Year-End Critics' Polls 2012

oh cool is this the thread where we brag about how much music we didn't listen to

I listened to a lot of music.

Likewise, including the two I mentioned above. I just didn't like them.

40 - Allah-Las: Allah-Las (who?)
39 - Mystery Jets: Radlands (what is this? sounds dumb)
38 - Best Coast: The Only Place (never heard of this)
37 - The Invisible: Rispah (REALLY Invisible if you ask me)
36 - Liars: WIXIW (they put out an album this year? LOL)
35 - Howler: America Give Up (Who-ler is more like it because i dont know WHO they are)
34 - David Byrne & St. Vincent: Love This Giant (Ok wau D Byrne is still alive? what?!)
33 - Animal Collective: Centipede Hz (Didnt these guys just put out an album?!)
32 - Beach House: Bloom (Am I thinking of Beach Fossils? WHAT?)
31 - Here We Go Magic: A Different Ship (Great DISAPPEARING ACT because i have never heard of you)
30 - Graham Coxon: A+E (Huh+What?)
29 - Poliça: Give You The Ghost (Is this Stings band idk)
28 - TOY: TOY (never heard)
27 - Chairlift: Something (more like nothing because you are nothing to me wanted yall 2 know)
26 - Bat For Lashes: The Haunted Man (Saw the pube on the cover and passed)
25 - Melody's Echo Chamber: Melody's Echo Chamber (Accidentally deleted from iTunes)
24 - Daughn Gibson: All Hell (Not on Spotify so #NEAUX1CURRRRR)
23 - Twin Shadow: Confess (is this rap i dont listen to rap)
22 - Dirty Projectors: Swing Lo Magellan (lost CD before I could play it fuck)
21 - The Cribs: In The Belly Of The Brazen Bull (British band, refuse to play on principle)
20 - King Tuff: King Tuff (King Nothing is more like it who are these bands is the The Wire's list hahah)
19 - Diiv: Oshin (megaupload down can any1 get this for me help)
18 - Pond: Beard Wives Denim (sounds dumb)
17 - The xx: Coexist (heard one of their songs in a commercial two years ago PASS)
16 - The Vaccines: The Vaccines Come Of Age (THIS IS STILL A BAND HOW IS THIS A THING IS THIS A THING)
15 - Purity Ring: Shrines (Thought I heard this but it was "Grimes")
14 - Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: Mature Themes (This came out in 2008 I thought. Wait)
13 - Grizzly Bear: Shields (My file was corrupted idk)
12 - Alt-J: An Awesome Wave (?????)
11 - Lana del Rey: Born To Die (People really like this huh? I had no idea. People?)
10 - Tame Impala: Lonerism (Wow. Tame Impala is still around huh. Wow.)
9 - The Maccabees: Given To The Wild (\O_o/)
8 - Kindness: World You Need A Change Of Mind (??????????? where do you people even find this music)
7 - Field Music: Plumb (wut)
6 - Django Django: Django Django (how do i even google this HELLO)
5 - Jessie Ware: Devotion (i dont like metal it's stupid)
4 - Cat Power: Sun (Did we even have a thread on this?)
3 - Frank Ocean: Channel Orange (dumb pop R&B crap, next)
2 - Grimes: Visions (thought i heard this but it was Sky Ferrari)
1 - Sharon Van Etten: Tramp (never heard of this)

lol

just occurred to me that 2/3rds of GAPDYX dropped albums this year

Listened to Grimes when it came out. Listening again now. It's still a mess.

If we're comparing the two - someone mentioned it up there - the Purity Ring is much better.

several of these bands, like "toy" and "goat", i don't even believe in their existence

25 - Melody's Echo Chamber: Melody's Echo Chamber (Accidentally deleted from iTunes)

i listened to this one the other day! it sounded like it might potentially be up my street and i wanted to show willing. it was extremely boring.

8 - Kindness: World You Need A Change Of Mind (??????????? where do you people even find this music)

i wish i lived in a world where kindness prompted extreme bafflement (his music is terrrrrrrrible)

cat power is kinda confusing cuz i like her and i thought that album was a mess, and i thought that was the consensus

xp I'm curious, what besides Graveyard do you consider of Witchcraft's kind that's better? Or do we have to wait for your list? ;)

Spiders, Horisont, and Troubled Horse.

seconded on Spiders which is gonna be top-10-of-everything-in-2012 for me. they probably need a better name. and fonts that aren't free to download

http://www.svartrecords.com/shoppe/1464-1595-large/spiders-flash-point-lp.jpg

band line-up of guitar, bass, drums, harley & the hairiest looking choirboys i have ever

Can we all make a pact not to be a bunch of old wankers about the EOY lists this year?

Last year felt so solidly classic to me, as if the big important albums were very prominently foregrounded in my mind, whereas 2012 seems a lot more disparate - little discoveries and delights from all over the place; Young Smoke, Goat, Swans, and probably Scott Walker will place but there's no year-defining album a la 'Let England Shake' or 'Diamond Mine' this year (for me at least).

What does GAPDYX stand for? I know who it signifies, just not what it spells.

Grizzly, Animal, Phoenix, Dirty, Yeahs + ?

the XX

Thought it must be that, but they seem strange bedfellows to the others, to me (as do Phoenix, but that may just be the fact that they & The xx aren#t Brooklynites).

That Poliça album is very likeable unless you are a grouch. Some of the Gayngs guys are involved but it's a whole lot tighter and denser and funkier than them, plus the vocals are great.

massive grouchiness about polica over here

Lol whiney

End of year list predictions: Lex will complain that the Uncut list doesn't contain any R&B and just one token hip hop album.

Poliça sounds interesting - I liked the Gayngs album on the whole.

Sicko, it was more the ubiquity of those five/six albums in the 2009 EOY polls more than any narrative or generic strand. They dominated that year, but sentiment among Ilxors was that these were not particularly new! fresh! exciting! albums on the whole and signalled a trend towards MOR-values for the year.

xp It's not going to blow your mind or anything, but it's solid enough. Dark Star is probably the best song on it: http://youtu.be/h6WgWCIkH9U

I like that Sharon Van Etten album, but it's funny to me to see it as anyone's top pick. Otoh, it may actually be the best thing on that particular list.

cat power is kinda confusing cuz i like her and i thought that album was a mess, and i thought that was the consensus

― #YOLO ONO (lex pretend), Thursday, November 22, 2012 3:35 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh it's fucking terrible but of course people like it

Spiders, Horisont, and Troubled Horse.

I definitely support them all as primo candidates. Troubled Horse place highest for me, but still not quite surpassing Graveyard & Witchcraft.

As much as I like the Goat album, for some reason it bugs me that so many seem to rate their album but aren't at all interested in the other Swedish stuff, I feel like just cuz they toss in some Afro rhythms.

I tried the Troubled Horse album the other day - more late '60s garage-rock than I prefer. Generally speaking, the more shamelessly a Swedish retro band is ripping off the first November album, the better I like them.

Did you hear Captain Crimson?

As much as I like the Goat album, for some reason it bugs me that so many seem to rate their album but aren't at all interested in the other Swedish stuff

And the same goes for metal fans who listen to Witchcraft, Goat should be up their alley too. That's why I raved about it on MSN's metal blog in August, even though it's not really a metal album per se. After much hemming and hawing, I left it off my metal list...like Swans I'll give it a special mention instead.

I don't really get this at all tbh, I have no problem w/ anyone repping the Goat album but there's like one hard rock song on it and the rest of it bears no meaningful resemblance to the other "Swedish stuff"

wow! people actually like purity ring more than grimes? purity ring is really boring to me. like a mushy blend of chillwave, witch house, and uk bass. to me it works as background noise and little else. the grimes album, though, has identity! "vision" if you will, yuk yuk. i think it at least deserves points for being legitimately polarizing.

what was the big problem with the cat power album? i liked it.

Fucking chillwave. I'm so fucking sick of this ongoing wishy washy "our vocals are shit so let's cover them up by smothering them in cheap reverb effects and just pretend we're really really into Heaven or Las Vegas" aesthetic. It was alright for a little bit, but jesus can it stop now?

DEATH TO REVERBCORE

Sort of feel this has been a weak year even by the low standards of the sort of indie that habitually fills these polls but there's not really anything filling the void other than weaker versions of similar stuff.

weak year for music in general or?

No, a weak year for that strain of indie.

I know there's a school of thought that says that no year is worse than any other, and there's always good stuff to be found, but I'm sure I found more killer albums last year.

there were definitely fewer albums this year that provided that social rush of loads of people rallying round something to praise it - i think in my top 30 or so, miguel is the only one that kinda qualifies. maybe jessie ware but even that has a "will this do" air to it. even my favourite indie-leaning albums seemed to only get people who were already fans talking - school of seven bells, neneh cherry, fiona apple, even leonard cohen.

which isn't to say that the music i did love wasn't as fantastic as it always is, it's just that too few bothered with my favourites because they didn't have massive ~news pegs~

i think in my top 30 or so, miguel is the only one that kinda qualifies

I'm assuming Kendrick Lamar misses out on your top 30 then?

oh i forgot about that, it's between 20-30 at the moment

xposts it's just so prevalent, as though things haven't moved on since halfway through the last decade - distant, indistinct vocals; gloopy "textures"; general feyness; superficial keening and yearning and an overall lack of presence. I just don't feel inspired in any way by this stuff - and yet I guess I class myself as an alternative/indie fan deep down, but when I hear Grizzly Bear or whoever, I can barely make it through a song without getting frustrated. And yet when Animal Collective decided to lay off the reverb for once, they released a shit album that doesn't even compare to their legions of soundalikes. So it's lose/lose I guess.

listening to animal collective at any time is def lose/lose

It certainly feels like there's less of a unilateral pushing of certain releases. The only thing I can think of really is Bish Bosch (which isn't out yet) and to a lesser extent The Seer, but that's only from my own, Quietus-influenced perspective. That said there've been some classic moments (great year for footwork's upward rise for example), and I really like the current flavour of leftfield pioneers from this and last year - Julia Holter, Neneh Cherry & The Thing, Julianna Barwick, Swans, Scott, Colin Stetson, ummm, can't think of too many off the top of my head from this year but it's all been great and very inspiring.

I've heard dance fans bemoan the state of the genre this year; that there doesn't seem to be a thing to rally around - loads of individual micro-scenes rather than the usual cause celebre. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing though. Dance music has come to operate so much around "now everyone listens to electro" "now everyone listens to minimal" "now it's dubstep" that maybe this breaking of generic barriers is sort of positive? I dunno.

I dunno in dance music this year the big thing has definitely been straight-up house music. The bobbins thread is a lot more slamming than in previous years, Hot Creations and Huxley and Maya Jane Coles are bleeding over into the garage interzone, throw jackin' in there as well and there's a definite 'story' there but not exactly a convenient rallying point.

there were several pretty great dance albums in 2012. andy stott, michael mayer, voices from the lake, lindstrøm, vatican shadow, smallpeople, blondes. dunno why people didn't rally round them, they certainly should have.

That Blondes album got a fair bit of buzz, in fairness. Obviously the Talabot one as well.