Best Of 2013: Paul Casey

Published on December 18th, 2013 in: Best Of Lists, Gaming, Music, TV |

2013 was a good year for my interests. Some of the greatest video games I have experienced all came in a bunch. R&B continued its resurgence with both new and legendary musicians, making this year one of the greatest in nearly a decade for human music. Rap has also reached a more interesting place than it has been in a long time with much of the dull-minded aversion to being smooth and beautiful wiped away. Now if you want to hit a nice melody on the chorus you can do it without the fear that you will be removed from the big-cock-I’m-in-a-street gang-and-will-literally-murder-you-and-your-family club. Even when it was aggressive or violent, this year it was from the Miike Takashi School of Creative Perversion.

On the television too, I had a wonderful time with the most original American show in the last decade ending its run on top. Yes, Eastbound & Down (probably) ended Kenny Power’s story as fearlessly as it began. This was not a big movie year for me and while I am sure there are a bunch that I will love when I get around to seeing them—Blue Jasmine, The Counsellor—nothing I have seen this year warrants a recommendation.

Games
Music: Albums
Music: Singles
Television

Games:

1. Irrational Games, Bioshock Infinite/Burial at Sea
This was the best game of the year. Along with presenting a world of more beauty and depth than almost anything else of this generation, it also told a story with a creative fearlessness unheard of in the medium. Its critics were as dull and predictable as those who failed to see the importance of the original Bioshock. In between suggesting that the two things that the game needed most were 1) conversation trees and 2) stealth options, much time was spent on how terribly violent the game is.

The argument that the violence in Infinite was somehow out of keeping with the story or the world is the result of either severe intellectual dishonesty or the failure to understand even a modicum of its importance within the story. While video game journalism and the medium make lunges out of the baby changing room and into potty training, this kind of embarrassing attempt at BEING GROWN UP is to be expected. That The Last of Us—an extremely violent and disturbing game—did not receive the same soggy treatment is the one of several cases of the hypocrisy of the critical establishment and concerned moral citizens of 2013.

Both games examine violence in ways that overlap, including using tricks that suggest to the player that sadism is not a requirement of survival. Both Elizabeth and Ellie, your companion characters in Infinite and The Last of Us respectively, state their shock or disapproval when the player behaves in a particularly violent way. This includes decapitating a soldier of Columbia or crushing a man’s skull with a brick while he begs for his life in The Last of Us. In Infinite, when Elizabeth realizes how little you value human life, it is of major importance to how your relationship develops. It is also integral to the way Elizabeth develops during the later parts of the game.

Infinite’s story is about a violent, sadistic, and insecure man who has the capability for great evil. Booker DeWitt is not a hero and the player is not a hero. When his lineage is hinted at late in the game it is clear why the game needed to involve acts of great violence to express how such a person could turn from a drunk to a monster. Some have apparently not encountered created things that are both violent and beautiful. They mistakenly believe they are putting on their Big Boy pants by laying on the “Aw shucks! It was High Art until it got violent!” These people need to engage with Horror, with the value of aesthetic violence as an end in of itself, and most importantly, stop confusing their own moral and intellectual failings with those of the individual.

Bioshock Infinite is on a very short list of games that have not only made me cry but shook me in a helpful/unsettling fashion. The ending remains a gorgeous, brave examination of self-loathing, personal responsibility, and how video games can push the individual in different ways to other media. It is a world that I still dream about. It is a place where I want to be. I will also have to give a nod to the first part of Burial at Sea, which continues the story in surprising ways. Rapture is recreated in stunning, lavish detail. (To the Kotaku fellow who said that Rapture—probably the greatest video game world ever—didn’t justify the pace: eat a dead cock. Of course it fucking justifies the pace you massive berk.) The differences between the ideologies of Rapture and Columbia are explored subtly as you walk through the still functional underwater society. A black man gets his shoes shined. Two men hold each other as they look out at the sea. The Pope is mocked over cocktails. The story feeds right back into Infinite and suggests Part 2 is going to be a special thing.

2. Rockstar Games, GTA V
I kind of hoped that GTA V would have the same level of outright emotional gumption as Red Dead Redemption and L.A. Noire. Then Los Santos overtook me and I didn’t care any more. The scale and detail of this game is obscene. It is a joyous, beautiful place to be. The satire is about on the level of Naked Gun. A dozen jokes in thirty seconds. Eleven clunkers in a row, but that one that provides some chuckles and some thinking makes it move. What Rockstar learned from the games it did between GTA IV and V is that it is possible to maintain that joyful chaos while also being sincere in its attempts at beauty. There are startling moments through the game and while it never quite reaches the level of Red Dead or Max Payne from a pure story perspective, it has more than enough beats which hit right. When Michael is spiked by his son and all of a sudden flies through the air to the dazzling original soundtrack, it is the kind of pause for thought that no GTA before ever did. The number of spontaneous moments of splendor and reflection provided to the player through the machinations of Rockstar’s world are too many to count.

GTA V is very coarse. Its story does not care about women except through this filter. A little disappointing, though the world of Los Santos has more than its share of real and varied humanity to compensate. A cycle through the forest, down to the pier, up the mountains, or a swim in the sea will allow you to overhear and engage with people who do not fit within the incoherent (nonexistent?) politics of the comedy bits. I appreciate its full embrace of a certain sociopathic flavor that runs through most games in one proportion or another. The torture scene in particular is very effective Horror. On this level it is worthwhile, but it does function well as a poke at the inconsistencies of how we think about violence in video games. Trevor is a satisfyingly brutal character and there is no disappointing evidence of restraint or silly attempts to put his behavior in any context other than sadism and self-interest.

3. Naughty Dog, The Last of Us
No, it’s not the Citizen Kane of games or whatever guff is the new review crutch for bad writers. It is also not quite up there with the Uncharted series. It is, however, an immensely confident work. Naughty Dog shows with The Last of Us that they can tell any kind of story because they are just that damn good. The story Naughty Dog tells here is not particularly original or innovative, especially if you are aware of the many movies, novels, and comic books that have covered the same precise area. The way they execute this well-worn story, though, is damn good. It also presents probably the best excuse to tell a zombie story since White Zombie had an eye on Voodoo. Fungus is the thing! The transformations are products of stellar creature design and the way the infected are brought alive through sound design make them genuinely terrifying.

Both Joel (Troy Baker) and Ellie (Ashley Johnson) are well conceived and well performed. That Troy Baker has been at the helm of two of the year’s best characters (with Joel here and Booker in Bioshock Infinite) does not seem to be a coincidence. He is more than a pro; he has the sauce AND the chops. Put the sauce on the chops? You have a delicious vocal meal. Ashley Johnson’s Ellie sits comfortably near (though not too near) Courtnee Draper’s Elizabeth as a character that you want to know. The best section in The Last of Us comes when the player takes control of Ellie and makes her survival a direct concern. Traipsing through heavy snow away from a band of unhinged humans (there are no hinged humans in the game) with a bow and arrow is a tingly good time.

The violence in The Last of Us is consistently shocking, frequently sadistic, and ultimately without any moral context except survival. While the game stops short of fully examining the humanity of the infected, it makes it clear that they are not simple monsters. Crack a skull as a person begs for their life or set a bunch of survivors on fire and watch them burn. Drive a shiv through someone’s neck or wait until someone sets a nail bomb off. While philosophical bits flow through and leave you with something to chew on, ultimately survival is the thing.

The way the game resolves is clever and like Infinite, is fearless in a way that few games are. It presents the player with the realization that you are not a good person, that Joel is not a good person, and most importantly, that this world no longer has any place for good people. The only thing that exists is the self, and even as you stack up the flecks of humanity shown by Joel and Ellie throughout the game, what is left are two people looking after themselves and that is about it. Arbitrary lines are drawn between good and bad gangs of survivors and the techniques they use to stay alive are laid out as pure relativism. Ideas are presented to make the player and Joel draw the line between good and bad and pretend for a while that they are on the right side.

Games
Music: Albums
Music: Singles
Television

Music: Albums

1. The Weeknd, Kiss Land
The Weeknd is the best person making music today. I have talked before about how Kiss Land examines the corrupted individual and how it is possible to find great beauty and hope within the cruelest environment. The Weeknd is, unfortunately, the victim of some egregious ignorance as it relates to R&B and the kind of hybrid music featured on Kiss Land. This is something that was also clearly seen with the guffaw over Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” though with Kiss Land it seems even more baffling.

The Weeknd is self-aware on Kiss Land. It is about the conflict between being low down and smothering all of your bad feelings in inhumanity, in coarse fucking, and numbing the body to everything but the act and that need for love and real happiness. It is in the moment and in a complex way, a celebration of sex, of skin, and of humans being human together as best as they are able. It is also an examination of it and in part, a condemnation of the way that people can turn when they take their mind out of the equation.

“It’s been a test to see how far a man can go without himself.” Kiss Land is about dehumanization and why being dead inside is sometimes preferable to being a human. “Belong To The World” gets to this conflict better than any track on the album. The world does not value this woman’s job. They use her for it, but they put her on the fringes of society all the same. Society and his place in it have led the singer to feel the need to demean her, to put her in the home, and keep her there. He has been down there, though. She gave him her humanity and as a result he cannot think of her in the way society wants him to.

After listening to the album about 200 times since it was released in September, I am pretty sure it is the equal of any of the albums on Trilogy, and probably their superior. It is the most challenging, interesting, innovative, and important album of the year. It has brought R&B to exciting new places. If Prince still had the courage to make weird music that freaks people out, it would probably feel something like this. This is Camille for a new generation. This is Kells for how it expresses the beauty and humanity of the physical. This is Michael for how a voice can transform your environment. And yeah, this is Marvin Gaye for its unwavering honesty and emotional depth. So fuck your Rolling Stone-approved listening party; THIS is What’s Goin’ On.

2. R. Kelly, Black Panties
“Tonight you’re lying with a sex genius. . . ”

Although this has only just been released I include it here because 1) I have listened to it many times and it is smooth as all hell and 2) because I know removing it due to its release date would be no more objective and I would rather celebrate good music than gnash teeth over objective list fetishes.

Black Panties is a Twelve Play album. Every R. Kelly album is sexy, but it may surprise a casual listener how much time Kells has devoted over the years to songs of joy and love in the style of Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye. Those who were surprised with Love Letter and Write Me Back clearly weren’t paying attention. The Twelve Play albums are consistently explicit in a way that Kelly’s other albums are not. 2009’s Untitled was originally intended to be the fourth Twelve Play, but following a leak of the album in 2008, it was cancelled and re-assembled with a different tracklist. Black Panties is the direct follow-up to Untitled and like that album is a Twelve Play record in everything but name.

Let’s get down to it: this is a dirty fucking album for fucking. If you don’t like fucking or thinking about fucking, this is not for you. It is as coarse as “I Like The Crotch on You” and “Sex in the Kitchen” and “Pregnant”, and quite a bit darker too especially on tracks like “Cookie”. This darkness has had a presence in Kelly’s music from near enough the start but this is more focused. The sound follows on from his work on tracks like “Hair Braider” and “Number One,” but the tone is very much in the style of modern R&B. As much as Kells has influenced the entire crop of modern R&B musicians, he has a fierce gift for taking that influence and pushing it back through his own talent. “Cookie” is the aggressive and coarse approach, along with that bleak tone, that represents the Frank Ocean/Weeknd flavour. There is a heavy Drake feeling on “You Deserve Better.” These tracks are not flat-out imitations but there is a sense that Kells has been listening very carefully to how R&B has changed and how he can further advance things.

Black Panties brings the romance, too, with a ridiculously lovely duet with Kelly Rowland (“All The Way”) and some of that TP2 style introspection on “Right Back.” As with so much of what R. Kelly does, this is hardly likely to get the respect it deserves. Even after decades of hits and classic albums, too many people still like to diminish one of the greatest musical talents of the last two decades as a clown. Expect in ten years for this album to be on some lists of the best R&B of the 2010s in Complex magazine or Vibe or one of the publications that actually understands the genre.

“Every boy, every girl, every child around the world from the ’90s until this day was made off me.”

3. Justin Timberlake, The 20/20 Experience
This is the best album Justin Timberlake has done in a trio of classics. It is also the return of Timbaland as a creative force and not the played out and overexposed hired gun he had become. If JT was competing with ANYONE except for the above two, he would have been the best of the year. It is as close to a perfect R&B album in 2013 as it is possible to imagine, and a nice reminder that a fresh sound can coincide with a more positive disposition. This is amazing dancing music.

“Pusher Love Girl” just keeps on giving and goes from falsetto romance to spiky guitar workout. “Suit & Tie” has my favorite Jay-Z guest spot ever. “Get out your seat Hove” will hopefully become a handle for TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS. The track is so fucking sexy and badass. Shape up and get out there. Let’s do this. “Strawberry Bubblegum” is also a ridiculous monster of a jam and that POP on the second half hasn’t sounded as good since Wendy & Lisa laid down their vocals on “Pop Life.”

I also include the second part of the 20/20 Experience here. As a single album, it is not at the level of the first but it has more than its share of killer songs. Taken as a double album, with the understanding that even great double albums require some pruning for individual preference, the complete 20/20 Experience is the way to listen to this music. “Cabaret” with Drake is a favorite. The 20/20 Experience is an embarrassingly large selection of excessively accomplished songwriting, performance, and production. It is the best work Justin Timberlake has ever done and reminds those who had forgotten that he is one of the best to ever do this.

4. The-Dream, IV Play
IV Play took a while to come together in my mind, but after spending some proper time with it over the last few months, it deserves a spot on the list. It is not as complete a listen as Love King or as spiky as Terius Nash: 1977. It just happens to be filled with killer tracks. The best song of the year, “Slow It Down,” is only available on the deluxe version and if I was unable to include that version, IV Play would be further down the list. As it is, this is another entry in The-Dream’s catalogue of RIDICULOUSLY GOOD PRODUCTION and HOOKS THAT COULD DESTROY THE MOON.

The title track is the first moment where things get into that zone and make you feel special. Order some high-cotton percentage sheets, or lay down a duvet with a high tog value on a freshly hovered carpet and go half on a baby. That The-Dream has paid tribute to Kells lyrically on almost every album is another reason why he gets the respect. There are some good guest shots on the album. Jay-Z opens the album with “High Art”. His friend Beyoncé appears later on “Turnt,” Pusha T pops up on, ahum, “Pussy.”

So yes! This is another album almost entirely concerned with love, fucking, fucking in love, fucking out of love, planning for some fucking at a later date, cataloging previous fucking to improve performance, etc. “Michael” seems to my ears to be a shot at The Weeknd, with whom The-Dream had a spat with on Twitter a couple of years back. It is unclear if the song is meant as a compliment or not, but seeing as “Sounds like Michael don’t it” is repeated it may be harmless or a musical peace offering.

5. Alela Diane, About Farewell
One of the best break-up albums in the last decade, and certainly Alela Diane’s best, this album has been played regularly since its release. It has been a big help to me for various dumb emotional reasons and a failure of my human abilities. It is comforting and sad and I love the hell out of it. It is alongside albums like Iron & Wine’s The Creek Drank The Cradle, Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, Damien Rice’s O, and Tom Waits’s Closing Time for using bad things to fuel the enjoyment of meaningful artistic things.

Like the above, About Farewell is not an album you tend to pick tracks out of, but some of my favorites are the opening “Colorado Blue” for setting the tone so perfectly and “Nothing I Can Do” for making me teary every single time. “You don’t know how to kill the hurt, how to leave behind revolution.” If you have never heard Alela Diane you should start with this album.

6. Drake, Nothing Was The Same
It took me a while to warm to Drake and even though Take Care was clearly a bloody great album, I was more entranced by his collaborator The Weeknd. By the time Nothing Was The Same arrived, Drake had sold me on his talent. Like Kanye West did before him, the line between R&B and Rap is willfully blurred and you get a thrilling sense of freedom. Just drop into a sweet chorus and sing it, and then go back into rapping and then switch it up and sing and rap AT THE SAME TIME.

“Furthest Thing” is a pleasing result of this melodically inclined rapping style. “Hold On We’re Going Home” is a straight up R&B hit. I thought I would miss The Weeknd considering his very large impact on Take Care, but the feel of this album is dead on. Drake has a hell of an ear for sounds and like that Kanye, even if you don’t appreciate his attitude or whatever, you should step out and acknowledge his ability. He is a (major) part of a scene that has taken R&B from stale bullshit and genre sell-outs like Usher to being the most exciting thing happening in music. He needs some delicious ear-based kudos.

7. Janelle Monáe, The Electric Lady
I also wrote about this album back in September. It is certainly one of the best of the year. Janelle Monáe is one of the most exciting people doing it today. She has a visual style and a firm idea of the whole presentation of the music—from the album cover to the performance to the videos to the clothes—that puts many to shame. She is indebted to the P-Funk stuff, particularly as it concerns the otherworldly conceit that runs through her work. Her music feels particularly modern, though. She is as current and now as anything going.

The Electric Lady is a sublime listen, but a nod has to go to “Givin Em What They Love” for basically being the only Prince guest appearance on a good, fresh artist’s track since probably Madonna’s “Love Song”. That she was able to make him do a collaboration that WASN’T from a shitty protégé record is enough of an achievement to put it on the list! You also have amazing appearances from the great Erykah Badu on “Q.U.E.E.N.”, Solange on the title track, and that hot fellow Miguel on “Primetime”!

Janelle is making sure we get the Funk as well as the sensual smooth. Immerse yourself in the gimmick, book a ticket, and get on board the android train straight to that sexy Dystopia!

8. The Flaming Lips, The Terror
I have been a Flaming Lips fan for a fair time now. They were one of the bands that made me very, very obsessive. I bought Zaireeka for a ridiculous price and went about scrounging the required number of CD players to hear the thing. I went to see them twice in concert within a few months when I was at the height of a crippling anxiety over anything to do with OTHER PEOPLE. What is more, their energy and love transmitted directly to the crowd. To this day, a little under ten years later, I still have not felt the kind of acceptance from a group of people than I did when I mashed up and down to “Race For The Prize” and sang along with thousands of people on “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots.” It didn’t change my life really—very few things have for the better—but it certainly made my life a more enjoyable one to live.

I enjoyed both At War With the Mystics and Embryonic, though neither still do it for me. At War With the Mystics, as a companion to the concerts at the time, was great but on its own it is easily the weakest of the Dave Fridmann-produced material. Even though it was clearly a superior album with a cohesive identity, Embryonic fell flat, too. I liked it when I listened to it, but I listened to it infrequently. I had no desire to go back in and be wrapped up in that world.

The Flaming Lips have made some of the greatest transformative, inspiring music of the last 20 years. Put your cynicism aside and you realize that “Yes, they have genuinely helped me live my life and deal with the arsey process of being a human.” The Terror does follow on with the tone of Embryonic so I am unsure why it resonates so much more with me. I’m not much closer to determining what it is about The Terror that stuck with me in a way that Embryonic has not. Perhaps it has a little more of the guarded optimism of The Soft Bulletin. Perhaps I was not depressed enough in 2009 to appreciate Embryonic. I’m not going to pick out specific tracks, but will say that that the album is quite close to how a panic attack feels and is useful in the prevention of same.

9. Tyler, The Creator, Wolf
Stop reading now, Australia! This is dangerous music!

Wolf is the most interesting entry in the hyper-aggressive category of Rap in some time. It goes on a bit too long at times, and it doesn’t always hit home, but when the production combines with interesting perversion at the right time, there are few things more compelling in the genre. Tyler’s diminutive stature and inclination towards the deranged and not specifically the masculine puts him in a more interesting place than so much violence-inclined Rap. I probably enjoyed Earl Sweatshirt’s Doris more. Wolf is more interesting. On the Eminem comparison: yes, but Eminem could never produce something this good on his own back. Good sounds. “PartyIsntOver/Campfire/Bimmer” is the track.

10. Iron & Wine, Ghost on Ghost
I liked most of Iron & Wine’s Kiss Each Other Clean. I adored “Me and Lazarus”. There was, however, a certain cod-Funk-Rock creep in the second half of the album, turning up most egregiously on the closing “Your Fake Name Is Good Enough For Me.” Fuck that shit. Fuck it all to hell. Ghost on Ghost has trimmed the bullshit and resulted in that same kind of sound but without Sam Beam thinking he can be a fearsome shouty Rock guy. These songs are lovely. “Winter Prayers” is something of a reconciliation between the good side of the more complex sound of the last album and the removed beauty of The Creek Drank The Cradle.

Games
Music: Albums
Music: Singles
Television

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