Hi everybody and welcome to the hMsM Best of 2012! We’ll cover the best albums of 2012 first, followed by songs, the Best of 2012 Playlist, and a few surprises. Stay tuned!
10. Jessie Ware – Devotion
Jessie Ware got her first big shot this year with a major label debut. Walking the thin line between bedroom electro pop and classic soul and R&B, Devotion is gorgeously composed without ever feeling showy or over-the-top. Ware is a confident but understated vocalist; even at her most vulnerable and pleading she still sings like she’s in the room with you, looking you right in the eyes. (Track Highlights: “Wildest Moments”, “110%”, “Night Lite”, “Something Inside”)
9. Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan
OK let me get this out of the way: I’ve felt for a long time that the Dirty Projectors define scenester trifle masquerading as art. That might sound rough and needlessly aggressive, but so does a lot of their music. I was not a fan of the critically adored Bitte Orca from a few years ago, and fully expected Swing Lo Magellan to be a masturbatory victory lap. It is not. For much of this record, you’d have no idea this is even Dirty Projectors. Taking a decidedly more organic approach, reigning in the constant chromaticism, and focusing more directly on songwriting, David Longstreth and company made a great — if not altogether consistent — record that would have been higher on this list if everything on it was as good as the first four tracks. (Track highlights: “Offspring are Blank”, “About to Die”, “Gun Has No Trigger”, “Swing Lo Magellan”)
8. Miike Snow – Happy to You
Miike Snow don’t get their props. Happy to You has a less all-over-the-place sound than its self-titled predecessor, and a slightly quieter feel, but that doesn’t mean it’s less ambitious. Looking around, there aren’t many bands doing what Miike Snow is doing right now, and even fewer doing it well. Happy to You, like Miike Snow, runs through a range of themes and emotions. But Happy to You cuts deeper on songs like “God Help This Divorce” and “Bavarian #1 (Say You Will)”. I saw these guys live a couple months back and their live show is a lot like their records: sleek, detached, and effortlessly powerful. (Track highlights: “Enter the Joker’s Lair”, “God Help This Divorce”, “Bavarian #1 (Say You Will)”, “Paddling Out”)
7. Kendrick Lamar – Good Kid, M.A.A.D. city
Kendrick Lamar: the Charles Dickens of Compton. His debut LP Good Kid, m.A.A.d. City is a packed record. When I first saw the front cover with its subheading “a short film by Kendrick Lamar”, I scoffed. But this record is cinematic in its storytelling in a way no other album was this year. Kedrick’s tales of hood survival run the gamut from scary (“m.A.A.d. City), to funny (“Swimming Pools (Drank)”), to heartbreaking (“Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst”). It’s the best hip hop album of the year, one that felt miles beyond anything else from 2012 (with all due respect to Killer Mike). (Track highlights: “The Art of Peer Pressure”, “m.A.A.d. City”, “Swimming Pools (Drank)”, “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst”)
6. Lord Huron – Lonesome Dreams
“Out there’s a land that time don’t command, wanna be the first to arrive”. Lonesome Dreams, the debut full length from Lord Huron is so confident and sincere in its execution of jangly rusticity it’s impossible to not take seriously. Well, maybe not impossible. This album’s detractors have bitched in earnest about how similar Lord Huron sounds to Fleet Foxes. There’s definitely a resemblance, but let me put it this way: Lonesome Dreams is the album I wish Fleet Foxes had made instead of Helplessness Blues. It’s a better record and one whose wayfaring spirit rings more genuine and heartfelt. (Track highlights: “Ends of the Earth”, “Ghost on the Shore”, “The Man Who Lives Forever”, “Lullabye”)
5. How to Dress Well – Total Loss
How to Dress Well is the project of Tom Krell, a graduate student originally from Colorado. Total Loss, his sophomore LP, slides out like smoky breath in the cold. To label this music simply as R&B would be to its discredit. Krell draws inspiration from classical minimalism, balearic pop, and post rock, and that’s just the first song. Things do get sexy though, particularly on the two song swing of “Running Back” and “& It Was U”. The former ends in half-note finger snaps that speed up and become the primary percussion in the latter in perhaps the best “oh no he didn’t” moment of the year. (Track highlights: “When I Was In Trouble”, “Running Back”, “& It Was U”, “How Many”)
4. Passion Pit – Gossamer
Being a famous musician is not easy for Michael Angelakos. On Passion Pit‘s debut Manners, Angelakos’ lyrics were opaque and shadowy, hinting at a sadness very real and personal. Rapid-cycling bipolar disorder and a lot of gin don’t usually mix, and Gossamer is a huge and vital album that is often very unsettling. When hMsM contributor William Roy wrote about this album earlier this year he described it as “the musical manifestation of rapid-cycling bipolar disorder; it’s as if he penned all of the lyrics while in depressive episodes and recorded the music while in manic states”. It’s this disguising of the ugly with the pretty — the sad with the happy –that makes Passion Pit unique among their peers. Pitchfork’s Larry Fitzmaurice wrote a troubling and enthralling piece about Angelakos earlier this year. In it the singer was quoted: “I’ve told people that I don’t see myself living very long. That really upsets them, but I’m just being honest.” In Gossamer‘s final song, “Where we Belong”, Angelakos recounts his first suicide attempt in which he slit his wrists in a bathtub. Then he thought better of it: “It was a really gruesome scene. I walked myself to the hospital and waited for four hours—my coat had blood seeping through it, and I was passing out on the floor. The hospital employees finally realized what was wrong with me and said, ‘Why didn’t you tell us what was happening?’ I didn’t tell them because I was embarrassed.” Gossamer is an immense and difficult record, one I sincerely hope is not the swan song of its creator. (Track highlights: “I’ll Be Alright”, “Cry Like a Ghost”, “Constant Conversations”, “It’s Not My Fault I’m Happy”(which contains the most beautiful one minute of music released this year at the start of the song))
3. Grizzly Bear – Shields
Ever have those albums that you really enjoy and know are excellent, but feel pretty much no personal connection with? For me, that was Veckatimist, the critically hailed 2010 release from Grizzly Bear. This band has always intimidated me; I’ve felt very little warmth and humanity in their sound, compelling as it may be. Until now, that is. I was expecting to appreciate this album in much the same way I did Veckatimist (a few tracks I’d return to, more I’d skip). But Shields is an album simultaneously more idiosyncratic and more accessible. It’s more immediate but less aggressive; a confident statement from a band sounding exactly the way it wants to sound. When I saw Grizzly Bear live a few months ago they played just about all of Shields, and I couldn’t have been happier. But seeing all these songs performed live just drove home how impossible it is for me to pick a favorite, and that drove home what a great album this is. (Track highlights: “Speak In Rounds”, “A Simple Answer”, “What’s Wrong”, “Sun in Your Eyes”)
2. Tame Impala – Lonerism
Mitch Hedberg once said that “alcoholism is a disease, but it’s the only disease you can get yelled at for having.” Lonerism, Tame Impala’s sophmore LP, conjures images of front man Kevin Parker surrounded by “friends” who are all yelling at him to do different things. But none of these things are good for his soul, so his only choice is isolation. And it’s not physical isolation, it’s a retreat into the self.
Lonerism sounds like no other record released this year. Its psychedelia is nostalgic without ever sounding dated, it deals with despair and dread without ever sounding sad, and it’s deep and elaborate without ever sounding over-complicated. Like Gossamer, Lonerism deals with the competition between self-reliance and the need for connection. In Kevin Parker’s case though, we’re left wondering which tendency will win out in the end. (Track highlights: “Apocalypse Dreams”, “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards”, “Music to Walk Home By”, “Elephant”)
1. Frank Ocean – Channel Orange
Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange is the best album of the year. In the absence of Ocean’s brave admission of his sexual orientation and all the ridiculousness that followed, Channel Orange would still be the best album of the year. There’s nothing ironic about this record. Its storytelling is the sort that demands engagement, but that’s all it’s asking; listen to the things Frank is saying and the way he’s saying them, the story will reveal itself.
It’s not a concept album, but Ocean deals with a few themes primarily: money, drugs, and love. Whether it’s the doomed narrator of “Super Rich Kids” (“sleeve rips off I slip and fall/ the market’s down like sixty stories/ and some don’t end the way they should”) or the protagonist of “Lost”, wrestling with his decision to smuggle drugs in the bra of the woman he loves (“I don’t really wish, I don’t wish the titties was yours/ Nor have I ever, have I ever let you get caught.”), or the secret admirer of one Forrest Gump (“I saw your game Forrest/ I was screamin’ “run 44!”/ But you kept running past the end zone/ Oh, where’d you go Forrest?”) this album covers a dizzying amount of thematic and emotional ground.
The best albums always show you just enough. Frank Ocean is willing to draw you in good and close so you can read the fine print, but it’s up to you to interpret it. None of his lyrics are particularly veiled or metaphorical, but they’re deep; depictions of the modern world in all its distressing complexity. In a recent interview with GQ, Ocean describes when he first got to L.A.: “I was looking at it like an athlete then—like I just wanted to be better than everybody else.” Whether or not he’ll be able to top Channel Orange, it’s abundantly clear that at this point Frank Ocean’s only competition is Frank Ocean. (Track highlights: “Sweet Life”, “Pilot Jones”, “Pyramids”, “Forrest Gump”, all of the rest)
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