Our music reviewers sift through their extensive record collections in an attempt to select their highlights from 2013.
John Hayden
It's easy to hate Mr West, whether due to his ocean-liner of an ego, his petulant media outbursts, or the fact he helped usher another Kardashian into existence. Yet his sixth album manages to negate such evils, showing yet again an artist not only ill at ease with treading water, but also one at his most compelling when pushing all manner of sonic boundaries, whether on the disjointed disco of On Sight, or Black Skinhead's savage industrial stomp.
Bursting out of the blocks with a Technicolor Paul Simon-meets-Wes Anderson aesthetic, this erudite New York quartet threatened to become too hip for their own good. Fortunately, in their third LP, they pared back smart-alec lyrics about French architecture, punctuation and Mexican refreshments in favour of delicate emotional observations and minor chord melancholy, and in the stirring Step, reflected a growth and tenderness refreshingly at odds with their peculiar brand of preppy pop-rock.
On paper, this sci-fi concept album following the exploits of fugitive android Cyndi Mayweather was enough to give Lady Gaga cold sweats. Yet beneath this bonkers narrative bubbled a dazzling musicality which straddled everything from James Brown to peak-era Prince, via spaghetti-Western strings and irresistible doo-wop harmonies, signalling the arrival of a major new maverick talent.
Staying relevant in a genre where the maxim is ''evolve or die'' is a tricky business. Clearly haunted by this, the newly minted 40-something looked to his past, recycled the name of his masterpiece, and after ditching the closet-cleaning and boundary-blurring revenge fantasies, reminded everyone just what a force of nature he is via the ferocious double-time raps on Rap God and Bezerk's old skool bombast.
Jeff Harford
This companion piece to 2010's Queen of Denmark finds Grant in gloves-off mode, once more railing against the former lover who left him bereft. Here, there's a sharper edge to the pain in the wake of Grant's announcement regarding his HIV status. Still evoking something of Harry Nilsson's '70s songster shtick, he hops forward a decade for his musical setting, creating nakedly confessional, wonderfully indulgent synth-based songs that express bucketloads of anger, sorrow, vindictiveness and wicked humour. It's somehow fitting that Sinead O'Connor is the backing vocalist for Grant's hymn-like melodies.
Here's an album to get lost in. Vile's in no rush to make his point, so it's best if you nestle into your beanbag, crank up the volume, close your eyes and picture a heat-haze shimmering on an endless highway. Gradually, the allure of this easygoing follow up to 2011's darker Smoke Ring For My Halo will reveal itself, chiefly in Vile's finger-picked acoustic and electric guitars which work in cycles, shifting here and rising there. Third or fourth time around, Vile's stoner observations will likewise reveal themselves as something more substantial.
Who, indeed? Since becoming a born-again Christian, the Nigerian funk musician who self-released eight albums from 1977-1985 has disavowed his past, and much mystery surrounds his pre- and postmusic life. No matter. This compilation on David Byrne's Luaka Bop label makes clear Onyeabor's genius for making compelling dance music built on joyfully experimental analogue-synth playing (unusually, for the time and place). There's Old Testament directness to his songs of love, justice and peace-mongering, several of which are sing-along stunners.
Mark Orton
Unfairly spoken of in the same breath as the woeful Mumford and Sons, these Aussie folksters are anything but formulaic dross. Positively dripping with one mellifluous melody after the other, Harlequin Dream makes you want to hire a convertible, pray for a long hot summer and take a long drive along a coast somewhere.
It's actually been quite a year for dance-oriented guitar bands and while the British India album deserves a special mention, the Aussies unfortunately lost the toss to Foals. Stirring up a ruckus with security at the Auckland Town Hall was but a sideshow for what Foals do well, cleverly crafted tunes that shift seamlessly from sweaty dance-floor moves to gnarly rock anthems and everything in between.
After a blistering start to their career when they were only just out of short pants, the Monkeys tested even their most ardent fans with a succession of albums that hinted but never quite delivered. Alex Turner's sexually suggestive proselytising, paired with raunchy fuzz and a dirty late-night groove, owes a debt of gratitude to their ongoing friendship with Josh Homme. AM is a career-defining moment and quite rightly being picked by all and sundry as the best album of 2013.
Perhaps it shouldn't have been a surprise after Wilco's Jeff Tweedy reinvigorated the legendary Staples singer with their first collaboration two years previously. What is surprising is how Staples' nuanced voice has matured and how well it suits Tweedy's pared-back guitar and drum arrangements. One True Vine is beautifully breezy, uplifting and evidently channelling some higher presence. Non-believers needn't fear though, this glorious marriage of gospel and Americana needs no celestial penance.
Shane Gilchrist
Following on the promise of finger-snapping hit Royals and all its subsequent tweet-talk was a potentially tough ask, but Pure Heroine revealed Lorde, aka Ella Yelich-O'Connor, was no one-trick pony. The Auckland teenager both celebrates and defies her youth throughout this 37-minute journal-cum-observation on everything from false idols to teenage crushes, all of which is further sharpened by songwriting chops that range from murky electronica (Buzzcut Season) to sassy R and B (Team) and occasional Bjork-like territory (Still Sane).
Merging the sing-along largesse of the Polyphonic Spree with the gritty soul of, say, The Temptations, the Los Angeles 10-piece outfit's eponymous third album might not be as completely uplifting as 2009 debut Up From Below, which contained breakthrough single Home, but it is a joyous experience nevertheless. Led by Alex Ebert and former girlfriend Jade Castinos, the band creates walls of backing vocals, rubbery bass-lines, horn stabs and syncopated guitars, all of which are tied to some unhinged production values that lend the album a warm spontaneity. Weaving through all this is the singing of Ebert, who revels in the elastic songwriting ability of a band on fire.
Canadian pop singer turned Americana troubadour Lindi Ortega followed 2011's rather good Little Red Boots with an album that's even better. Boasting a set of vocal cords that mix the powerful trill of Dolly Parton with a touch of ragged fragility, Ortega delves into country, rockabilly and subdued blues, telling tales of desperation, drug use and inner struggles while also bringing an occasional ethereal, widescreen approach, courtesy of producer T-Bone Burnett.
Former United States soldier Wilis Earl Beal followed his sometimes shambolic 2012 album, Acousmastic Sorcery, with the more focused Nobody Knows, ditching much of the poetic rawness for which he first came to attention, and instead presenting a personal tour of all that can be good about soul music, principally, the power of a good voice. Gone is the stream-of-consciousness lyricism set to lo-fi percussion; instead there are fat drum-beats, funky basslines and delicate keyboards.
