My Top Albums 2013: Number 1

Hookworms – Pearl Mystic

 

 

Created by a mysterious group who would rather be referred to in public by their initials than their birth names (anti-rock stars?), Hookworms' debut album is menacing, brutal and yet soothingly hypnotic.

With echo drenched vocals acting more as an additional instrument than anything else, 'Pearly Mystic' is steeped with many obvious reference points yet is so instinctively fresh and vibrant as to leave everything else trailing in its' wake. This is the sound of the past, present and future all rolled into one.

Video: Hookworms - Away / Towards

My Top Albums 2013: Number 2

Joanna Gruesome – Weird Sister

 

 

Having supposedly met in anger management, a story almost too good to be true, Joanna Gruesome's debut album manages to cram hardcore beats, fuzzed-out bliss and violent urges into just about half an hour.
 
With a singer who stomps, screams, and shouts her way through plenty of the album, while verses slam into bridges before crashing headlong into choruses, this is without doubt one of the most purely exuberant, hook-stuffed indie-pop records of the year.
 
Video: Joanna Gruesome - Secret Surprise

My Top Albums 2013: Number 3

Cate Le Bon – Mug Museum

Cate Le Bon's understated and modest third album contains small, graceful songs with deceptive amounts of depth, while her voice grows more and more versatile with each release.

While the sound may not be wholly original, it is the way in which Le Bon combines styles that is more creative than many, being blessed with both sound melodic sense and a strain of Welsh peculiarity that lends the album such a singular sound.

Video: Cate Le Bon - I Can't Help You

My Top Albums 2013: Number 4

Rick Redbeard – No Selfish Heart

 

 

A debut solo album that has inner beauty and honesty, Rick Redbeard's 'No Selfish Heart' is a succinct, poetic and engaging listen, which makes it such a crying shame that it is likely far too few people will hear it.

 

With dark humour running throughout the album, the songs follow a more traditional path of finger-picked guitar and folk confessional than witnessed on his band's (The Phantom Band) albums to date, but lose none of the majesty and yearning wistfulness for doing so. 

 

Video: Rick Redbeard - Now We're Dancing

My Top Albums 2013: Number 5

My Bloody Valentine – m b v

 

 

Taking almost two decades to make, 46 minutes to listen to, and arriving at three hours’ notice, My Bloody Valentine's ' m b v' is a rich, complex and rewarding listen that offers up a looser, more eclectic set than previous albums.

 

Featuring raw, rhythmic, jungle-style drums, frantically skittering dance rhythms, savage screeches of feedback and being tempered with pleasant sounding keyboards and the usual hard-to-decipher lyrics, 'm b v'  draws on the past without forgoing the fierce originality that has defined the band from the outset.

 

Video: My Bloody Valentine - New You