The 75 Best Albums of 2012 PopMatters

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The 75 Best Albums of 2012

By PopMatters Staff 10 December 2012
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75 My
Jerusalem
Preachers
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The songs of Preachers sound to bubble up as a miasma from a swamp. Southern Gothic to a T, with all the pathos, depravity, dread and redemption that implies, the record is a dispatch from the squalor of emotional wreckage. Holding court in this landscape is the id of singer Jeff Klein, howling of being, but an animal in a
My Jerusalem
Preachers (The End)
well on the title track, though elsewhere his primal self takes the form of a raging beast caught in a bear trap (Born in the Belly) or an old dog languidly giving in to fate (Between Space). The unexpected, but welcomed, shifts to tunes of optimism or playfulness go to balance the profane with the sacred, and show that even the ugliest moments of experience still allow beauty to break through. For a night spent soul searching, grappling with existential dread as you evaluate your failures and successes,
Amazon iTunes Review

[11.Oct.2012]
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there is scarcely a better record in 2012 that could serve as your musical roadmap.
Cole Waterman
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74
Santigold
Master of My Make-Believe
From the first lurching strains of opener Go to the
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skittering, surreal groove of closer Big Mouth, Santigolds sophomore record Master of My Make-Believe holds the listeners head under the shimmering, hypnotic waters of its multi-faceted pop ingenuity and keeps us there, kicking and flailing, until we have neither the desire nor the ability to fight back any further. Like many other truly great pop records of the last decade (Robyns Body Talk, Lana Del Reys Born to Die, Annies Anniemal), Master of My Make-Believe waltzes through a seemingly endless hall of genres, gesturing here and there at will, making the various influences available to the artist seem easily accessible, just one possibility among millions. But of course, distilling ones influences into something as streamlined and effective as Master of My Make-Believe is anything but easy. The
[3.May.2012]
Santigold
Master of My Make-Believe (Atlantic)
style and restraint shown here mark Santigold as one of Americas best contemporary pop artists and Master of My Make-Believe as one of the years best. Ben Olson
73 The Tallest Man on Earth

Theres No Leaving Now
Kristian Matsson (aka the Tallest Man on Earth) conjures up the spirits of Greenwich Village-era Bob Dylan. With his ramshackle voice, high and lonesome acoustic fingerpicking, and folky anthems, theres little denying the influence that the folkies have had on him. However, the music still must stand on its own, and Matsson has consistently delivered over the course of his three-album career. With this past years Theres No Leaving Now, Matsson holed up in his Swedish home and slowed things down, choosing to explore and refine his previously frenetic pace of recording. The result is a more nuanced and sturdy foundation to the music, one where the songs, like the pulsing 1904 or the reflective Criminals, are given space to flesh out, expand, and become fully realized. This album feels more mature and confident, as if Matsson has pushed aside the Dylan comparisons and gained the complete trust in his own sound and the confidence with which to follow his own voice. Hes moving forward and developing his own contributions to the folk canon. This album may be the break he needs to reach a wider audience. Jeff Strowe
'The Carrie Diaries': High School Origin Story 4 people recommend this. King Crimson: A Prog-Rock Case Study 1,407 people recommend this. Texas to Release New Album, 'The Conversation' 10 people recommend this. Defending the Imperialist 6 people recommend this. A Festival, a Parade: The National's Best Lyrics 76 people recommend this. Recommendations
The Tallest Man on Earth

Theres No Leaving Now (Dead Oceans)
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72 The Congos / Sun Araw / M. Geddes

Gengras
Icon Give Thank
RVNG INTLs FRKWYS series is an attempt to bridge the generation gap between the old and new vanguard, pairing younger artists with more established (though still relatively obscure names). The collaboration between Jamaican group the Congos, whose Heart of the Congos is perhaps the best dub album
RATINGS
10 - The Best of the Best 9 - Very Nearly Perfect 8 - Excellent 7 - Damn Good 6 - Good 5 - Average 4 - Unexceptional 3 - Weak 2 - Seriously Flawed 1 - Terrible
The Congos / Sun Araw / M. Geddes Gengras

Icon Give Thank (Rvng Intl.)
of all time, and Sun Araw and M. Geddes Gengras of the hypnagogic set is not only the most high profile release yet, its also the most successful. The thought of two white dudeswith beard and moustache in tow respectivelytravelling to a third world nation to record a quick one-off smacks of exploitation, but the music speaks a different story in which all players are equal partners. The project was made in the spirit of community one witnesses on Icon Eye, the documentary on the recording process
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that has been included with the release. Indeed, the swirl of elements at times threaten to drown the Congos out of the equation with production value, but there is just enough restraint to give the project a properly alluringly disorienting feel, like positive vibes transmitted from an alien watch tower. The collaboration is reverent not only to the kind of bold experimentation producer Lee Scratch Perry undertook during the sessions for Heart of the Congos (updated with an ear for the 30-plus years of psychedelia that followed), but also the spiritualism that defines the Congoss Rastafarian worldview. Timothy Gabriele
71 Purity Ring
Shrines
Following a string of stellar digital singles, Purity Ring properly debuts with Shrines, an album that sees the young band already deeply entrenched within a singular aesthetic. Megan Jamess girlish vocals evoke a plaintive unease, when Corin Roddick isnt busy chopping and shifting her syllables into rhythmic devices. Roddicks production, owing more than a little to the trap craze permeating hip-hop and club music this year, lurches seasick along a path set by snare clicks and ceaselessly pulsating synths. The music itself, while varied in tone and pitch, mostly explores the same sliver of sonic space throughout the records runtime. Where other bands might run out of ideas within such self-imposed limitations, Purity Ring uses that cohesiveness to its
[23.Jul.2012]
Purity Ring
Shrines (4AD)
advantage. Shrines is a strange creature. This is mood music, yes, but its also an indelible pop record, full of transportive melodies and swaths of drama. Corey Beasley
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Lianne La Havas
Is Your Love Big Enough? (Nonesuch)

[29.Aug.2012]
70 Lianne La Havas
Is Your Love Big Enough?
A finalist for the 2012 Mercury Prize, Lianna La Havas Is Your Love Big Enough? may have been the most mature breakthrough album of the year. Sure, the British songstress is a meek 23 years of age, but if theres one thing that runs like an undercurrent through the 12 songs that make up this impressive major label debut, its the singers sense of thoughtful, love-striken tales that sound decades older than the lady writing them. Age, for instance, is a wonderfully fun solo waltz through the nature of an age-inappropriate romance, while No Room For Doubt personifies the passion that comes with the more appealing side of puppy love. Lost & Found, meanwhile, is one of the most heartbroken tracks on record this year, and Forget takes a shot at pop prominence while celebrating the age-old practice of telling someone to piss off. Ahhh, but here we are again, talking about age. Its an element of La Havas and Is Your Love Big Enough? that is practically impossible to discount. Why is that? Someone this young and naive shouldnt sound this old and experienced. Lianne La Havas pulls if off, though, and the result sounds like the beginning to a career that should see her into the years shes already so good at singing about. Colin McGuire
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69
Allo Darlin
Europe
There is a constant, captivating push and pull between
hope and disillusionment going on during Europe. Its captivating because of the disarming way Elizabeth Morris phrases things, which when combined with melodic pop-rock has a way of taking you right there with her. And for the way the songs link the experiences of one person to those of us all, and to global happenings like the economic crises. The connection we have to home, the way we deal with hard times, the roads we took and
Allo Darlin
Europe (Slumberland / Fortuna Pop)
didnt take; Allo Darlin packages universal feelings in a smart and exceedingly touching way, within songs that build an atmosphere of nervous anticipation and joyous relief. They wear their favorite records and their hearts on their sleeve, and theyre one and the same. In Europe theyve made a record that gets close to your heart with the same proximity the Go-Betweens Tallulah has to theirs. Dave Heaton
Amazon iTunes
68 Goat
World Music
Arriving with a bewitchingly fabled back-story of voodoo lore and shamanistic enchantments, Swedish mind-bending act Goat matched the twisted tale of its birth with an album that was fittingly warped and spellbinding. World Music was a psychedelic marvel, a fantastically tripped-out collection of fuzzy, acid-soaked guitar, trance-inducing grooves, wah-wah, reverb, grubby disco and crashing dins. It dragged in everything from Congotronic rumblings, jazz, funk, space rock, Krautrock, folk, Haiti percussion, proto-punk and Asian keyboard frenziesand then wrapped that around garage rock and lysergic blues. World Music reeked of vintage 70s adventurousness, and most importantly, authenticity. Spliff and rum fumes, squalls of raw riffs, throbbing
[16.Nov.2012]
Goat
World Music (Rocket Recordings)
and lolloping bass, picked notes, squealing solos, indie-pop harmonies and droning wig-outs, it was all there in World Musics scrappy bursts of eccentric noise. While its easy to mark a band
as psychedelic, Goat tapped into the descriptors darkest heart, and World Music is aptly demented and free-spirited. Craig Hayes
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Rush
Clockwork Angels (Roadrunner)

[21.Jun.2012]
67 Rush
Clockwork Angels
I cant stop thinking big, says the protagonist of Clockwork Angels. The same can be said of Rush, because after 44 years and 19 studio albums Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart keep pushing themselves. A full-blown concept album centering on a coming of age story amidst a steampunk landscape, its plot is engaging, and the songs prove to be even more vibrant than 2007s excellent Snakes and Arrows. However, whats most fascinating about Clockwork Angels is how the sequencing of the album reflects various stages of Rushs career: from heavy, blues rock riffs (BU2B), sly little nods to the past (the Bastille Day reference in Headlong Flight), the complexity of 2112 and Hemispheres (Clockwork Angels), right to the disciplined melody-oriented songwriting of the bands late career (The Wreckers, The Garden). With lyrics by Peart that not only tell a story but also feel like his own reflections on his own life, its a beautiful, impassioned late career masterwork that deserves to rank alongside Rushs greatest albums. Adrien Begrand
Passion Pit
Gossamer
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66
The title of Passion Pits sophomore album speaks volumes about the contents, a thinly veiled peak into the psyche of singer/songwriter Michael Angelokos. He singularly wrote and produced the new collection, with
lyrics that provide a direct connection to his life since the 2010 breakthrough debut, Manners. When the single Take a Walk was released last spring, the recognizable swagger of Passion Pits indie electro pop was evident, however the subject of economic collapse alludes to more than money. Right after Gossamers release in July, the group had to cancel tour dates so Angelokos could continue treatment for bi-polar disorder. Yet the songs are
Passion Pit
Gossamer (Columbia)
full of optimism, from the exultant synths of Ill Be Alright to soaring, uplifting choruses in On My Way and Hideaway. By fall, Angelokos was back on stage in front of millions on Saturday Night Live with big plans for 2013: a tour that includes Madison Square Garden and a wedding date as well. Seymour Jane Jansen

[25.Jul.2012]
65 - 56
65 Krallice
Years Past Matter
Last year, Krallice released Diotima, a nearly 70-minute opus that demanded repeated listens and intense time investment. For an album that dense, most bands would let such a release settle in for at least two years. But Krallice doesnt seem to be interested in following such conventional thinking, because a little more than a year later, they gave us Years Past Matter, a slightly shorter album, but just as dense and brutal. The 16-minute closer Iiiiiiiiiiii (not to be confused with Iiiiiiiii) comes on so fast and ferocious that for Krallice beginners, it will likely overwhelm. So, whats to keep people coming back? Aside from the incredible musicianship (most notably drummer Lev Weinstein), it comes down to the simple joy of discovery within each of the ten minute-plus tracks. Like a complex video game, or a difficult section of a challenging novel, Years Past Matter is an antidote for the Twitterverse. Buck up, dig in, concentrate, and be rewarded. Sean McCarthy
Krallice
Years Past Matter (self-released)
Amazon iTunes
Ty Segall
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64
Twins
In an age when constant communication has become the norm, Ty Segall has risen to the challenge. His consistent recorded output might have some onlookers assuming
that the San Francisco-based garage rocker has a desperate need for attention and/or to stay relevant. Yet the truth is, Segalls seemingly bottomless pit of recorded material is located in a place indistinguishable to the casual onlooker. Segall doesnt strive for greatness; his is a celebrity that is attained simply by doing his job, and doing it well and often. Seriously, how do you stop Segall? Or better yet, will he ever hit his peak? Goodbye Bread,
Ty Segall
Twins (Drag City)
his last Drag City release maintained a songwriting maturity that hinted at said peak. Twins makes quick work of that notion, with tangibly well-crafted noisy-pop that dips its toes into numerous genres. Id like to assume that Twins will be his best work, but I know Ill soon be proved wrong. Joshua Kloke
Amazon iTunes
63 Islands
A Sleep & A Forgetting
With A Sleep & A Forgetting, Islands Nick Thorburn added to the rich tradition of breakup albums in grand fashion. Thorburns fourth album as Islands was such an outstanding collection of confessional songwriting because it paid equal mind to both sides of that description. With wit, passion, and not a little humility, Thorburn chronicled the fallout of his divorce and all the feelings such an event entails. And the music was ace, a sharply-produced mix of indie-pop styles with an intimate, small-club vibe. In showing that emotional turmoil and memorable choruses are not mutually exclusive, Thorburn put himself in the ranks of forbearers such as Morrissey and Lloyd Cole. John Bergstrom
Islands
A Sleep & A Forgetting (Anti-)
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Debo Band
Debo Band
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62
This 11-member collective from Boston could probably just get away with performing Ethiopian art music with a slight update. After all, legends like Mulatu Astatke and Mahmoud Ahmed have already blazed a trail that many American bands are happy to follow. However, Debo
Band is not content to follow anyone elses path, plunging happily into the wilderness without a backward glance. Over the course of an hour, they turn Ethiopian signifiers (Bruck Tesfayes old-school vocals, a lovely horn section led by Danny Makonnens saxophone) into tense rock puzzlers (Habesha), big band jazz numbers (Tenesh Kelbe Lay), droney excursions (Ambassel), and goofy-footed heartbreaking pop (DC Flower). Theyve got
Debo Band
Debo Band (Next Ambiance/Sub Pop)
accordions, theyve got electric violins, theyve got sousaphones and they know how to use them. Ney Ney Weleba is an absolute steamroller, with big heavy hooks, a stunner of a Brendon Wood guitar solo, and a free jazz raveup that brings some real heat into the discourse. Matt Cibula
Amazon iTunes
61 Alt-J
An Awesome Wave
Alt-J have the best record of 2012, one of the most praised records of the year, even if they never quite meant for things to happen this way. With the Mercury Prize already in hand for the UKs best record, the foursome who first met at Leeds University, crafted an album full of hooks that were equal parts unsettling and unstoppable. It was a pop record, to be sure, but an intensely modern one, intentionally angular and unexpectedly warm. Even its most approachable single, Breezeblocks featured signature lines about cannibalism and a video depicting the murder and drowning of a lovely young woman, held down with concrete weights, or, as the band explained, breezeblocks, British slang for these construction materials turned murder weapon. They were comfortable being approachable and weird in the same moment. Drawing comparisons to Radiohead, perhaps a reflection of just how difficult their sound was to place and categorize, Alt-J embraced being a band that everyone was bound to hear about in 2012 even if they never intended to be so self-consciously popular. Geoff Nelson
Alt-J
An Awesome Wave (Canvasback)
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60 The Gaslight Anthem

Handwritten
With Handwritten, Brian Fallon and company have produced a document chronicling the diffidence that comes with reaching adulthood, but not feeling all that grown up. Such self-doubt naturally leads one on a nostalgic, maybe even masochistic, trip through the memories of youth, and that dichotomy of the bliss and the pain is depicted in a most visceral sense throughout the record. The punk ferocity and soulful passion, always whats set the New Jersey quartet apart from the pack, is again put to good use facilitating the emotional ambivalence. What strengthens the record is the diversity of scenarios in the songs, each connecting on a deeply personal, yet simultaneously universal, manner. The solace afforded by favorite albums in 45, the gender-swapping break-up of Here Comes My Man, the idealistic vow in the title track, the inability to move beyond the ruins of a crumbled relationship in Mulholland Drive and the acoustic paean to a former love who doesnt seem all that former in closer National Anthem are all case studies in struggling to find your place when youre unable to let go of the past. Cole Waterman
The Gaslight Anthem

Handwritten (Mercury)
Amazon iTunes
59 Redd Kross
Researching the Blues
When you start a band before you can drive a car, as Jeff and Steve McDonald did with Redd Kross, you can get away with taking 15 (!) years off and still making one of your best albums in an already-rewarding discography before you turn 50. Such is the case with Researching the Blues, one of the years best, most unexpected surprises (even if the tunes were recorded a few years back and are only seeing the light of day now), and the first Redd Kross album since 1997s Show World. The opening one-two-three punch of the title track, song-of-the-year contender Stay Away From Downtown and Uglier hit harder than offerings from most bands half Redd Kross age, and midtempo charmers like Draculas Daughters, One of the Good Ones and Winter Blues are power pop nonpareil, overflowing with effortless hooks accumulated over the past decade-plus. Hopefully theres plenty more where Researching the Blues came from, and soon. Stephen Haag
Redd Kross
Researching the Blues (Merge)
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58 Sleigh Bells
Reign of Terror
Reign of Terror sets itself off with True Shred Guitar, a buzzed-out get-psyched call, and more or less exactly what youd expect after the first Sleigh Bells album, Treats, exploded in 2010. But while Terror does offer more of the same in the sense that if you loved Tell Em and swooned over Rill Rill, then you have to hear Demons and re-swoon over End of the Line, the album also offers greater modulation for this still-young pop-noise band (theyre too catchy for noise to get first-billing). Instant classics like Comeback Kid and Crush combine the bands signature loudness with cheerleader chants and Alexis Krausss dreamierthan-ever vocals, and the album even becomes downright languorous final third, hinting at a sense of loss and melancholy from principle songwriter Derek Miller. Treats was so concisely perfect it could have easily been a one-and-done wonder, like so much of the pop music it distorts. Reign of Terror makes the case that the Sleigh Bells formula itself may be more disortable and durable than we thought. Jesse Hassenger
Sleigh Bells
Reign of Terror (Mom + Pop)
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57 Dirty Projectors
Swing Lo Magellan
Dirty Projectors just might be the most divisive band in contemporary indie music. Dave Longstreths love-it-or-hate-it singing voice undulates from a dulcet croon to a hysterical yelp, often in the course of a single bar of music. And he blends seemingly incongruous influences90s R&B inflection, 70s rock arrangements, math-rock time signatures and West African guitarswith the reckless abandon of a musical mad scientist. Over the course of the past decade, Longstreth has channeled these multifaceted sonic proclivities into a series of increasingly accessible incarnations, all under the banner of Dirty Projectors, though the players and the palette of sounds have rotated and evolved throughout. Swing Lo Magellan marks the apex of this progression, embracing classic song form while still indulging Longstreths trademark eccentricity. The album retains the most captivating elements from 2009s Bitte Orca, from the sublime female harmonies and rollicking guitar blasts of opener Offspring Are Blank to the languid acoustic balladry of the title track. And on songs like the infectious single Gun Has No Trigger and the delightfully haphazard Unto Caesar, Longstreth and his band display a looser and less calculated approach to their craft than we have seen up to this point. Robert Alford
Dirty Projectors
Swing Lo Magellan (Domino)
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56 Bruce Springsteen
Wrecking Ball
Fear sells and divisiveness reaps dividends. In a presidential election year that choked on bile about parasitism and entitlement, we withstood an onslaught of cues to view our neighbors with suspicion, to sleep with one eye open and one finger on the trigger. What gets lost in that ulcer-inducing mess is that most of us are just working hard, doing the best we can to get by. Wrecking Ball has its share of anger at fat cats, drainers, and exploiters (looking up instead of down the economic ladder for evil); in fact, its the angriest Springsteen record in years. More importantly, its also one of his most inclusive, with Springsteen reaching back to his populist roots, the ones he watered in Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie lyrics. Its a simple message: were in this together and we should never forget the nose-tothe-grindstone ethos and simple charity that informs We take care of our own. That Springsteen needs to shout it at the heavens only shows just how much that message is needed. Andrew Gilstrap
Bruce Springsteen
Wrecking Ball (Columbia)
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55 - 46
55 Wadada Leo Smith

Ten Freedom Summers
Four discs, four and a half voluminous hours of instrumental jazz and chamber music, all tackling aspects of the Civil Rights Movement in various abstract ways. If you havent heard Ten Freedom Summers, it might sound like homework, especially given unwieldy song titles like Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964. If you have heard it, though, youll know that Smiths masterwork is anything but a chore. Play any one of these 19 songs and youre confronted or seduced by gorgeous sound combinations. Ensembles break apart and re-form into audacious musical shapes that youll remember like landmarks, even when the musics off. Smiths trumpet savors meditative dissonance along with strings and harp; his Golden Quartet or Quintet, sometimes featuring two drummers, races through passages of wild improvisation. The whole thing is impressive, yes, but also spellbinding, like the book you read for school that alters how you think about everything. Josh Langhoff
Wadada Leo Smith

Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform)
Amazon iTunes
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54 BBU
bell hooks
In a year filled with great politically conscious rap, BBU brings something special to the table. While Killer Mike has his righteous anger, El-P is the master of dense, paranoid soundscapes and Kendrick Lamar trades conflicted personal narratives, these Chicagoans incorporate all of those elements into their music while still sounding like theyre having fun. On their second mixtape, bell hooks, MCs Illikt, Epic and Jason Perez sound like a bunch of radicalized kids in a candy store, cracking jokes, throwing lyrical bombs and name checking everyone from Bad Brains to NWA. Its a breathtakingly assured outing, brimming with potential that will, sadly, exist mostly within the realm of possibility, what with BBUs recently-announced their breakup. During one sketch on the mixtape their manager rhetorically asks the group, do you guys want to be like, rap stars, to which Jason Perez replies, not really. Its hard to fault them for living by their principles, but you cant help but selfishly wish that theyre career ambitions were as limitless as their musical and political ones. John Tryneski
BBU
bell hooks (Mad Decent)
Amazon iTunes
53 John Talabot
IN
Several years and numerous aliases have passed since Barcelona based DJ and producer John Talabot first began his work on the club scene. He has emerged from that time with an acute understanding that many of his predecessors have failed to grasp; when you make an album full of dance music, you have to be deferent to your medium, but balance those demands with the realities of a full length record. So its testament to the originality and freshness of fIN, that after its arrival in the heart of winter, it ignited a spark which still glows brightly nearly a year later. It works because it holds all of the vitality and creative ingenuity of a breakthrough recording, but is constructed with the skill of a master craftsman. Echos of his Balearic forebears pulsate through the glistening, sun-dappled electronica and fuse with ominous, hypnotic beats and shadowy glitches. Culminating in a patchwork
John Talabot
IN (Permanent Vacation)
Amazon iTunes
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of brilliant sound which pulls away like a low tide, only to crash over you in waves, serving to become more invigorating and revelatory on each listen. Tom Fenwick
52 How to Dress Well

Total Loss
If 2010s Love Remains was all promise, Total Loss is the delivery. Best served in one sittingpreferably under moonlight - its a quietly devastating, poetic, delicate, tear-soaked mini-masterpiece. Lush, rich and fragrant its one of the years classiest dishes. Unashamedly romantic and built to console the lonely, sweep lovers off their feet and salvage a highway of car crash hearts. Sinatras In the Wee Small Hours rebooted for the 25th century with Tom Krells aching falsetto draped over phantom piano, slick R&B beats, oh and strings, lots of strings. One could even imagine Total Loss as some clandestine treasure unearthed from the pint-sized prancin purple pervert of pop Princes infamous Vault. Perhaps recorded at his mid-80s peak, his lost heartbreak and 808s album. A witching hour of weeping angels, poetry, perfume, candles, finger clickin, spinnin stilettos and one enormo-sized bed, obviously . Matt James
How to Dress Well

Total Loss (Acphale / Weird World)
Amazon iTunes
51 Todd Snider
Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables
You may have heard that Bruce Springsteens Wrecking Ball was a fierce rallying cry on behalf of the 99 percent. Well, that may be so. But, for my money, little about that bloated spectacle felt much like the on-the-ground reality of a cratered middle class amid the great recession. Todd Sniders record, on the other
Todd Snider
Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables (Aimless)
handa shambling mess of folksy drawls, scratchy melodies, tossed off performances, and deeply insightful tales about Americans in troublefelt just right. Always a keen observer of human foibles, and a whipsmart chronicler of ordinary people in all their glorious complexity, Snider is at his razor-sharp best on this, his ninth studio record. From the menacing In the Beginning (with its Napoleon-quoting lament that we still need religion to
Amazon iTunes
keep us from killing the rich) through the evisceration of New York Bankers (refrain: good things
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happen to bad people) down to the hilarious, cutting study of the cultural consequences of entrenched income inequality on Precious Little Miracles (So your school is a joke, and youll always be poor, and your pleas to the rich have been heard and ignored: Is that what all you crazy kids are so upset for?), this is socially conscious music at its most entertaining, at its most affecting. Henderson Stuart
50 Paul Weller
Sonik Kicks
Appropriating Krautrock elements has been the go-to method for a few up-and-coming bands in recent years, but a minimal amount have managed to put those bits to as thriling use as Paul Weller on Sonik Kicks. Thankfully, Weller has not entirely disowned his Modness; throwbacks such as the swirling The Attic and the swaggering That Dangerous Age are too refined to feel like mere retreads. They rank just as highly as more outre Sonik Kicks moments such as the dub pastiche Study in Blue. After wowing critics and listeners with 2008s 22 Dreams and 2010s Wake Up the Nation, Weller could have easily gotten away with playing it safe. Thankfully, he chose instead to continue honoring longtime listeners while also treading new ground. Even if Wellers restlessness is not your thing, the Style Council-esque closer Be Happy Children is worth sticking through the whole release. Maria Schurr
Paul Weller
Sonik Kicks (Yep Roc)
Amazon iTunes
49 Iris DeMent
Sing the Delta
Its been 16 years since Iris DeMents last album of original material. In the interim there was a collection of old gospel songs called Lifeline (did you hear her singing Leaning on Everlasting Arms at the end of True Grit?), a wedding to folksinger Greg Brown, and a celebrated collaboration with John Prine, but not much else to speak of. Whether driven by writers block or something else, this was a lengthy stretch of relative silence from an artist whose first three albums (released in the early 1990s) seemed to signal a major songwriting talent. Thankfully, DeMent has returned to her craft, and the result is the best record of her career. Piano driven country songs about faith, family, memory, and the way that place (in her case the Arkansas delta) can tattoo
Iris DeMent
Sing the Delta (Flariella)
Amazon
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iTunes
something indelible upon us, Sing the Delta is an album of spiritual (if ambiguously, ambivalently Christian) music that speaks to us all, no matter where were from. Stuart Henderson
48 Lambchop
Mr. M
For a band as plodding as Lambchop, they sure know how to pack a punch. Still going strong after nearly 20 years, Kurt Wagner and Co. start with the basics: slowly strummed guitars, lilting piano notes, and drum brushstrokes, add Wagners baroque voice to tell oddball tales of the ordinary and then turn the whole affair into a startling cacophony of wonder. Songs may begin with a whisper but before too long, things are ratcheted up and listeners are jamming along, in sync with the pulsing thrum but also finely attuned to Wagners offbeat poetry. On this years Mr. M, Wagner rambles on about searching for cooking recipes, slurs his shady behavior, and observes with passing interest the shifty drifters that make up the world around us. You never know whether marvel at Wagners penchant for detail or simply take them with a grain of salt. But thats what makes Lambchop so entertaining. Here, the band doesnt reinvent the wheel, but instead simply adds to their incredible body of work. Jeff Strowe
Lambchop
Mr. M (Merge)
Amazon iTunes
47 Ryan Bingham
Tomorrowland
Ryan Binghams opening track says all you need to know about the Texas-natives first self-produced album. The gruff vocals cry out again and again, repeatedly refusing to beg for bread and mop the floor. Beg for Broken Legs chronicles Binghams general frustrations with the accepted norm, and the rest of the album follows suit. Bingham is in full-on rock mode here. Hard-hitting, direct lyrics match the singers elevated vocal range on tracks like Guess Whos Knockin, Heart of Rhythm, and The Road Im Onall of which focus on the dissatisfaction (childhood, love, and travel) of a songwriter whos still paying up these god damn dues. Much of the records B side is made up of more muted musings on the subject, but tracks like Rising of the Ghetto are just as potent as their louder brethren. Binghams
Ryan Bingham
Tomorrowland (Axster Bingham)
Amazon iTunes
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disappointment on Tomorrowland reflects the nationshes sick of accepting less than he deserves, and hes not going to take it anymore. Ben Travers
46 Julia Holter
Ekstasis
If the grey-scale drones and overcast palette of last years Tragedy exemplified the budding compositional ambition and attention to detail of rising experimentalist Julia Holter, then Ekstasis, the Los Angeles natives staggering sophomore album, betrays an even greater sense of harmony between the classical strains of the conservatory and the malleable potential of the avant-pop underground. Still awash in the layered keyboard sustain and enveloping aural textures of her debut, Ekstasis finds Holters music nonetheless expanding outward, alight with a sonic radiance not unlike that of a Spring mornings first ray of sunlight, nurturing a once-nascent melodicism even as it seems to inevitably evaporate in the surrounding atmosphere. Ekstasis, then, moves as if by intuition, the inertia of Holters compositions cresting in hypnotic patterns, outlining a suite-like structure while galvanizing a thematic undercurrent which Holter constructs via lyrics both personal and philosophical. This is music for the mind that emanates from the soul, residing in a uniquely disorienting middle distance, as enticingly tangible as it is fleeting. Jordan Cronk
Julia Holter
Ekstasis (RVNG Intl.)
Amazon iTunes
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45 Bob Mould
Silver Age
Despite its title, Silver Age is no late-career victory lap for the former Hsker D and Sugar frontman. Instead, this is his most infection and volatile set in years. Backed (perfectly) by the propulsive drumming of Jon Wurster, Mould blasts through these songs with his crunching guitars and edgy vocals, shrugging off the young, ineffectual rocker on the title track, or revisiting his own brash youth on The Descent. The album looks back at the past as a long, hard-won lesson, and Mould acquits himself as an elderstatesman of rock without ever preaching. No, instead he gives us the sweet melody, the slicing hook and, though he claims that, in his past, I didnt want to play the song that gave people so much hope, that is exactly what he does here ten times over. Its no small feat for a guy whos been wowing us for decades to surprise
Bob Mould
Silver Age (Merge)
Amazon iTunes
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us again, but he did no Silver Age not by reinventing a formula, but by tightening it up into a potent coil, and reminding us just how strong and malleableand downright beautifulhis punishing power-pop can be. Matt Fiander
44 Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft

Orchestra
Theatre Is Evil
Amanda Palmer owned this year. She became a Kickstarter millionaire and held her title as the unofficial queen of Twitter, but by far her biggest achievement was the release of Theatre Is Evil with the Grand Theft Orchestra. Theatre Is Evil is big and bold, a
Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra

Theatre is Evil (8ft)
shotgun blast of unabashedly fun rock, a tangle of pure electric energy. Dramatic, hilarious, and earnest by turns, the album not only shows off Palmers pop chops, but also her ability to craft a song at any tempo which stays with you like a glittery tapeworm. Palmer has released many good albums since the early 2000s, but with Theatre Is Evil she didnt just top her best releases to date. She did it with room to spare. Adam Finley
Amazon iTunes
43 METZ
METZ
Shining brightly like a Molotov cocktail at the moment of impact, this Toronto noise rock trios incendiary debut had my attention from the opening bombast of Headache. Informed by both the Jesus Lizard and the Jesus and Mary Chain, METZ arent here so much to revolutionize garage rock as to revitalize it. Primitive and discordant, this self-titled debut isnt some rehashed mishmash; rather, its the next logical genetic step forward for angular, abrasive rock. Militant yet dangerously nihilistic, Wasted is a jackbooted kick in the teeth, an explosive demonstration of howling humanity and ignorant sonics. If Toronto has thugs, this ought to serve as their anthem. Hard-charger Wet Blanket turns the old fashioned Twist into a something more spastic and like a seizure. Alex Edkins might look like the jittery I.T. guy from your office, but in fact hes the latest righteously furious frontman in the tradition of Steve Albini, yowling and yelping inscrutably over his perverse riffs. Gary Suarez
METZ
METZ (Sub Pop)
Amazon iTunes
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42 Flying Lotus
Until the Quiet Comes
Until the Quiet Comes unfolds with a measured sense of purpose, each song dissolving seamlessly into the next like the swirling back eddies of a single flowing current. Although it may be Flying Lotuss most approachable work to date, this album retains the distinct sense of tension and juxtaposition, and the unpredictable approach to structure that Steven Ellison has always brought to his meticulous electronic compositions. Here, he blends dense and cavernous rhythms with glistening, chiming keys and surging swaths of electronic noise to create a vividly textured tapestry of sound that never fails to both challenge and engage. Two of popular musics most singular vocalists show up to lend their talents in Thom Yorke and Erykah Badu. But rather than foreground their presence, Ellison blurs and bends their voices to merge with their surroundings, as just another stroke of color upon the surface of his sonic canvass. For Ellison arranges every sample, sequence and voice on the record with the careful precision of a visual artist, so that each individual element is both inseparable and indistinguishable from the work as a whole. Robert Alford
Flying Lotus
Until the Quiet Comes (Warp)
Amazon iTunes
41 Quantic and Alice Russell

Look Around the Corner
Having upped sticks and moved from England to Colombia, musician and producer Will Holland aka Quantic, assembled a crack team of virtuoso musicians steeped in cumbia and champeta. Welding this to the incredible retro blues, soul and jazz voice of fellow Brit Alice Russell, Quantic has captured the zeitgeist of music in the 21st century with the album Look Around the Corner. More than ever before musicians are collaborating, sharing, experimenting and making music free of geographical or cultural boundaries and this is all encapsulated on this stunning album. Taking classic sounds and arrangements and creating something new, this album is chock-full of killer soul with Look Around the Corner, boogaloo with Boogaloo 33, and cumbia with Road to Islay. This is an authentically vintage, yet utterly
Quantic and Alice Russell

Look Around the Corner (Tru Thoughts)
Amazon iTunes
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modern, album that will be enjoyed by audiences from London to New York to Cali.
Jez Collins
40 The Men
Open Your Heart
The Men is a particularly apt name for a band thats becoming a flag-bearer for big-boy rock n roll. In a year when raw, bare-bones rock statements were plenty and plenty good, fewif anymatched Open Your Heart in depth and breadth, as it runs the full gamut of the genres most tried-and-true stylings. Open Your Heart offers pretty much everything youre looking for from a black-and-blue rock record, from Fucked Up-like post-hardcore body blows (Animal) to lovesick Buzzcocks-y power-punk (Open Your Heart) to swaggering street-smart art-noise la Sonic Youth (Oscillation). And thats not even mentioning any number of tracks reminiscent of the Replacements, especially on the bar-rock ditty Candy, thick with punch-drunk melodies and careening vocals. But what makes Open Your Heart a listen to go back to is that no matter how familiar the idiom, none of it comes off derivative, thanks to the young Brooklyn quartets unbridled intensity and improvisational flair. If Open Your Heart is any indication, the Mens intuitive approach to instinct-driven rock n roll gives em a chance to be as original as the acts whose footsteps in which theyre following. Arnold Pan
The Men
Open Your Heart (Sacred Bones)
Amazon iTunes
Of Monsters and Men

My Head Is an Animal
This Icelandic bands ebullience is pervasive and contagious, with an unbridled energy that translates incredibly well from a live setting to this album (a slightly reworked version from 2011s release in Iceland). With six official members, Of Monsters and Men dont just outnumber Mumford & Sons, but they also surpass Marcus with two lead singers, one of each gender. Ragnar rhallsson offers a more mellow register in harmony with the soprano of Nanna Brynds Hilmarsdttir. Her voice propels the sing-along songs and once King and Lionheart and Little Talks got inside my head, I couldnt help but shout hey!, even when that wasnt the next lyric. These powerful choruses are on an album alongside excellent mellow songs like Slow and Steady or the la-la lullaby Yellow Light which tempers and varies this debut. But one thing remains constant; even these quieter tunes have choruses that motion for listeners to join the wild rumpus. Sachyn Mital
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Of Monsters and Men

My Head Is an Animal (Universal)
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38 David Byrne and St. Vincent

Love This Giant
Although Byrne and Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent) may come at music from a generational divide, they share many commonalities. Favoring offbeat, jittery arrangements and writing with an astute realization of the mundane, this pairing isnt as surprising on record as it may have initially appeared. What began as a series of collaborations in 2009 for the Dark Was the Night benefit turned into a full-blown whammy of an album in 2012 with the release of Love This Giant.The two artists exchanged compositions via email and were met in the studio and on the subsequent tour by a massive and invigorating horn section that emboldens the albums shadowy and fragmented lyrical content. From the opening tracks questioning in Who to the joyously upbeat middle section through the final plaintive tones of Outside of Space & Time, its a well-crafted and nuanced album that gets more exciting with each subsequent listen. Jeff Strowe
David Byrne and St. Vincent

Love This Giant (4AD/Todo Mundo)
Amazon iTunes
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37
Miguel
Kaleidoscope Dream
Kaleidoscope Dream could easily be used as a sort of
cheat sheet of where R&B has gone in the past 50 years. The opening Adorn will undoubtedly draw comparisons to Marvin Gayes Sexual Healing, but simply cant be dismissed as a rip-off. Do you and The Thrill bring to mind the steaminess of Princes funkiest and dirtiest 80s work. And for future-looking Use Me sounds like something straight out of a Blade Runners playlist in 2032. But Kaleidoscope Dream is far more than a
Miguel
Kaleidoscope Dream (RCA)
hodgepodge history lesson. How Many Drinks? and Pussy Is Mine take routine nightclub conquest scenarios and twist them into pained self-doubt confessionals. No 12-minute epics. No excessive supporting guests, Kaleidoscope Dream is a supremely confident effort by an artist who only a few years ago was almost labelless. 2012 gave us instant classics by Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar and Killer Mike. With Kaleidoscope Dream, Miguel has Sean McCarthy
Amazon iTunes
submitted his own masterwork to an already landmark year for hip-hop and R&B.
36 Nas
Life Is Good
As he says, Nas must have half-naked pictures of God or something. Eleven albums in, he remains a spectacular rapper, albeit one who doesnt need to make a spectacle of himself. Whether discussing his divorce, fatherhood, plans to topple investment banks, or summers on smash, Nas has honed his complex rhyme schemes for maximum ease of communication. He taunts young pipsqueaks who kill people accidentally; he sympathizes with a middle aged doctor contemplating uxoricide while performing surgery. He shouts out Kelis and makes their story interesting, even if you havent been following along. He hates when people write him hostile textswho doesnt? The guys turned into a wealthy charmer, and his producers opulent beats back him up, peaking with the orchestral banger A Queens Story but rarely flagging. In factdo my ears deceive me?Life Is Good might be a better album than his revered debut. At least, Id rather listen to it. Langhoff Josh
Nas
Life Is Good (Def Jam)
Amazon iTunes
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35
El-P
Cancer 4 Cure
Any performer with Oscar ambitions should never go full
retard, warns Robert Downey Jr.s Kirk Lazarus in 2008s Tropic Thunder. Prestige culture was the target, but outcry from disability activists was the response, leading to pickets and memes before reemerging as lead single The Full Retard of El-Ps Cancer 4 Cure. Here the context is hip-hop, but the disdain for acclaim-grubbing remains the same. The indefatigable rap
El-P
Cancer 4 Cure (Fat Possum)
iconoclasts fourth solo outing pulls a bait-and-switch on year-end canonization by turning talking pointsthe police state (Drones Over Bklyn), institutional oppression (Stay Down)into occasions for stream-of-consciousness spoonerisms and scattered venom. What glimpses there are of lyrical coherence reveal ethical ambivalence, as on For My Upstairs Neighbor (Mums the Word)s tale of overheard abuse: If you kill him, I wont tell, he
Amazon iTunes
urges. Powered by the rapper/producers signature deep-space funk breaks, Cancer 4 Cure is the album that refused to vote in an election year: frustrated, skeptical, and hilariously morbid, but with little use for empty liberal pieties. Benjamin Aspray
34 The Tour-Raichel Collective

The Tel Aviv Session
Transcendent brilliance is not too strong a phrase to describe this album-length collaboration between Malian guitar maestro Vieux Farka Tour and Israeli keyboardist/pop star Idan Raichel. The album is the fruit of a spontaneous jam session held in Israel in which the musicians sat down to swap musical ideas, with the results betraying a rare but profound responsiveness to one anothers work, and a refreshing willingness to set aside ego in favor of musical purity. Tour sets aside his electric guitar for these sessions, and the relevationone of themis that his snaky, sinuous melodies are just as much at home on an unplugged instrument. Songs like album opener Azawade find their rhythm right off the bat, quickly settling into hypnotic grooves that provide the musicians ample room to improvise and explore. This is, simply put, one of the best Afro-pop collaborations you are likely to hear since Tours father Ali sat down with Ry Cooder to record Talking Tuimbuktu back in 1994. Yes, its that good. David Maine
The Toure-Raichel Collective

The Tel Aviv Session (Cumbancha)
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33 Bat for Lashes

The Haunted Man
Haunted is right. If youre the subject of a song on Natasha Khans third album as Bat for Lashes, chances are theres some considerable damage in your past, whether its unrequited love, the isolation of fame, or shell shock. With all of this baggage, The Haunted Man could have easily been an album-length-wallow, but Khan instead crafted a song cycle about struggle. From the stately opener Lilies, on which she declares, Thank God Im alive!, these songs offer salvation through love and optimism. Where you see a wall, she sees a door. Khan also ups her already considerable compositional game. For an artist whos often praised for her moody atmosphere, shes also exceptionally attuned to percussion arrangements, and The Haunted Man lays off the thick orchestration to reveal even more rhythmic complexity than usual. In addition to isolated feats of syncopation like the twitchy guitar picking and drum programming on All Your Gold, she subtly weaves marching rhythms throughout until they appear overtly on the title track, accompanying a male choir. Khan has cited her grandfathers return from war as a key influence on the albums themes, and she masterfully gets the fallout of war across without tipping her hand lyrically. Its smart touches like this, combined with Khans continued flare for dramatic flourishes, that help make The Haunted Man her richest release. David Bloom
Bat for Lashes

The Haunted Man (Capitol/Parlophone)
Amazon iTunes
32 Esperanza Spalding
Radio Music Society
Radio Music Society is Esperanza Spaldings fourth recording and the flip-side Chamber Music Society. So it ought to be a pop album designed for radio playright? It may have ripping hooks and huge bed of soulful grooves, but Spalding, at her core, remains a jazz musician. So, the opener, Radio Song, may be built around an irresistible chorus and a very hip two-note vocal hook at the start, but then theres the long middle section with a charging brass figure that sets up a vocalese break followed by a swinging tenor sax solo. Tack on a long, modern-jazz piano solo on the end for good and youve got not kind of radio hit at all. But, of course, thats why Spalding is terrific. Shes not Adele or even Macy Gray. She has made an ambitious jazz record that creatively uses soul forms to grab our ears. You can call it whatever you want, but youll want to listen. Will Layman
Esperanza Spalding
Radio Music Society (Heads Up)
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31 Hot Chip
In Our Heads
Its been incredibly rewarding to watch the streak Hot Chip have been riding since their sophomore LP The Warning in 2006. Coming on Strong, their 2004 debut, wasnt bad by any means, but if someone had told me that band would be responsible for In Our Heads, Id have laughed in their face. But Hot Chip arent a band to settle in to the comforts their genre provides them. Although there are infectious choruses and unforgettable synths throughout In Our Heads, its by no means an electro album thats all surface. The mature, philosophical nature of the bands music that started to flourish on 2010s One Life Stand is exemplified at its highest form on this record. One moment, theyll have you ready for the dancefloor (Night and Day is easily Hot Chips best single to date), the next theyll have you meditating on the meaning of love and life itself (Look at Where We Are and I Have Always Been Your Love). In Our Heads is the kind of album that demonstrates why Hot Chip are going to be remembered for the years to come, and its also refined summation of the groups MO to date. Hot Chip are consistently life-affirming in their ability to highlight the joys of the human experience, all to the sound of some of the best electronic dance music around. In Our Heads is not only the definitive Hot Chip recording, its also one of 2012s best works. Brice Ezell
Hot Chip
In Our Heads (Domino)
Amazon iTunes
Robert Glasper Experiment

Black Radio
Black Radio is not a reflection of what is currently spinning on urban radio stations, but a rich, multilayered portrait of progressive R&B and hip-hop through the prism of jazz. Its the antidote to an overabundance of mediocrity, to borrow a phrase from Angelika Beeners incisive foreword. Led by pianist Robert Glasper, Black Radio offers a sophisticated yet accessible rumination on how black music traditions have always birthed new vanguards in popular music, from jazz to funk to hip-hop. Bassist Derrick Hodge, multi-instrumentalist Casey Benjamin, and drummer Chris Dave are the engine of Glaspers radio dial while Erykah Badu, Meshell Ndegeocello, Bilal, and Musiq Soulchild are among the dozen guest artists who join the experiment. Amidst Glaspers original compositions like Always Shine (a co-write with Lupe Fiasco) and Gonna Be Alright (F.T.B.) (a collaboration with Ledisi), he tours a range of material, from Bowie to Sade to Nirvana. His experiment succeeds. To best experience Black Radio, all you need are your ears and your soul. Christian John Wikane
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Robert Glasper Experiment

Black Radio (Blue Note)
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29 Death Grips
The Money Store
Death Grips are the real deal, and its becoming increasingly hard to discern that in the age of limitless self-doubt, auto-critique, and instant backlash, but its the truth. Death Grips are certainty an anomaly, the exception proving the rule. Theirs is a music where anger and negation are simulated at every level, throughout the entire package, rage as contagious pathology (I got the fever). MC Rides barking hoarse voice is the obvious entry point, a pitiless stream of raw aggression spewing forth the most beautiful pornography of disgust and vitriol, his lyrics an imaginary language daubed in sanguinary hues of Burroughs and De Sade for the street set. On The Money Store, Ride breaks into gated communities, hacks bank accounts (I know the first three numbers/ Im in), and slips the gun to your lips and appreciates the phallic symbolism, but Death Grips move beyond shock value into the most pure transgression of late capitalist values as demon intruders. Their System Blower not only melts speakers, but upends the status quo in a manner where the paucity of resourceslo-fi as Anarachist Cookbook homemade terrorism like their power noise predecessorsacts less as stage relish than fetishistic attention to detail. Of course, it wouldnt work if the sonics themselves didnt also leave your eardrums feeling slightly violated. Zach Hills wonky, disjointed percussive gait makes the entire crushing industrial ensemble feel like a miswired, circuit-bent machine from the island of misfit terminator drones. Andy Morrins programming only compliments this, running on the textural grit of 20 years of scorched earth electronics and incorporating everything from the epileptic seizures of footwerk to the Nuum fueled vocal science of chopped female voices that actually sound like terrorized caged birds. The Money Store is a psycho-delic horrorshow on the surface alone, but with one with unexpected (and somewhat unseemly) depth and resonance for those willing to plunge in for multiple visits. After a ka-jillion spins, this is still a thrilling release. Timothy Gabriele
Death Grips
The Money Store (Epic)
Amazon iTunes
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28 Andy Stott
Luxury Problems
Manchester producer Andy Stott has spent the better part of the last half decade burrowing a small niche for himself amidst a splintering dub techno landscape, his expertly fashioned fortress of isolation and cavernous atmosphere having, up to now, felt about as unwelcoming to human harmonization as one could imagine. But with Luxury Problems Stott has reconciled his unstable machinery with a mounting sense of mortality in a way that feels not only unique, but inevitable. Coming after last years bleak double bill of Passed Me By and We Stay Together, Luxury Problems can sound comparatively plush and inviting, as Alison Skidmores vocals emanate naturally from the fabric of Stotts air-tight productions, a swarming conflation of digital noise, 4/4 beat science, and dub atmospherics. In a year where spiritual contemporaries such as Raime, Demdike Stare, Shackleton, and even Burial released benchmark work, it was Stott who stood tallest amid the ruins, his scorched-earth triumph a new rite-of-passage for anything electronic-leaning that dares arrive in its wake. Jordan Cronk
Andy Stott
Luxury Problems (Modern Love)
Amazon iTunes
27 Father John Misty

Fear Fun
Even for an alt-country record, Father John Misty had a sense that this might be a bit of commercial enterprise. Singing look out Hollywood, here I come as the last line on the first song of his Sub Pop debut, Fear Fun, Misty channels a series of broken Western dreams, an old American trope, moving them to the nations far Western boundary, placing them delicately in a washed out and fucked up Los Angeles. All the same themes work, death in Hollywood isnt just a metaphor; its as American as F. Scott Fitzgerald. And so Misty, nee Joshua Tillman, traffics in all these broken, Western dreams, shreds of religiosity creeping in at the corners. The albums lead single, Hollywood Cemetery Sings, opens with the line, Jesus Christ, girl, what are people gonna think? The exasperation isnt for show with Tillman discussing the disjoints between commerce, religion, and the new
Father John Misty

Fear Fun (Sub Pop)
Amazon iTunes
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American West, which like the Old one, turned into a damn ghost town.
Geoff Nelson
26 Dr. John
Locked Down
Its tempting to label this a comeback album for the 72-year-old Dr. John, but one look at his post 2000 output shows a staggering number of quality releases. Instead this is yet another album that reaffirms Dr. Johns position in music history. Locked Down does feature one interesting quirk though as the album is essentially produced by Dan Auerbach (of Black Keys fame), who seamlessly blends the old school aesthetics of Johns New Orleans R&B (or Voodoo as John calls it) with the Black Keys signature new school meets old school style of fuzzed out blues. The final result feels so natural that you cant help but wonder why these two didnt meet up sooner. In todays world of here today, gone tomorrow artist, its almost inconceivable that a man who began his career in the 50s would be making albums that not only equal, but possibly surpass his early classics, but Dr. John has done just that. Proving once and for all that age aint nothing but a number. Adam Maylone
Dr. John
Locked Down (Nonesuch)
Amazon iTunes
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25 Galactic
Carnivale Electricos
The New Orleans funk and jam kingpins have delivered again on a disc that crackles with energy and sonic flavor. Many jambands struggle to capture their live energy in the studio, but Galactic cracked the code on 2010s Ya-Ka-May by utilizing a variety of guests to add fresh vibes and creative sparks. This formula is used successfully again here, with a theme that focuses on the Mardis Gras festivities that fuel much of what Galactic is all about. Highlights include the charged dance groove of Hey Na Na, ever soulful vocals from Cyrille Neville on Out in the Street, the 40-piece KIPP Renaissance High School Marching Band adding to the stomp of Karate and dueling raps from Mannie Fresh and Mystikal on Move Fast. Drummer Stanton Moore, aka the redneck gangster, is the ringleader and the bands sound gels around his tight funky beats like a well-oiled groove machine. But this isnt just retro funk Galactic are masters at mixing their old school influences with fresh cutting edge sounds. Greg Schwartz
Galactic
Carnivale Electricos (Anti-)
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24 The Mountain Goats

Transcendental Youth
John Darnielle has always been one of indie rocks most celebrated songwriters, and for good reason: he could do albums based off Tarot cards, explore spirituality through songs whose titles were bible verses, and collaborate with Aesop Rock and Kaki King pretty much whenever he felt inclined. Yet as brilliant as Darnielles songs were, the Mountain Goats never reached the mass appeal of some of his indie rock contemporariesuntil now. Transcendental Youth is the bands biggest, brassiest album to date, occasionally approaching a Broadway level of grandiosity and exuberance, but all still carefully reigned in by Darnielles precise words and tight arrangements, leaving the stripped down arrangements of Life of the World to Come far behind in the dust. Such a noted change in the groups tone would be met with cries of sell out! in some circles, yet the Goats secret lies in the fact that they make it look so easy. A brisk mood piece like Night Light can stand next to optimistic piano-pounding crime tales like The Diaz Brothers without a second of hesitation. They could still do moments of powerful straightforward honesty (Until I am Whole), but when things end together with the jazzy strut of the albums title track, its obvious that after two decades of making music, Darnielle & the Goats are just getting started ... Evan Sawdey
The Mountain Goats

Transcendental Youth (Merge)
Amazon iTunes
Taylor Swift
Red
Red feels designed to outdo others at their own game, to demonstrate Taylor Swift can do U2/Coldplay arena anthems, teenpop radio songs, Rilo-Kiley like LA alt-rock, Mazzy Star-like daydreams, cutesy pop like they play in Target commercialsplus keep perfecting her own brand of songwriting, with its romantic balladry, snarky kiss-offs to exes and introspective growing-up songs. Red is ambitious but doesnt seem it, which is her M.O. Its a thematically unified album about the next phases of growing-up, about failed attempts at love and the pleasure and pain within them. For all its dance-club moments and infatuation peaks, it might be her most downbeat LP yet. One of its chief goals is depicting the sad beautiful tragic nature of young love. For all her romantic dreams, she seems awfully skeptical, about love, life, other people and careers in music. Where the last two albums ended with big generational anthems, this one ends with a quiet hope for renewal, to begin again. Dave Heaton
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Taylor Swift
Red (Big Machine)
Amazon iTunes
22 The Avett Brothers

The Carpenter
In the 00s, the Avett Brothers attracted a passionate cult audience with their raw, barroom take on Americana. With The Carpenter, the bands second major label album and second with producer Rick Rubin, the last traces of those scuzzy early days have been scrubbed away. Fortunately for the band and their fans, the Avett Brothers have gradually blossomed into great songwriters and savvy arrangers, and The Carpenter puts their talents on full display. Songs like the banjo-driven Live and Die and Pretty Girl From Michigan, with its bouncy electric guitar leads, are instantly catchy. But the heartfelt lyrics of the albums quieter moments, particularly February Seven and A Fathers First Spring, take a bit longer to appreciate. Even the more unusual musical ideas, like the subtle brass choir in Down With the Shine and the full-on rock arrangement of the unfairly maligned Paul Newman Vs. the Demons, work well here. This is an album that shows a band confident in their ability to develop their craft without falling back on their tried-and-true tricks. Chris Conaton
The Avett Brothers

The Carpenter (American)
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21 The Maccabees
Given to the Wild
Modern rock bands tend to have a problem when it comes to aiming for grandiosity. Wary of the meat-and-potatoes classic rock clichs (and possibly limited by their own level of technique), oftentimes their dreams of soul-stirring majesty are realized as formless bluster, more pale sketches paired with vague sentiments than fully-realized vistas. If Coldplay is one of the chief perpetrators of this sort of stadium-sized blandness, Brighton, Englands Maccabees are here to undercut them by redeeming it. The quintets third album Given to the Wild takes them further away from their early incarnation as a third-division indie rock ensemble stylistically indebted to the Futureheads, and finds them continuing down a populist art-rock furrow they started plowing on their previous LP Wall of Arms (2009). Given to the Wild is essentially Coldplay done right: its floating atmospheric sections are grounded by a corporeal (and nimble) rhythm section thats always ready to bound forward at an opportune moment, and rest of the band is never subordinated to focus attention on Chris Martin-soundalike Orlando Weeks chaste sighs. Tracks such as Child and Heave strive to ascend to lofty realms, and their successful quests to attain entrance are invigorating in a way that the more demure of the modern rock lighter-igniter crop would do best to learn from. AJ Ramirez
The Maccabees
Given to the Wild (Fiction)
Amazon iTunes
20 Spiritualized
Sweet Heart Sweet Light
Spiritualized maestro Jason Pierce cites middle-period records by artists like Captain Beefheart and Iggy Pop as inspiration for Sweet Heart Sweet Light, his follow-up to 2008s Songs in A & E. This manifests not so much as a big shift in sound as in an underlying lyrical concept of getting older and wiser. With additional distance from the sickness that fueled Songs in A & E, Sweet Heart Sweet Light confronts what life has in store once youth has passed us by. Framed at the beginning by Hey Jane, a nine-minute cautionary tale of living fast and dying young, and at the end by So Long You Pretty Thing, a prayer for getting right with God, the album asks a lot of questions about the relationship of the here to the hereafter. Ultimately emphasizing that you cant take it with you, Sweet Heart Sweet Light is singular within Pierces already accomplished discography. Its a moral tale born from surviving early years of joyless indiscretions. Thomas Britt
Spiritualized
Sweet Heart Sweet Light (Fat Possum/Double Six)
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19 Grizzly Bear
Shields
If there are any lingering doubts as to whether Grizzly Bear is the greatest American band currently recording, they should be laid to rest once and for all by Shields, the bands irrefutably gorgeous third album. The bands 2009 breakthrough Veckatamist may have had catchier tunes but the both the complexity of the arrangements and the level of musicianship on Shields are positively awe-inspiring. Over the years Grizzly Bear have evolved into a band in the truest sense of the word, with each member absolutely essential the groups ever-broadening sonic palate. The lyrics might be a bit cold and world-weary here yet the performances are full of boundless energy and innovation. From the ominous opener Sleeping Ute through the towering finale of Sun is in Your Eyes, the band explores everything from classic rock to jazz to pastoral folk, often within the confines of the same song. The album concludes with the line So bright, so long / Im never coming back. Im sure Im not the only one praying that this isnt the case. Daniel Tebo
Grizzly Bear
Shields (Warp)
Amazon iTunes
18 Cloud Nothings
Attack on Memory
Attack on Memory, what an album title. Thats exactly what Cloud Nothings third album will feel like to anyone who grew up on the rough-edged emo and garage rock that constituted indie music from the early 90s through roughly Trail of Deads Source Tags & Codes. Teaming with Steve Albini, this formerly middling foursome somehow cranked out an album that defies expectation. It opens with a pair of tracks, No Future / No Past and Wasted Days, that instantly bring to mind the formers multi-tiered epics, but they turn out to be red herrings. The rest of the album is essentially an update on the punk attitudes of guys like Kurt Cobain and Lou Barlow. I need time to stay useless / I need time to stop moving / I need time, rings single Stay Useless, while Cut You ends the album with a balancing act of the dirge and the pop with simplistic, whining verses from Dylan Baldi that quickly shifts into pop excellence and back again. At a curt eight tracks and barely over a half hour, Attack on
Cloud Nothings
Attack on Memory (Carpark)
Amazon iTunes
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Memory is so brief and full of energy that it ends up on repeat over and over, constantly reminding me that I was young once, and I was never quite sure what that meant until it was probably too late. But this was the sort of music that made for a less awkward time, and unlike the current popular form of this malaise like Wavves and Real Estate, theres a hardened edge of catharsis that would lure just about any child of the 90s. This is about as purely nostalgic as new music can get. David Amidon
17 Pepe Delux
Queen of the Wave
The soul-nourishing abundance of Queen of the Wave took a lot of people by surprise in 2012. A concept album based on the psychically channeled Atlantis writings of Frederick S. Oliver from the late 1800s, the fourth full-length by Finnish neo-psychedelists Pepe Delux utilized over 60 talented musicians from across the
Pepe Delux
Queen of the Wave (Asthmatic Kitty)
world and a plethora of vintage, arcane technology, from an aether modulator and chromatic gusli to the Great Stalacpipe Organ (a.k.a. the worlds largest instrument). Sure, their ingredients look impressive on paper, but this surrealistic lark is even tastier when heard in its genre-hopping, whirlwind context. Thoughtfully assembled for a wink and a prayer with all the proceeds going to clean the Baltic Sea, this visionary work
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demonstrates immeasurable depth in its dynamic range and thematic exploration. It would be a compliment to exploratory thrift-store epics like Since I Left You and Thunder, Lightning, Strike if it wasnt for the fact that every sound on the boundlessly creative Queen of the Wave was painstakingly researched and designed to seem like the crate-dug samples from which the Avalanches and Go! Team manufactured their material. Through its melody, narrative, instrumentation, emotional resonance, and charitable disposition, Queen of the Wave generates a myriad of reasons for audiences to care, incessantly flooding listeners with exquisite quirks that tickle the senses and ignite the imagination. This is one for the ages. Alan Ranta
Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Allelujah! Dont Bend! Ascend!
For a band whose every album felt something like a monument of intent and ideological purity, Godspeed You! Black Emperors quiet recession from the public eye following the release of 2002s Yanqui U.X.O. seemed uncharacteristically weak-willed, as if theyd left something unfinished or, worse yet, resigned themselves to the very injustices theyd fought so hard to combat. That is what makes Allelujah, Godspeeds first album in ten years, not only so welcome, but so vital. The two
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16
20-minute behemoths which anchor the record may have originated from the waning days of the bands first run, but here, in recorded form, they sound refreshingly urgent, the albums unexpected release coinciding with the run up to the U.S. Presidential election in pointed
fashion, a brush of synchronicity impossible to read as coincidental. The contrasting drone suites, meanwhile, lend an appropriate gravity amidst such heart-stopping pyrotechnics, reconfirming this mysterious collective as saviors of a stagnant scene. Allelujah indeed. Jordan Cronk
Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Allelujah! Dont Bend! Ascend! (Constellation)
Amazon iTunes
15 - 6
15 Baroness
Yellow & Green
The double album is a hallowed form in the halls of progressive rock, a genre that Georgia-based Baroness show a surprising mastery of on Yellow & Green, a 75-minute, two-LP opus thats almost hard to believe is the product of a band only on their third studio release. Though some have complained about Baroness shift from prog-inflected sludge to a rock sonic with a much wider rangeon Yellow and Green, they go anywhere from outlaw country to 90s indie to Floyd-esque progthe huge risks taken on this album pay off incredible dividends. Double albums are notorious for excess, and even when theyre good (see: Ayreon), its quite difficult to take them in one sitting. The strength of Yellow & Green, aside from the incredible songwriting within, is that it never feels like a chore to listen to, and despite the clear tonal shifts between each half, the entire thing flows together with a cohesion that no other record of its kind has for a long time. Metals expanding inclusivity has taken many forms in 2012, but in terms of maturity, none came close to what Baroness has done here. They may no longer be a metal band in the conservative sense of the term, but they couldnt have made a rock LP as richly conceived as this one without having first began as they did. The Baroness on Yellow & Green couldnt have existed without the sludgy Baroness many have grown to love. Ezell Brice
Baroness
Yellow & Green (Relapse)
Amazon iTunes
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14 Jack White
Blunderbuss
Its accepted that albums released under an artists own name are more confessional and revealing, often so much so that the artist loses his or her mythical stature. After 15 years and a variety of bands, White made the leap to recording under his own name with Blunderbuss, a raw-nerve record that merges blues, country, rock and folk in combinations that demonstrate why White has outlasted so many of his late 90s guitar-rock contemporaries. The singles alone are proof. The intimate Love Interruption caught even ardent fans off guard, while Sixteen Saltines and Freedom at 21 position White as one of the only true rock stars we have left. On Blunderbuss, White does deal with serious personal issues: his divorce, the dissolution of the White Stripes, self doubt, loss, and all manners of weighty emotional stress. But it doesnt kill the mythical Jack White, as many predicted. It only makes him stronger. Adam Finley
Jack White
Blunderbuss (Third Man/Columbia)
Amazon iTunes
13 The Walkmen
Heaven
The Walkmens seventh full-length studio effort proves that the label daddy rock shouldnt be used only as an insult. Heaven is a collection of mature, emotionally resonant rock songs about the pleasures and perils of adulthood. Tunes like We Cant Be Beat and Heaven show the comforts that come with settling down, whereas The Witch and Dreamboat depict the adult world with more cynicism. This intriguing ambiguity is to be expected from a band who once wrote songs with titles like Woe Is Me and Everybody Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone. Even frontman Hamilton Leithausers ode to his daughter Song for Leigh is imbued with some darkness, conveying the emotional strain of parenting with the line, I sing myself sick about you. Indeed, the Walkmen depict heaven as an ideal we are continually moving towards, yet perhaps never fully reaching. The group sure has come close on this latest record, though. Jacob Adams
The Walkmen
Heaven (Fat Possum)
Amazon iTunes
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Carolina Chocolate Drops

Leaving Eden (Nonesuch)
Amazon iTunes
12 Carolina Chocolate Drops

Leaving Eden
Their style may be referred to as old-timey, but the passion, talent and creativity of the Grammy Award winning Carolina Chocolate Drops burns brightly on their fifth album. Under the thoughtful touch of renowned alt-country musician/producer Buddy Miller, Leaving Eden pops and sizzles crisply from start to finish. Traditional ditties and new compositions were rolled into a distinct whole that respects the past while commanding the attention of the present. Where the jug sound on the Cousin Emmy bluegrass standard Ruby, Are You Mad at Your Man? takes it back to 1940 Kentucky via drum & bass, this sound turns to scratching/beat boxing on the swagger laden original tune Country Girl. Yet, while it was not a grave-robbing exhibition of tradition, its not a careless fusion clawing aimlessly at relevancy either. Its not exactly Alan Lomax carpools with Rick Ruben so much as it passes them by in their own 1921 Oldsmobile flatbed truck on their way to Beverly Hills. With their live reputation preceding them, Leaving Eden is a memento of a historically aware band living band in and of the moment. Alan Ranta
Grimes
Visions
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11
The Internet has facilitated rummaging through the historical and cultural vaults like no other technology before it. In the 21st century, musicians have had an unfortunate tendency to respond to such unfettered accessibility to pop cultures detritus by performing simple
grab-and-paste appropriations or outright pastiche, manifesting a sort of exhibitionist curatism that says more about their tastes than what they are actually trying to do with the wares available to them. Claire Boucher, a.k.a. Grimes, does more than that. Though there are recognizable reference points for what she is doing (one apt summary Ive heard of her music is Cranes with a laptop) and where she is drawing from (a crude shorthand
Grimes
Visions (4AD)
description of the GarageBand software auteurs music I often offer to the unconverted is Cocteau Twins meets Mariah Carey), Boucher filters her myriad influences80s 4AD dream pop, 90s mainstream R&B, avant-electronica, East Asian traditionswholly through her own transformative sensibility, one prone to emphasize one strand of inspiration here and another there for added variance and nuance. Yet what is really responsible for
Amazon iTunes
Visions becoming one of the most buzzed-about releases of 2012 is the winsome, almost hypnotic timbre of her girlish voice in all of its effects-manipulated permutations, and her preternatural gift for arrangements and hooks. Astoundingly catchy, occasionally haunting, and frequently brilliant, Visions is top-rate art and pop in equal measure, and deserves to be talked about for years to come. Ramirez AJ
10 Chromatics
Kill for Love
Johnny Jewel doesnt do things by half. Arriving microseconds after his 36-track Symmetry project, Chromatics darkly divine Kill for Love took the stage like some futurist-romantic Shakespearian yarn of love, death and everything inbetween. A tragedy written in neon lights, lipstick, tears and rain. Even more so than their 2007 album this was the Night Drive. From the elegaic rewiring of Neil Youngs Hey, Hey, My, My to the ethereal, misty 15-minute outro No Escape, Kill for Love paints a cinematic lost highway trailing femme fatale Ruth Radelet through the bright lights n big city way over yonder to the darkness on the edge of town. Our doe-eyed dark passengers hopes n dreams (Back from the Grave, Kill for Love) slowly dissolve into the rear view mirror to be replaced by emptiness and melancholia (Dust to Dust, The River). Sounds like a downer fsure but Kill for Love is one electrifying, cathartic, unforgettable trip. Buy the ticket, take the ride. Matt James
Chromatics
Kill for Love (Italians Do It Better)
Amazon iTunes
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9 Kendrick Lamar
good kid, m.A.A.d. city
Videogame voice actor and headphones mannequin Dr. Dre could be seen clinging to 25-year-old Kendrick Lamar on a variety of magazine covers and promotional photos this year, and it doesnt take much time with the younger rappers good kid, m.A.A.d. city to see why. Dre, long the face of Compton despite his deep history of finding himself outshone by collaborators and protgs alike, sees in Lamar what the rest of the rap world does, too: not just the future of West Coast hip-hop but the future of rap, period. In good kid, m.A.A.d. city, Lamar has created a dense, cohesive, emotionally exhaustingand, above all, impossibly addictive masterpiece of form, flow, and feeling. The rapper weaves his fictionalized life story, replete with chameleonic vocal turns and rotating characters, into a testament to both his ambition and, crucially, his humility. The hooks slice, the all-star production team never blinks, and Lamar leaves his listeners at once winded and utterly revitalized. Beasley Corey
Kendrick Lamar
good kid, m.A.A.d. city (Interscope)
Amazon iTunes
8 Jessie Ware
Devotion
Devotion begins not with a bang, but with a whimper. Fluttering electronic bird-chirps quiver over hard-edged bass syncopation as Jessie Ware begins to sing: Used to be so close to me / Everything happens so easily / Life with you is like a dream / Without you theres no way to be / Need your devotion. Everything you need to know about Jessie Wares incomparable and spectacular debut album is encapsulated in the sound, melodies and lyrics of that first track, Devotion. The track is a jarring portrait of a confident woman questioning her internal struggles but with fierce determination and unwavering love. Moving straight into, probably the best track on the album, Wildest Moments tears through a conflicting love affair, and by the time that infectious and heart-wrenching chorus begins where she sings: Baby in our wildest moments / We could be the greatest, we could be the greatest / Baby in our wildest moments / We could be the worst of all, youre hooked. This woman has packed more conflicting, nuanced complexities into the first two tracks of her album that many artists dont succeed in doing in their entire careers. But for all its beautiful marrying between R&B and electronica, Devotion, much less Jessie Ware, isnt the saviour of R&B, shes the beacon of light leading the way for all other artists to follow. Enio Chiola
Jessie Ware
Devotion (Island)
Amazon iTunes
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7 Tame Impala
Lonerism
I know that Ive gotta be above it now/I know that I cant let them bring me down, harps Kevin Parker to open Lonerism. This mantra sticks like glue throughout the winding psych-rock masterpiece. 2012 has seen many of Parkers peers use the studio as a means to simply indulge their creative fantasies, with largely half-assed results. Parker however, walks boldly and follows his creative vision. In doing so, he not only set the bar high for expansive psych, he creates (And subsequently explores) an entirely new sonic language. Textured to the point that every listen yields new results, Tame Impala has done what others wouldnt consider attempting. Refusing to have his vision put into a comfortable little box, Parker challenges listeners. Though the 12 tracks on Lonerism are never weird just for the sake of being so, they will take listeners on a ride. Lonerism is majestic in scope and reminds us how to still be in awe of a record. Joshua Kloke
Tame Impala
Lonerism (Modular Recordings)
Amazon iTunes
6 Killer Mike
R.A.P. Music
In teaming up with producer El-P, Killer Mikea rapper long due for a coming out partyfinally made the classic record everyone thought he could. He comes with the hardcore G shit he spits about in the albums opening lines, but more important than that, Killer Mike brings a lot of heart here. Through all the bile spit here at dirty cops (Dont Die), Reaganomics (Reagan) and even the self-destructive nature of hip-hop culture itself (Reagan again), Mike gives off a lot of experience here. If theres a fine line between persona and personality in rap, Mike walks it well here and steers us towards honesty and a passion that cuts through his cynicism about politics or paranoia about power structures. In the end, as the closing songs on the record tell us, R.A.P. Music is ghetto gospel, an ode to the music that came before it, music that honors its heritageboth in hip-hop and in the black communityby trying to inspire and critique in the same way. It helps that El-P frames Mikes raps in some futuristic mash-up of Southern rap and soul music. There were more high profile rap records,
Killer Mike
R.A.P. Music (Williams Street)
Amazon iTunes
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and records given credit for being high-concept (ahem, Kendrick Lamar), but in 2012 Killer Mike delivered the truest set of R.A.P. Music, not to mention the best. Matthew Fiander
5-1
5 Swans
The Seer
Before the release of The Seer, Swans frontman Michael Gira spoke of the album as being 30 years in the making. While it was unquestionably a culmination of his past endeavors, brought to bear in a vanquishing fashion, it was also a monstrously visceral image of the future. The albums lengthy emotional trawls through darkness and luminescence were undeniably forward-thinking, gracefully arranged, and aggressively delivered, with Gira and co constructing edifices of vibrancy, sound and colortheir foundations set deep in fertile, doom-laden soil. The Seer pummeled, stroked and nurtured, dripping with ecstatic catharsis like no other album from 2012, its thick hallucinogenic and physical tension released in palpable purgative doses throughout the albums two-hour journey. Reveling in trepidatious rapture, The Seer celebrated life, death, chaos and fear as potently as in the Swans very best work. Through it all, the lunacy, lunacy, lunacy was overwhelming resonant. Craig Hayes
Swans
The Seer (Young God)
Amazon iTunes
4 Beach House
Bloom
Its presumptuous but not farfetched to predict that 2013 will be the year of Beach House. Just like the Arcade Fire two years agobest album Grammy, sold out world tours, deluxe album reissueBeach House seems poised for mainstream success. Bloom , the Baltimore duos fourth LP, sold more than 40,000 copies the first week it was released, and for good reason. The album has all the hallmarks of a pop masterpiece: simple arrangements, hummable melodies, universal lyrics and the right amount of edge to appeal to a range of musical tastes. Bloom s success can also be attributed to timing: the album came out just as a new wave of dream pop artists seemed to be reaching their height in popularity. At its core, Beach Houses music owes much to dream pop progenitors like Cocteau Twins and Mazzy Star, though without the noise and disaffection of those bands work.
Beach House
Bloom (Sub Pop)
Amazon iTunes
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The pretty, ethereal, slow-tempo songs that make up the bulk of Bloom , carried by Victoria Lagrands smoky voice, seem both evocative of the past and embracing of the future. Its a formula thats bound to earn Beach House new fans and even more acclaim in the days ahead. Michael Kabran
3 Fiona Apple
The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do
Fiona Apple has seemingly become the Terrence Malick of Pop. She takes bloody ages to do anything and when it arrives youre often initially baffled. Cryptic curios written in tongues and riddled with riddles. Beautiful, poetic but spiked with sadness and so reason. But what does it all mean and er, which way is up? So you The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the persevere. Days come, nights go, heads are scratched and slowly Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes this most curious thing starts to breathe, show its colours, reveal Will Ever Do its secrets. This Apple doesnt dilute for no one; you gotta get off (Epic) your fat ass and go up the mountain yourself to see these
Fiona Apple
meticulously engraved you know every teeny detail is carved for a
Amazon iTunes
wonders. Stripped of the fanciful studio trinkets of Extraordinary Machine, Idler ultimately cuts both ways and like its reassuringly unique creator proves simultaneously intimate, distant, childlike, ancient, funny, saddening, maddening, yet vibrantly life-affirming. Matt James
Folks, Apples Wheel is for the long road.
2 Japandroids
Celebration Rock
Japandroids grow up on Celebration Rock . While they have havent tempered their rambunctious, hot-and-bothered sound too muchif at allJapandroids point-of-view virtually matures over the course of its urgent sophomore effort. On Celebration Rock, the duo of singer/guitarist Brian King and drummer David Prowse proves that you can imbibe heedlessly like theres no tomorrow at the same time youre playing the house-party existentialist. So while loud, primal, excessive songs like The Nights of Wine and
Japandroids
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Celebration Rock (Polyvinyl)
Roses and Fires Highway give you the idea that Celebration Rock isnt just about hedonism, but an exercise in hedonism, theres something deeper to Japandroids vivid vignettes than just empties and hangovers. The album captures how present tense turns into the past before Japandroids very eyes, their carpe diem indulgences becoming memories in real-time as the
Amazon iTunes
yearning strains of Kings vocals tell their tall tales. Nowhere is the sense that Japandroids are running against timeand out of timeso poignant and bittersweet as on Younger Us, as King frantically howls, Gimme that you and me in a grave trust / Gimme younger us, as if hes desperately hanging on to something thats slipping from his grasp. Celebration Rock is a testament to living for the moment because Japandroids know those days are numbered. Arnold Pan
1 Frank Ocean
channel ORANGE
This is going to be a bad pun, and I certainly dont mean to make light of the situation, but Channel Orange was one big coming out party for Frank Ocean as an artist on a number of fronts. His announcement on Tumblr that he had unrequited feelings for another man just a week or so ahead of this albums release (which, in turn, was moved up a week from the date it was supposed to be releasedsay what you will if youre cynical) was an act of gravitas. As an African-American artist who openly expressed that he had same-sex leanings, he was a pioneer, a real trailblazer. Being black and working in the hip-hop industryone that is often well known for its expressions of homophobiaisnt easy, so that move to out himself alone would have crowned him Artist of the Year in most critics books. All of this, however, would obscure and overshadow the fact that the album itself was a brilliant amalgam of Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. From the soulful Thinkin Bout You to the piano vamps of Super Rich Kids to the grandeur of the 10-minute long centerpiece Pyramids, Channel Orange would have been an exception album by any artist, regardless of its makers sexual leanings. Its hard to listen to the record without thinking of the impact Oceans announcement that he was bisexual had on rocking a particular community of musicians, let alone listeners, which may be, in a sense, a tad bit unfortunate, but forget all that. Just get lost in the warm vibes of this R&B masterpiece, and let the music do the talking instead. Zachary Houle
Frank Ocean
channel ORANGE (Def Jam)
Amazon iTunes
PopMatters Picks: The Best Music of 2012

Introduction The Best Hopes to Break Out in 2013 The Artists Pick the Best of 2012, Part 3 The Artists Pick the Best of 2012, Part 2
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The Artists Pick the Best of 2012, Part 1 The Best Bluegrass of 2012 The 20 Best Re-Issues of 2012 The Best Americana of 2012 The Best R&B of 2012 The Best Music Books of 2012 Caution: Now Entering a Headphone Zone - The Year in Atmospheric Music The Best World Music of 2012 Ragnark: 2012 Gloomy Awards The Top 10 Pleasant Surprise Albums of 2012 The Most Disappointing Albums of 2012 The Best New Artists of 2012 The Best Pop Singles of 2012 The Best Noise-Rock of 2012 The Artists of the Year: 2012 Edition The Top 10 Overlooked Albums of 2012 The Best Jazz of 2012 Indie Love for Taylor Swifts Hipster-Baiting 'Red' The Best Hip-Hop of 2012 The Best Electronic Music of 2012 The 75 Best Albums of 2012 PopMatters Picks: The Best Songs of 2012 (streaming playlists) The Best Country Music of 2012 The Best Metal of 2012 The Best Indie-Pop of 2012 The Best Pop-Punk of 2012 The Best Progressive Rock (and Metal) of 2012 The Best Canadian Albums of 2012 The Best Indie Rock of 2012 The 75 Best Songs of 2012 Introduction: The Year in Music, 2012
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COMMENTS
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20 comments
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Community wildcorrective
Share
Pretty sure Bruce Springsteen, Dr. John, Rush, The Congos, Paul Weller, Iris Dement, et al. are all over 40 too. There tends to be more excitement around the young folks. I'd argue that the critical inclination towards fresh meat is one that's objectively correct as younger people tend to be less bound by the same limitations established artists have set for themselves by doing the same thing for 20 years, but there are notable exceptions (ie.-the probably too late for inclusion Scott Walker album) .
3 Allyn
Sad that On The Impossible Past, by The Menzingers, didn't even make the list. I actually learned about it from a glowing popmatters review. Out of the fifty albums I chose to rank for my favorites this year, it was #2 behind Japandroids. Also surprising First Aid Kit (my #3 of the year) wasn't on here. Other notable omissions that I thought were as good or better than most anything on the Popmatters list: Shins, Marty Stuart, Diiv, King Tuff, Dinosaur Jr., Dwight Yoakum, Neil Young, Lotus plaza, Frankie Rose, Echo Lake, The XX, Screaming Females, Alabama Shakes, Cat Power and Sharon Van Etten. Like most years, I'll probably find Popmatters' list of runners-up to be better as a whole than their actual Best-Of list.
1 popmatters
Mod
I personally love the Dwight Yoakam album and it's in my top 10, but not enough of the overall staff voted for it. We did select it as the #1 country album this year though. -- Sarah Zupko
1 willy 1 Stephen Underwood

muse's album was pretty awesome
I know I am old, but are Swans the only people over 40 who are allowed on the list? (David Byrne gets a pass by working with Annie Clark, I suppose). No Richard Hawley, St. Etienne, Aimee Mann, Rufus Wainwright, Magnetic Fields, Jens Lekman, Divine Fits, and no Crystal Castles? Yikes. You are on some pretty pitchforky ground here....
1 Maaaaanix
Not quite... Though there are a shocking amount of 'Best New Music' picks on this list, with Frank Ocean's bland exercise in hype and circumstance over substance taking the cake, but Pitchfork hated Pepe Deluxe, the Maccabees, and the Avett Brothers and has never reviewed Galactic, Taylor Swift, or Carolina Chocolate Drops, which were all in the PM Top 25 (and half the bands you mentioned received glowing reviews from P4K). There are a lot of major differences between the two.
1 Jirin
Not a bad list but I would have liked to see more risks toward the top. I generally use these lists to find standout albums that I missed. So when I see all the albums toward the top are ones I already know about and have an opinion about it's a bit of a let down. Good choices, though.
Colin Harris
Great list! I've got quite a few, but there are more I haven't heard so this is exactly
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PopMatters Picks: The Best Music of 2012