“Modern Vampires of the City is both comprehensible and confounding, a versatile and profoundly beautiful album that reflects the joys, worries and questions the average person struggles with over the course of a year.” — Danielle Ohl
Prince Avalanche
Prince Avalanche is a film with a heart so wide and genuine that Apatow-ian masturbation gags can exist alongside heartrending monologues in the aftermath of a forest fire without either feeling out of place.
The multifaceted nature of the film bleeds through to the plot. On the surface, it’s a cliche buddy cop story without the cops. But squint and Prince Avalanche becomes the arthouse Mario and Luigi adaptation you never knew you wanted, where Mario is a borderline-autistic lout unable to plant his roots while Luigi suffers from bouts of uncontrollable rage.
Miraculously, Prince Avalanche never becomes too small or stretches too far. Writer-director David Gordon Green (Joe) gently expands his tale’s borders to encompass a mood and feeling larger than the two protagonists without ever losing track of the characters at the heart of the story.
It’s as if Green has managed to combine his frat boy comedy filmography with his Malickian dramas to create one of the funniest, sweetest and most quietly moving films of the year.
—Warren Zhang
BioShock Infinite
Game Informer gave it a 10/10. Yahoo hailed it as perhaps the most perfect video game of all time. My dad said the commercials made it look really cool.
BioShock Infinite is the most engaging video game I have ever played and my hands-down favorite game of the year.
Anyone who doubts video games’ artistic value should play this game — through its stunning visuals and thrilling story, Infinite redefines what games are capable of.
You play as Booker DeWitt, a man seeking to square a debt by retrieving the mysterious Elizabeth. With her by your side, you discover the secrets of Columbia, a city floating in the clouds in an alternate-history 1912.
From the start, you’re pushed into a mystery that slowly unfolds as you explore the city. It’s intense and sometimes confusing but never dull — the bombshell ending is enough to rock even the most seasoned gamers.
Thanks in part to the heavenly setting, the game features the most jaw-dropping, beautiful graphics and scenery I have seen. My first time through, I constantly found myself stopping just to appreciate the world before getting to the power-ups and shooting.
My favorite part of the game, though, has to be the music. If you haven’t heard The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” performed by a barbershop quartet, you need to pick up a controller, stat.
—Zöe DiGiorgio
An Object by No Age
An Object is as much a manifesto on the philosophy of music as it is a rock record, which is probably why it was often overlooked in a year so crowded with great music. It’s an album that ponders art as a shapeless entity — as its title suggests — and something that can’t be described or beaten down with hollow adjectives.
Sonically and lyrically, the record is as gorgeous and affecting as anything No Age has recorded. The melancholic dancehall of “An Impression,” the white noise gurgle of “A Ceiling Dreams of a Floor” and the stoics rhythmics of “I Won’t Be Your Generator” are its standout tracks, each song tinged with a deliberate sense of subdued emptiness. Where are Dean Spunt’s pounding, punk rock drums on “No Ground”? Why doesn’t “Defector/Ed” evolve beyond a bare, wobbly pulse?
The first time through, it’s hard to focus on anything other than what’s missing. On subsequent listens, however, we forget about instruments, genre conventions and our own preconceptions about sound and theme. Art doesn’t belong in a lockbox, where it’s forced to succumb to our individualized dimensions. An Object might test our intellect. But there’s only one way of truly understanding it: by smashing the box and letting it wash over you, one strand of emotional stimuli at a time.
—Dean Essner
“Get Lucky” by Daft Punk
It’s not every day you see middle-aged men wearing robot helmets and singing catchy tunes. Some might call it weird, but it was this futuristic look and sound that gave French electronica duo Daft Punk the recognition it has today.
Single “Get Lucky” — a clutch performance from producer Pharrell Williams — caught fire immediately after its release. The immense popularity and recognition the song received made it an instant radio hit. “Get Lucky” has personality and spunk. It has genuine lyrics and a beat that never gets old. Pharrell’s smooth vocals are in perfect harmony with the instrumentals, making the single that much more likable.
That’s why “Get Lucky” is my best single of 2013. The song gave Daft Punk a new, groovy sound, and its fresh, funky beats encourage you to keep the song on replay as you bounce to the music.
—Elana Dure
The Great Gatsby
This summer, America was re-acquainted with the great American novel. Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was a thoroughly entertaining movie, featuring a fantastic lead performance from Leonardo DiCaprio. But that’s not what makes it special.
For years, this fantastic book had withered away on required reading lists, with most students dismissing it simply because it was prescribed by school. Its complex emotional storyline and literary beauty went unnoticed — because those kinds of thing are hard to notice on SparkNotes.
From the moment the first trailer was released, with its A-list cast and its grand sets, the book fought its way into the hearts of readers once again. Adults who had read the book as teenagers read it again to return to its majesty, and students who skimmed through it the first time around gave it another chance. This film made people appreciate the beauty of Gatsby once again. And for that reason alone, it tops my list.
—Michael Errigo
Modern Vampires of the City by Vampire Weekend
Music lovers are hungry consumers, and 2013 did not disappoint in offering up musical talent to the voracious beast. One of year’s best offerings, in my humble opinion, was Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City, which succeeds because it captures the feeling of frail humanity surviving another year.
The album begins with the line “Morning’s come, you watch the red sun rise/ The LED still flickers in your eyes,” capturing the nostalgia for the distant revelry of holidays past. The album is marked with classic themes of aging, transience, friendship and faith, but it presents each in a fresh context. Though accessible indie-pop songs “Diane Young” and “Unbelievers” give the album a bouncy, beat-driven feel, the more ethereal “Step,” “Hudson” and “Hannah Hunt” require a closer listen to decipher the underlying messages. Modern Vampires of the City is both comprehensible and confounding, a versatile and profoundly beautiful album that reflects the joys, worries and questions the average person struggles with over the course of a year.
—Danielle Ohl
“Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke
You might remember the way it felt the first time you listened to Robin Thicke’s summer hit “Blurred Lines,” took a moment to look beyond the initially catchy beat and realized something just seemed wrong. “I know you want it”?
It wasn’t long after the song took over the airwaves that feminists everywhere started voicing concerns that the song overshot sexy and landed somewhere closer to rapey. There was debate on both sides about what it means for the lines to be blurred — some felt it meant crossing into a territory of no consent, while others felt it was just talking about the moment of uncertainty before a consensual hookup.
Whether the lyrics actually conveyed a dangerous message, the song (and the accompanying music video) still sparked widespread debate about the impact of male-centric hypersexualization. Thicke’s music was the catalyst for a huge and much-needed discussion about a damaging trend in pop music, and I’d call that a good moment for feminism indeed. Now if only that conversation could continue regarding other songs and genres, where it is just as needed.
—Kelsey Hughes
Katie and Allison Crutchfield
Regardless of what apocalyptic rubbish gains traction on mainstream radio, pop music isn’t dead. Instead, listeners looking for hummable hooks and intensely relatable songwriting should take their attention off the dial and turn it to the punk record bin, where twin sisters Katie and Allison Crutchfield wait, sticker-plastered guitars in fingerless-gloved hands.
Though they did it separately — Katie as the driving force behind Waxahatchee and Allison as the front woman for pop-punk outfit Swearin’ — the two sisters spent 2013 crafting the most beautiful, confessional melodies of this or any other year.
In early March, Waxahatchee’s second full-length, Cerulean Salt, dropped. A step above the band’s intimate girl-with-a-guitar debut, Cerulean Salt beefed up the group’s sound while losing none of the songcraft: “Swan Dive” is a lilting sing-along about suicide, while “Peace and Quiet” spins the story of a dysfunctional relationship over classic-rock noodling.
And just more than a month ago, Allison Crutchfield’s Swearin’ unveiled Surfing Strange, a dark, difficult record that nonetheless manages to showcase the Crutchfield gift for melody: Album opener “Dust in the Gold Sack” begins with a strummy acoustic gift and Crutchfield’s naif voice before exploding into a glorious march of washed-out guitars and bombastic drumming.
On the one hand, 2013 was a dreadful year for pop — Miley, Katy and Gaga’s mediocre albums all saw to that. On the other hand, indie artists such as Katie and Allison Crutchfield spun perfect musical cobwebs that are still sticking to the inside of my skull. Pop isn’t dead; it’s just hiding in the attic.
—Eric Bricker
“The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)” by Ylvis
“The Fox” rose to become YouTube’s top trending video of 2013 by quietly ignoring the chaos that defined the year.
This was a year of tumult, of controversy, of bigger social issues splayed across the music scene — the clash of millenials versus baby boomers, black versus white, big-budget pop music versus a rapidly growing indie scene. Miley. Robin Thicke. Lorde. Macklemore. Justin Timberlake. Big names. Bigger topics.
“The Fox” ignored it all and threw context out the window.
It was in September that the members of Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis posted a video on YouTube that suddenly went viral. I thought my roommate had gone crazy when she showed me the video. It introduces animals (“What does the fox say?” I was so puzzled) and the chorus of the video is literally just screaming (“wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!” or “ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!”). There are flashing lights. There are costumes. There is synchronized dancing. What?
It was a year when production was king, yet music videos (“Bound 2,” anyone?) only seemed to get worse. “The Fox” embraced flashy production to the max. In the midst of its catchy harmonies and overdramatized lines about animal sounds, Ylvis forced the world to take a step back from the overloaded music scene.
“The Fox” taught us to stop being so wrapped up in the world and to remember that good art is anything that makes us feel. It doesn’t matter how stupid it is. Relax. Be simple. Stop thinking so much. Thinking is what inhibits good music and good art.
“The Fox” is the song of the year because instead of overanalyzing or overpowering or trying so hard to break barriers, it brought out the year’s most beautiful message: Sometimes, the weirdest — and best — pieces of art transport people away from the heaviness and let them have pure fun.
—Beena Raghavendran
“New Slaves” by Kanye West
There’s the Kanye who rents out an entire baseball stadium and a live orchestra for a $3.3 million marriage proposal. There’s the Kanye who fashions himself a post-racial MLK and restarts a line in “All of the Lights” because his mostly white crowds won’t sing the n-word. There’s the Kanye who co-opts a song about lynchings in the Deep South and samples it to craft a six-minute ode to baby mama drama. There’s the Kanye who throws fits because he can’t lock down a high-end fashion deal.
And then there’s 2:47.
Just less than three minutes into “New Slaves,” one of the few radio-friendly hits on this summer’s challenging, confounding Yeezus, vaguely menacing synths transition without warning into an uplifting drum roll.
The only accurate description of the next minute or so is transcendence. For all the diatribes and think pieces, the YouTube-ready interviews and over-the-top ridiculousness that have come to define his public image, this is Kanye in his element, and it’s beautiful.
Drums melt into a soaring orchestral arrangement culled from Hungarian band Omega’s “Gyöngyhajú Lány,” and an auto-tuned Kanye and a crooning Frank Ocean wax eloquently yet simply on drug-aided escapism.
For just more than one minute, all the sometimes-laughable earnestness he’s exhibited in interviews this year seems believable. However briefly, he’s Jordan, Jackson, Jobs — all of his oft-mentioned idols rolled into one — and he won’t — or can’t — lose.
—Matt Schnabel
