Music is awesome, isn’t it? Whether intentional or not, music is a big part of everyone’s lives. It’s all around us: on TV, in ads, in our headphones and earbuds attached to our smart phones with streaming audio. Chances are if you’re reading Submerge, you love music too. Even though there is more great music being made than ever and access to it is becoming easier and easier, it’s still sometimes hard to know where to look to discover new tunes. Enter Submerge’s annual year-end best-of list! In 2013 there were so many amazing albums released that we actually expanded this story to feature the top 30 instead of the top 20. You’ll notice that a lot of this list, approximately 50 percent, is local. That’s not by mistake. That’s not because we tried to include local albums just to round out our list. No, we just have that much talent right here in our own city.

Compiled by all of our contributing writers and staff, we hope this list will help you discover something new. And because all of our attention spans are so short nowadays (are you still with us?), we kept our reviews to 140 characters or less, because we all know that reading someone’s short, to-the-point Twitter post is a helluva lot better than reading someone’s four-paragraph-long Facebook rant. Now, set forth and discover some new jams! Who knows, your new favorite band/album may be waiting for you somewhere on this list.

30.

Danny Brown
Old

Fool’s Gold

What can you say about Danny Brown? He’s rap’s Jim Morrison, The Lizard King. Old has been on repeat since the day I got it. And will be.

29.

Run the Jewels
Run the Jewels

Fool’s Gold

As dope as promised, it gets no better than this. Killer Mike is at his best, and El-P provides the perfect sonic-scape for destruction.

28.

Biosexual
The Window Wants the Bedroom

Debacle

Fantastically produced debut album of avant-garde supergroup featuring the great Jocelyn of ALAK, brother Michael RJ Saalman and Zac Nelson.

27.

Paper Pistols
Deliver Us From Chemicals

Self-released

2 can do it all. Skinner & Lydell are all binary: beard/belle; drum/voice; age/youth; decadent/austere; beautiful/music.

26.

EGG
Overly Easy

Self-released

If Cake and Phish had a baby? Close, but doesn’t quite describe this amazing band. An infectious sound that makes you wanna get up and GO.

25.

M.I.A.
Matangi

N.E.E.T.

M.I.A. is pissed off, and still fresh as ever, rapping over aggressive beats and keeping the Sri Lankan sound alive.

24.

The Men
New Moon

Sacred Bones

Brooklyn noise punks retreat to a rural cabin, finding a balance between a Mudhoney dustup and a Grateful Dead peace-in.

23.

Gauntlet Hair
Stills

Dead Oceans

Gauntlet Hair dropped the dopest, weirdest album we’ve heard in a minute and then immediately broke up. Spacey, strange, with a dash of pop.

22.

Jacuzzi Boys
Jacuzzi Boys

Hardly Art

The Miami trio switched things up with a more polished than pure garage sound. Still playful and infectious, just adding new dimensions.

21.

Gap Dream
Shine Your Light

Burger

Mid-tempo sex appeal born of psychedelic melancholy and rock ‘n’ roll disco; drugs, dance, drugs, booze, dance, fuck.

20.

Miley Cyrus
Bangerz

RCA
 
Crying cats ftw! The most dissed/discussed AoY; w/ hits by Dr. Luke, Pharrell & Mike WiLL, twerk! This is Miley’s year.

19.

Chuuwee
Thrill

Self-released

With rap albums you usually either get bangin’ trap beats OR real lyricism. On Thrill you get both. One of Sac’s best in top form.

18.

Century Got Bars & Bru Lei
Midtown Marauders

Self-released

A flawless Tribe tribute and audible tour of this fair city’s nucleus. If you’ve spent more than five seconds in Midtown, you want this. 

17.

David Bowie
The Next Day

RCA

Charming, confidently progressive with kick-ass guitar solos. It’s classic Bowie with a modern, enthusiastically suspended twist.

16.

Black Sabbath
13

Vertigo/Universal

Pure smokin’ stoner doom rock at its finest! Timeless lyrics and riffs. This album picks up where the band left off with Ozzy 30 years ago.

15.

Nails
Abandon All Life 

Southern Lord

Yeah, it’s a light version of Unsilent Death (the most brutal album ever), but it’s still hard and evil enough to kill your grandma.   

14.

Bombino
Nomad

Nonesuch

A perfect album for trekking the Sahara. Blues guitar, smooth Tuareg vox, steady rhythm. Produced by Dan Auerbach (of The Black Keys).

13.

Meat Puppets
Rat Farm

Megaforce Records

Return to form for desert-baked Brothers Kirkwood. Simple, honest, catchy… Bare bones and poignant. May the Puppets live forever.

12.

Foals
Holy Fire

Transgressive

With Holy Fire, these British boys delivered their most focused (and heaviest) album to date, bringing a new meaning to “modern rock.”

11.

City of Vain
Back Against the Wall

Self-released

Sacto punkers bring forth one of the best punk rock records of the year, not just locally, but globally. Warm tones and classic style!

10.

Middle Class Rut
Pick Up Your Head

Bright Antenna

More fierce rock ‘n’ roll from Sac’s Dynamic Duo…and we <3 it! Grimy grooves and distorted chaos mark MC Rut’s best album to date.

09.

Horseneck
The Worst People Ever

Artery

Booze-fueled bone-breaking sludge metal with a sense of humor. This EP gives Sac’s heavy music fans something to smile about.

08.

Tel Cairo
Voice of Reason

Illicit Artists

Tel Cairo is the best kind of weird. If Kurt Cobain made hip-hop music in space it would sound like Tel Cairo’s Voice of Reason.

07.

Foxygen
We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic

Jagjaguwar

Flamboyantly lilting pop with occasional Jagger twists; creates proneness for nymph-like prancing, sometimes mincing.

06.

Death Grips
Government Plates

Self-released

A dizzying mix of poetry, yelling and other stuff people hate. But in the eloquent words of MC Ride, “Fuck your idols/ Suck my dick.”

05. 

Screature
Screature

Ethel Scull

A solid debut by the Sacramento quartet. Guttural lyrical torrents coalesce with shadowy, rhythmic tones, blending into a dynamic framework of sound.

04.

!!!
THR!!!ER

Warp Records

Your favorite dance-punk band is back again with more rump shaking, baby making, all-night-party-inducing tunes. Instant classic!

03.

Cove
Candles

Self-released

It’s an insightful album. An emotional excavation replete with lyrical fluidity, melodic flirtations and a groovy aftertaste.

02.

Doombird
Cygnus

Eightmaps

Vivid percussive landscapes seen through a celestial-tinged lens. Spacey harmonies embedded within hypnotic textures and bright timbres.

01.

Chelsea Wolfe
Pain Is Beauty

Sargent House

A beautifully haunting album. Wolfe’s ghostly vocals, layered with cascading guitars, violins and synths, will put you in a trance.

Paper Pistols’ Deliver Us From Chemicals examines life in the new age

It’s 2013: NASA is collecting applications for Mars colonists; international, state and local governments continue to gut social programs and education through austerity measures; and California, despite its drastic cuts, projects a minimum $1.2 billion dollar budget surplus for 2013. As I write, the still hot ashes of the Egyptian Revolution are igniting a populist uprising in Turkey. This month, according to major media, suicide is an epidemic. The world is lonely, the global economy is stagnant and in an effort to grow, we’re colonizing space; everywhere—Arrested Development season 4 included—it’s austerity and decadence, riot and romance.

“I’m just here in my body,” sings Julie Lydell on “Oil,” the first track of Paper Pistol’s debut album, Deliver Us from Chemicals, “No weight on my chest/No knot in my throat/Unimpaired by the impulse to make sense/of senseless things/patterns and chaos/God, I’m tired/and I’m sick/of caring about where all this is going.”

Lydell’s voice, slightly nasal and rich in timbre, contains our moment today: the anxious present, the absent future. True to pop form, Lydell locates herself as a body, anywhere and everywhere. The lyric I, here, is alone swimming in gin and existential crisis at the bar, walking the streets of Turkey surrounded by neighbors and teargas, discarding consequence, guilt, frustration and concern.

This chorus increases via the layers of samples, melodies and instrumentation before falling to the austere, the minimalism of Ira Skinner’s rim-shots over a pitter-patter series of electronic clicks. As a song, “Oil” utilizes a Thom Yorke-ish intro, syncopations and percussive pops that sound like a digitized steam engine gathering speed—a tenacity realized by Skinner’s rolling-stop snare work at the end of the track. And during this large arc, the cycle, the song structure builds. This next verse section, a series of piano driven chords, highlights Lydell’s addition to Skinner’s one-time solo project.

“I don’t know any prophets,” sings Lydell, “Don’t ask me for my oil/That lamps been burnt out for so long/I’ve no more light to give.” The play here, as in many other places on the album is a skipping of connotations. From the inability to see the future to the non-existent incentive to invest in it, Lydell and Skinner, in a combination of ups and downs, replicate the cyclical feeling of a bubble bust economy, all dwindling resources and antiquated infrastructure. For this, the album is an emotive, LED beacon in our dimly lit times.

This is not to say it’s anything other than music pushing its boundaries both lyrically and technologically, as Lydell and Skinner are quick to point out.

“This is where music is going now,” states Lydell. “It’s crazy how many frontiers are being expanded. We can almost make music on accident with an app or something.”

With this development of computerized production there’s also a tension that emerges between the traditional role of performers and machines. Lydell understands this as an opening of potentials: “I don’t think you can lose the organic side of it, absolutely never. You can augment or improve on what you would be able to do with the bodies, with instruments.”

“It’s like limitless capabilities,” confirms Skinner, “when you’re playing electronically. We could go up there and just play piano and drums, but why be limited by how many people can touch an instrument? We physically play most of the parts on the record and play them off the laptop live because there are not six of us.” Then he adds, “I think we have trust issues as well.”

Despite the meager numbers, Paper Pistols is a dominant force live. They concentrate on making their concert performances engaging and entertaining.

“We can still be a dynamic band, not sound robotic or fake,” explains Skinner.

“I think there’s such an energy live. There’s a lot of energy on stage—presence. Because of that, most people don’t think, oh shit, half the music’s on a laptop. It’s not like we’re doing anything super unusual for these times. All bands have laptops in their bands now. Ten years ago when I started Evening Episode, that was unheard of. It was a challenge. We had adapters hooked up to adapters just to make it work.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been onstage where I’ve half-assed my performance,” Skinner continues. “For me, it’s a very therapeutic release. It’s such an outlet, and every show I try to push it more. I write my parts based on emotion, parts that feel cool.”

Writing, practicing and performing are vital for both Skinner and Lydell. Lydell even jokes that her daily stress about and frustration with the world dissipates after a good practice session or show.

These concerns, likewise, find expression in the album itself as a conflict between isolation and community, absence and presence. “I think that’s the theme of the record,” Lydell meditates in a sprawling thought, mirroring our complicated contemporary. “It’s hard to have an electronic album and have it be about getting back to this primitive state, or this more pure place, before the world was full of billboards and Internet homepages and anti-depressants, nicotine, alcohol. All the things we can use to escape from ever having to deal with selfhood because it’s really lonely. I think lyrically and thematically, that is the tension this postmodern world promises.

“When people used to be alone, they were truly alone,” she adds. “There was no way to communicate unless there were other people [physically present]. You had to be comfortable being by yourself. [Today] you can focus on your projected self because you can just do it constantly; what do I want to put in this status update so that people can see that I’m having an existentialist crisis and I need to solve it? You don’t have to ever deal with anything if you don’t want to. Or you can take a pill.”

These constant bombardments and over-simplified alleviations express themselves lyrically and sonically on the album. If Lydell drifts as a lyricist between loneliness and connection, then the minimalist verse structures and rich, decadent hooks similarly materialize these concerns through chords and melodies. The album has many moments of quiet tension and multilayered movements.

Lydell sees the work as a collaboration of sorts between opposing forces: “Ira and I have different composing styles. I really like tension. I think there are moments on the album where it’s really decadent, kind of luscious because of how much is going on; epic. Ira’s written film scores.”

“That’s my part,” Skinner states flatly, his stoic front confirmed by his casually crossed arms, smooth-shorn scalp, burled beard and deep voice. “I specialize in epic.”

Next to him, Lydell seems a bit more dynamic despite her “logical, monotone” self-description. She slouches back sipping tea in black and white wing tips, a long dress and sleeveless denim jacket. Both members casually detail what they hope to accomplish in the next year, which includes finding a manager and setting out on a small tour. Familiar friends, they joke quickly between each other. Their chemistry confirms the band’s back-story: Lydell canceled a return to Austin, Texas, to continue working with Skinner on Paper Pistols, alongside her other musical projects. Thus, the album came to be.

Describing how Paper Pistols came to be in its current incarnation, Skinner, who spends most days recording bands in his Midtown studio or running sound for various local venues, recounts, “After The Evening Episode, I didn’t have a desire to do a band again. I’d need to get a van, a practice space, book tours. It didn’t seem fun to do that again. Playing music with Julie has changed my perspective. It’s inspired me to actually start writing music. It’s an easier process with her because she moves quicker than I do, and she’s got so much energy. It’s different in a very positive way. ‘Astronaut Food,’ we wrote that and recorded it in a day. It sums up the record and so many of Julie’s views on the world. It’s a lonely ass song, too.”

“It’s just The Lion King. In a key too low for me,” smirks Lydell.

“Does that make me Simba?” asks Skinner.

“It does. And I’m still myself,” Lydell quips in return.

Aptly, for both musicians, “Astronaut Food” is an anthem of sorts. Over a music box sample and long sustained piano chords, Lydell sings, “The future looms not as bright for the most of us.” The final crescendo of the song is a surge of booming toms where Lydell repeats in a melancholic affirmation, containing hope and despair, “Deliver us from chemicals.” The song concludes with a four-part, gospel-style harmony that, in a song about literally being isolated above earth, desperately seeks transcendence.

Lydell explains the song, the possibility of a future, as a “conflation of living in the age of celebrity where everyone wants to have something special, look rich. But really we’re underemployed, making $9 an hour. There’s this gap. I think we’re really removed from reality in some ways, and it’s showing up on a bigger scale post-2008. There are so many complex systems, and I can’t even fathom it.”

The future looks similar to Skinner, a monoculture of sorts: “My realm of expertise would be the music business. If you listen to today’s radio, no, we don’t have a future, or at least not a very bright one. The influence that pop musicians have on the youth, artistic or not, it’s not positive. But, I think that’s because I’m old. People who are produced now don’t have an artform.”

Ultimately it’s clear that both Skinner and Lydell would prefer to stay on Earth playing music despite the chaos that surrounds us.

“I wouldn’t fucking go out in space,” Lydell laughs. “I would kill myself first. It freaks me out. I want no part of it. I’ll cling to a tree.”

“They have that thing right now,” says Skinner, regarding Mars. “You can sign up, but you can never go home. You live in a bubble. Who would do that?”

“People who like Burning Man would go. That would be my worst nightmare,” says Lydell.

“That’s what they should do,” concludes Skinner, “dump the Burning Man tickets and send them to Mars. I’m done with some Burning Man shit.”

There it is. Mars, loneliness, anxiety, austerity, decadence: Paper Pistols, Deliver Us From Chemicals, 2013. Transcendence, indeed.

Catch Paper Pistols live on Saturday, June 22 at Davis Music Fest’s City Tavern Stage at 9 p.m. They are also scheduled to play Launch Music Festival, a two-day event going down on Sept. 7 & 8 at Cesar Chavez Plaza. Visit Launch’s website for tickets!