Top 20 Albums of 2013 (#1 – 4)

We made it!  This was an outstanding year for music, and I’m thrilled with every one of the 20 (well, 21) albums listed.  A final wrap-up post with honorable mentions and oversights will be up tomorrow, but if you can’t wait to see what has come before, here are links to #17-20, #13-16, #9-12, and #5-8.  For now, the final four albums that utterly blew me away this year.

#4.  Jolly – The Audio Guide to Happiness (Part 2)

I booked my cabin for Progressive Nation at Sea in October 2013, which was how I initially discovered Jolly.  My concession that I am a relatively new supporter of their work, however, should only underscore what an extraordinary up-and-coming prog band they are.  Last year, I identified Dead Sara as a woefully under-recognized group that you should check out before anyone else I had mentioned (and that recommendation still holds, by the way – their self-titled album is unequivocally worth your time and money).  This year, that honor (if you’ll excuse the self-aggrandizing term) goes to Jolly:  if my Top 20 Albums of 2013 list were to entice you to explore any new band, choose Jolly .  They have this uncanny ability to layer complexity in their melody and rhythm that will permit you those satisfying “I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed that part before!” revelations even after numerous (like, at least daily in my case) spins, and yet somehow the end result retains a quality that would render the music accessible and appealing to a broader audience that isn’t interested in contemplating compositional structure or theory and just wants to hear a cool song.  Similarly, the mood may fluctuate within and among songs – a self-evident parallel to life’s vacillations, if you’ll pardon my making the obvious explicit – but there’s no underlying blackness or bitterness.  Okay, well maybe there’s a little bitterness, but in the context of the album in its entirety, it’s fleeting and cathartic, rather than consuming and self-destructive; the driving sentiments are more of a wistful sadness, a renewal, nostalgic yearning, an ache that’s dulled by the pleasure of remembering what had once been.  The musical journey is exhilarating, like the pleasant exertion of a long walk on the hiking trails that leaves you giddy and satisfied, notwithstanding the moments of struggle – the audio guide to happiness really does work!

I should note that for the fully Jolly experience, you should check out Part One of the Audio Guide to Happiness as well.  The band’s intention is quite clearly that the two albums be enjoyed consecutively:  the first album closes with a recorded voice stating “this concludes Part One, please insert Disc Two,” and Part Two welcomes listeners with the direction “if you have not yet completed Part One, please do so now before continuing.”  Yes, each album could stand on its own merit, but goodness knows I have a special affection for concept albums and themes or ideas that manifest over several records.  For instance, like Dream Theater’s “Twelve-Step Suite.”  And oh yeah, Mike Portnoy happens to be a huge supporter of these guys:

That has to be the best video cameo of the year.  The PNAS lineup is stupefying, but these guys are right near the top of the list of bands I’m most stoked to see.

Addendum:  as if this review wasn’t long enough already, I creeped on their video for “Firewell,” and it made me realize that their drummer plays his kick without shoes.  This makes me unreasonably happy and the song is awesome, so now you get that video also:

#3.  The Ocean – Pelagial

When I created a list of my favorite albums of 2013 (so far) at the midway point of the year, there wasn’t a doubt that The Ocean’s Pelagial would be my top pick.  I feel as strongly about it now as I did then, and I actually don’t think I can add much to the praise I showered upon the album then, except to say that its merit endures over time.  In part:

I’m struggling with this write-up because I think the album is truly in a class of its own.  This was the same reaction I had to my 2012 Album of The Year, Between the Buried and Me’s Parallax II.  Basically, when the final note played, I sat there momentarily stunned, and then was thrilled to immediately hit “replay” and explore, enjoy, study, discover the album all over again (and again and again).

Click through to the mid-year write-up for a video as well.  It actually pains me to put this remarkable album at #3 and should serve as a testament to what an insane year for music this was.

#2.  Leprous – Coal

In the write-up for the listed-as-Number-Six-but-basically-in-a-massive-tie-for-Number-Two” album of 2013, Haken’s The Mountain, I described it as exemplifying what I mean when I tell folks more inclined to Top 40 pop radio that I dig a weird niche style of metal music (and immediately thereafter make the self-deprecating but mostly accurate affirmation that I can justly be called a hipster metalhead).  Incidentally, I don’t know that I would have been as open to Haken’s style had I not discovered and embraced Leprous first.  A band can be dubbed a “progressive” metal band in the sense of incorporating many or all of the elements of the familiar formula associated with the genre’s label (e.g., longer songs, relatively heavy on the keys/synths, mostly clean vocals, tempo changes, odd time signatures), and certainly can create outstanding and original music this way; I’m not implying that such bands are nothing more than Dream Theater knockoffs.  But there’s a second concept embedded in the “progressive” label – or perhaps the significance of the “progressive” categorization has morphed over time, such that “avant garde” is now more appropriate for this second style to which I’m about to refer– by musicians that consciously deviate from the strictures of even the normative conception of progressive sound, beholden to no rule other than to push music and creativity forward.

There is a reason for all this pedantic genre dissection, I promise:  namely, to assert that Leprous falls squarely into the latter (avant-garde) category, defying comparisons to other bands and proffering albums that my limited musical vocabulary is capable of fairly describing:

Prediction:  their 2014 appearance is going to be one of the highlights of my ProgPower weekend (although in fairness, that festival is essentially one extended highlight reel).  It’s worth noting that the band’s 2011 release Bilateral  is also on constant rotation on my end, so if you dig the sound proffered by Coal, exploring the band’s back catalog is a great place to start for additional similar songs.

#1.  TesseracT – Altered State

Altered State is a desert island album.

You know:  if you were stranded and could listen to only 3 albums until your inevitable solitary demise, which would you choose?  As an album that has accompanied me through some of the best and worst times of my life, and which is essentially sonic comfort food now – what I play when I need to calm myself down or pump myself up – Killswitch Engage’s As Daylight Dies would be one of my three.  I’m internally debating the third, but TesseracT’s Altered State has stolen the coveted second spot to join me in my tropical isolation.  I have yet to tire of listening to it, from beginning to end, despite doing so at least once nearly every day since I purchased it; and it has yet to cease evoking an overwhelming emotional response in me every time.

Obviously there’s something beyond the brilliant musicianship that has caused me to connect so profoundly with this album, involving (as with my KSE pick) personal and contextual factors.  And unlike the other albums contained in this list, I’m reluctant to dissect all the particular technical highlights or creative elements that make the album so beautiful.  Nothing I could write here would adequately describe this masterpiece.

Here’s “Nocturne,” also known as a multiple-musicgasm:

To say nothing of that that sax interlude in “Calabi-Yau”!!

Jeebus.  Jeebus!!!!  I can’t even think about it without getting all misty-eyed.  And at the ideal spot in the sonic journey.  I’m actually swooning.

Just buy the damn album, already.  Listen to it from beginning to end on good speakers/headphones.  Maybe have a stiff drink or a smokey-smoke to relax and heighten the experience.  Only then may you begin to understand my utter obsession with this sexy minx of an album.

Altered State:  unequivocally the best album of 2013, and doing a solid job kickin’ the crap out of my all-time list as well.  Horns up, kiddos.  Thanks for reading.  Compiled list and a few thoughts tomorrow.