We have spent the last eleven months by listening to a stack of music albums. To close the year, we’ve listed our ten best albums which definitely have put us to the cloud nine while listening to their musics.

10. Arcade Fire – Reflektor :

If only the albums was as good as ‘The Suburb’, we would put them sitting on the peak of the chart. But we didn’t say the album is bad. Reflektor still kicks it with some of the Suburbs’ rhythm, which we really love, and the album still has a strong rock roots with an intertwined of dark tunes. The lack of emotion from the album might take you a couple of times to really get the sense of Arcade Fire.

Recommended Track : Reflektor

9.Disclosure – Settle :

The band have been hailed for their dance music and given an outstanding call-out. ‘Settle’ is 100% a sugar land for a fan of Groove Armada or Artful Dodger. Knowing that ‘Settle’ is the duo’s debut album, we are blown with its content. What not to love! The album itself will give you the finest house music, 90’s electro and some modern dance music. Somehow, it also gives us a chill that their music is reflecting the era when Basement Jaxx were dominating the dance music industry.

Recommended Track : Disclosure ft. James Woon – January

8.Phoenix – Bankrupt! :

They have catapulted into the big leagues with “Wolfgang Amadeus…” The hardest task is to maintain their album quality and their popularity. Instead of making Wolfgang Amadeus part II, they’ve decided to make something different with their own touch. Layered thick synth flavored with heart-thumping drums and the way their vocalist Thomas Mars pronounce exotic words such as “Drakkar Noir” and “Oblique City”, that’s just the Phoenix way of maintaining their lovely status among their fans.

Recommended Track : Tryin’ to be cool

7. QOTSA – Like Clockwork :

Like Clockwork is the long awaited album from Queens of The Stone Age after their hiatus in 2009. In August 2012, Homme with his band mate began to record their sixth album. Like Clockwork is the first independent album from this California based band. However, it doesn’t shrink the musical quality, they still creates fantastic album from astounding songwriting, badass guitar riff in full effect, and not to mention the great musicians who collaborated with them such as Alex Turner, Jake Shears, Trent Reznor, James Lavelle, and Sir Elton John.

Recommended Track: If I Had a Tail

6. James Blake – Overgrown :

The second album of James Blake is unequivocally an amazing job. The album is being written beautifully with a nice touch of dub step, we really think James Blake is one of the most genuine artist who can describe dub step in a very classy way. The album also takes some hip/hop and soul music to make it classier. As a result, Overgrown has earned him a Mercury Prize and got him nominated for Grammy Awards 2014.

Recommended Track : Retrograded

5. Justin Timberlake – 20/20 :

The new king of pop, Justin Timberlake is bringing the sexy back again with 20/20 experience. His third solo album takes over the number one spot both in the UK and US charts, it has reached nearly a million in its first week sales. The former leader of the famous boyband *NSYNC is probably the only singer who can make a seven-minute track without making the listeners feel bored with his falsetto voice, groovy beats, and skillfully written lyrics. Nonetheless, 20/20 Experience cannot beat the massive success from Timberlake second album Future Sex/Love Sounds that helped him get four Grammys. It’s hard to keep the 21 years of experience in the right track, but we must say that Timberlake has successfully nailed it.

Recommended Track: Let The Groove Get In

4. Foals – Holy Fire :

Foals’ third album, “Holy Fire”, is a solid proof of their hardworking career. They could’ve easily followed their signature sound that they have created in “Antidotes” and “Total Life Forever”. But now, they were trying to capture the energy and improvement outside their comfort zone. Most new bands have copied Foals’ signature guitar sound but they’ve failed to reach the stage where the Oxford guys have reached. There’s a simple explanation, it is mainly because most of the bands don’t have the character and maturity that Foals gained in the past few years.

Recommended Track : My Number

3. VW – Modern Vampires of the City:

When the guys from Vampire Weekend said that their third album would be ‘darker’ from the first two that preceded it, they didn’t mention that it would sound better too. Vampire Weekend entered the music industry with the image of a group of preppy, young college graduates singing about (mostly) their days at the campus, but this year they had shown people that it’s not the only thing they’re good at. Modern Vampire Of The City is full of well-crafted, beautifully threaded tracks.

Recommended Track: Hannah Hunt

2.Daftpunk – Random Access Memory:

Random Access Memories was probably the most waited album of 2013. The excitement that was following its release was tremendous. Featuring collaborations with renowned musicians such as Giorgio Moroder, Julian Casablancas, and Pharell Williams, the album is filled with musical twists and turns. It’s also probably Daft Punk’s most personal work, what with them trying to maximize the use of natural sounds. Random Access Memories is a mix of disco, soft rock, and progressive rock, with some Broadway-style pop on the sides. With twenty years up their sleeves, it seems that the helmet-wearing duo have been getting better and better at what they do.

Recommended Track: Give Life Back to Music

1.Arctic Monkeys – AM :

Who The Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys is now an invalid question because, really, who doesn’t know Arctic Monkeys? Especially after their fifth album release which raised much raving reviews. The twelve tracks in AM have been threaded so perfectly that every aspect, from the guitar riffs to the glam-rock stomps, is simply irresistible. A wordsmith that Alex Turner is, the well-written imagery becomes highly seductive at no matter what pace. Slick slow-burning groove, infectious riff-rockers, a dash of R&B and hip-hop; genre no longer defines Arctic Monkeys as now they can make anykind of music and make it their sound.

Recommended Track: No.1 Party Anthem

Hobo Rocket, their fifth album, was finally released on August 2nd. And to say that Pond is on fire would be an understatement: the guys have produced five albums in the span of five years since their formation. And with them, it’s not the common tale of I’m-aiming-for-commercial-success-so-I-force-myself-to-be-productive like so many artists have fallen trap into nowadays. It seems like their heads are just so full with ideas that they simply can’t contain it all inside anymore, and those ideas found their way out themselves.

The album opens with Whatever Happened To The Million Head Collide, giving us a warm up before we move on deeper into the album, with such futuristic notes that somehow still have a trace of vintage feel amidst the modern vibe. The drums in the background work so well with the tingling synthesizers and vocalist, Nick Allbrook’s yowls and occasional chants. Allbrook’s scream in the middle of the song should’ve felt out of place. But miraculously, it doesn’t. It actually works with the pace of the whole song. As the song breaks into a full-on guitar riffs, you can’t help but lose yourself to the rock ‘n roll feel that lulls your subconscious into a state of trance. And it’s just the beginning.

“Xanman, Xanman. She wouldn’t understand, you were crying for your man!” Allbrook cries in the second track, Xanman. Within the first twenty seconds of the song, we are treated with the buzzing guitar that reminds us a bit with the one from the other track off Hobo Rocket: Giant Tortoise. The free-wheeling cymbals and intense loopy vortex made for hallucinogenic songwriting.

O Dharma, on the other hand, is something of a half-awake state of mind. It’s trippy and swirly, peaceful and serene—the kind of music that drowns you in a wave of positivity. Followed by Alone A Flame A Flower, a druggy, psychedelic-heavy tune, the album is brought into a halt. It’s like Pond is giving us a short break from the energetic, explosive, head-banging mood the first two songs had set up.

Hobo Rocket is full of vocals drenched in reverb, thunderous drumming, and ominous riffs as well as stabbing piano. The majority of these elements are showed in Giant Tortoise, which also happened to be the first single to be released from the album. The song gives you goosebumps, as you can feel its richness through the guitar that sounds like amplifier being fed through a filter.

Come the time for us to listen to the title track, Hobo Rocket, and our interest is instantly piqued by the spoken work poetry (performed by Cowboy John). It’s chaotic and slightly schizophrenic, and in the middle of his rambling you can hear John asking the band: “What kind of drugs you boys on?” The track is a free-flowing jam and frankly, it’s not really essential, but you got to give Pond a credit for making it as listenable as everything else on the album.

The album closes with Midnight Mass, a dreamy, heavy psych-rock that’s filled with skeletal keyboards. It’s taken to climax with Allbrook’s scream one minute into the song, and the thrill is prolonged by the drum-led freak out repete and spacey effects.

All in all, Hobo Rocket is no doubt a psychedelic beast. It’s rough; explosive; but with pedal bursts, percussion, and synth warps that are stitched skillfully. Afterall, Nick Allbrook himself had labeled the album as “…jammy, and sloppy as sh*t.” And like everything Pond has ever done, it reeks of raw emotions and passion, while still managing to be so carefully-assembled. The songs feel inaccessible, unmemorable, and the distortion that’s present throughout the album makes it indecipherable. But it works for Pond. Just like the work of Vincent Van Gogh, you don’t have to really understand it to know that it’s beautiful. Hobo Rocket might not be as ace as its predecessor, Beard, Wives, Denim, and it doesn’t really take Pond to the next level. But it’s a piece of art in its own way, and ensures Pond’s consistency in creating decent music.

If you want to hear the raw vocals and raw musics that the New Yorkers have on their first album, you’ll totally miss them out on Mosquito, as Karen O said to NME “So much feeling went into this record, it was the rope ladder thrown down into the ditch for us to climb up and dust ourselves off.” This fourth album actually gives you the second version of ‘It’s Blitz!’. The first track of this song is ‘Sacrilege’, it tells about a love story, well, we don’t want to discuss about the materials and the meanings of this song, but what is really interesting is Karen O’s idea to add gospel choirs at the end of the song, which gives a sacred-like ambiance or more religious’ point of view. For the next track, ‘Subway’, gives a gloomy with a sound of a subway train. The fact that Karen O wrote this song because she thinks the band should have a song that describes about New York, is not really delivering the point of the song. ‘Mosquito’ is probably the song that will be the band’s opener for their upcoming concerts, the song is really pumping, not as pumping as ‘Date With The Night’ or ‘Tick’, but if you are looking for the song that you’d like to karaoke for, this song will fit you most. Their ‘Under The Earth’ is our next favourite, it’s full with the heavy drums, and eventhough it sounds dark (or not so dark). ‘Area 52’ is the bomb! We’ll say that because this song is the closest one to the raw Yeah Yeah Yeahs, plus to confirm about the raw-ness of Area 52, Karen O confessed that this song has the roughest lyrics (after ‘Art Star’), it also has the best Nick’s riff in this album (there you go for those who scream a Fever To Tell-ish song!). Area 52 is obviously the song that has the richest materials among the other tracks. Their songs like ‘Despair’ and ‘Wedding Song’ are some of the song that show the genius part of the band’s musicality.

The fourth album is just different, it gives the different side of the band, intriguing and also less crazier. Most of the tracks offer dark and low tunes, and even for ‘Buried Alive’ features DrOctagon, the guest rap for the song. It’s just different. Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ three previous albums got nominated for Grammys, we were expecting the fourth would be the goal of the band to score the triumph, but after ripping the album, we are quite doubt this album will even be nominated. However, Yeah Yeah Yeahs are on their transition way, this album is just not their strongest work. Yeah Yeah Yeahs are not the party-punks anymore, the songs in ‘Mosquito’ are not the songs that will make Karen do some crazy stage acts, it’s the mature Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Mosquito :