The 10 Best Songs of 2013

With no pretense of being exhaustive, nor of fully representing the editorial staff's rankings, we thought we'd let you hear, with a Top 10 each, the playlists that best capture each of our own "musical year." The songs that stood out within a certain genre, the songs that came to symbolize the year's revelations or its great confirmations – or, more simply, the songs that meant something to us as we listened to them.

Alberto Asquini

1. Fuck Buttons – Hidden Xs

Epic sweep in a tear-jerking ride. Wide-open synths that build towards an epic climax.

2. Daft Punk – Giorgio By Moroder

This is how museum audio guides should be. History explained by the man who made it.

3. Saåad & Mondkopf – Last Love

Muffled, martial bass drum, drones that trip off into the depths. An endless trance.

4. Ripatti – #39

Vladislav Delay goes glitchy.

5. Prurient – You Show Great Spirit

Fernow goes EBM-goth.

6. Tropic Of Cancer – Plant Lilies At My Head

Camella Lobo pulls off what the latest Grouper on Kranky couldn't: languor without the yawns.

7. Immanuel Casto – Tropicanal

In a fair world it would have been a worldwide hit. The closest thing to a mainstream international sound we have in Italy.

8. Shapednoise – Until Human Voices Wake Us

Brutality explained in Berlin by a guy from Palermo.

9. Boards Of Canada – Reach For The Dead

The post-atomic universe of Boc in a visionary, devastating track.

10. Foals – Providence

Ferocious guitars, off-kilter drums. I didn't like the album, but this track alone is worth a whole career. 

Gabriele Benzing – Ten songs, ten places (real or imagined)

1. Okkervil River – Down Down The Deep River

Meriden, New Hampshire. Two kids defy the night in a tent in the middle of the woods. Will Sheff returns to the places where he grew up to tell of the Eighties in a corner of small-town America, staging the loss of innocence in his own personal coming-of-age story.

2. The Weather Machine – Act III – Alexei Mikhail

USSR, somewhere along the border. Waking up with a Simonov carbine by your side and a bullet in your shoulder, while a military doctor speaks to you in some Slavic dialect. Somewhere between Orpheus and Percy Jackson, an irresistible spy story told in song form by Slater Smith and his Weather Machine.

3. Buster Blue – Leave Me In Coeur d’Alene

Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. A brass band marches through the city streets with the gait of a funeral elegy. Bryan Moses Jones and Andrew Martin lead the Buster Blue folk collective through one of the most nostalgic and theatrical tracks in their repertoire.

4. Misophone – Broken Radio

Overlook Hotel, room 237. With its sinister carillon chimes, Misophone's music seems to emerge straight out of a Stephen King nightmare. And perhaps that's exactly where Matt Welsh and Steven Herbert's songs live: wandering the halls of the Overlook Hotel, ready to drive Jack Torrance to madness.

5. The Mostar Diving Club – Voyage Of Starlings

Mostar, Bosnia. From the old bridge of Mostar to the London suburbs, Damian Katkhuda's voice immerses itself in this track steeped in the border-town atmosphere worthy of Calexico at their best, carrying us far away on the wings of a flock of migratory birds.

6. Intuitive Compass – Before The End Of Days

On the road, toward the next town. Wearing old cabaret performers' costumes, wielding guitar and accordion on every street corner: Jason O’Dea and Aurelia Cohen are the soul of the traveling circus that is Intuitive Compass. Their only baggage is music that combines retro echoes and alternative accents with lucid recklessness.

7. Vandaveer – Pretty Polly

Appalachia, USA. When Willie invited her to follow him, Polly immediately sensed something strange in his eyes. The Appalachian forests have passed down her tragic story through the folds of time, until it reached the voice of Vandaveer. Because the human soul has always stayed the same, with all its contradictions.

8. Frontier Ruckus – Careering Catalog Immemorial

Suburbia, USA. A white limousine rented for the prom. The line at dawn outside a shopping mall. A minivan bought with the parents' money. "My world's a comprehensive private diorama/ Unpunctuated by any comma," proclaims Matthew Milia, sealing his torrential stream of consciousness.

9. Gambles – Safe Side

New York City. An apartment on the Bowery, a window looking out over the lights of the night. Taxis race along the streets of Manhattan while a young man confesses his torments to the darkness. "There is no safe side/ Wherever I stand, I damage." A bare, direct account of a descent into hell. And of the chance to find the way back.

10. Joseph Arthur – I Used To Know How To Walk On Water

Redemption City. Joseph Arthur had dedicated an entire album to the "city of redemption". Now he's returned to visit it with his most ambitious project yet. To recount those moments when things seem on the verge of revealing their secret, when the mystery of reality shows itself to our eyes for an instant. Then life throws us back into the shadows. But something remains inside that we can no longer pretend to forget.

Giuliano Delli Paoli

1. James Blake – Retrograde

Blake lifts emotions off the ground, gradually projecting them upward in an epic, passionate crescendo. He's practically a fallen angel. There couldn't have been a better comeback for the acclaimed electro-writer.

2. Swim Deep – The Sea

An irresistible, mischievous little tune that leaves no escape. A gust of pop freshness that's absolutely rare these days. What more could you ask for?

3. Foals – My Number

Gripping to the bone. It's the year's smash single.

4. Arctic Monkeys – Fireside

An epic bassline and a band in a state of grace.

5. Major Lazer feat. Amber – Get Free

The pairing you didn't expect. Filed under "how to stop time in Kingston".

6. Yo' True – The Dough

Somewhere between Matt Johnson and Alvin Superstar. English pop's next great hope. 

7. King Krule – Baby Blue

Nocturnal spleen embroidering a tender, shadowy snapshot. 

8. Connan Mockasin – I’m The Man, That Will Find You

Mocking, off-kilter in just the right way. Mockasin at his best, in a sickly-sweet, vaguely erotic mode.

9. Blood Orange – Time Will Tell

Once upon a time there were the wonderful '80s, fat synths and a white suit. Halfway between Prince and the King of Pop.

10. Toy – Join The Dots

A sumptuous, proud ride through the depths of new kraut-rock.

Claudio Fabretti

1. Daft Punk – Giorgio by Moroder

In the sprawling epic crafted by the two French spaceboys, the legend of Moroder bursts in, recounting with irony his own story and the birth of disco music. Bringing back to life, as if by magic, all the wonder of that sound.

2. Suede – Sabotage

Brett Anderson is alive and fighting alongside us. To tell us that love is sabotage, in the romantic peak of a high-intensity record that restores the Suede brand to its former glory, skilfully blending pathos and adrenaline.

3. Primal Scream – Goodbye Johnny

In the visionary crossover of Bobby Gillespie and co., back once again on top form, this outrageous, sensual and tipsy bossa nova number stands out. A triumph, between disorienting crooning and sax solos.

4. Trentemøller – Never Stop Running

The electronic composer of the year wins the boldest of gambles: opening up his minimal-techno universe to sounds and guests of every kind. As in this irresistible lead single, christened by Jonny Pierce of the Drums. But almost every track on the album would have deserved a mention.

5. Janelle Monàe – The Electric Lady

2013's Electric Lady in a new, disorienting tour de force between r'n'b, soul and electro-funk, alongside Solange. The greatest potential popstar on the planet proves once again to be a force of nature.

6. David Bowie – Where Are We Now?

In the single that anticipates the album "The Next Day", the moving return of the White Duke is sublimated among faded black-and-white memories of magical 1970s Berlin. Questioning past, present and (above all) future. Without hiding a good deal of melancholy and a touch of worry. Hang in there, David.

7. These New Puritans – Organ Eternal

The revelation band of the year in the most intense acceleration of an album built entirely on pauses and sonic modulations. A majestic organ sonata, sent into glory by a superb accompaniment of strings and horns. These New Puritans chart a new path for post-rock, scraping off the clichés and mannerisms of recent years.

8. Pere Ubu – Thanks

Are Pere Ubu making dance music? Have we lost our minds? Maybe so, but if you've got David Thomas's self-deprecating humour, you can afford even the boldest of leaps. As in this delirious track that turns Anita Ward's eternal disco hit "Ring My Bell" into the irreverent refrain "You can go to hell". Incomparable.

9. Julia Holter – Maxim's I

The most refined songwriter of the year navigates the romantic swirls of this enveloping, timeless song. Showing a sure hand and a performance of real class. The Los Angeles girl with a passion for Greek tragedies and a fondness for John Cage no longer puts a foot wrong.

10. Fuck Buttons – The Red Wing 

The Bristol duo's synthesizers in a new astral progression that leaves no escape. That they were the best in their field had long been clear. But with "Slow Focus", they proved they now have an absolute mastery of this "mental music" that transplants the melodic grandeur of Jean-Michel Jarre into the age of drones and cyborgs.

Stefano Macchi

1. David Bowie – Where Are We Now?

David is back, delivering, to whoever cares to grasp it, that "pleasant melancholy" of being alive. "Where are we, what are we doing and, above all, where will we be?", Bowie leaves us the concept of the past in the words of the present, so that we might, for once, dream of a better future.

2. Laish – Visions

In a tight race with Bowie right up to the end, "Visions" is a perfect sonic jigsaw, an album that won me over listen after listen. Green's voice is so dissonant it sounds almost alien as it opens up into the visionary sweep of the chorus, while the seafaring guitars lock together in symbiosis, countered by syncopated drum rhythms.

3. The Knife – Raging Lung

The tribal unease this Swedish duo packs into this sonic trap has few equals; "Raging Lung" is ten minutes of percussion and laser bubbles, primitive and futuristic sensations combined in what is, for me, the best record of 2013.

4. Money – Black 

"..the rationed, rational melancholy of 'Black', in which Lee's voice is pure emotional communication, a burning soul accompanied by the mournful notes of a piano.."; that's what I wrote some time ago about Black, which, together with "Arms Up High" by Chantal Acda, really was one of the most emotionally gripping tracks in singer-songwriter pop.

5. Pure Bathing Culture – Dream The Dare

If dream-pop is your thing, this is a track that will stay with you for years to come, because it has the delicacy of muffled sound, the cleanness of '80s guitars, and a voice, Sarah Versprille's, of an intensity I'd call magnetic.

6. The National – Pink Rabbits

To my mind, "Trouble Will Find Me" was conceived like an "anthology album of unreleased tracks": if you like the National, you'll understand what I mean listening to this summation of Berninger's band; the same crooner who, on "Pink Rabbits", varies the vocal melody four times over the same chord progression: only Roy Orbison, the master, did that before him.

7. Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Swim And Sleep (Like A Shark)

This New Zealander's songwriting skill on guitar was probably the best on show in 2013: fusing pop melodies with a deliberately lo-fi sound proved a winning weapon for Ruban Nielson, heard here at his most representative.

8. Cloud Control – The Smoke, The Feeling

More dream-pop colors in the collage crafted by Australia's Cloud Control, on one of the most surprising records of the year. "The Smoke, The Feeling" is the dreamiest track, leaning heavily on the Legrand side of Beach House, but with dirtier, more crooked guitars.

9. Bonobo – Cirrus

This producer never disappoints: every time, he pulls off surprising records thanks to his ability to flow effortlessly and never bore the listener. "Cirrus" is electronic tropicalismo of swaying hips, beautiful women plumping our palate with grapes, while we curl up in a velvet armchair.

10. Bombino – Azamane Tiliade

Niger's motorcycles roll down the roads of American Sixtiesix, at the crossroads of North and South, when the Arabic sonority bursts in that has bewitched every lover of blues and rock in general: that of gentleman guitarist Bombino. 

Matteo Meda

Songs

1. Darkstar – Timeaway

This year's most beautiful surprise, after a debut I didn't find all that thrilling, was precisely "News From Nowhere", this delicate watercolour that the eccentric trio handed over to mother Warp, packing it with soft colours and sugary lsd in massive doses. "Timeaway" is a disarming music box, the sublime elevated to simplicity, a paradise you can reach on foot, just a stone's throw from home, the cocoon to take shelter in when it's freezing outside, the greenhouse where flowers bloom endlessly, the cool corner that shields you from the heat, the glass case beneath which rain beats down and bounces off. Melancholy and serenity. The synthesis of my 2013.

2. Nine Inch Nails – Copy Of A

Another surprise, "Hesitation Marks". So many faces, perspectives, reflections from the adult Trent, who looks at that old "Mr. Self Destruct" with a critical eye, and doesn't spare him a few veiled blows (not so veiled, actually). And so the rage that once became self-destructive force is now an overwhelming roar, controlled and measured to hurt exactly where it needs to: "Copy Of A" has it in for everyone who lacks the strength to stand apart, to steer clear of clichés, to be something more than "copies of a copy of a copy". That cynicism where you can also vent your own rage, when needed. That frontal assault where you find the drive and adrenaline to face everything, but above all everyone.

3. Trentemøller – Trails

A palm also goes to the year's most underrated album. Little has been written or said about it out there, far too little. "Lost" is a crossover-electronic experiment with very few precedents, and you realise it more with every listen. It's not an absolute masterpiece, it's not a flawless record: but what other producer, born in the minimal world straddling house and techno, could have pulled off something that cuts across that universe into worlds like indie, shoegaze, slo-core, post-dubstep, singer-songwriter fare and so on? Amid a kaleidoscope of a thousand faces, "Trails" is a bubbling fountain spraying liquids of varying consistency and colour from every corner. It starts off like a funeral march, gradually comes to life, sweeping away the mix of fog and smog with gusts of wind, and when the sky finally clears, it explodes into hyperactivity, letting loose jets of liquid that form an enormous rainbow.

4. Moby – Almost Home (feat. Damien Jurado)

After a joyous dawn, a laconic sunset. "Innocents" wasn't a revolutionary record, nor one able to steer good old Little Idiot away from his usual haunts. But whereas once "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" and "Porcelain" were isolated episodes, today that melancholy is the load-bearing structure of his music. We'd already seen it in the bare-bones "Wait For Me", and it seemed there was no way out: here instead everything becomes grand and sumptuous, complete with a wide cast of guest cameos, and behind the melancholy there seems to lurk a dose of resigned optimism. "Almost Home" is the kind of track that brings you to tears, the tears that fall when you embrace again a friend you hadn't seen in years and thought lost who knows where, tears of emotion rather than despair, the kind of tears that manage to bind melancholy and joy together. Because even the simplest emotions, which we tend to suppress whenever and however we can, deserve some room every now and then.

5. Mogwai – Wizard Motor

Mogwai really deserve a monument. Because if, after sixteen years of career, at least three masterpieces and another string of albums as precious as diamonds, you go on to sign one of the most beautiful soundtracks of recent years, you belong on an Olympus whose members can be counted on very few fingers. The gem actually also includes the French mini-series, eight episodes of a sort of modern "Twin Peaks" that has built a surprising cult following around itself. Fifteen wonders of rare purity, among which "Wizard Motor" is perhaps the only one that keeps up a continuum with the equally splendid "Hardcore..." from two years earlier. An unmistakably Mogwai martial gait, ash-grey sky, a crescendo kept on a leash, so much heart, and goosebumps that just can't help swelling beyond measure. Scratches turning into caresses in a march in unison up the slope of a damp, foggy mountain. End credits, but never this intense.

6. Daft Punk – Contact

Too much has already been said about "Random Access Memories". The truth is everyone chose to read it their own way. I liked to see it as a time machine: the two robots setting off after exploring the future in an attempt to have their say there too, making friends with the greats of the era (Moroder, Nile Rodgers and Paul Williams) and bringing along a few trusty squires (Panda Bear, Casablancas and Pharrell). "Contact" is the least representative track on "R.A.M." and, at the same time, its summary: following the metaphor, it represents the journey home, a space-bound ride that calling phenomenal would be a pure understatement, a vortex that takes flight at the speed of light from the back of the album and soars, looking down on three decades of music from above. But they wouldn't be Daft Punk if the landing weren't a wild one, beyond the present, in a noise reached through malfunction but from which to set off again toward the future. All around it, ecstasy.

7. Sigur Rós – Brenninstein

Had someone told me only a year ago that one day Sigur Rós, the only band capable of softening anyone's heart (and I mean anyone), would suddenly turn vicious, it wouldn't have taken me long to burst into a booming laugh. Booming like the mortar blasts with which the stunning "Brenninstein", a year later, would demolish my convictions, leaving me open-mouthed, somewhere between amazed and wounded. Yes, because after Kjartan's departure, hearing Jónsi work his way through metallic beats was another hard blow to the heart. But they needed it, and so did we: an imperfect Sigur Rós album to fall in love with in a different way, one that showed us that deep down they too are human like us, that they're not three deranged sprites who can feed only on dreams, melancholy, ecstasy, fantasy, joy and meditation, but that they too have their own nightmares and their own ghosts.

8. 65daysofstatic – Prisms

"Vladislav who? Delay?! Uh, what a cool name! And who is he?". Talk to them and that's how they answer, and you can never tell how much they really mean it and how much they're just putting you on, how much they want to say "it's all our own doing" or how much they truly don't know one of the most far-sighted craftsmen of contemporary electronic music. Then you put on "Wild Light", their most tame, most traditionally post-rock record, less flashy, less crazy, less ambitious, and perhaps the most beautiful. And right in the middle of it you find "Prisms", sharp, jagged, irresistible, and you wonder how that's even possible, it would have fit right in on "Kuopio". And yet they claim not to know who he is. But that's just how they are, and it's exactly what we've always loved about them, this staying outside the lines, this taking an all-too-stylised genre and turning it into whatever devilish thing they please. Even when, as this time, they try to "play by the rules" a bit more, it's no use, they just can't do it, Delay or no Delay. And thank god for that.

9. Gary Numan – Here In The Black

He once had electric friends, but these days old Gary keeps company with ghosts, zombies and demons. He's said so himself, in no uncertain terms: at a certain point he got tired of pretending, of playing the pop star while inside he was haunted by ghosts. So he decided to lay them bare, and why not, to befriend them. He met Trent Reznor, a long-time admirer of his, and thanks to him found in industrial rock a path to a new youth. Something we should all do a little more often: take the time to dive into our own darker sides, the ones that catch us off guard when they surface and become unmanageable, perhaps because we don't know them (and therefore don't know ourselves) deeply enough. "Here In The Black" does exactly this, confronting nightmares and fear head-on, only to discover in the end that in that undergrowth of darkness and doom-tinged veins, things aren't so bad after all. That sometimes, in fact, it's the best refuge there is.

10. Tricky – Nothing Matters (feat. Nneka)

There's no denying it: 2013 was the year of the deluxe comebacks. The classic kind of year where there's a shortage of new blood, of freshness, of novelty, and almost as if by some law of compensation, a whole string of veteran names, long adrift from their creative spark, suddenly find themselves again and make up for lost time with a handful of genuinely great records. Among them is the dark priest of trip-hop, Tricky, a man who hadn't managed to make an enjoyable album in at least a decade, if not more (we're talking about "Angels With Dirty Faces", at least for me, and that was back in 1998). A man who should have been "burnt out" along with the end of Bristol, and indeed came within a hair's breadth of it, but who, just when least expected, came back home with a stripped-down, homemade sort of trip-hop record - clean, simple, sincere. And he nails a "Nothing Matters" that, even on constant repeat, simply never gets old.

Tracks & suites

1. Dale Cooper Quartet & Dictaphones – Brosme En Dos Vert

Two albums this year can lay claim to the title of masterpiece: Tim Hecker's "Virgins", which I'll discuss in the next spot, and "Quatorze Pieces De Menace" by this Dale Cooper Quartet, who are in fact nothing more than a Breton trio backed by a wide-open cast of collaborators (the Dictaphones). A black pearl, a diamond cut from crude oil, a hollowed-out monolith that beneath a layer of gloomy patina conceals an infinity of tunnels and passages but no way out: "Brosme En Dos-Vert" sums all this up in twenty minutes that move from cosmos to mud, from storm to a sickly calm, from games of shadow to mirages of moonlight. An endless dead of night, as if there were no tomorrow, darkness triumphant in its most luxuriant forms. The manifesto of a possible dark aesthetic for the future, in its most primordial, pure and uncontaminated form.

2. Tim Hecker – Virginal II

"Virgins" is the ambient album of the decade, for now. Let's give it time, we'll talk again in seven years. But it's also the drone album, the electro-experimental album, the atmospheric album of the decade, for now. A continuum of emotions, images, visions, jolts, embraces, flows, threads that tie and untie themselves, harmonies bent in every direction, thunder, lightning, light, shadow. A single, unbroken block from start to finish, in relation to which "Virginal II" simply has the distinction of being the way in, the first room, the one standing before which you realized what an incredible universe you were about to step into. It will be remembered as a piece inseparable from the rest, so tightly bound together that even the faintest dividing line has vanished - a phase of a ritual that is unique and perfect, human where others have aimed for abstraction, cosmic yet built on stars you can see without any instrument at all, only with the naked eye of imagination.

3. Rafael Anton Irisarri – Her Rituals

It's likely that Irisarri and his "The Unintentional Sea" benefited from being the last to reach my ears this year, when other albums of the same caliber (right now I'm thinking of those by Netherworld, Celer, Orsi and Selaxon Lutberg) had already been consumed and, at least in part, filed away. Be that as it may, the Californian doesn't betray his roots and delivers a work in which you seem to hear Steve Roach reborn amid the electro-acoustic drone sounds of Helios and the murk of Aidan Baker - and "Her Rituals" is its melodic peak, its northwest passage, the cradle to sink into while outside a snowstorm rages and a wind blows that couldn't possibly get any colder. Little trace here of the pollution that's the concept's central theme: a concession to purity, which for Selton Lake is nothing more than a wistful memory.

4. AUN – Returna

If Tim Hecker has drawn up his own personal, tailor-made cosmos, AUN (as we should now call them) this year claimed the throne of the more "canonical" ambient realm. And they did so by taking the step we'd long expected but that had, until now, been missing - perhaps largely due to Martin Dumais's sheer prolificacy. For him, and for the project as a whole, the presence of Julie Leblanc has proven vital: a wife who must have taken up part of the time he once devoted solely to recording music, and who has meanwhile shown herself to be the added value of this new AUN era. In the spatial dream-state of "Returna" it's precisely her vocalizations that guide us through a dream among the constellations, as if Elizabeth Fraser had suddenly been catapulted into the Milky Way, her voice right there, ready to float and echo through the seeming void.

5. Nils Frahm – Says

More than one of us this past year (myself included, in a review) had advised the talented Nils to drop, as soon as possible, any hope of becoming the new king of solo piano, as he'd tried to do on "Screws" without much success, and to go back to the electroacoustic textures that had made his best work, "Felt" above all, so fortunate. No sooner said than done: "Spaces" revisits it all, and does so live, in front of an audience that wasn't especially large but was decidedly spellbound by the magic of the little German wizard. "Says" is nothing more than a synth arpeggio nurtured with loving care until it's able to spread through the room like a tree, covering multiple dimensions at once, penetrating and gradually winning you over, until it reaches the sky in a moment of ecstasy. The only downside to a recording for which the word "mediocre" would be the most detached of compliments.

Michele Palozzo

Braids – In Kind

A more than dignified comeback for Braids, though on the whole it didn't convince the way their lovable debut "Native Speaker" did. The exception on "Flourish // Perish" is the closing track, already previewed on an EP, which to this day might well be their finest song ever. Two complementary sections form a single breathtaking track in which Katie Lee gives her all in impossibly high notes – and there's no trickery involved, since I had the honour of hearing them live last September. A textbook ending.

Daughter – Youth

One of the reasons why "If You Leave" truly is the 4AD debut of the year (and not only that). It's about dodging all the cliches of a genre like post-rock – now widely, and not unreasonably, considered past its expiry date – while sticking closely to the song format and giving words their proper weight and space. The reverb-drenched guitars go hand in hand with Elena Tonra's anguished voice.

Everything Everything – Duet

It happens sometimes that you don't particularly love an album yet can't stop listening to it. This year that happened to me with Everything Everything's second effort, a handful of decent songs with two or three rather striking peaks. "Duet" is a track I simply can't resist: the syncopated strings in the chorus, the singer's uncontainable emotion – once again proving himself a falsetto virtuoso – the stop and the final explosion. I love this song, and honestly it's a bit odd even to me.

Laura Marling – I Was an Eagle

The surprise was twofold, because up to now this young singer-songwriter had certainly never blown me away. And while I still think Marling owes an overly heavy debt to Joni Mitchell, "Once I Was An Eagle" is without doubt a solid record, indeed a proud and biting one, but with all the sincerity it needs. The title track, needless to say, is its quintessence.

Massimo Volume – La notte

The return of the greats, whom we missed even though we never truly felt their absence. A return to the acrid urban landscapes of "Da qui". Rage and disillusionment in Egle and Stefano's distortions, in Vittoria's hammering drums, in Emidio's vivid recollections.

A return to dear departed ones, presences that inhabit memory and that will not come back – they, at least, will not.

The night, a perfect image, a perfect feeling. One that keeps coming back.

Miracle Mile – I Love You, Goodbye

True adult pop: the nostalgia of a husband, father and grown man who still wants to be a bit of a child, who couldn't live without harking back to his own past, without giving up a chuckle over it. It's hard to find a band that isn't afraid of romanticism while at the same time being about as far as possible from grandstanding or baroque posturing. This year Trevor Jones and his Miracle Mile (London's best kept secret) gave us the purest emotions, therapeutic melodies that do the heart good.

Nadine Shah – Winter Reigns

The year's best female debut, still imperfect but full of promising ideas to build on, hopefully, for a commendable songwriting career. A mistress-like voice, a marked accent (she's from Whitburn, north-east England): the dark yet ever-shifting atmospheres of her songs may lack stylistic unity, but the surge that culminates in the heartrending "Winter Reigns" takes your breath away every single time. It definitely deserves some of your precious time.

Colin Stetson – To See More Light

The final chapter of the "New History Warfare" trilogy is also its expressive and stylistic peak: the culmination of a singular avant-garde vision, able to synthesize Albert Ayler's spirituals with the eternally circular motion of Philip Glass's work. "To See More Light" is a manifesto, plain and simple: a panting, tormented riff, stripped down and then transfigured; a solemn, ecstatic national anthem, freedom made music once again.

These New Puritans – Fragment Two

In between the reed notes / where the stars are hiding

Opening the CD's cardboard sleeve, amid the musicians' photos you'll find only these words: they are the opening words of Jack Barnett's masterpiece, an album that initially seems hermetic, but whose depth unfolds with every listen. A chest of stones that don't glitter, yet conceal secrets and revelations never heard before. Words truly fail here, leaving only a vast white space, pure and indecipherable. fəɗ̈ ə fɒɗ̈ɒ

Vàli – Himmelens Groenne Arr

The music of the mysterious project Vàli has something few others can claim: the ability to make you sense, fleetingly, even if only for a few moments, a breath of immortality. Much like the sound of nature, this music cannot be worn down by time, nor is it subject to our moods: it's simply there, speaking to us constantly in ever-new ways; a genuine, boundless splendour, truly too vast for an ordinary compact disc.

Lorenzo Righetto

1. San Fermin – Sonsick

The pop song of the year, in the truest sense of the word — at last, a song that can appeal to everyone without ever aiming for the lowest common denominator. Vocal acrobatics, horn progressions: you'll find it topping your most-played list very soon.

2. Plantman – Lunaria

Matt Randall's songs have a particular power: the ability to engage the listener not just on a purely sensory level, but above all on a spiritual one. "Lunaria" is the ultimate example, with its muffled march, a dreamlike procession among the stars.

3. Kathryn Williams – The Known

One track to celebrate a great year for female singer-songwriters. Chantal Acda and Alela Diane both delivered their most heartfelt and moving records. But on pure songwriting terms, it's Kathryn Williams's album that wins out.

4. The Appleseed Cast – Cathedral Rings

The 90s revival is starting to raise its voice, especially in its emo strain, which never really died out, though few surviving bands still have something to say. "Illumination Ritual" has a devastating first half, and "Cathedral Rings" is its most straightforward, melodic track.

5. Radical Dads – Shackleton

From those who built a scene to those trying to rediscover its style. "Rapid Reality" is the most driving guitar-rock track of the year, and "Shackleton" is one of the few where, after an epic opening, they manage to build a genuine musical narrative.

6. Ducktails – Ivy Covered House

While waiting for the new Real Estate record, the vintage psych-pop scene has taken a break. The only one to gift us a fine record of dreamy, retro songs is Matthew Mondanile: "Ivy Covered House" is the track closest to his more famous band, on an album that also roams through decades beyond the '60s.

7. Iron & Wine – Baby Center Stage

When he puts his mind to it, Sam Beam's voice could melt granite. The songs on "Ghost On Ghost" are like those of "Our Endless Numbered Days" dressed up in their best new clothes.

8. Tripwires – A Feedback  Loop Of Laughter

No 90s revival would be complete without brit-pop's gloomy minor-key melodies and choruses that shove a wall of sound brazenly in your face. Here's the embryo of the anthem a generation is missing.

9. Steve Gunn – Water Wheel

In the alt-country field, 2013 was the year of Paradise Of Bachelors. Steve Gunn embodies its "musician-archaeologist" side, a sort of lesser-known Jonathan Wilson, but on the blazing "Water Wheel" he leaves plenty of genre journeymen eating dust, the latest Wilson included.

10. Camera Obscura – Break It To You Gently

Not a stellar year for indie-pop either, though Camera Obscura stand out: they've finally shaken off the shadow of Belle And Sebastian with a hugely inspired instant classic, even if it's far from their gloomier moments, as the sun-drenched "Break It To You Gently" shows.

Roberto Rizzo

Dear Life, you know I love you secretly/ even when you’re talking dirty to me

Dear Life,/ you felt so close tonight.

1. Inga Copeland – A&E

2. Melt Yourself Down – Release!

3. M.I.A. – Yala

4. Omar Souleyman – Wenu Wenu

5. Close – Born In A Rolling Barrel

6. DIANA – Perpetual Surrender

7. Cosmetics – Black Leather Gloves

8. Dalhous – Eros, Love And Lies

9. The Knife – Stay Out Here

10. Connan Mockasin – I Wanna Roll With You

Michele Saran

10. Lady Lamb The Beekeeper – Rooftop 

A small, little-known single that paved the way for the equally small and little-known "Ripely Pine" (Ba Da Bing), the debut album from Aly Spaltro, the Maine singer-songwriter who records as Ladylamb The Beekeeper. Here, the unease generated by the petulant glissandos, the syncopated tempo, the instrumental rumblings and the a cappella vocals is a small force of nature.

9. Joanna Gruesome: Do You Really Wanna Know Why Yr Still In Love With Me? 

The debut by Joanna Gruesome (honorable mention also goes to the band's name, a quintet from Cardiff) pushes the crudest clichés of twee lo-fi pop to peak Sonic Youth-like intensity; this trick reaches its cacophonous peak in the understated chorus of "Do You Really Wanna Know".

8. Lorna – Whose Idea

The jewel of the British band Lorna's fourth album, "Heart Of Wire", is a cover of an old For Stars track, a powerful reinterpretation that goes beyond their folk-pop sound: as much a sighing baroque-renaissance lullaby as a chromatic fantasy built on jingle-jangle guitars.

7. Magic Panda – Tokyo

The opening track of Magic Panda's (producer Jamie Robson) "Temple Of A Thousand Lights", an album that swallows up witch house and hypnagogic pop without losing itself in experimentalism, is also one of its finest moments, a distinctly melodic and progressive Alan Parsons-esque whirl.

6. Knife – Without You My Life Would Be Boring

The ambition of "Shaking The Habitual" comes through with particular warmth not only in the sprawling tracks that dominate it, but also in the snake-charmer dance of "Without You My Life Would Be Boring", set ablaze by horn fanfares, skittering rattles and vocal lines worthy of a possessed Bjork.

5. Julia Holter – World

Another of the most creative inventions by Julia Holter, one of the finest songwriters of recent years, lies on her third album, “Loud City Song”: touching and rarefied, with its mournful harpsichord caresses recalling a madrigal by Claudio Monteverdi.

4. Lady Lamb The Beekeeper – Bird Balloons

A shining emblem of “Ripely Pine” for its sprawling, tangled discourse — free, highly irrational, Neil Young-esque, psychoanalytic yet festive, theatrical. Also a fine showcase for her band-leading skills. One of the most compelling “containers” of 2013.

3. Vampire Weekend: Diane Young

“Modern Vampires Of The City”, the third album by Ezra Koenig and co., leaves behind the impetuous spontaneity of its predecessors — especially the self-titled debut — and sets off on an almost surgical, digitally-driven process, resembling in method the all-production late period of the Beatles. The difference is that here the arrangement heightens rather than dulls the impact, and indeed takes the chance to ruffle up their pot-pourri, especially in the experimental vocal treatment of the alien tribute to acrobatic (here supersonic) rockabilly that is “Diane Young”.

2. Doldrums – Egypt

The year's best alternative dance track is the one capable of making Black Dice and Animal Collective sprint across the dancefloor — the work of Airick “Doldrums” Woodhead, a Canadian video artist, in a chaotic, cacophonous continuum that grinds together industrial music, carioca dance rhythms, electronic studies and delirious goa-trance.

1. Janelle Monae – Dance Apocalyptic

The second half of “Electric Lady”, still structured in suites but perhaps less biting than “ArchAndroid”, includes the easily digestible hybrid of girl-group, jitterbug and dizzying tongue-twisters that is “Dance Apocalyptic”.

5. Murcof & Philippe Petit – The Call Of Circè

It's the track that justifies the first chapter of the collaboration between the two musicians, and paradoxically the artistic peak of both careers. Gestural music and non-music for irrational events drive a cantata of dark ambient noises, echoes, and a distant soprano, even electronically reprocessed to make it even more disorienting.

4. Zs – Grain Part One

The first part of the composition embodied by the latest Zs album is an agglomeration of sonic events and pastiche that goes beyond the very idea of irrationality and bad taste. A compactness and firmness of intent unprecedented even in their own career.

3. Sutekh Hexen – Five Faces Of Decay

The centerpiece of the latest EP (“Become”) by the San Francisco avant-metal band, on which they move from the terror of their early work to pure sonic digression, through sheer force of electronic layering and every kind of metallic clangor.

2. Pharmakon – Sour Sap

Closing track of “Abandon”, the debut work of industrial musician Margaret Chardiet: a full 27 minutes of fragments with no logical progression and no cohesion whatsoever, yet utterly suffocating in their constant self-reinvention, designed to shred the listener's nerves and heart. Echoes of early Swans run through the whole record (it's no coincidence that Gira picked her as support act for his new tour), but here they take shape as a fantasy with neither beginning nor end.

1. Israel Martinez – The Minutes 

The masterpiece of the Mexican electroacoustic artist, and perhaps of all of 2013, is a “Creation Du Monde” by Bernard Parmegiani (RIP) turned into destruction, a sonic journey that composes rather than merely depicts, a post-industrial orgy, a fresco that transcends the very idea of alienation of any era.

Marco Sgrignoli

1. Frightened Rabbit – Housing (Out)

A minute and a few seconds, just enough time for a little acoustic guitar flourish and a verse/chorus turn built on a heartfelt, ramshackle sense of communal spirit. It might seem like nothing much, but it's perhaps the track that best captures what "folk" can mean in 2013.

2. Noah and the Whale – Heart of Nowhere

Sparse and glorious, the violin theme of this song - now closer to Bruce Springsteen than Old Britannia - is one of this year's indie-pop icons. And proof that, despite a bit of creative fatigue, Noah and the Whale still have a few arrows left in their quiver.

3. Frank Turner – Losing Days

Carefree, genuine and in its own way even a little punk, Frank Turner's pop-folk can light up a dull afternoon. Or tinge the brightest, sunniest day with melancholy.

4. Stornoway – (A Belated) Invite to Eternity

Miss My Latest Novel? I do, a whole lot.

5. Mice Parade – Currents

Doug Scharin's drums (Mr. June of 44) at full power on an indie-folk track is already something spectacular in itself. And when Gunnar Örn Tynes of múm takes the mic, the existence of Paradise suddenly becomes a lot more believable.

6. Appleseed Cast – Barrier Islands (Do We Remain)

Soft/loud dynamics, dreamy emo and just the right amount of jagged math abstraction. I couldn't ask for anything better.

7. Mansions – Out for Blood

Neutral Milk Hotel, if they were played by the Melvins. This track isn't really that representative, but with a riff like this, I can't help but pick it.

8. Vaccines – Melody Calling

Gentlemen, the indie-pop track of the year. There's really nothing else to say, except that, paraphrasing the title of their first album, this is genuinely not what I expected from the Vaccines.

9. Swim Deep – Francisco

What if the early Nineties still had something to say? No, not grunge, heaven forbid: rather, the triumphant return of Sarah Records and Madchester!

10. IAMX – The Unified Field

A bit of cyberpunk swagger to close things out on a dark note. This, to counterbalance the optimism of the rest of the playlist.

Mattia Villa

1. Daughter – "Youth"

I appreciated many debuts this year, for various and disparate reasons. The Daughter album was the one that got the most plays in my headphones, the one that, with its raw, depressing lyrics and Bon Iver-esque tension, accompanied me time and again on the Ravenna-Bologna route. "We are the reckless, we are the wild youth" are tattoo-worthy lines (which I will never actually get.)

2. Prefab Sprout – “The Best Jewel Thief In The World”

Paddy McAloon's return in all his glory. The last thing I ever imagined for 2013 was a Prefab Sprout record that would thrill me like this, and yet, proving that class really doesn't wash off, it just goes grey (beard), the best pop record of the year comes courtesy of this English gentleman.

3. Los Campesinos! – "Avocado, Baby"

Los Campesinos! always remind me of the "old" days, when, faced with the fateful question "what music do you listen to?", you'd confidently answer "indie-rock". This track has a killer drive, and more generally, the Los Campesinos! album reignited a kind of youthful flame in me at a time when I really needed it.

4. The National – “Don’t Swallow The Cap”

I could probably have picked any track at random off the National record and still landed on my feet. The choice of this song comes down entirely to the lyrics, but I don't really feel like explaining why.  

5. London Grammar – "Wasting My Young Years"

If I had to give an award for Voice of the Year, I wouldn't hesitate to hand it to Hannah Reid. Something incredible that gives you chills just watching a live video on YouTube. Personally, I could write a treatise on wasting one's youth, and even though the song isn't really about that, it's still gorgeous to listen to.

6. Rhye – “3 Days”

The Rhye album made its way into my mp3 player at the start of the year, and it's still there. This particular song delights me every time it randomly pops up from a playlist while I'm walking under the porticoes of Bologna. As smooth a track as any other in 2013.

7. Justin Timberlake – “Mirrors”

If someone had told me last year that in 2013 I'd end up loving a Justin Timberlake record, I probably would have told them they were crazy. And yet "The 20/20 Experience" was the real surprise of my musical year: an album I wore out over the summer, especially when I went running (try it during an hour or an hour-and-a-quarter run: it's perfect). I picked the "radio edit" version to keep the compilation flowing, but the original 8-minute track is truly special.

8. Cosmo – “Le Cose Più Rare”

“Saremo orizzonti e ci potremo ammirare, ci nasconderemo nel profumo del mare, ci ritroveremo nei dettagli più belli, ci riscopriremo nelle cose più rare, e sarà superfluo non saperlo spiegare, al tramonto di tutto potremo capire, sopravvivere dentro ad un tratto di colore, nei suoni più caldi scomparirà il dolore. Poi forse un giorno ci rincontreremo…”

9. Ducktails – “Academy Avenue”

I don't have a CD player in the car I usually drive, just a tape deck: I've literally worn out the cassette of "Flower Lane", bought at a Ducktails show over the summer. Even though there are arguably better tracks on the album, this somewhat Felt-ish guitar line that closes it always sends me into ecstasy. A perfect record to bookend the summer, though oddly enough it came out in January. It's been in my mp3 player ever since.

10. Satellites – “World At Your Feet”

I didn't think "02" could top the debut "01" in terms of personal connection; yet I've literally worn this album out too, making it "mine" just like the previous one. There are so many standout moments, and "World At Your Feet" conveys a certain sense of grandeur that makes it perfect not just for closing out this playlist, but this whole musical year.

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