FasterLouder's Top 50 Albums of 2013

My Bloody Valentine still sound like no other band, but they’re stretching out to a large degree on this album, making their sound even more texturally dense.

From soul to psychedelia may seem like a stylistic jump, but Ruban Nielson has absorbed his influences so completely, and has attained such control of his sound, that he makes such eclecticism seems completely natural.

If you think you’ve outgrown them, you haven’t. Matt Berninger’s quandaries are not the sort that can be outgrown, they’re the sort that stalk you to the grave. That The National can wring beauty from these bleak inevitabilities is the reason that they matter.

Straight to your heart and to your gut, Push The Sky Away hits like a gentle kiss: life, love, loss. It’s a masterwork by an artist whose horizon feels a long, long way off.

Overgrown holds together beautifully, managing to cohere without wilting into monotony. Given how eclectic the album is, it’s a hell of a trick.

Reflektor is the sound of a few goofballs throwing themselves a well-deserved party, present are the requisite anxieties that go hand in hand with playing host.

The record’s better executed moments (‘Unbelievers’, ‘Ya Hey’) are widescreen and epic; adjectives one would never have associated with Vampire Weekend’s first two albums

If not a total revelation, it’s another periodic reminder of just how arresting a playful songwriter and a well-schooled rock band can sound together.

Random Access Memories is too intimate to be the late night dancefloor banger some might’ve expected. Instead it’s the sensual conversation on the velvet sofa in a dimly-lit room.

It’s dark as anything but able to turn uplifting at any moment, synths and drum machines giving way to choral samples as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

I called them solid and dependable previously and that sense of solidness is the first thing that comes across on ...Like Clockwork. They are a Volvo of a band, reliable, they will not let you down.

Overwhelming nostalgia defines Pure Heroine, a wistful dissection of a youth still in progress.