If the mark of a great record is for it to make you grin from ear to ear upon first listen then ‘Pythons’ was an undisputed success. Brimming with sunshine and melody, Surfer Blood’s debut outing on a major label saw their breezy indie pop polished up and transformed into an irresistible end product up there with early Weezer and They Might Be Giants, full of awkward charm perfectly streamlined into radio gold. If Parquet Courts are looming large as the indie band most likely to dominate festival bills and student union dancefloors in 2014, the Surfers are perfectly poised to enjoy ever bigger success if they can reproduce the quality here – all the tracks on show here could easily find their way onto a film soundtrack or mainstream radio playlists and transform the band into overnight megastars. In the meantime the rest of us can simply enjoy the sweetest prospect in guitar pop with this luscious slab of candy-coated indie rock.
9. Minks - Tides End
Those of us old enough to remember the 80s have been largely responsible for ruining them for everyone else with wave after wave of tactless nostalgia and humourless parody, carelessly glossing over the fact that the decade heralded a golden age for pop songwriting and studio invention. Minks’ Shaun Kilfoyle wasn’t interested in simply aping Duran Duran’s gaudiest moments on ‘Tides End’ and instead devoted his time to cooking up streamlined electropop elegance on a par with Talk Talk and Pet Shop Boys at their creative peak, gliding through ten tracks of effervescent radio pop with more than a hint of Morrissey-esque black humour and decadent melancholy. He avoids the creative pitfalls encountered by his less graceful peers by walking around in his signature sound until he feels totally at home, stepping into the skin of ‘True Faith’-era New Order and charting his own intriguing course. This was electro pop done to perfection and stayed on my stereo for pretty much the whole year.
8. Bleached - Ride Your Heart
Babes, guitars, fuzz pedals….some things just never get boring. Bleached popped up in the wake of every other killer girl band out there but pared back the post-shoegaze scuzz pop formula to its most appealing ingredients for a brisk energetic rush of gorgeous energy. ‘Ride Your Heart’ was up there with the Vivian/Dum Dum debuts of yesteryear but had plenty of individual qualities to set it apart from the pack – this was a driving rush of sunbaked energy without a wasted second, packed with hooks and harmonies like a perfect marriage of old skool Go-Go’s and lost US shoegazers Black Tambourine. It might have been nice if some of the hype dolloped on Haim’s disappointingly conservative debut had been saved to promote Bleached’s infinitely more enjoyable offering to mainstream recognition but in truth we’re all better off seeing these gals in small venues while we still can – I managed to miss them twice this year but their gold-flecked guitar pop is sure to keep them on the road winning over new fans everywhere they go for the foreseeable future.
7. Jagwar Ma - Howlin
All you festival dads out there are spoilt for choice these days, what with the plethora of reformed early 90s acts dragging the average age up to about 107 at open air events across the continent. But don’t let your enthusiasm for the imminent Northside reunion blind you to the quality of younger bands drawing from the same well – Australia’s Jagwar Ma were merely a glint in their parents’ eyes when Madchester was at its peak but manage to encapsulate the loved-up dynamics of the original wave of indie dance hybrids without resorting to simple plagiarism. The euphoric throb of ‘Howlin’ captures the rush of guitar music’s union with Acid House in technique but also in spirit, bringing back a joyous bounce not seen since The Music’s similarly indebted debut a decade ago and providing 2013 with a slew of irresistible party anthems to soundtrack the year’s unbeatable heights. They absolutely kill it live as well so chalk this one up as one of the year’s most welcome debut offerings.
6. FIDLAR - s/t
Indie’s ongoing lapse into premature middle age continued in 2013 with endless industry hype piled on the overcooked returns from seasoned vets like Arctic Monkeys and Arcade Fire but I’ll take a brash scrappy debut LP laid down in a few hours over calculated career progressions any day of the week. FIDLAR’s stonking full-length fit the bill perfectly, landing early in 2013 and staying on my speakers for most of the year with its quickfire blasts of skate punk extolling the merits of cheap booze, street drugs and general raucous behaviour – the band’s sound lands somewhere between Black Lips, Andrew WK and the late 90s UK Bratpop (Bis, Tiger, Kenickie) to provide a deeply satisfying dose of day-glo amusement. It’s hardly surprising given the band’s pedigree – their parents include a member of LA street punks TSOL plus a famous surfboard designer and their splenetic debut packs in a lifetime of grotty West Coast underground culture to deliver the year’s finest hit of young, loud and snotty punk rock.
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