Usually as December dawns the very best works of the year have already risen to the surface. Not so in 2012.
Sure, summertime yielded a few undeniable standouts, and they’re the same titles likely to cap the nationwide Pazz & Jop poll of critics when that tabulation is revealed in January. But even those standard-bearers lacked widespread momentum among people actually doing the listening. Even with Spotify putting everything at our fingertips, great music required more effort than ever to be discovered.
The monumental movers and shakers – runaway smashes like Taylor Swift’s Red and Mumford & Sons’ Babel – are confident collections that nonetheless lack the surprise and innovation worth singling out as exceptional. Granted, the mainstream typically isn’t the most abundant river for prize fishing.
But at a time when One Direction sells out shows a year in advance and “Gangnam Style” pulls in a billion YouTube views, while a trilogy from Green Day struggles to add up to the platinum status of even one generic country clone, well, it’s more polluted than usual.
Fringe experimenters and the elder guard (so plentiful this year they should have their own Top 10) remained the arbiters of excellence, whether trading in deafening noise-rock, unsettling rap, soul of the past, grooves of the future or – richest terrain of all –the fascinating (and sometimes terrifying) psyches of singer-songwriters.
1. Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel … – All three of the year’s finest sets willfully wander down dark alleys of the mind, but Apple’s are littered with the most vivid graffiti. We recognize her disturbingly alluring images (like this album’s hand-drawn cover) from three previous noir-pop diary outpourings, but the visions have grown grimmer, devilishly giddy with jazzy maturation, their streaks of romantic coloring beaming all the more boldly and bouncing across the walls on wings of percolating percussion.
I think she takes so long between works (this is her first in seven years) because every phrase, musical and lyrical, needs time to marinate before it will allow any contextual sense. What results every time she invites a crowd into the nightly fight with her brain is a completely engrossing experience that can leave you emotionally tethered. Your own doubts and yearnings fuse to her deeper, persistent anguish, until you come out the other side strangely happy, realizing you’re not half as messed up as she is. She cuts because she cares, and she’s still like no other.
2. Frank Ocean, Channel Orange – A beguiling revelation, not least because of its cultural significance: Never before had a bedroom-bumping urban-soul record so sublime and seductive been crafted by a just-out gay man and still been celebrated and snatched-up. What really sets this apart, however, not merely as the best thing the Odd Future clan has coughed up but as a totem for our times, are the delightfully confounding choices Ocean makes. He routinely eschews the obvious for the unusual, the holler for the whisper, the killer beat for the extra texture, the modern twist for the classic move. Like primo Eno, the stillness of his proper debut sucks you in; like Drake, his drawl hides secrets his yearning falsetto gives away.
3. Kendrick Lamar, good kid, m.A.A.d city – If you want your hip-hop hard, download Killer Mike’s R.A.P. Music, raw like sushi and brutal like brass knuckles between the eyes. But the accomplishment of this 25-year-old Compton sensation, the most startling of several striking newcomers to emerge from the West Coast’s Black Hippy movement, is more astonishing and visionary – deep like 2Pac at his most intense, gritty like early Nas, building on production advancements spanning OutKast to Lil Wayne while putting down a flow as urgent as it is laid-back. It’s a conflicted and convoluted snapshot of street struggle, harrowingly alien and entirely relatable, a series of discrete morality plays in which internal goodness gets morphed by external madness to murderous extremes. When it’s over, it feels like a new era of L.A. rap has dawned.
4. Alabama Shakes, Boys & Girls – An unbridled slice of rock ’n’ soul elation, a throwback almost as remarkable as Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black. Whereas deservedly touted guitar-slinger Gary Clark Jr. and pan-soul brother Cody ChesnuTT (see No. 9) craft tracks drenched in as much modernity as retro preservation, this Southern bunch aims for analog authenticity and nails it. They sound plucked from a Muscle Shoals roadhouse circa the turn of the ’70s and come fronted by an unlikely powerhouse, Brittany Howard, who looks like your favorite curly-haired Sprouts checker in specs but sings like Janis Joplin’s lost love child with Al Green. A stunning introduction. The opening stomp “Hold On” alone is so strong, it deserves to trump an intimidating field of elder competition at the Grammys come February.
5. Grizzly Bear, Shields – Simultaneously this Brooklyn band has gotten a great deal more approachable while staying deliberately inscrutable. Pore over the impressionistic lyrics and airy vocals while luxuriating amid suddenly tactile soundscapes and you’ll be no closer to gleaning meaning; this is structure-defying prog-rock to be taken intravenously, not understood via cranial impact, no matter how effectively it pounds like Mo Tucker’s tribal toms for the Velvet Underground. The feel is avant-garde space-rock sailing to the dark side of the moon. If you make it there in one piece, you don’t wonder what it signifies. You simply marvel at oblivion.
6. Japandroids, Celebration Rock – There are other purveyors of the latest alt-noise: ever-changing London group the Men make an exuberant racket on Open Your Heart, Metz’s self-titled debut was sonically crushing enough to squash your skull, while hyper-prolific garage-rock hero Ty Segall’s triptych this year (topped by Twins, the final installment) is nothing to sneeze at. But this duo’s feral blitz is like no ear-splitting force to emerge since the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy. Like that abrasive rush, this one never lacks for hooks, shrieks even when the volume is low, obliterates your senses with hurricane force – and ends all too soon.
7. The Hall of Famers – I despise ties. But there was so much great music this year from younger talent worth discovering that I don’t want to wipe out five spots with equally excellent titles from older names you know all too well. All of the following are worthy of Top 10 inclusion, however, and in this order:
Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s epic Psychedelic Pill, a wizened blast I hope isn’t their last; Bruce Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball, a clarion call foreshadowing fiscal cliffs; Leonard Cohen’s self-explanatory Old Ideas, further timeless brilliance about love and spirit; Dr. John’s Dan Auerbach-produced Locked Down, a groovetopia worthy of his wildest ’70s sides; and the pristinely seedy future-funk of Donald Fagen’s Sunken Condos, his best since Steely Dan’s Two Against Nature.
8. Tame Impala, Lonerism and Spiritualized, Sweet Heart Sweet Light – Like I said, I despise ties. But the back-stories of these tales of isolation in the isles (the former’s Kevin Parker is an Australian from Perth, the latter’s Jason Pierce is a Brit from Rugby) deepen a continuity already steeped in psychedelic rock of the grandest kind.
Parker’s one-man disappearing act is as down-the-rabbit-hole paranoid as Eels at their most navel-gazing, yet the spectral sound entrances like Syd Barrett reincarnated for a second chance at euphoria, this time without the acid to permanently fry his brain yet with equally visionary results. Pierce’s therapeutic (and second-best) album, meanwhile, gathers his various preferences – massed gospel vocals, orchestral grandeur, ruminative folk, blissed-out classic-rock choruses – and melds them into his most accessible music in two decades of work, his finest since the 1997 benchmark Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. They both blur beautifully on endless loop.
9. Gary Clark Jr., Blak and Blu and Cody ChesnuTT, Landing on a Hundred – As I may have mentioned, I despise ties. But these two gems – the eagerly awaited Warner Bros. debut from six-string hotshot Clark (above) and the decade-in-the-making second album from ChesnuTT – really ought to be heard back-to-back for the full retro-now soul explosion they pack. The first is a cornucopia stuffed with thrilling traditionalism, unexpected shifts into digitized R&B and a killer Hendrix cover. The second, a pastiche so instantly familiar you’ll swear it was your mom’s go-to get-it-on record, merits the title Soul more than Seal’s gooped-up classics. Better yet, make it a triple-play by tossing in Bruno Mars’ just-released Unorthodox Jukebox, which fails to encompass everything he’s capable of while assuring that he’s a little Prince in the making.
10. Django Django – Yes, as every mouth-frothing hipster will insist on telling you, then shame you for not knowing in the first place, this Edinburgh-spawned, London-reared group sounds remarkably similar to another quorum of Scots, the much-missed Beta Band, who share a couple of Maclean brothers between them. That has no bearing on the most obvious facsimile, however: almost robotically harmonic voices. But what separates them from their forebears is the pace of their quirk. Packing the sunny pep of Vampire Weekend to match their Hot Chip-ish electro-pop, they leave the Betas looking downright morose.
11. Amadou & Mariam, Folila – It’s a production marvel: The acclaimed Malian duo actually cut two versions of one album, with the same tempo and tunings but completely different instrumentation – one was a proper Bamako session replete with sokou, kora and other traditional accoutrements, the other was an NYC collaboration with some of the city’s leading indie lights, like Santigold, members of TV on the Radio, Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears and, most prominently, Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner. Rather than release to sides of the same coin individually, A&M took their wares to Parisian producer Marc-Antoine Moreau, who matched and melted them into one masterpiece of multi-culti rhythm and meditation.
“Dougou Badia,” the opening salvo, is a heavy hitter that sets a high bar, Amadou’s twangy speed-riffing rubbing just right against Zinner’s surrounding soar. From there it gets Fela funkier (“Wily Kataso,” making wise use of TVOTR’s Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone) and weirder (the polyrhythmic churn of “Baro”) and grimier (the drone and stomp of “Bagnale”) and rowdier, with the all-out elation of “C’est pas Facile pour les Aigles,” which jams like Primal Scream on a high-life kick. There oughta be an international prize for such cross-cultural mastery.
12. Beach House, Bloom – Certainly this fourth and most sumptuous assortment from the Baltimore duo of Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand could have been included in No. 16 on this pompous list of too many records; it’s definitely a mood-setter, even more transporting than anything Flying Lotus has sent into the ether. What sets it apart from a herd of wanna-be’s and sound-alikes I find hard to pinpoint, other than to say it’s simply grander, more memorably heavenly, more ripped from everyday gray skies yet still unearthly like Cocteau Twins before it.
Some people get that kinda fix from Sigur Ros; I need to give those Icelanders a fourth or fifth chance, but every time I indulge another sitting all they do is make me drowsy. Beach House takes me to shorelines that exist only in the Blue Nile sojourns of my post-New Wave dreams, the angelic jangle and synth washes sucking me deep into oceanic bliss. What comes after that, Legrand wonders at the album’s outset, on “Myth.” “Help me to name it,” she insists. Gladly, if only the words weren’t escaping me.
13. Dwight Yoakam, 3 Pears – A triumph after seven years away from the drawing board, a career high to top his previous greatest album (1993’s This Time) and some of the highest-caliber rock ’n’ roll you’ll find this side of Petty’s Heartbreakers and the Boss’ E Street Band, the only two entities capable of the breadth Yoakam brings with re-invigoration to this smorgasbord of classic styles.
Yelping cowpunk, Motown soul, Orbisonian dramatics, roof-raising rave-ups, jumpy British Invasion blues, country classicism of course. You can count the number of Americana mavericks worthy of wearing his denim on two deformed hands, but only Vince Gill, Steve Earle and maybe Lucinda Williams would have attempted so much and still come out cohering. It’s a peak performance I hope heartens him; this should be the start of a new chapter, not a comeback to cap the past.
14. Dirty Projectors, Swing Lo Magellan – There’s something about Upstate New York that cuts open the chests of bands to reveal their rustic heart. Where this group’s other recent masterstroke, 2009’s Bitte Orca, rounded the edges of Dave Longstreth & Co.’s cheerfully idiosyncratic guitars-and-quirks approach, providing a lustrous sheen of Talking Heads cool, this proper follow-up is unfettered and woodsy.
There’s a happy cabin fever infecting even suddenly swooning moments that lift you out of the living-room rawness and into another dream state altogether – like the fleeting MGM musical moment that morphs “I Am the Walrus”-style into the thick of “Dance for You.” I love the cover because it encapsulates the strangeness within: his hands in guitar pose, Longstreth looks like he’s trying to explain what it is he creates to a neighbor who’d probably prefer Willie Nelson. No matter how many times I’ve played this unique record, I still come away feeling just as dumbstruck as that big-bellied guy.
15. Green Day, ¡Uno! / ¡Dos! / ¡Tré! – Does it really matter what exactly put Billie Joe Armstrong in rehab? Pick your poison, but I think the underlying reason is general exhaustion from chutzpah overload. How do you follow up an album-of-a-generation rock opera? Why, with your own Quadrophenia to overthink that Tommy, while sending your first child off to Broadway! And how do you top that? How else – with a TRIPLE-LP! Three-dozen-and-one songs that cut for cut will stick in your head a lot longer than the noodling doodles on Sandinista! and, more impressively, work remarkably well as individual collections while still seeming completely interchangeable.
It’s a treasure trove that in the hands of a lesser band would have been wisely winnowed down by committee, and probably been better off for it. But Green Day regularly sprints in the valley of the giants now; slowing to a jog isn’t permitted without also downsizing some ego. Also, scaling back on a bumper crop of choice tunes sure wouldn’t have been very Ramones-like; when Johnny and Joey had this much material, they doled it out in fast heaps, too. Is it punk enough? Of course not. (Wait … you really thought they were punks?) All the same, it’s the most instantly and consistently hummable rock you’ll find all year, and I consider the whole shebang a DayGlo testament to their chosen aesthetic – they aimed stupidly high yet reached the goal. Albeit with a casualty.
16. Into the atmosphere – I absolutely despise ties on lists voted by one, but as this countdown proves, I’ll happily defy my own distaste. Especially when I run into conundrums like what to do with 2012’s over-abundance of meticulously mesmerizing what-not, all of it hypnotizing as if it were soundtrack to one long day’s journey into fantastical unknowns. Certainly there are discernible differences between, oh, the enthralling synth-pop deconstructionism of Grimes’ Visions (that’s her, Claire Boucher, above) and the entrancing synth-pop deconstructionism of Flying Lotus’ Until the Quiet Comes and the ebullient synth-pop deconstructionism of Chromatics’ Kill for Love. I’d like to read (as opposed to write) an essay about that.
But there’s so much A-grade ambience to choose from, I’d feel like Satan yanking you off a mushroom cloud to heaven by insisting only one can really take you there. Also highly recommended: Julia Holter’s operatic Ekstasis, Jessie Ware’s languorous Devotion, Alt-J’s An Awesome Wave for an unpredictable pick-me-up, How to Dress Well’s Total Loss for an icy comedown. Most unnervingly captivating of all is the one I’ve selected to lead this assortment: Andy Stott’s glacial Luxury Problems, which I believe the Mars Rover will soon discover is what the Red Planet puts on for relaxation.
17. The Shins, Port of Morrow – James Mercer apparently knew full well what we all had sensed, and it’s the same lesson Radiohead learned at the turn of the millennium: the only way forward for the Shins was for the band to no longer be the Shins. Wincing the Night Away, the capstone on the original lineup’s catalog, was a fine batch of songs without a clue how to keep from sounding like all-too-evident clones of the enduring sweetness Mercer and his mates initially brewed out of Seattle. Morrow is that rarity in the annals of indie music dating back to the post-punk boom: a second-phase launcher that feels entirely different without sounding radically rethought.
Emboldened by his Broken Bells collaboration with Danger Mouse, one of his generation’s finest songwriters plotted a superb set of melodies with an all-new band of peers (like Jessica Dobson and Richard Swift) to keep him challenged, plus heavy input from Greg Kurstin (distinctive, in-demand producer, one-half of the Bird and the Bee). From the Shins’ charming folk-rock prototype, it would have been occasionally powerful and largely quaint – twee, even. In this configuration, it’s a baptism in modernity.
18. Redd Kross, Researching the Blues – Longtime readers (now numbering in double digits!) will recall that I have permanent soft spot for expertly executed power-pop. It explains why some Top 20s have seen less-celebrated stuff from Fountains of Wayne or Superdrag or the Broken West edge out Really Important Records by (Insert Godhead Legend Here). This year’s arrow to my Achilles’ heel couldn’t be more razor-sharp: the first album from one of L.A.’s too often unsung finest in 15 years is note-perfect, as handsomely harmonic and melodic like the Beatles circa ’65 and more cracklingly energetic than they’ve been since the McDonald brothers have been since the ’80s. A real beauty every bit as exhilarating as the Black Keys’ El Camino.
19. Baroness, Yellow & Green – Metal from another dimension. In a banner year for heavy rock, when the thrash (Converge’s All We Love We Leave Behind) was as superb as the stoner stuff (High on Fire) and the sludge (Pallbearer), this double-LP sprawl was like no other – in large part because it dared to go places most thunder-wielders won’t. The second half (Green) takes an indie-geared excursion for three songs (“Foolsong” and “Collapse” into the jittery “Psalms Alive”) that for a while will make you forget these Savannah transplants can actually rock as hard as Queens of the Stone Age, as complexly as Tool. Then the rest of it comes crashing in, and you wonder why they aren’t half as well-known as those other bands.
20. Calexico, Algiers – I’ve cheated more than ever this year. Count up the extra recommendations and this Top 20 is closer to 40. Which, after years of rigidly trying to select just two sets of 10, I’ve concluded is as it should be. There are scads more albums than there are movies, say, not to mention myriad more subgenres and moods. Containing that to just 10 or 20 titles is the sort of pointless task that can give critics paralysis (or worse, diarrhea of the brain) for weeks. Choosing the final spot, however, is a special kind of self-imposed mental hell, where a fool like me can waste hours wondering which sleeper is oh-so-perfect to spotlight … as if anyone actually holds professional opinions on these things in much regard anymore.
In the end, I’ve chosen Calexico’s latest front-to-back winner over equally memorable efforts from Lambchop (sad, haunting Mr. M) and Aimee Mann (Charmer, one of her very best) and Astro (self-titled Chilean psych-bounce joy) and Jack White (happy alone in Blunderbuss blue at last) and the mighty Boots Riley and his anti-capitalist conglomerate the Coup (Sorry to Bother You, another irresistibly incendiary assortment). I picked one of the best yet from Tucson’s finest for three reasons: 1) You really ought to have heard Calexico by now, and this one’s a great gateway. 2) It’s late and I don’t care anymore. 3) I like the cover a lot. So serene.
THE REST OF THE 2012 A-LIST
Ab-Soul, Control System
Alt-J, An Awesome Wave
Astro
The Avett Brothers, The Carpenter
Bahamas, Barchords
Band of Horses, Mirage Rock
Band of Skulls, Sweet Sour
Bat for Lashes, The Haunted Man
Ben Folds Five, The Sound of the Life of the Mind
Andrew Bird, Break It Yourself
Paul Buchanan, Mid Air
David Byrne & St. Vincent, Love This Giant
Cat Power, Sun
Chromatics, Kill for Love
The Coup, Sorry to Bother You
Ani DiFranco, Which Side Are You On?
Death Grips, The Money Store and No Love Deep Web
Delta Spirit
Iris DeMent, Sing the Delta
Divine Fits, A Thing Called Divine Fits
Dr. Dog, Be the Void
Justin Townes Earle, Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now
Escort
First Aid Kit, The Lion’s Roar
The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends
Flying Lotus, Until the Quiet Comes
Garbage, Not Your Kind of People
Gotye, Making Mirrors
The Hives, Lex Hives
Homeboy Sandman, First of a Living Breed
Hot Chip, In Our Heads
Beth Jeans Houghton & the Hooves of Destiny, Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose
Jamey Johnson, Living for a Song: A Tribute to Hank Cochran
Norah Jones, Little Broken Hearts
Killer Mike, R.A.P. Music
Michael Kiwanuka, Home Again
Ben Kweller, Go Fly a Kite
Lambchop, Mr. M
Mark Lanegan Band, Blues Funeral
Led Zeppelin, Celebration Day
The Little Willies, For the Good Times
Lower Dens, Nootropics
Aimee Mann, Charmer
Bruno Mars, Unorthodox Jukebox
John Mayer, Born and Raised
The Men, Open Your Heart
Metz
JD McPherson, Signs & Signifiers
Miguel, Kaleidoscope Dream
The Mountain Goats, Transcendental Youth
Muse, The 2nd Law
Nas, Life Is Good
OFF!
Pallbearer, Sorrow and Extinction
Pink, The Truth About Love
Bonnie Raitt, Slipstream
Rush, Clockwork Angels
Saint Etienne, Words and Music by Saint Etienne
Santigold, Master of My Make-Believe
Schoolboy Q, Habits & Contradictions
Todd Snider, Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables
Soundgarden, King Animal
Staff Benda Bilili, Bouger le Monde
Barbra Streisand, Release Me
Swans, The Seer
Titus Andronicus, Local Business
Sharon Van Etten, Tramp
Jack White, Blunderbuss
Bobby Womack, The Bravest Man in the Universe
Woods, Bend Beyond
The xx, Coexist
More: Soundcheck Staff Top 10s.
Goodbye 2012: The 20 (or so) Best Albums is a post from: Soundcheck