Scott B. Bomar's 40 Favorite Albums of 2013

Following is my list of favorite albums of 2013, each accompanied by a one (sometimes long) sentence review or comment. First, I've posted a Spotify playlist with all the albums for your listening pleausre.

And the winners are...



1. Vampire Weekend – Modern Vampires of the City (XL)
A lot of people have commented that Vampire Weekend came into their own with this record, but in my opinion they’ve always had a fantastically groovy blend of pop melodies, world music influences, and literate lyrical observations.

2. The Head and the Heart – Let’s Be Still (Sub Pop)
The Head and the Heart and the Belle Brigade are probably two of my favorite new bands from the last five years, but since the Belle Brigade hasn’t released a sophomore record yet, the Head and the Heart was left to fill the gap alone with this highly appealing follow up to their outstanding indie folk-rock debut.

3. Gregory Porter – Liquid Spirit (Blue Note)
This will sound pretentious, but Gregory Porter is some kind of deeply spiritual soul jazz poet that, in my opinion, could become a jazzier version of the great Donny Hathaway.

4. The Avett Brothers – Magpie and the Dandelion (American) 

Somehow these guys always manage to seem both down-home (banjos and fiddles) and amazingly panoramic (perfectly layered production, rich harmonies) as they work from a musical palette that encompasses a little of everything from the 1870s to right now.

5. Kacey Musgraves – Same Trailer Different Park (Mercury Nashville)

It’s about time that commercial country music reclaimed some of the brash irreverence and progressively-minded lyricism of its golden era - and it happened in a big way in 2013 with a handful of Nashville women led by Musgraves.

6. Little Green Cars – Absolute Zero (Glassnote)
This is some excellent wide-ranging harmony-laden pop, garnished with jangly electric guitars and tasteful echoes of their native Ireland –all filtered through a hip contemporary lens.

7. Escondido – The Ghost of Escondido (1-2-3-4-GO!)
I’m a sucker for swimming and shimmering pedal steel guitar, so this moody male-female duo kept me engaged with their rich echo and lush atmospherics from the first song on.

8. Patty Griffin – American Kid (New West)
This exceptional collection of songs has become one of my new favorite albums from one of my very favorite songwriters (and, strangely, Robert Plant’s girlfriend).

9. Valerie June – Pushin’ Against a Stone (Concord)
With her Medussa-like dreadlocks, this Tennessee native’s look is as mesmerizing as her wildly eclectic stew of folk, R&B, blues, jazz, country, and bluegrass that sounds like the Black Keys making and album with the Carter Family.

10. Daft Punk – Random Access Memories (Columbia)
I’ve never been into Daft Punk because I’m not into electronic music, but this time around they’re augmented by real live musicians who helped create a very funky album that reminded me of being at the roller rink in about 1982.

11. Brandy Clark – 12 Stories (Slate Creek)
Brandy and I used to write songs together back in my Nashville days, but now she’s a wonderfully way-out-of-my-league Americana troubadour with some truly funny, poignant, and incisive lyrics.

12. Jason Isbell – Southeastern (Southeastern)
The Former Drive-By Trucker is a good songwriter and a great singer with a whiskey-worn voice and sparse haunting songs that occupy the space somewhere between Ryan Adams and Ryan Bingham.

13. Billie Joe + Norah – Foreverly (Reprise)
The idea of Norah Jones and Green Day’s Bill Joe Armstrong joining forces to cover the Everly Brothers’ Songs Our Daddy Taught Us album sounds like a Mad Lib, but makes for an unexpectedly pleasant listening experience.

14. Milk Carton Kids – The Ash & Clay (Anti)
Mel and I used to play gigs with Joey Ryan, now one half of the Milk Carton Kids, a duo that’s perfected the intertwined acoustic guitars and rich 1960’s-style harmonies that make them sound like they just jumped out of the Cohen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis film.



15. Arcade Fire – Reflektor (Merge)
Arcade Fire is a little more “electronic” (for lack of a better word), than I usually go for, but for some reason I thought this record was pretty cool.



16. Ashley Monroe – Like a Rose (Warner Bros.)
An effortlessly talented no-frills country traditionalist who, along with Kacey Musgraves and Brandy Clark, is leading an exciting wave of music out of Nashville that challenges the bloated recycled 80s pop that somehow overtook the genre that was once marked by unflinching authenticity.



17. Dawes – Stories Don’t End (HUB)
This is definitely not their best album, but Dawes is one of my favorite bands of the 21^st century so far, and even in a slight slump they’re still great.



18. Pearl Jam – Lightning Bolt (Monkeywrench) – Easily one of the top five best records this band has done, Lightning Bolt has all the scrappy energy of classic era Pearl Jam with the comfortable ease of grown men who know who they are and know what they do best.



19. The Lone Bellow – The Lone Bellow (Descendant)
I saw this band open for Dwight Yoakam and was ready to dismiss them for their hipster moustaches until they started playing, and completely blew me away with their traditional-meets-contemporary acoustic-oriented assault.



20. Kopecky Family Band – Kids Raising Kids (ATO)
Though they suffer from an unfortunate name that makes them sound like a bad Southern gospel act, this album is actually a fine collection of well-crafted indie rock with great harmony vocals and surprisingly strong songwriting.



21. Justin Timberlake – The 20/20 Experience (RCA)
I can feel your judgment, but the guy’s crazy talented!



22. Queens of the Stone Age – Like Clockwork (Matador)
Though my tastes lean toward roots music, I still love me some loud guitars that sound both edgy and classic at the same time.



23. Arctic Monkeys – AM (Domino)
These guys have been around a while, but I just recently discovered them, and I really like the whole indie-rock-meets-David-Bowie thing they’ve got going on.



24. Kurt Vile – Wakin on a Pretty Daze (Matador)
It’s hard to know what to think of a guy who starts an album with a 10 minute song, but when the guitars sound this good and the vocals are this disarmingly intimate, I’ll take it!



25. Hey Marseilles – Lines We Trace (Onto/Thirty Tigers)
I know there’s sort of a Mumford backlash these days, but Hey Marseilles sounds like a lusher and more cinematic version of Marcus Mumford and company, that I happen to really like.



26. Jake Bugg – Jake Bugg (Mercury)
I hate to say this guy sounds like a young Bob Dylan, but the scrappy 19 year old has a strange and slightly nasal voice that’s reminiscent of mid-1960s folk rock - with a little Pete Yorn modernism thrown in for good measure.

27. Alice Smith – She (Rainwater)
Alice Smith possesses a remarkably powerful voice and a cool neo-soul aesthetic that’s rooted in the sort of classic breezy 70s grooves that I cannot resist.



28. Max Gomez – Rule the World (New West)
I accidentally saw this guy twice as an opening act in 2013 (for Buddy Miller & Jim Lauderdale and Patty Griffin), and he hooked me with his Americana-meets- James-Taylor thing.



29. The Mowglis – Waiting for the Dawn (Island/Def Jam)
There’s still a place for semi-jangly pop rock that’s just fun even if the songs aren’t necessarily amazing, right?   

30. Rokia Traore – Beautiful Africa (Nonesuch)
Most of this album is not in English, but I have an attraction to African music, and this folky Africa-meets-Western influences vibe makes me feel all warm inside.



31. Guy Clark – My Favorite Picture of You (Dualtone)
Guy Clark is the Ernest Hemingway of singer-songwriters, and he returns with yet another meticulously crafted, but seemingly effortless masterpiece of lyrical authenticity.



32. Boy – Mutual Friends (Nettwerk)
Ironically composed of two girls, Boy sounds like a more rustic version of Feist at an intimate house concert.



33. The James Hunter Six – Minute By Minute (Fantasy)
This white British guy, who I’ve very much admired for several years, sounds like a supercharged lost 60’s soul man with the nuance of Sam Cooke and the punch of James Brown.

34. Kelly Willis & Bruce Robison – Cheater’s Game (Premium)
Kelly Willis possesses an unparalleled voice, and this album by the married Austin duo showcases an appealing pastoral ambiance with a hip Austin spin.

35. Robert Randolph Presents: The Slide Brothers (Concord)
The pedal steel guitar is generally associated with country music, but there is a long Sacred Steel tradition in a handful of African-American churches that is beautifully captured here by some of its most accomplished living practitioners.



36. Phoenix – Bankrupt (Glassnote)
I loved Phoenix’s previous album and, although they stretch out and get a little weirder on this release, they still have the whole melodic-retro-80s-through-a contemporary-filter down really well.



37. Son Volt – Honky Tonk (Rounder)
Son Volt’s debut album, Trace (from ages ago), is one of my all- time faves, and this record reasserts the rootsiness of the familiar pedal-steel-and-fiddle-meets-edgy-Americana that I’m always a sucker for.

38. Elvis Costello and The Roots – Wise Up Ghost (Blue Note)
Always eager to work with unlikely collaborators, Elvis Costello does it right once again with this slow burn of a partnership with the hip-hop masters that might take a few listens before it gets its claws all the way in you.

39. Robbie Fulks – Gone Away Backward (Bloodshot)
One of the original alt.country pioneers, Fulks has been prolific enough that I haven’t always managed to keep up with him, but he recaptured my attention with this fantastic showcase of his artfully economical approach to songcraft.



40. Janelle Monae - The Electric Lady (Bad Boy)
With her socially-conscious but funky sound, this female James-Brown-for-the modern-world makes music that is like a forward-looking history lesson of retro-futurism (which makes no sense).