Of This and Other Worlds, the 2013 debut of Glasgow’s Hidden Masters, would have slipped nicely into some record label’s 1971 release schedule. Something like Love’s Forever Changes crossed with the Who Sell Out, with extra doses of Odessey and Oracle vocal harmonies and the loudest Beatles and Thirteenth Floor Elevators riffs and mysticism, it is unembarrassed psychedelic retro, and it is *really good at it*. My ranking it at #40 serves only as a reminder, first, that all my rankings are compliments, and second, that if you care more about classic rock more than I do, you might rank it way, way higher.

Opening track She Broke the Clock of the Long Now shows off quite a few of their tricks in 4:39: fierce-but-catchy flanged guitar, agile tempo changes, fast solos, sharply-composed vocal harmonies (behind the confident, smooth lead vocals of David Addison), a slowed-down spacey bridge. Into the Night Sky kicks off with rapid, perky folk-rock, works in Procol Harum organ, slows down into a drum/ piano/ wavery-bass workout (highlighted by more vocal harmonies), jumps back into double-time, then almost immediately delves into a-cappella, then tricky rhythm changes; seems ready to return to the slowed-down bit, but instead lets everyone stand aside for a proto-Black Sabbath guitar solo; jumps into spy-chase music; and winds back up at perky folk-rock. Perfume is, on average, slower and grander (it still shifts around a lot), and makes extra-sure you notice how good a drummer John Nicol is and how much he enjoys echo.

See You in the Dark plays a Lovin’ Spoonful cheerfulness at extra velocity. Like Candy is a different side of Lovin’ Spoonful, their gentle bubblegum pop, done Hidden Masters style — which means it detours into something more like an Everly Brothers duet, perhaps if they’d been produced by someone tripping, and then into something a bit like the Archies trying to make Immigrant Song, then into clean-cut finger-snapping college a-cappella group in front of the Byrds’ instrumentalists or something. Grey Walls Grey brings the syncopation and the organ and even more enthusiastic harmonies than usual; Fall in Line, while on average rather dignified and stately, keeps bringing in new ideas for almost six full minutes. And none of the variation is in the show-off-ish Bohemian Rhapsody/ Mr. Roboto style; all the songs on Of This and Other Worlds can pass for standard first-wave psych-rock, until you make yourself wonder “How did we get here from *there*?”

I can imagine someone having no interest in classic psychedelic pop-rock. I can imagine someone who *does* like classic psychedelic pop-rock finding it inherently ghoulish for a band of young men to never once draw on a single muse more recent than the first three Blue Oyster Cult albums. Still, either of those attitudes would be a pity. If you’re not stuck with either, then the Hidden Masters, within the chosen confines of those old forms, bring a surplus of abilities, fresh ideas, harmonies, and hooks into the open.

– Brian Block

To see the rest of our favorites, visit our Favorite Albums of 2013 page!

The Kenyan-born Toronto rapper Shad‘s magnificent given name is Shadrach Kabango. Surely if he’s been more aggressive and posturing in his style, someone at absolute minimum would’ve convinced him to hold onto the syllable “bang”. Shad has enough ego to survive in the rap game, yes: his 4th album Flying Colours includes its genre’s requisite wordplay bravado games (“Ooh, look at how I’m killing these tracks/ I’m a vet but not the type that’s feeling these cats/ Where’s the real Emcees at? I’m dying, I need to hear someone as ill as me, stat” — a genuinely clever through-line of double meanings, wasted on pure peacocking). But Shad is also a misfit in his genre: an immigrant, a Christian, a guy who can sustain Star Trek wordplay over a lengthy verse instead of just a quick one-liner, and a do-gooder who needs a big ego to justify his sense of social responsibility. His rapping strikes a solid compromise between the demands of rhythm and a desire to be conversational. And Flying Colours is an unusually pretty rap album, as well as occasionally a daring one.

Y’all Know Me has a ’70s Stevie Wonder feel, built on acoustic bass, tambourine, spacey synthesizers, melodic “Ooh-ooh-ooh” harmonies, and Shad‘s unsteady, but potentially smooth and soulful, tenor singing voice. Fam Jam (Fe Sum Immigrins) is built on a sunny Buddy Holly-style guitar loop — I’d swear it’s a sample of Kleenex Girl Wonder’s great the Pathetic Fallacy if it wasn’t extraordinarily unlikely that you or Shad has ever heard of it —  as well as ’80’s-style record-scratching noises and a pleasant, barely audible bass line. The saxophone, Rhodes keyboard, and piano of He Say She Say are back to ’70s soul with a touch of ’80s Bruce Hornsby, although the clunky drum machine adds it more modern charm. Dreams has a low bass keyboard, mournful cello, and highly syncopated drum machine that suggest a more musicianly take on the Cure’s bleakest years (sampled musicians, sure, but bleakly lovely). Stylin’ — part his second boasting song, part his love letter to hip-hop as a salve for a confused black immigrant boy — has similar bass keyboard, but plays everything for joy, letting Kabango rap gleefully fast, then sing inside heavy echo that makes him sound like he’s refracting into a dozen of himself. Progress Progress is weird, and perhaps my favorite thing here, progressing from slam poetry unaccompanied, to slam poetry over piano and skittering fake drums, to slam poetry over intense and dissonant orchestra strings, to singing over acoustic guitar and chilled-out beats. Or Remember to Remember might be my favorite, hypnotic and urgent, over sawing cello, synthesizers like distant arcade-game space battles, and gorgeous circling vocals from Valerie “Lights” Poxleitner.

A big part of how I learned to enjoy hip-hop is displayed on Flying Colours: it’s perfectly capable of building itself from ingredients I already loved in pop songs, sometimes putting them in combinations I haven’t heard before. Then a lot of stylized talking is layered over it: that took adjustment, sure, but it also puts focus on the what the rapper has to say, and a million albums about drug-dealing aside, that can be an important strength. Shadrach Kabango identifies, even in his bragging songs, as “an egghead with glasses”, and cares about what his listeners will hear him say. None of his lyrics deserve the too-short summaries I’ll give them, but Fam Jam celebrates the contributions of immigrants (also giving a quick thanks to Doctors Without Borders), and endorses the concept of working up the class ladder. He Say She Say is a relationship failure portrait that carefully lays no blame, trailing off with a chorus of “Then I wanted to do a verse about how they worked it out, but…”. Dreams protests the crowded noisy concrete ghettos and announces “We think till we’re emotional, then drink until we’re sociable again/ This whole century is sensory overload”. Progress Progress juggles and juxtaposes dozens of allusions, but is arguably centered on how his love for pop culture doesn’t justify the way pop culture is used to deflect us from fury at the bankers who hijack economies and police who tase or water-cannon those who protest. Remember to Remember is a self-conscious song about the importance of rappers being self-conscious: they have a mike, what are they going to do with it?

Shad certainly uses the right, as we all do, to be cheap and trivial sometimes. But not the right to do harm. Where Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Niggas in Paris is a lavish celebration of exploiting women — some of whom surely enjoyed it, yes, but which women and why and with what possible side effects is clearly of no interest — Mr. Kabango remembers Paris as a place where he ate nuggets. Which is also disrespecting chicks, come to think. But above and beyond the pretty music and nifty drum machine beats, I appreciate the harm he’s at least trying to avoid.

– Brian Block

To see the rest of our favorites, visit our Favorite Albums of 2013 page!