The Best Albums of 2013
Anxious Sound
10
Floating Coffin
Thee Oh Sees
10-Song LP
Released April 16 on Castle Face
Favorite tracks: Toe Cutter - Thumb Buster, The Floating Coffin, No Spell, Strawberries 1 + 2, Night Crawler, Minotaur
09
Heartleap
Vashti Bunyan
10-Song LP
Released October 6 on FatCat
Favorite tracks: Across the Water, Holy Smoke, Mother, Jellyfish, Gunpowder
08
Black Hours
Hamilton Leithauser
10-Song LP
Released June 3 on Ribbon Music
Favorite tracks: The Silent Orchestra, St Mary's County, I Don't Need Anyone, Bless Your Heart, The Smallest Splinter
07
Overnight Motorcycle Music
Lotus Plaza
2-Song EP
Released March 24 on Geographic North
Favorite tracks: Indian Paintbrush, Gemini, Pt. 1
06
Teenage (OST)
Bradford Cox
17-Song LP
Released March 11 on Cinereach Music
Favorite tracks: Natural Harp Monitor, Skeleton Disk Loop, New Praire Blackout Pattern, Milk Glass Metronome, Planetarium, Dream Logic, Spanish Plastic, VHS Dream
05
Cassette
Preoccupations
7-Song LP
Released July 7 on Mexican Summer
Favorite tracks: Throw It Away, Unconscious Melody, Oxygen Feed, Static Wall
04
No Energy
Unwound
32-Song Collection
Released October 14 on Numero Group
Favorite tracks: New Energy, Demolished, Natural Disasters, Re-enact the Crime, Descension, Message Received, For Your Entertainment, Seen Not Heard
03
Barragán
Blonde Redhead
10-Song LP
Released September 2 on Kobalt
Favorite tracks: Barragan, Lady M, Dripping, Cat on Tin Roof, No More Honey, Seven Two
02
Under Color of Official Right
Protomartyr
14-Song LP
Released April 8 on Hardly Art
Favorite tracks: Maidenhead, Ain't So Simple, Want Remover, Trust Me Billy, Pagans, What the Wall Said, Come & See, I'll Take That Applause
01
For The Recently Found Innocent
White Fence
14-Song LP
Released July 22 on Drag City
Favorite tracks: The Recently Found, Anger! Who Keeps You Under, Like That, Sandra (When The Earth Dies), Wolf Gets Red Faced, Actor, Hard Water, The Light, Fear
White Fence is one of several active projects by Tim Presley, a California-based musician who played previously in the hardcore punk band The Nerve Agents and the psychedelic-leaning Darker My Love. He also joined The Fall for a spell, playing on the band's 2007 LP Reformation Post TLC and guesting on some of the band's later albums. Working as White Fence, Presley has been incredibly prolific, releasing six studio albums by the time of this writing (seven if you include his collaboration with Ty Segall, Hair).
The White Fence sound might be typecast as lo-fi, psychedelic, folk-rock, and/or garage-rock. A roll call of its influences might include, but certainly not be limited to, Syd Barrett's solo work, The Monkees, The Byrds, Count Five, The Electric Prunes, and Gram Parsons. I also hear reminders of many not-so-distant acts, such as Gogogo Airheart. Though White Fence might recall these and similar acts, the project's expansive output to date is anything but derivative. Presley takes his myriad influences and fuses them with his incredible songwriting ability and distinct sense of melody to create something unique and unharnessed to any sound or genre. White Fence is undeniably his.
For The Recently Found Innocent builds off the momentum of the wonderfully raucous full-band sound caught on White Fence Live in San Francisco (2013), and that was hinted at with Hair and last year's Cyclops Reap. Segall mixed For The Recently Found Innocent, and his exterior input complements these songs nicely and gives them added presence. It still sounds like music made by a man alone in a room, but the room is larger and filled with new things to play with. The result is the most complete rendering of Tim Presley's wonderfully kaleidoscopic psych-pop sensibilities, and it's probably his most fully dressed album to date.
