Filed under: 2012 Albums Of The Year
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01. Swans – The Seer (Young God)
02. The Singing Adams – Moves (Records Records Records)
03. Future Of The Left – The Plot Against Common Sense (Xtra Mile)
04. Shrag – Canines (Fortuna POP!)
05. Pye Corner Audio – Sleep Games (Ghost Box)
06. Jessica Bailiff – At The Down-Turned Jagged Rim Of The Sky (Kranky)
07. Chain & The Gang – In Cool Blood (K)
08. El-P – Cancer 4 Cure (Turnstile)
09. Raime – Quarter Turns Over A Living Line (Blackest Ever Black)
10. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! (Kranky)
11. UFOMammut – Oro – Opus Primum / Alter (Neurot)
12. Bridie Jackson & The Arbour – Bitter Lullabies
13. Cheek Mountain Thief – Cheek Mountain Thief (Full Time Hobby)
14. Neneh Cherry & The Thing – The Cherry Thing (Smalltown Supersound)
15. First Aid Kit – The Lion’s Roar (Wichita)
16. Dean Blunt & Inga Copeland – Black Is Beautiful (Hyperdub)
17. Iris Dement – Sings The Delta (Flariella)
18. Shackleton – Music For The Quiet Hour / The Drawbar Organ EPs (Woe To The Septic Heart)
19. Carter Tutti Void – Transverse (Mute)
20. Eccentronic Research Council – 1612 Underture (Finders Keepers)
21. The Horse Loom – The Horse Loom
22. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – Meat & Bone (Bronze Rat)
23. Four Tet – Pink (Sony Japan)
24. Dexys – One Day I’m Going To Soar (BMG)
25. Moon Duo – Circles (Souterrain Transmissions)
the other contenders:
Anais Mitchell – Young Man In America
Andy Stott – Luxury Problems
Bill Fay – Life Is People
Busy Signal – Reggae Music Again
Calexico – Algiers
Cat Power – Sun
Clinic – Free Reign
Death & Vanilla – Death & Vanilla
Demdike Stare – Elemental
Dirty Three – Towards The Low Sun
Dr John – Locked Down
Giant Giant Sand – Tucson
Hillfolk Noir – Radio Hour
Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs – Sunday Run Me Over
Holy Other – Held
Hurray For The Riff Raff – Look Out Mama
Jessica Bailiff – At The Down-Turned Jagged Rim Of The Sky
Johnny Dowd – No Regrets
Killer Mike – RAP Music
Laura Gibson – La Grande
Liars – WIXIW
Lower Dens – Nootropics
Melvins Lite – Freak Puke
Mogwai – A Wrenched Virile Lore
Murder By Death – Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon
Necro Deathmort – The Colonial Script
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis – Lawless OST
Orbital – Wonky
Oren Ambarchi – Audience Of One
Peaking Lights – Lucifer
Pelt – Effigy
Prince Fatty – Hollie Cook In Dub
Ricardo Villalobos – Dependent And Happy
Rob Heron & The Teapad Orchestra – Money Isn’t Everything
Ry Cooder – Election Special
Saint Etienne – Words & Music
Scott Walker – Bish Bosch
Sharon Van Etten – Tramp
Shit & Shine – Jream Baby Jream
Shonen Knife – Pop Tune
Stealing Sheep – Into The Diamond Sun
Terror Danjah – Dark Crawler
Thee Faction – Singing Down The Government
Trash Talk – 112
Two Bears – Be Strong
Typical Cats – 3
Unthanks & Brighouse & Rastrick Brass Band – Diversions 2
X-TG – Desertshort / Final Report
Yamantka – Sonic Titan
ZZ Top – La Futura
01. Swans – The Seer (Young God)
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I’ve got nothing. Go read the scores of other “album of the year” lists with this at number one. Or just fucking listen to it.
No Words / No Thoughts.
I’m not copping out, I just can’t do it
02. The Singing Adams – Moves (Records Records Records)
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In any other year, The Singing Adams might have made it to Album of The Year for the second year running. But you’ll see…
This is what I wrote a bit ago. Narc wordcounts mean I didn’t get to mention the Freebird tribute:
“At just 33 minutes of all killer, no filler excellence, the second album from The Singing Adams leaves you wanting more. Moves is stuffed with fresh and inventive songs that have a scrappy charm whilst actually being smart and intricate and beautifully put together. There are hints of country rock, a touch of Pulp, even some Beta Band on the title track. Steven Adams is still probably the best songwriter in the UK, applying caustic wit and sharp insight to the minutiae of relationships – blame, disappointment, guilt, the usual – while the band has a knack for taking a simple chorus and repeating it until it lodges in your brain. Moves is a late contender for any right thinking album of the year chart
5/5″
03. Future Of The Left – The Plot Against Common Sense (Xtra Mile)
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I wrote this back in June, for Narc magazine:
“You’ll get no objectivity from me when it comes to Future Of The Left, so thank god this is their best album yet (and a genuine album of the year contender). It roars out of the gate with the frantic single Sheena Is A T-Shirt Salesman and doesn’t let up for a second. FOTL are still very much a post-hardcore band – and thank fuck for that! – but there’s an ambition and invention here that most bands will never match. Alongside the brutal guitars and beefed up rhythm section, there’s shonky electronics, strange folky vocal passages, nods to the B52s and The Fall, and of course, Andy Falkous’ furious wit (Robocop 4 – Fuck Off Robocop for title of the year?). Practically perfect.
5/5″
Turns out, with hindsight, the album is even better than all that. Just blinding from start to finish
5/5
04 Shrag – Canines (Fortuna POP!)
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I have a fairly complicated relationship with ‘indie pop’ – most of it nauseates me, sets my teeth on edge, makes me angry. I learned in 2012 of a soi disant ‘indiepop community’ – can you imagine a more sexless, joyless, anaemic thing? I quite liked, I dunno, The Popguns, The Shop Assistants, Talulah Gosh. But that was 25 years ago, more even. There’s really no need for that sort of nonsense any more, at least not unless you’re going to do something AMAZING with the formula.
Thank fuck for Shrag then. Like Los Campesinos!, they’re pretty much indie pop but they’re smart, literate, funny, ambitious and complex. Take the first track on Canines (which is, I think, my most played album of 2012): that intro is more Crass than The Flatmates. Shrag have a way with the shoutalong chorus that makes me grin (something else they share with Los Campesinos!, come to think of it). There’s often a real edge to their lyrics too – not a shrug of mimsy resignation but a roar of anger. There’s not a duff track on Canines, which is rare enough these days, and some – Chasing Consummations, Devastating Bones, On The Spines Of Old Cathedrals, the title track – are just brilliant. It makes me laugh that they share a label with my indiepop bêtes noires Allo Darlin’ who represent everything that boils my piss about the aforementioned indie pop community.
Just fucking marvellous, frankly.
05. Pye Corner Audio – Sleep Games (Ghost Box)
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After a series of Bandcamp releases and mixes, it seemed inevitable that Pye Corner Audio would end up on Ghost Box, but in many ways his music is a complete departure. There are no public information film samples, no explicitly referenced nostalgias, the music is more fully formed and less fragmented – the tunes here are paramount whereas you get the feeling with most of the Ghost Box roster that the music is merely a vehicle for ideas. Sleep Games does share some common ground with the rest of the roster – a presumed fondness for Boards Of Canada particularly – but this album also hints at Coil, the Blade Runner soundtrack, and more contemporary electronic tropes (nods at chillwave, even). You can actually dance to this stuff. While its sonic palette might be largely that of an analogue fetishist, this is new and exciting and only a bit haunting.
Filed under: 2012 Albums Of The Year | Tags: Chain & The Gang, El-P, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Jessica Bailiff, Raime
10. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! (Kranky)
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Godspeed get on my tits. Massively. Pompous po-faced sulky teenager cunts. I saw them once, they pissed me off. They’ve taken that whole “we reject the star system and the media” so far they’ve become more inaccessible than Howard Hughes. They’ve nicked their moves off Swans, mostly, and couch their fairly formulaic music in the kind of shallow anti-corporate schtick that even the most naive anarkid would find gauche. They reject ‘entertainment’ while writing entertaining songs called Mladic, which depend on a faux-Balkan sound palette to even vaguely reference the piece’s namesake.
Unfortunately, they’re fucking great at big soaring postrock noises. Even while I’m gritting my teeth at their nonsense, my heart races as the tunes explode. This is a fucking incredible album, which has pissed me off even more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXdF9uhVrI0
09. Raime – Quarter Turns Over A Living Line (Blackest Ever Black)
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Claustrophobic, oppressive, Stygian, like a musical black hole sucking in light. And absolutely beautiful for all that. The disconnect between the essentially danceable DJ sets (ragga jungle, Cabaret Voltaire, bashment, that sort of caper) and their almost-danceable 12″s was one thing, this is a whole other ballgame. Barely any beats, live instruments, more than a hint of goth.
08. El-P – Cancer 4 Cure (Turnstile)
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I don’t keep up so much with hip hop these days and largely depend on a man like Adam for tip offs. He wised me up to a number of great hip hop albums this year – Killer Mike and Typical Three especially – but the El-P album would have got to me anyway, cos I love a lot of his old stuff. But even compared with some of his excellent past form, Cancer 4 Cure is way better than all that. Might be my favourite hip hop album of the last decade or more. Crunchy, abrasive, layered, in your face, funny, paranoid and angry and all the other things that make great hip hop great.
07. Chain & The Gang – In Cool Blood (K)
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On which the coolest man in rock’n'roll (since Lux passed, anyway) gets his own Poison Ivy (the Nancy to his Lee, the Kylie to his Nick) with the arrival of Katie Alice Greer, a new partner in crime to help him put the world to rights – socialism, freedom, sharp suits and the gospel yeh yeh sound! Greer’s voice (a kinda hipper Kathleen Hanna) gives Svenonius a perfect foil and adds a brilliant new dimension to the songs – and this album has SO many great songs. When I saw Svenonius front The Make Up at this year’s Ally Pally ATP, and pretty much win the weekend, I had an no idea that within weeks he’d release the flat out coolest album of the year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeYodvSK320
06. Jessica Bailiff – At The Down-Turned Jagged Rim Of The Sky (Kranky)
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Only got this album late in the year, which prompted some last minute list reshuffling (Dr John got dropped, I think). Once I’ve lived with this even longer, I’ll probably wish I’d made it top 5, it’s that wonderful. It’s the old dream pop noise MBV thing, but Bailiff does amazing things with the formula. Alongside the more indie pop moments, there are songs that nod at a kind of Wicker Man wyrdfolk, others that are unsettling, scary even. All wrapped in some of the best realised fuzzy warmth I’ve heard in years.
