Alright, here's my best of 2012 CD:
Spiritualized - Huh? (
Sweet Heart Sweet Light)
I'm not saying this little intro is a great song, or that
Sweet Heart Sweet Light is a great Spiritualized record (it's good, but not as good as his 1994-2001 streak). It still leads nicely into...
Regina Spektor - Firewood (
What We Saw From The Cheap Seats)
Hard times. Smash your instruments to keep warm and create new music. I fell in love with Regina Spektor back around
Soviet Kitsch and she's become a little more polished and a little more pop with every album since, but as long as she keeps doing songs like this I don't mind.
The Vaccines - Teenage Icon (
The Vaccines Come Of Age)
Pop music!
First Aid Kit - Emmylou (
The Lion's Roar)
Sure, it's shamelessly popculturally correct and seems almost designed to give Rolling Stone reviewers a hard-on, but who cares? The melody! The harmonies! The kind of seriousness you can only muster when you're a few years past 20! The very gall that two sisters from Sweden would attempt to lecture Americans on American music!
Django Django - Firewater (
Django Django)
When everyone else is ripping off
Led Zeppelin II, Django Django rip off
Led Zeppelin III. Acoustic, groovy, sneaky.
Neneh Cherry & The Thing - Cashback (
The Cherry Thing)
Comeback of the year. Don Cherry's stepdaughter teams up with a bunch of free jazz musicians and Sonic Youth hangarounds and records an album fusing punk, funk, hiphop and pure chaos.
Lee Ranaldo - Angles (
Between The Times And The Tide)
Farewell, Sonic Youth, and thanks for everything. Hello, solo careers.
Willis Earl Beal - Swing On Low (
Acousmatic Sorcery)
I have no idea what Willis Earl Beal thinks he's doing. He should probably be ashamed.
Bob Dylan - Scarlet Town (
Tempest)
In the weird biopic
I'm Not There there's a scene where an aging Dylan arrives at an old American town in the middle of nowhere, inhabited by characters from the songs he's written and covered, all those mythical modern fairytales and folk heroes from what Greil Marcus called the Invisible Republic. Thats' where he wrote "Scarlet Town", built it from the ghosts of songs he learned as a teenager, with 50 years of disillusion added. "Uncle Tom's still working for Uncle Bill" indeed.
Cat Power - Ruin (
Sun)
Almost 20 years ago, Chan Marshall debuted alone with a guitar and a tape recorder. In 2012 she released her most digital album yet, with synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers, and is doing it all herself again after a few years of working with a big band. She sang about travelling the world. She made the charts. She made critics' lists. Then she cancelled her tour and declared bankruptcy, because this is 2012 and you can't eat good reviews.
Mumford & Sons - I Will Wait (
Babel)
Some people will tell you that
Babel is the same album as their debut, that Mumford & Sons have a formula and stick to it, that their entire secret is good melodies, perfect harmonies, melodramatic lead vocals, and full speed ahead. And they'll say this as if it's a bad thing.
Ralph Stanley - White Light/White Heat (
Lawless Original Soundtrack)
Cover of the year: 85-year-old bluegrass hero covers the Velvet Underground. Because Nick Cave asked him.
Patti Smith - Banga (
Banga)
It's been a good year for the 65+ gang. Patti celebrated her (deservedly) acclaimed autobiography with the release of her best album in years. Lenny Kaye howls like a dog in the background. Like you wouldn't.
The Men - Open Your Heart (
Open Your Heart)
The reunited Electrelane didn't release any new material this year after all, but this'll do. And yes, I'm comparing a lesbian krautpunk band to a band who call themselves The Men. They have that same melodic pounding over a simple beat that seems to just go on and on and on and on without losing speed.
Anna von Hausswolff - Mountains Crave (
Ceremony)
On her debut, she played piano. That wasn't...
enough. So on her second album, she locked herself in a church and wrote an entire album about Death on a massive church organ. I'm pretty sure Ingmar Bergman and Nico were playing chess in the rectory the whole time.
Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball (
Wrecking Ball)
Springsteen's recent E Street Band albums have been dull, dull, dull. So this year he kept them as a live band and recorded with other people. And he was pissed off. And it showed. "And hard times come and hard times go and hard times come and hard times and go and hard times come and hard times and go and hard times come and hard times go and hard times come and hard times go... Take your best shot, lemme see what you got!"
Japandroids - Fire's Highway (
Celebration Rock)
Japandroids do a cover of "For The Love Of Ivy" that bugs me. I want to believe that they just discovered this thing called rock'n'roll and have no idea what they're doing, just banging on their guitars and yelling. And if they know enough to cover the Gun Club, that's just not possible. But **** it, this is rock'n'roll.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Walk Like A Giant (
Psychedelic Pill)
Crazy Horse haven't played together in 10 years. Neil hasn't made music sober since the 1960s. He just wrote a very frank autobiography where he talks of his friends dying, the fear of losing his mind to Alzheimer's, thinking he may have forgotten how to write songs... then he shakes it off, whistles a jaunty tune, straps on his 59-year-old Gibson Les Paul battleaxe, and four giants old enough to not know better trample everything in sight as they head off on new adventures. And the road goes ever on and on.
Spotify link
(Everything's somewhere on youtube as well)
