Vancouver Weekly's Best Albums of 2013: Mid-Year Round-up - Run-Offs

Since my pitches for Thee Oh Sees' Floating Coffin and Waxahatchee's Cerulean Salt didn't make Vancouver Weekly's mid-year round-up of the Best Albums of 2013, I'm posting my mini-reviews here. At least my vote for the Courtneys self-titled debut album passed. Click here for the full list, and read on for my blurbs:

Thee Oh Sees - Floating Coffin (Castle Face Records, April 16)

San Fran's hyper-prolific garage outfit Thee Oh Sees returned this year with Floating Coffin. It's meaty - a thick, bubbling stew of bloody psychedelia, cavernous claustrophobia and hypnotic, mangled riffs that burst like stressed sutures. Though it's one of the band's rare releases primarily written as a group, it still creeps and crawls the way only Thee Oh Sees can before tearing your flesh from bone.

Stand-out track: "Toe Cutter/Thumb Buster"

Waxahachee - Cerulean Salt (Don Giovanni Records, March 7)

Bedroom pop songs sung with enough obliqueness as to never quite feel confessional. A single guitar is mostly all Katie Crutchfield needs on her doleful second album Cerulean Salt, but bassist Kyle Gilbridge and drummer Keith Spencer make little rock gems like "Coast To Coast" possible, even lifting the album's spirits a bit, at least musically.

Stand-out track: "You're Damaged"