Introduction

If you’d told me at the beginning of 2013 that new records from Queens of the Stone Age, David Bowie, Kanye West and Daft Punk would all fail to make my personal year-end Top 10 list, I’d likely have laughed in your face. If you’d told me that a Beyonce album and a Miranda Lambert side project would both make it in their place, my laughter would have soured into worry. And if you’d told me that the band responsible for “Oxford Comma” would produce an LP capable of sparking lengthy dinner table discussions on Hasidism, I might well have called the cops on you.

And yet, here we are.

CLICK THROUGH FOR ANDREW BARKER’S TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2013

#10 Polica, “Shulamith” (Mom + Pop)

Easily the year’s most danceable electro-rock record dedicated to a reclusive feminist theorist, the Minneapolis duo’s “Shulamith” provided study-hall synth jams of the highest order.

#9 Pistol Annies, “Annie Up” (RCA Nashville)

Ignoring contemporary country music’s drab dichotomy between frattish radio-friendly pop and po-faced traditionalism, this trio — comprised of Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley — threatened to revive the lost art of shit-kicking like nothing else out of Nashville this year.

#8 Beyonce. “Beyonce” (Columbia)

While Beyonce’s fifth solo album is likely to be remembered more for its sneak attack release strategy and kitchen-sink packaging, it’s the music itself that deserves most of the attention. Allowing for an uncharacteristic degree of intimacy from the oft imperious R&B princess, the album exhibits a startling range, with Bey masterfully tugging heartstrings, heating up bedrooms, and out-rapping her husband. “Bow down, bitches” indeed.

#7 Camera Obscura, “Desire Lines” (4AD)

“New Year’s resolution to write something of value,” sings Camera Obscura frontwoman Tracyanne Campbell midway through the group’s fifth collection of joyfully dour indie pop, before immediately revising, “New Year’s resolution to write something, would be fine.” Never has writer’s block and weary self-deprecation sounded so inspiring.

#6 Steve Arrington and Dam-Funk, “Higher” (Stones Throw)

Pairing the latter-day-Roger Troutman stylings of Dam-Funk with the Gospel-forged croon of former Slave vocalist Steve Arrington would seem to be the perfect recipe for an instant block party, yet this collaborative album was a far stranger beast, deconstructing vintage funk rhythms rather than simply mimicking them, and gazing far into the future with one foot still planted in the past.

#5 King Krule, “6 Feet Beneath the Moon” (True Panther)

Nineteen-year-old Brit Archy “King Krule” Marshall wields a voice like a blunt weapon, a blocky, marble-mouthed hybrid of Shane MacGowan’s slovenly slur and Billy Bragg’s hectoring foghorn. Yet it’s remarkable just how much subtlety, style and soul he can wring out of this raspy instrument, and his spare, jazzy debut picked up right where the xx lost the plot, coming across like a late-night come-on and a back-alley stick-up all at once.

#4 My Bloody Valentine, “mbv” (mbv)

2013 in music was full of surprises, but none were nearly as shocking as the abrupt appearance of shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine’s third full-length, arriving more than two decades after its genre-defining masterpiece, “Loveless.” Though it never reached the heights of that earlier release (how could it?), the album was a consistent triumph, and a testament to bandleader Kevin Shields’ continued ability to test the sonic limits of the electric guitar.

#3 Neko Case, “The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You” (Anti)

Were she signed to a major label, it’s hard to imagine the impeccably assembled folk-pop gems that litter Neko Case’s sixth studio album wouldn’t have gotten some serious radio attention. But while “Ragtime” and “Night Still Comes” reveled in note-perfect traditional songcraft, Case’s songwriting revealed its true strengths when completely stripped down: “Nearly Midnight, Honolulu” sketched a heartrending slice-of-life using nothing but Case’s multitracked vocals, while “Calling Cards” provided the year’s most purely pleasurable two and a half minutes of music without so much as a chorus.

#2 Run the Jewels, “Run the Jewels” (Fool’s Gold)

On last year’s “R.A.P. Music,” Atlanta hip-hop journeyman Killer Mike teamed up with producer El-P, and improbably crafted the year’s most irresistible rap record using topics cribbed from a Sociology 101 lecture: Reaganomics, racial profiling, commercialism, and the legacy of the Civil Rights movement from W.E.B. Dubois to the present. For this year’s free release “Run the Jewels,” the duo lightened up considerably, with El-P promoted from producer to full duet partner, and the heavy subject matter replaced by gloriously vulgar verbal sparring for its own sake. To see these two underappreciated hip-hop lifers deliver the year’s best rap release for the second time in a row was truly, as the album’s final track would put it, “A Christmas Fucking Miracle.”

#1 Vampire Weekend, “Modern Vampires of the City” (XL)

On its previous two albums, Vampire Weekend was far easier to respect than to like. The group’s abilities to craft catchy tunes and pen memorable lyrics were undeniable, but they seemed frustratingly unwilling to apply these abilities to matters of any real depth, like bratty potential valedictorians determined to forever remain the class clowns. In that regard, the group’s third album, “Modern Vampires of the City,” represented a rather epic leap forward. Ditching the smug Ivy League affectations of his previous work, frontman Ezra Koenig turned his gimlet eye away from punctuation and horchata and toward matters of real significance: death, intolerance, aging, depression, and above all, God. (“Modern Vampires” is perhaps the most thoroughly Jewish pop album since the Beastie Boys’ “Paul’s Boutique.”) Meanwhile, multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij buttressed his bandmate’s meditations with a cornucopia of arresting structures and textures, from the Celtic rave-up “Unbelievers” to the robot-rock of “Diane Young” and the achingly sincere chamber pop of “Hannah Hunt.” There isn’t a wrong note, or a callow smirk, to be found.