a breath of fresh air.
1. Modern Vampires of the City – Vampire Weekend
This album should’ve been called Out of Africa. I’ve been waiting to use that line for the entire year, and it really sounded better in my head, but it still rings extremely true. VW’s first two albums appropriated the joyous sounds of native African music, much like Paul Simon’s Graceland before it, and to much success. But Modern Vampires of the City is different. It draws influence from Africa, sure, but also from all around the globe. The brief monologue in the middle of “Finger Back” summarizes the album perfectly: “’Cause this Orthodox girl fell in love with the guy at the falafel shop, and why not? Should she have averted her eyes and just stared at the laminated poster of the Dome of the Rock?” Why shouldn’t they use gorgeously arranged music, obscure cultural references, and tangential metaphors to create beautiful and thoughtful songs about fear, death and uncertainty? Ezra Koenig was never much of a straight talker, and here is no different. But between the Modest Mouse shout-outs, Angkor Wat allusions, and long-winded and endlessly inventive metaphors, lines jump out at you. Maybe not the first time, or the second, maybe even a year or two afterwards. Take this lyric from the wondrously drawn out opener “Obvious Bicycle:” “Oh you ought to spare your face the razor/Because no one’s gonna spare the time for you.” Lines like that make you stop and ponder; think about things outside the realm of the album. And they occur on every single song. MVotC may not be the most immediate album of the year, or even the most immediate of VW’s 3 albums, but it already feels worn in, something that, ten years from now, I can sit down with again, and it would welcome me like an old friend.
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