As part of our ongoing Year in ReView series, here is Vanyaland senior writer Daniel Brockman’s Top 13 songs of 2013. For his take on the state of music in 2013, click here.
13. “Crawling On Bruised Knees,” Pharmakon (from Abandon)
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People think being bleak is easy, but it isn’t — for every Pharmakon, there are a thousand million losers poring over Throbbing Gristle’s “Hamburger Lady” thinking they can do it to. They can’t though, because you have to really mean it, and take it past the point of being comfortable; Pharmakon don’t even know that such a point ever existed in the first place. There’s really nowhere but up for this project, and I mean that in the best possible way.
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12. “Live Forever,” Black Sabbath (from 13)
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The voice of the elderly in rock is a growing phenomenon, but it will be hard for anyone in the geriatric set to ever top this masterful Sabbath record, wherein they take the doom and gloom of their ’70s peak and adjust the themes and sounds *only slightly* to suit their advanced age and ever closer impending doom. People always talk about old people playing rock music needing walkers and canes like that’s something to be mocked, but listening to “Live Forever,” I think Ozzy and Co. should celebrate their arthritic metal moves — put your horns to the sky, if you can lift your hands that high.
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11. “Åpenbaring,” Kvelertak (from Meir)
Metal is dead, punk is dead, and as everyone should know by now, deathpunk is the future of rock and roll, if it indeed even has one. Blast beats, trem rips, twin unison leads, piercing shrieks, and the rock and roll equivalent of toppling beer from a red cup — by now, everyone knows that Kvelertak are the shit.
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10. “Mary Jane Holland,” Lady Gaga (from Artpop)
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Gaga’s Artpop is clearly the Spruce Goose of the 21st Century event album, a whopping plopping of nonsense amidst a tedious deluge of self-praise and advance advertising. The saddest part of the whole debacle is that the record contains some of her absolute best jams, especially when she cuts the Andy Warhol shit and just gets down to what she’s good at: vamp-singing about getting high. I could care less about what conceptual dress she needs to be fitted into in order to sing this one, but I can listen to the hook here infinitely and never get tired.
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