Favorite Albums of 2012
It's that time of year when I strain to set down in list form my favorite albums from the past 12 months. Never an easy task, it's still one that I look forward to year after year. It falls right into my wheelhouse of loving order through lists and loving music.
Each year that passes, it seems to get more and more difficult to pare the list down to ten. At the same time, it gets more difficult to stay open to new and different music and artists. You hit your 30s and the tendency is to settle in for the long haul, disregard that which you don't immediately "get" or that you don't already know, and plow ahead into your 40s listening to the same soundtrack that carried you through your late teens/early 20s.
It's not easy. I still hold so much love for the bands I fell for back in my "prime" - The Wrens, The Mountain Goats, Apples in Stereo, The Thermals, Spoon, etc. - and they're all still putting out good music (The Wrens aside, obviously). It helps that 2012 was a good year for music. Plenty of artists hitting their stride and others coming back stronger than ever.
As I have the past few years, I declined to numerically rank these albums. They're my Top Ten for the year, but in what order I have no idea. I could give you general positions, like that Titus Andronicus is definitely near the top and so is Sera Cahoone. Cat Power and Japandroids are in the middle somewhere. Bobby Womack and Sharon Van Etten are in the bottom half, whatever that means.
As with any list, some didn't quite make the cut. For the sake of brevity, I'll point out three-
Justin Townes Earle, Nothing's Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now A wonderful record, but only as wonderful as his others. Nothing new, but still very nice.
Cotton Mather - Kontiki (Deluxe Edition) A reissue of a stunningly overlooked power pop gem from the late 90s.
Robert Glasper - Black Radio If this is where jazz is heading, I like it. I like it a lot.
And now, on to the list!
Titus Andronicus - Local Business
What can I say about this album? Since it's release, I think I've fallen in love with each and every track for at least a day or two each. I play them over and over and over again, absorbing every single riff, every single diatribe, and I still haven't gotten sick of any of them. (okay, maybe Food Fight)
Titus were already riding pretty high after one of my favorites of 2010, The Monitor. With a more stable, tighter lineup this time around, They sound better than ever. It's not that the burrs and rough edges weren't endearing and engrossing. The mood that was set on their first few albums provided some of the best moments. Local Business is Titus Andronicus taking care of business in a slightly more efficient and organized way. I've never heard such discontent with society and self expressed with such an exuberant musical backdrop.
If this is what the generation under mine has to say, both lyrically and musically, I'm all for it. Hell, I'll be waiting for the insurrection with open arms.
Don't call it a comeback. Okay…call it a comeback. Cat Power's first album of new material in six years is an uppercut that connects squarely and knocks you on your back. When we last heard Chan belt out her own tunes, it was with a pastiche of old soul. Now she's back with a much darker, electronic-driven sound that is less a reinvention than a revelation.
The opening track, Cherokee, sounds at once desperate and confident, and it sets the tone perfectly. This is a gritty album. Chan's songwriting comes at you from street-level, not from high above. Ruin is a whirlwind trip around the globe set to a wonderfully circular piano line that reinforces that we are, in fact, "sittin' on a ruin." 3,6,9 brings out the swagger that walked all over her last album, The Greatest, while grappling with addiction and sobriety. Sun is a testament to Chan Marshall's resilience and talent, and I for one am glad to have her back after hiatus.
Oh, and Manhattan is probably one of the most darkly beautiful songs about New York City ever written. Hell, I don't think I've ever heard Man-HAttan ever sound so sexy.
The Tallest Man on Earth - There’s No Leaving Now
You could always feel a hesitant distance in Kristian Matsson's music. It was enthralling and starkly beautiful, but always at arms length. There's No Leaving Now loses that distance, and, in the process, pulls the listener in. Lines like "I was more than just a coward / I was handsome, too / I felt nothing when your flood came down" from Revelation Blues just knock you back and make you chuckle at the same time. Each song is it's own little tale that you wish could go on forever.
The musical and lyrical expansion that this album over previous Tallest Man on Earth albums makes this both wholly new and entirely comforting. You can feel an artist much more comfortable and at-ease finally taking the time to stretch out and explore.
Japandroids - Celebration Rock
Anyone who has ever played or enjoyed watching any kind of sport (not golf or bowling) knows that one player or team who, once the match/game/whatever started, went 1000mph with seemingly no regard for their own body and with no apparent intention of saving any ounce of energy.
That's the Japandroids, whether you see them live or just sit down and put on one of their albums. They strap in and power straight ahead, giving it everything they've got, with no regard for the future. Celebration Rock is like a full-frontal assault with instruments and shouted choruses, and it's beautiful.
This is not just an album of glorious nights of partying and living life to it's fullest. It's the aural embodiment and expression of those things. It's a bar rock band reaching for arena rock heights, probably best exemplified by The House That Heaven Built - "when they love you and they will / tell them all they'll love in my shadow / and if they try to slow you down / tell them all to go to hell." Selfishly, I hope they never reach those heights. Seeing them in a cramped bar, shoulder to shoulder, the crowd and band one churning mass.
It's the kind of album that can make you, if only for eight songs, feel 22 and on top of the world again.
A big reason I liked Joe Pug's latest album - and all of his albums, really - is how much they remind me of where I grew up.
Pug often sounds like he's singing to his younger self. Especially with lines like - "they called you a dreamer / we were 17 / the years went by so fast / now they call you other things / all the answers that you're dreaming of / they say it's natural, but a grown man learns how to give them up" - from Silver Harps and Violins. Part of the fun of listening to artists your age is hearing them deal with the same problems you're facing. They just make them sound better.
Pug was a carpenter before he became a full-time musician, and the workmanlike pace of his songs shows it. They're solid and well-constructed and his backing band, guitarist Greg Touhey and bassist Chris Merrill, really shine live. The lyrics are the true substance and The Great Despiser, just like Pug's previous releases, delivers in spades.
This is not an album for a beautiful, sunny day. It's best listened to in gloom and grey. It's not a summer album, it's a winter and fall album. This isn't because it's unbearably depressing, though there is depression. There is also plenty of self-criticism and vivid portraits of relationships soured and chances taken. It's inward-looking and shoe top-gazing, but it also showcases Van Etten's poignant songwriting - filled with half-thoughts and implications - and powerfully vulnerable voice.
The production work done by The National's Aaron Dessner really shines on Tramp, as well. There are moments, like toward the end of Serpents where it echoes the indie wall of sound that The National employ almost too often, in my opinion. When it shows up here, it's tempered and well-timed, and it suits the rough silk of Van Etten's voice perfectly. This is exemplified in the sparseness of standouts like Kevin's and In Line. The pained wail at the end of In Line goes right to your bones and raises the hair on the back of your neck. Tramp is a album that stays with you long after it's over.
Bobby Womack - The Bravest Man in the Universe
The 2010s have seen a weird resurgence for elder statesmen of soul, with Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley showing everyone that, even after years of struggle and toil, there is redemption when you strike the right note. Womack, a former backup guitarist for Sam Cooke and the man who wrote the Rolling Stones hit "It's All Over Now," is just as due for some late-career recognition, and his boldly-titled album, The Bravest Man in the Universe, certainly merits it.
You can hear the roots of soul butting up against and actually mixing quite well with a more digital palette throughout this album. Having one of the artists behind the Gorrilaz (Damien Albarn) as a producer certainly helps. But the passion on this album is all in Womack's world-worn voice. It shines on the hit "Stupid" as well as on the bare-bones "Deep River." It's not busted and broken down, just well-worn. The years of experience and pain and hard work resound in every high note and every growling return.
Sugary electro-pop isn't usually my thing, but I picked this album up on a whim and barely put it down all summer. If you've turned on your TV in the past few months, you've likely heard the opening track, Take a Walk, shilling for Taco Bell. But the rest of this album has surprising depth. I've said before that Constant Conversations is the slow-jam of the year, and the on-going references to Angelakos' drinking problem keep such a high-flying album grounded in harsh reality.
The problem I have with many dance-pop is that there's nothing behind the over-saturated musical palette. Just repetitive, mindless lyrics. There is real story there, real pain, real heartbreak, real triumph. Things that are hard to fake. Just ask any of the legendary musicians who battled demons during their prime, then got rich and sober and struggled to find anything interesting to say about their new, fancy lives.
While I'm glad Angelakos is clean and sober, his pain certainly created a beautiful piece of art that brought enjoyment to many people. When I caught Passion Pit in concert back in September, I've never seen so many people just blissed-out and enjoying the moment. It's that sharing of relatable material that brings out the best in both artists and audience, and it's wonderful to hear.
There are many different ways to sound like America. I, personally, still think that Jeff Tweedy's voice sounds like America. But that's beside the point. My first (and really only) exposure to Dan Deacon was his 2007 track Crystal Cat. So when I queued up America, I expected more of the same frenetic, freakout mayhem that I liked on that track. Instead, what I got was a much more nuanced, less soullessly-paced album. There are certainly big sweaty dance numbers on America, like the opener Guilford Avenue Bridge, but even they hide a more intricate and delicate core that runs throughout the album. There is soul, not just passion and pomp, to this electronic maven.
Deacon has stated that this album is based on his love for cross-country travel, and you can feel that throughout. The lines on the highway pass by during True Thrush, overpasses briefly blot out the lazy sun during Prettyboy, and through the heavy industrial drive of USA: II, The Great American Desert you can feel the cornfields and rolling hills of flyover country analog past.
Sera Cahoone - Deer Creek Canyon
With a voice as dusty and lonesome as a backcountry road on a summer evening, Sera Cahoone has delivered an amazingly pitch-perfect and toe-tapping country album for the 21st century.
Deer Creek Canyon doesn't fall back onto glamor country tropes and stereotypes. It's just honest, lo-fi alt country at it's finest. The only shame is that we have to slap the "alt" tag in front of the "country" because it has zero associations to what is popular country. Like Dan Deacon's America does with the entire country - but in an entirely different manner, of course - this album sounds like a trip through the West and Midwest, and it's a glorious trip, at that.
It's a lonesome sounding album that still manages to have moments of levity and balance. There's a resignation, but a willing one, throughout Deer Creek Canyon, a kind of "this is the way things are, and it's not great, but it's what I have to work with" feel. Everyone knows that feel.