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.
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...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.
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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!
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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
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Favorite Tracks:
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.
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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.
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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:
Nas- Life is Good
Ok, so “Summer on Smash” is probably the worst song on any album on my list and Mary J. Blige’s guest spot on “Reach Out” is borderline unlistenable, but aside from a few major hiccups, Life Is Good is the best thing Nas has done since Illmatic. Fresh off of his divorce, Nas is equally reminiscent and forward-looking, returning again to his poverty-ridden, ghetto upbringing and post-Illmatic fame days, but also adding thoughtful and introspective material about his failures and successes as a father and husband. It’s one hell of a conflicted album, thematically jumbled as it goes from immature, megalomaniacal tracks to deep, melancholy ones without hesitation, but it is within this mess that the album’s title, Life Is Good, begins to take shape. It is less a statement of fact than a mantra and with everything Nas has been through, he’s choosing to believe that life is good and this album, with all its complications and contradictions, wants us to believe it too.
Favorite Tracks:
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