KFL is a writer/lover of music, a drinker of coffee and a (begrudging) maker of lists.

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Admission/Confession: I don’t bother defending my opinions these days; I find it to be an exercise in futility. Besides, I’m really fucking lazy. This is for posterity as much as anything.

The List:

1. Phosphorescent, “Muchacho” (Dead Oceans Records)

2. Eluvium, “Nightmare Ending” (Temporary Residence)

3. Daniel Bachman, “Jesus I’m a Sinner” (Tompkins Square)

4. Dawn of Midi, “Dysnomia” (Thirsty Ear)

5. Mikal Cronin, “MCII” (Merge)

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1. Lorde, Pure Heroine (Universal)

I’m fairly certain I would not have surmised my most listened to album of the year would have been written and recorded by a 16-year-old girl from New Zealand. I guess it proves I’m not utterly dead inside that I can still be this taken aback. Pure Heroine is an accidental master stroke. Lorde is a typical teen with typical teenage insecurities, but she has an atypical way of expressing herself that just happens to take the form of top shelf pop. I’m pretty sure she set out to mimic Lana Del Rey, but she ended up creating a sound unlike anything else on the radio. Lorde is trying to be a poet. She’s trying to sound sophisticated. She’s trying to conjure a dark romanticism. The thing is she pulls it all off with very little to be embarrassed about. (I’m 100% certain I would want anything I created at age 16 to be burned forever). Pure Heroine is a staggeringly accomplished pop record: Big, catchy choruses are underpinned with attention-grabbing starkness and wildly unorthodox beats. It’s down-tempo-electro-pop to be sure, but it’s truly every-day-hummably infectious. “Royals” stands out like a sore thumb on the radio, but its appeal extends beyond the masses into the hierarchy of the critical elite, even as clueless arbiters of nonsense try to argue its latent racist overtones. It is the single of the year.

2. Kanye West, Yeezus (DefJam)

I am embarrassed for and annoyed by Kanye West as much as the next guy. It pains me to think how white I am for this being the only hip hop album in my list, but I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t mark it down. I listened to Yeezus more times than I care to count. The disconnect between West’s persona in interviews and his recorded output is confusing at a minimum. He comes off like a complete bozo in public, whose blind ambition almost elicits pity it’s so laughable. But on record he’s an absolute genius. Yeezus is dark, scary, confrontational, and a complete mass of contradictions, but it’s a record you will want to blast out of your car stereo. Rick Rubin tore the production down to its absolute minimum mere days before it was due for printing. It sounds next level. Jabs of synths, mutated vocal effects, and tribal rhythms are all interspersed with scattershot samples, but the star here is West’s lyrics. Yes, they’re extraordinarily misogynistic, but at the same time shards of brilliance lessen the blow with insightfully pointed rage. West is an angry man, and Yeezus is the musical catharsis he needed.

3. My Bloody Valentine, m b v (self released)

Much to my brother’s chagrin, I brought My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless on cassette to listen to on the way to school just about every day my junior year. He was too young to understand how fucking mind-bendingly awesome those waves of noise were. And still are. My Bloody Valentine leveled the playing field with that record, setting the bar for an entire movement of music and spawning a generation’s worth of copycats. I wouldn’t have wanted to follow it up either. So when word hit that IT FINALLY HAPPENED I scrambled to order my copy. When I listened to it, I was initially disappointed. I was mostly disappointed to discover that I was accustomed to all the soundscapes that had once shocked me so. Changing music forever is a once in a lifetime gift. So, MBV picks up the very next day. It doesn’t surpass Loveless; nor does it try to. It can’t. But it is a gloriously soul-crushing record all the same; it just takes longer to ingest. Guitarist Kevin Shields hasn’t added any new elements to the mix. It’s more of the same. But more of that same is clearly better than most.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Patrick Wall is the man whose name you’d love to touch. But you mustn’t touch. People pay him to write things.

KNEE MEETS JERK
In Which a Beleaguered Music Journalist Attempts — and Fails — to Identify Ten Records Released Between December 2012 and December 2013 That Were Better Than All Other Releases in the Same Time Period. Listed in alphabetical order. Results subject to change. In seven acts.

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Robert Howell is a professor of philosophy at SMU. His latest book is called Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity and is available at Amazon. Now that you are good and intimidated, below are his thoughts on a few records from the past year.

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I seem to be the only person who doesn’t like the new Vampire Weekend, and I’m one of only a handful that finds the new Arcade Fire boring. Combine that with the fact that Kanye’s continuous ass-hattery prevents me from listening to Yeezus and I’m disqualified for pronouncing the top ten albums of the year. Instead, here are twelve albums (and one reissue) that I think are excellent and generally underrated. In no meaningful order.

Daughn Gibson, Me Moan (Sub Pop)
Recommended if you like: Playing bagpipes on Music Row while huffing ether.

Cayucas, Cayucas (Secretly Canadian)
Recommended if you like: Ferris Bueller but not Say Anything

El-P and Killer Mike, Run the Jewels (Fools Gold)
Recommended if you like: Small cars with big engines.

Adam Green and Binki Shapiro, s/t (Rounder)
Recommended if you like: Those bikes with baskets in the front, probably filled with brie and a baguette.

Mikal Cronin, MC II (Merge)
Recommended if you like: The idea of California but have no interest in moving there.

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Looking at this list, I clearly had a dark, introspective year. So, there’s that. –@kerryrm

Still Corners – Strange Pleasures
Continuing what they started on Creatures Of An Hour, Still Corners deliver more of the same ethereal dream pop that I can’t resist. Strange Pleasures is like the soundtrack to a long drive across a desolate plain reflecting on a cracked and abandoned life. RIYL: Beach House, Chromatics

Forest Swords – Engravings
On one of my favorite labels, Tri Angle, Forest Swords’ Engravings has a tinge of “witch house” and at times reminds me of a more mellow, less methodical oOoOO. These tracks are a hazy, introspective and meandering collection of samples, atmospherics, field recordings and minimal beats.

Julianna Barwick – Nepenthe
I knew nothing of Julianna Barwick until I heard Nepenthe and for weeks after I could listen to nothing but this album. It was like a drug. The songs build on her lushly layered vocals, creating a kind of vocal analog to Music for Airports. RIYL: Sheila Chandra’s The Zen Kiss, Sigur Rós, Cocteau Twins
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Come on, people. You know Fiona Apple is very sensitive. She does not have thick enough skin for heckling, especially when it’s about her appearance. I have to admit I thought something was amiss when I saw her last September. She looked way too gaunt, but I know better than to yell my thoughts at her while she’s trying to play songs. Anyway, Apple had a heckler tossed from her show in Portland last night for screaming, “Get Healthy. We want to see you in ten years!” Now, it sounds like said heckler was trying to be supportive, but that’s just not the way to go about such things. Apple played one more song after the incident and then left the stage in tears, because, OF COURSE SHE DID.

She did manage to play a new song before storming off stage:

I’m unabashedly obsessed with this song- and the whole album for that matter. I’ve deliberately avoided the backstory on this girl, but it’s becoming increasingly more difficult now that she has the number one song in America and is cropping up on ubiquitious shows like this.