My Favorite Albums of 2012 (#10-1)

10

The Men - Open Your Heart

Following the brutalizing post-hardcore of Leave Home, my favorite album of 2011, Open Your Heart was not at all what I was expecting from The Men just one short year later.  The departure of bassist and co-lead singer Chris Hansell (the one who screams) led to a realignment of sorts and heavy, punishing noise and feedback that once dominated faded into the background in favor of a smorgasbord of rock sounds.  From the country-influenced “Candy” and upbeat anthem “Turn It Around” to the slide guitar-driven “Country Song” and “Animal”, the latter featuring the albums only presence of Hansell’s vocals, Open Your Heart shows a band experimenting with a handful of new styles without a single misstep.  The Men keep the heavy guitars, but have quite literally opened their heart, both in the more positive lyrics and and the embracing of the sunnier side of rock, leading to an album that is more varied and inviting than it’s predecessor.  Leave Home threatened to bludgeon you with noise; Open Your Heart gives you a taste of that along with various touches of country and classic rock.  If the album proved anything, it’s that this is a band that can do whatever they want and still sound great doing it. They’re one of the few bands that may actually deserve being called the saviors of rock.

Favorite Tracks:

9

Spiritualized - Sweet Heart Sweet Light

There’s something about drug overdoses and near-death experiences that sparks Jason Pierce’s creativity.  If heroin is to thank for Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, Pierce’s struggle with liver disease over the last couple years is the impetus for Sweet Heart Sweet Light, perhaps Spiritualized’s most tender album as well as their best since the 90s.  The shoegazey guitars, angelic choirs, big organs and the funky gospel rhythms are all still intact, but Pierce’s voice, while still in his typical monotone style, is more confident and higher in the mix rather than buried in distortion or beneath layers of guitars giving the album a more intimate feel than the band’s more recent output.  But ultimately, it’s the songwriting that makes this another stand out in the band’s output – catchy riffs, a more subdued approach to the choral backings and strings and, of course, fantastic guitarwork all combine together to create the kind of unique, emotionally gratifying, transcendent album that only Pierce can conceive.

Favorite Tracks:

Headin' for the Top Now

8

Andy Stott - Luxury Problems

After 2 wonderful EPs last year, especially We Stay Together, Andy Stott cements his reputation as one of the best electronic musicians and producers around.  Luxury Problems takes the pallete laid down by last years works – dark dub ambient techno pumped through a dreamlike haze, with pulsating beats and rhythms weaving their way into the mix as if coming from a distance – and adds in additional vocals. As one who is always a bit trepitatious about vocals in this type of music, I wasn’t expecting them to work so well here, but Stott uses them as a perfect counterbalance, almost angelic, otherworldly croonings that enhance and complicate the music beneath them.  But for an album that relies so heavily on its production to achieve its intended effect, Luxury Problems is still remarkably controlled and restrained, minimal in all the right ways, yet still dropping killer beats that all combines into an unsettling yet exciting listening experience.  If David Lynch owned a club, this album would be spinning at least once a day.

Favorite Tracks:

7

Frank Ocean - channel ORANGE

As an R&B skeptic, at least of that produced in the last 10-12 years, and a hater of what little I'd heard of the Odd Future crew, specifically Tyler, The Creator's abominable Goblin, I fully expected the hype behind channel ORANGE to  be just that, pure hype.  But my first few listens left me both intrigued and confused by what I’d heard – it was hysterical and offbeat, but so scattershot yet ambitious that it was difficult to determine how much of my appreciation was due to the sheer oddity of the thing and how much due to the sheer oddity actually being what was so damn brilliant about it.  The juxtaposition of the absurd and the real, the satirical and the raw, the comic and the tragic all work to build a mythic portrait of the African American experience amongst poverty and riches – super rich stoner kids running out of Lucky charms banging up against a mom who can’t afford to send her kid to a prom without missing a bit.  The flurry of absurdities and non-sequitars - stage-diving dalai lamas, cheetahs kidnapping Cleopatra, odes to Forrest Gump, among others - serves to create an immensely amusing album that can at times be just as emotionally mature, sonically adventurous and socially aware as it is just downright silly.  Whatever channel ORANGE is or isn't, it's probably the most fun I've had with an album all year and one I end up playing at least a few times every time I return to it.

Favorite Tracks:

6

Lamps - Under the Water Under the Ground

2012 was a year for guitars and The Lamps, a band I’d never even heard of more than a few months ago, are certainly one of the exciting guitar-driven rock bands I’ve discovered recently.  Under the Water Under the Ground takes the garage rock sound and absolutely shreds it with blistering outbursts of noise and feedback, its harsh angular guitars constantly churning, accumulating a speed and momentum that only come to a crashing halt at the album’s finish.  There’s not much in terms of complexity to The Lamps’ sound, but there is a fury and immediacy that is tough to match and an intelligent yet intuitive use of noise, not only as a more aggressive extension of the song’s ideas, but as a form of transition that takes the song to a totally different place.  It’s really only an album for hardcore fans of noise rock, but if that’s what you’re looking for, The Lamps deliver in spades.

Favorite Tracks:

H.B.D.

5

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!

It’s been 10 years since Godspeed You! Black Emperor left the scene and no one ever truly stepped up to claim the throne of their particular brand of crescendoing post-rock.  If anything, new sounds and styles came to the forefront and the linear, slow-fast builds of Godspeed’s prime all but fell out of favor.  With their return (despite the continued presence of several members occasionally brilliant side project, A Silver Mt. Zion), two main questions were on everyone’s lips: “Do they still have it?” and if so, “Is their music even relevant anymore?”  For me, Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!, silly title aside, most definitely still has it and while the band’s modus operandi has not changed all that much in the past decade, the result is just a powerful, moving and transcendent as their best works, so they sure sound relevant to me.  The addition of two almost pure drone tracks – the second and the last, acting as bridges between the two epic 20+ minute jams you’d expect from GY!BE – introduces a new element to the band’s sound, one almost with more in common with Silver Mt. Zion than Godspeed, breaking from the mold of the slow-fast build and offering two interesting counterpoints to the monstrous duo that is “Mladic” and “We Drift Like Worried Fire”.   But ultimately, I’m just glad Godspeed are back at all, though the fact that they didn’t miss a beat in those 10 years off is a whole lotta gravy.

Favorite Tracks:

4

Grimes - Visions

Claire Boucher already had a couple of interesting releases under her belt, particularly Halfaxa, but these early albums and EPs were merely a faded blueprint of where she would go with Visions, a pop album that is as vibrant, experimental, joyous and downright weird (often all simultaneously) as any I've heard this decade.  Boucher's pixie angelic voice soars like an ethereal beacon that shines against the dark underbelly that is her beat-driven electronic madness, an array of pulsating rhythms, hyped up dark ambiance and manic beats.  Visions is both consistent and consistently surprising, not only boasting one great tune after another but constantly morphing and growing into something new – the kind of truly thrilling pop album we expected from Bjork, oh, a decade or so ago.  Not that I’m saying that Boucher is the new Bjork, but considering the competition, she’s probably the best candidate out there.  And at the ripe young age 24, Boucher/Grimes have plenty of time to refine or shapeshift or head in surprising new directions, but even if Visions stands as her peak when all’s said and done, it’s still a hell of an album and proof that pop music can be as adventurous and rewarding as any other type of music out there.

Favorite Tracks:

3

Mount Eerie - Clear Moon/Ocean Roar

Ever since his days with The Microphones, Phil Elverum has been carving his own little niche in the world of indie folk, but since Wind’s Poem and his perverse fascination with black metal, there has been a crystallization of a new sound built even more heavily on textures that set a hauntingly surreal mood.  The direct references to David Lynch and Twin Peaks in the last album have taken settled more organically into his two sister albums, Clear Moon and Ocean Roar, from this year.  Clear Moon in particular has a deliberate sense of pacing and time, which along with the languorous synths, create a distinctly otherworldly feel, yet where this may sound like an album that would be murky or full of reverb, surprisingly it isn’t.  Clear Moon, like the title, is crisp and exact, yet still drifting and rootless, like wandering through a strange forest on a dark winter night, while his companion album, Ocean Roar, is less distinct, allowing the guitars to get noisier and the sonic layers to blend together.  Despite my general preference for the sound of the latter, Clear Moon stands out as the best for me, highlighting Elverum’s raw talent as a song-writer as well as that of an experimenter in atmospherics, but the albums work spectacularly together and serve as a showcase for all of the things Elverum has excelled at in his earlier and most recent works.

Favorite Tracks:

2

Grizzly Bear - Shields

Much has been made of Grizzly Bear’s egalitarian approach to music-making, but before Shields, there was always at least a slightly different feel to an Ed Droste song than one written by Daniel Rossen.  Even on Yellow House, still my favorite record of theirs, you can hear a single, unique voice behind “Plans“ and “Knife“ and while it never was at the detriment of the song or album as a whole, there’s something very pleasing in Shields that signifies Grizzly Bears full maturity and crystallization as a band.  Every track not only plays to and highlights their strengths – vocal harmonizing, haunting melodies, surprising key changes, intricate, interlocking riffs – but seems to employ those strengths, and those of each member, consistently.  There’s no “Two Weeks” to instantly reach out and grab you, but Shields is an album that rewards patience.  Neither as densely atmospheric as Yellow House or as catchy as Veckatimest, it nonetheless boasts the bands most complicated and successful songwriting to date with every song taking unexpected turns to both darker and sunnier places, often shedding a particular tempo or tone for another midway through a song.  Yet Grizzly Bear are still making pop music, albeit highbrow and complex pop music, so they are careful walk the line between creative/adventurous and sheer inaccessibility and the result is an album that cements their status as one of the best bands working today bar-none.

Favorite Tracks:

1

Swans - The Seer

So the Mayans were wrong and the world didn’t end in 2012, but for all the fire-and-brimstone folk just pining for an apocalypse, Swans was kind enough to pack one neatly into a 2-hour double album that is effectively the sonic equivalent of the universe dying and coming into being again.  The Seer is epic, but it is so much more than that – it is a great revolutionary yawp into the vast abyss of the universe, a primal, visceral, raw, almost tribal expression of intense fury, biblical in proportions, yet preached less in words than through the loudest, noisiest guitars Michael Gira could squander and bells and drums struck with such thunderous force that the earth shudders beneath us making people scatter in fear.  Seeing Swans live for the first time last year was an eye-opening experience, not only for the pure pleasure of seeing them on stage together reimagining these fantastic songs, but for the sheer volume at which they perform.  If you thought Dinosaur Jr. was loud live, and my god they are, Swans make them sound like a coffee shop folk act by comparison, but this volume is an important part of their act and their albums, particularly The Seer whose droning repetitions often have a trancelike effect that is intensified by paralyzing loudness.  This music isn’t just overwhelming; it’s downright rattling and there’s nary a song on here that won’t rattle you to your core, but the 30-minute title track and two other 20-minute tracks, “The Apostate” and “A Piece of the Sky” each have more raw power and emotional heft than most other whole albums released this year.  And while this is a countdown, thus signifying my increasing appreciation for each record as the list goes in, #1 was not even close this year.  Swans owned it and this album owns me.  It’ll be tough to top this for best of the decade let alone 2012, so have your own little apocalypse in your mind and check out The Seer if you haven’t already.

Favorite Tracks:

My Favorite Albums of 2012 (#20-11)

20

Ty Segall - Twins

The year’s most prolific artist, Ty Segall was thoughtful enough to leave us with three solid and distinct albums in 2012 – Hair, with White Fence, Slaughterhouse, with Ty Segall Band, and Twins, a solo album proper – each providing ample evidence of both his ridiculous talents as guitarist and his wide array of musical knowledge, particularly 60s garage rock and psychedelia.  Twins may be the most musically straightforward of the three, but it also packs the hardest punch, the crunchy, churning guitars giving way to one killer riff after another.  With every track taking the 2-3 minute, get-in and get-out approach of garage rock, Segall takes us on a face-paced unrelenting tour through all the shades of his style, all similar in tone yet each offering a fresh enough take that the album builds an accumulative power and a momentum that makes it endlessly spinable.

Favorite Tracks:

19

Mohn - Mohn

Mohn marks the return of electronic legend Wolfgang Voigt, Gas himself and founder of the always consistent Kompakt label, with Jörg Burger, with whom he released the brilliant Las Vegas under the Burger/Ink monicker.  Mohn is a bit more expansive than Las Vegas, lying further on the ambient side of the ambient techno spectrum, yet not as purely and densely atmospheric as his Gas releases, pun not intended. Structured around rhythmic repetitions, carefully layered sonic textures and a wide array of playful percussive backing, Mohn create 9 rock solid, slow-building, hypnotic gems to get lost in; each track varied and complex enough to reward attentive listening, but equally suited to zoning out to.  It marks yet another fine addition to Voigt’s canon, which was already among the most impressive in the last 20 years of electronic music.

Favorite Tracks:

18

Thee Oh Sees - Putrifiers II

Like Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees’ John Dwyer draws much of his inspiration from early garage and 60s psych rock, although his music often takes on a more garish, macabre form evident in everything from the instrumentation and Dwyer’s occasionally abrasive vocals to the album covers and song titles.  With Putrifiers II, Dwyer & Co. put the brakes on the insanity, releasing their most self-controlled, focused and chill work to date. Accessibility is not something most fans of Thee Oh Sees are looking for, so I imagine this will be seen as a disappointing entry to some, but for me, it highlights Dwyer’s songwriting skills more than any of their previous albums while still retaining everything that I’d already loved about them.  The addition of more krautrockish sounds, particularly in “So Nice” and “Lupine Dominus” along with a newfound tenderness in their psychedelia, verging on folk, at least on the Byrds-esque “Goodbye Baby” scratched me right where I itched and gives more proof that this is a band that cannot only consistently surprise its fans but pull in new ones by branching out without sacrificing one iota of what makes them such a damn entertaining group.

Favorite Tracks:

17

The Tallest Man On Earth - There's No Leaving Now

You can’t talk about The Tallest Man on Earth without talking about the Dylan comparisons and you can’t compare anyone to Dylan without doing so, at least in part, disparagingly.  Yes, There’s No Leaving Now is the not-so-tall Swede’s Dylan-goes-electric album, but leaving behind the familiar voice, this album also happens to feature his strongest song-writing to date and while his influences are still evident (I can’t listen to “To Just Grow Away” without thinking Nick Drake), the actual songs – ya know, those things by which albums should actually be judged - stand on their own. The album’s production is more intrusive than that of his first two albums, but the melancholic haze it adds to many of the tracks is perfectly suited to his sound, giving them a unique edge and adding a new relationship between the singer and his guitar.  While the album slows down a bit too much after “Wind and Walls”, there’s more than enough greatness in the first ¾ for this to hold up as a great album.

Favorite Tracks:

16

Flying Lotus - Until the Quiet Comes

FlyLo’s Cosmogramma set a new bar for electronic beat-making and instrumental hip-hop, so his third album had little chance to be anything but a disappointment.  And while it was, if only all disappointments could be as good as Until the Quiet Comes, life would be a hell of a lot better.  Intelligently opting not to repeat the futuristic, hyper-paced approach of his prior masterpiece, Flying Lotus keeps his cool by slowing things down a bit and refining the jazzier side of his sound, replacing Cosmogramma’s maximalism with a smoother and more patient yet equally complex mix of tempos and beat styles.  Despite the toned down approach, Until the Quiet Comes is, if anything, less accessible than its predecessor, in part due to FlyLo trying to find his feet again, but more because of the aggressive infusion of jazz rhythms into his work, which have lead to an increasing presence of offbeat time signatures and shifting tempos. If not as infinitely re-listenable as his first two albums, Quiet is, at the very least, a fascinating progression of in the career of an artist who, in a few short years, has laid claim to being one of the most important new kids on the block.

Favorite Tracks:

15

Raime - Quarter Turns Over a Living Line

If there’s an endgame for dubstep, Quarter Turns Over a Living Line is it. By stripping it of all excesses and refining its very core, Raime has created a sound that is spacious yet haunting and open yet claustrophobic. It’s dance music for aliens in another dimension, ambient music for empty warehouses at 2am – the type of music that not only sets an overwhelmingly creepy, dense and foggy atmosphere, but sets a pace of being, takes you outside of yourself and for 45 minutes allows you to hover just above and outside of existence in a sort of musical purgatory unlike any other. As effective as Raime’s buzzing whirs, thumping beats and pulsating ambient rhythms are, it’s the methodical pacing with which he uses them, the space between the notes and hefty drawls of chords and sounds as they’re smeared, stretched, elongated and distorted within his sonic palette, that makes this such a wonderfully effective mindfuck. It’s not an easy listen, but its rewards are ample for those willing to immerse themselves in its world.

Favorite Tracks:

14

Liars - Wixiw

Liars, the true chameleons of the indie rock world, just can't help themselves.  From one album to the next, they continually reinvent themselves, unafraid to shed traits that critics and fans have loved from their previous work as long as it's for the benefit of their current album.  When they announced that Wixiw was their electronic album, it was hard not to be both excited and trepidatious, yet for a band whose sound is so entrenched in post-punkisms and weird, unsettling atmospherics, the transition makes perfect sense. After two of their more straightforward albums, Sisterworld and Self-Titled, WIXIW finds them back on the experimental terrain of their masterpiece, Drum's Not Dead, as they implement a wide array of playful experimental sounds, crafting an album that covers several corners of the electronic spectrum.  From the mellow atmospherics of "The Exact Color of Doubt" and "Octagon" and the restrained pulsations of "No. 1 Against the Rush" to the playful twist on recent Radiohead with "His and Mine Sensations and even full-on club-thumping with "Brats", Liars once again show that they're not only capable of what they set their mind to, but that what they set their mind to is usually more interesting and ambitious than what most other bands dream of doing.

Favorite Tracks:

13

Demdike Stare - Elemental

Another year, another 2-hour batch of endlessly rewarding post-apocalyptic soundscapes from Demdike Stare, the duo who distill our nightmares into Lynchian sonic vignettes, transcendent journeys to the deepest, darkest corners of the human psyche that plunge the listener into decaying, industrial environments than unearth our worst fears only to overcome them through a sense of constant progression towards completeness and finality, the shattered broken pieces put back together again even if only by the silence at the end of the track.  It’s difficult to even say what Demdike Stare’s music is actually for; it’s too intense and engrossing to function as pure background music and almost too overwhelming and emotional to take in through extended careful listens, but when the moment is right, these guys have some of the most singular electronic music out there, elevating ambience and atmospherics to the level of high art, a microcosm of the mind, capturing the universal aspects of aging, decay, destruction, isolation and fading memories that plague us all with a vitality and spirit all their own.

Favorite Tracks:

12

Beach House - Bloom

Essentially playing like an extended B-side to their previous, and best, album, Teen Dream, Bloom once again highlights Beach House's unique ability to transform simple melodies into something tender, vulnerable, broken yet hopeful.  Aside from its single mistake of sidelining Victoria Legrand's vocals in favor of Alex Scally (whose voice is great, but the interplay present on their prior outing is missed), Bloom is dream pop at its finest - immaculately production, beautiful, intertwined riffs and melodies, and a sense of yearning and hope battling against the melancholy undercurrent. "Myth" is the clear stand-out track, but the other 9 are all equally great, contributing to an album whose consistent rewards show why its makers are rightly considered among the finest working in their genre.

Favorite Tracks:

11

Motion Sickness of Time Travel - Motion Sickness of Time Travel

Ambient music is a man's game; for whatever reason, it is a genre almost complete devoid of a female presence, so when a female ambient artist comes along - in this case, Motion Sickness of Time Travel aka Rachel Evans - it's always interesting to see what they bring to the table.  Evans is as sprawling and expansive as any artist out there and with each of the album's tracks spanning a shade over 20 minutes, her open style gives her ample space to allow her feminine mystique to come through.  Of course there's nothing on this album that screams "feminine", especially as ambient music isn't exactly testosterone-driven to begin with, but Evans music does have a certain delicacy to it, particularly in the subtle ways she introduces splashes of progressive electronic segments, a sort of toned-down version of Emeralds comes to mind, that serve to connect her subtly varied yet tonally connected, otherworldy stretches of pure ambience.  But ultimately, when an album is this good, it doesn't matter who it comes from and female or not, this self-titled release stands on its own as one of the finest albums of the year and announces Evans as a young talent to keep an eye on.

Favorite Tracks:

It's only 4 tracks, so here's the whole album.

My Favorite Albums of 2012 (#30-21)

So I've been so busy the last couple months, the end of the year snuck up on me, but despite this being a relatively week year, especially in comparison to 2011, I've still come across a lot of quality music.  I won't even both with honorable mentions since the first 4 or 5 picks are borderline Top 30-worthy as it is, but still contain enough great songs to be worthy of a few spins if you haven't heard them already.  So yeah, let's just get this over with.

30

Pile - Dripping

So the 90s were pretty awesome, right? Pile clearly agree, bringing the heavy, crunchy guitars of 90s alternative rock right back to the forefront. Rick Maguire's vocals may drag a few of the songs down a bit, but man, when the dude's screaming, he certainly has a way of getting his point across.  The guitarwork here is consistently solid and while it's derivative of a specific era, there are some beautiful progressions and nice surprises that kept drawing me back.

Favorite Tracks:

...and "Sun Poisoning" and "Grunt Like a Pig" (which aren't on youtube, but the whole album is streaming on bandcamp here.

29

Dead Can Dance - Anastasis

Infusing their dark, gothic palette with the sounds of world music and European folk, Dead Can Dance have created a fascinating, engrossing album whose sprawling synths and subtle repetitions reward patience by slowly entrancing the listener.  Both Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry's voices sound as powerful and refined as ever - Gerrard's angelic and otherworldly, Perry's deep and grounded, the two complement each other wonderfully, just as the carefully selected mix of strings, synths and beats consistently enhance rather than overwhelm the songs, leading to a finished product that is as open as it is tightly controlled and as subdued as it is epic.

Favorite Tracks:

28

Shackleton - Music for the Quiet Hour/The Drawbar Organ EPs

A double album that is essentially two separate releases with varying aesthetics, Shackleton's Music for the Quiet Hour/The Drawbar Organ EPs' offers a value that no electronic music lover can turn down.  Quiet Hour presents more experimental offerings, long stretches of dark ambient which create a palpable sense of doom through electronic hums, tribal beats, a creative use of negative space and a sense of pacing that produces a prolonged sense of time. Functioning as a 5-part, one hour opus, Quiet Hour explores the nooks and crannies amidst the darkest areas of the ambient spectrum.  The Drawbar Organ EPs on the other hand is firmly planted in the more accessible realm of dub ambient with each track held together by more traditional melodic progressions and structures. However, the result is surprisingly fresh and within these more restricted confines, Shackleton finds a unique voice with his pulsating rhythms highlighted by a variety of cacophonous sounds and strange yet somehow pleasing beats.  Any album that clocks in at 2+ hours is going to have a bit of filler, but while there are a few stretches where my interest wanes, there's really not a single track that doesn't deserve to be on here.

Favorite Tracks:

27

Aluk Todolo - Occult Rock

Occult Rock is one of those albums that slams down the accelerator right at the start and unrelentlessly keeps up the feverish intensity for its entire spintime.  Noise-driven, instrumental psych rock in the vein of Psychic Paramount, Aluk Todolo's music isn't predicated on intricacies, but rather its sheer feverish pace that transforms guitars into instruments of transcendance and its rough-edged sonic textures which shape noise into atmospheric bliss. At 80+ minutes, it pushes the edge of excess, but there's rarely a dull stretch and it holds up equally well to careful listens as it does to functioning as background music. Metalheads take heed; this is likely as close to pure metal as we'll come this year!

Favorite Tracks:

26

Sigur Ros- Valtari

I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but post-rock just isn’t as cool as it used to be.  Maybe it’s due to its omnipresence in mass media or the fact that many of the genre’s most recent titans either broke up or are spinning their wheels, having left their best days back in the early aughts.  While Sigur Ros fit pretty snugly in the latter category given their steady decline since ( ), Valtari finds them stripping down their sound, tightening their song structures and honing in on the ambient textures that, prior to Valtari, were often only primers leading to explosive crescendos. This more subtle approach to unsubtle music may sound counter-intuitive, but in limiting their excesses, Sigur Ros have reshaped their aesthetic just enough to make them unpredictable and interesting again, their shift further into the ambient spectrum limiting what had become more rote, even a bit emotionally cheap, in their more recent and expanding on the subdued emotional terrain that lied beneath much of their best work.  It’s certainly not an album that will win over new fans, but for those of us who loved their earliest albums, it was more than a pleasant surprise.

Favorite Tracks:

25

DIIV- Oshin

I’ve been a fan of Zachary Cole Smith’s guitarwork since his work with Beach Fossils a couple of years ago and his remarkably vivacious stage presence, both with Beach Fossils and DIIV, only further solidifies him as one of the most interesting guitarists in the new decade’s indie rock scene.  While his high-pitched plucking certainly have a similar sound to his other band, DIIV truly feels like something of his own with the ethereal atmospherics that dominate the album coming from a combination of his distorted vocals and shoegazey guitars with the haunting post-punkish basslines.  Few albums strike the right balance of mellow and catchy, but Oshin manages to be both a perfect dreamy, chill out album yet fun and poppy enough to keep your boots tapping and your heart rate up.

Favorite Tracks:

24

Big K.R.I.T. - 4eva N a Day

4Eva N A Day may not be as thematically ambitious as Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, Maad City or as sonically adventurous as El-P’s Cure for Cancer or as consistently engaging as K.R.I.T.’s other 2012 release, Live from the Underground, but as good as those albums are, K.R.I.T.’s is the only one I still spin from start to finish.  This album really pulls no punches – there are some touches like the inclusion of a sax or guitar on a few tracks, but for the most part, this is simply good, old-fashioned hip-hop with solid beats, killer hooks and samples and K.R.I.T.’s smooth voice taking us along for his nostalgic road trip.  The highs on 4Eva N A Day aren’t as high as this year’s other heavy hitters, but no other hip-hop album from this year flowed as smoothly and effortlessly as this.

Favorite Tracks:

23

Royal Headache - Royal Headache

There’s a lot of garage rock revival going around these days and honestly, a lot of it is fairly unimaginative, completely derivative and devoid of creativity.  Royal Headache are none of these; their self-titled album is vibrant and bursting with personality and passion, particularly from lead singer Shogun’s gruff yet soulful voice which gives the album a sense of immediacy and purpose as well as a sweetness and intimacy that plays nicely off the fun, speedy little riffs that zip us through each track.  It’s about as fun as an 24-minute album has a right to be.

Favorite Tracks:

22

Cloud Nothings - Attack on Memory

Hiring Steve Albini to produce your rock album is pretty much always a great idea, since whether or not he spends most of his time in the studio playing Scrabble on his phone, he's still going to give you those rough, metallic guitars and hard-popping drums that gives you a leg up on most other hard-edged rock albums.  But 19-year old wunderkind Dylan Baldi more than held up his end of the deal, bringing a remarkably consistent set of rocking tunes that show a maturity well beyond his years.  From the poppier, riff-driven tracks like "Cut You" and "Fall In" to the sprawling, expansive post-hardcore tunes like "Stay Useless" and "Wasted Days" whose breakdowns turn into full-on jams, Baldi and friends turn cliched teenage angst into a musical endeavor rather than lame posturing, the palpable sense of frustration and anxiety not merely coming through in Baldi's gruff, screamy voice, but in every element of the song, from the explosive instrumentation to the often adventurous song structures.  It's far from a perfect album - hopefully the flashes of Green Day fade away in their next outing - but Attack On Memory kicked off 2012 with one of the most surprising and auspicious debuts we saw all year.

Favorite Tracks: