Year-End Critics' Polls 2012

no prob :)

were you thinking of beach house throughout this post?

― Heterocyclic ring ring (LocalGarda), Friday, 7 December 2012 14:39 (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

i'd assumed he was just trying to create something more banal than your breakfast 'nana

haha

hey ship, not sure whether you're a dude who thought dashboard confessional was an elaborate joke or not, but the new further seems forever record seems in your emo/modern rock wheelhouse? it might end up in my list

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O35DonBT4vQ

some pensive scarf-wearing in the video

Rolling Stone's Top 50 Albums of 2012

50 Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan
49 Amadou And Mariam - Folila
48 The Smashing Pumpkins - Oceania
47 Todd Snider - Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables
46 Muse - The 2nd Law
45 Rick Ross - Rich Forever
44 Garbage - Not Your Kind of People
43 fun. - Some Nights
42 Allo Darlin' - Europe
41 The Avett Brothers - The Carpenter
40 Escort - Escort
39 Passion Pit - Gossamer
38 Titus Andronicus - Local Business
37 Justin Townes Earle - Nothing's Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now
36 Bobby Womack - The Bravest Man in the Universe
35 Grizzly Bear - Shields
34 Alabama Shakes - Boys & Girls
33 Grimes - Visions
32 Hospitality - Hospitality
31 Taylor Swift - Red
30 Azealia Banks - 1991
29 Dave Matthews Band - Away From the World
28 Beach House - Bloom
27 Gary Clark Jr. - Blak and Blu
26 Django Django - Django Django
25 Donald Fagen - Sunken Condos
24 G.O.O.D. Music - Cruel Summer
23 Divine Fits - A Thing Called Divine Fits
22 Bonnie Raitt - Slipstream
21 Cloud Nothings - Attack on Memory
20 Killer Mike - R.A.P. Music
19 Band Of Horses - Mirage Rock
18 Nas - Life is Good
17 John Mayer - Born and Raised
16 Cat Power - Sun
15 Dr. John - Locked Down
14 Best Coast - The Only Place
13 Leonard Cohen - Old Ideas
12 Jimmy Cliff - Rebirth
11 Mumford & Sons - Babel
10 Neil Young and Crazy Horse - Psychedelic Pill
09 Japandroids - Celebration Rock
08 Green Day - !Uno!
07 Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros - Here
06 Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d city
05 Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel...
04 Bob Dylan - Tempest
03 Jack White - Blunderbuss
02 Frank Ocean - Channel Orange
01 Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball

Funny that it took RS to remind me there was a new Amadou & Mariam album. However as compelled I am to check out way too many albums I hadn't heard yet than is probably good for me, I don't think I'm motivated to subject myself to the John Mayer, DMB and Donald Fagen.

Finally heard Solange's True EP and was slightly disappointed. It's pretty good, but too samey mid-tempo groove. The Orchid Heretic EP, however, f-yeah! Having a tough time with Laurel Halo's voice so far but haven't finished it. What do you all think the Wire staff liked about it so much?

I for one tune out the moment I see Mumford on any of these lists.

Drowned in Sound
http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4145840-drowned-in-sounds-favourite-albums-of-2012--5-1

=1) Blondes - Blondes
=1) Chromatics - Kill for Love
=1) Liars - WIXIW
=1) Swans - The Seer
=1) Sharon Van Etten - Tramp
6) Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel Is Wiser ...
7) Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
8) School of Seven Bells - Ghostory
9) Aesop - Rock Skelethon
10) Julia Holter - Ekstasis
11) Frank - Ocean Channel Orange
12) Chairlift - Something
13) Twilight - Sad No One Will Ever Know
14) Polica - Give You the Ghost
15) Perfume Genius - Put Your Back In 2 It
16) Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d City
17) Jessie Ware - Devotion
18) Killer Mike RAP - Music
19) LHF - Keepers Of the Light
20) FOE - Bad Dream Hotline
21) Twin Shadow - Confess
22) Motion Sickness of Time Travel - Motion Sickness of Time Travel
23) Django - Django Django Django
24) Cat - Power Sun
25) Deftones - Koi No Yokan
26) Yppah - Eighty One
27) Errors - Have Some Faith in Magic
28) John Talabot - Fin
29) Melody’s Echo Chamber - Melody’s Echo Chamber
30) Cloud Nothings - Attack On Memory
31) Efterklang - Pirimada
32) Actress - R.I.P.
33) Metric - Synthetica
34) The Lost Rivers - Sin & Lostness
35) Crystal Castles - iii
36) Field Music - Plumb
37) Grimes - Visions
38) LV - Sebenza
39) Blood Red Shoes - In Time To Voices
40) Lana Del Rey - Born to Die
41) Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan
42) Japandroids - Celebration Rock
43) The Maccabees - Given to the Wild
44) Grizzly - Bear Shields
45) Muse - The 2nd Law
46) Scott Walker - Bish Bosch
47) Yeasayer - Fragrant World
48) Echo Lake - Wild Peace
49) How to Dress Well - Total Loss
50) Bloc Party - Four
51) Shearwater - Animal Joy
52) And You Will Know Us By The Trail of The Dead Lost Songs
53) Earth - Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II
54) Sigur Ros - Valtari
55) Death - Grips The Money Store
56) Andrew Bird - Break It Yourself
57) Bat for Lashes - The Haunted Man
58) Tindersticks - The Something Rain
59) Eight and a Half - Eight and a Half
60) Leonard Cohen - Old
61) The Cribs - In the Belly of the Brazen Bull
62) Future of the Left - The Plot Against Common Sense
63) Purity Ring - Shrines
64) The xx - Coexist
65) First Aid Kit - The Lions’s Roar
66) The Shins - Port of Morrow
67) Orbital - Wonky
68) Neil Young - Psychedelic Pill
69) Tame Impala - Lonerism
70) Stumbleine - Spiderwebbed
71) Exitmusic - Passage
72) Diiv - Oshin
73) El-P _ Cancer 4 Cure
74) Richard Hawley - Standing at the Sky's Edge
75) Lower Dens - Nootropics
76) Halls - Ark
77) Dirty Three - Toward the Low Sun
78) Magnetic Fields - Love at the Bottom of the Sea
79) Nils Frahm - Screws
80) The Walkmen - Heaven
81) BATS - The Sleep of Reason
82) Flying Lotus - Until The Quiet Comes
83) Ghosting Season - The Very Last of the Saints
84) dEUS - Following Sea Guide
85) Dan Deacon - America
86) Darren Hayman and the Long Parliament - The Violence
87) why? - Sod the Seed
88) Lee Ronaldo - Between The Times and the Tide
89) Passion Pit - - Gossamer
90) Beach House Bloom
91) I Like Trains - The Shallows
92) Anais Mitchell - Young Man in America
93) Spiritualized - Sweet Heart, Sweet Light
94) Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball
95) Alt-J - An Awesome Wave
96) John Cale - Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood
97) CFCF - Exercises
98) Hot Chip - In Our Heads
99) Hey - Sholay ((o))
100) Cursive - I Am Gemini

Appropriate that that sad Cursive album finally made a list, in the saddest way possible

Did anyone bother to check out the dEUS album?

Oh god, I have only just got the terrible Diiv - Oshin pun

it's funny, The Ugly Organ was close to being the best album of 2002 or 2003 or whenever it was released. it's a shame they've hung around and turned into such a useless band

I still think they have some creative life in them—Mama I'm Swollen was great—but by nature what they do is hit-or-miss, and Gemini was one nasty miss

Good for DiS for ranking why's "sod in the seed" ep and not the album proper.

Wire Modern Composition A-Z

William Berger/Iain Burnside - Insomnia
John Bishoff - Audio Combine
Philip Blackburn - Ghostly Palms
John Cage - Etudes Australes
John Cage - Sonatas & Interludes
Edison Denisov - Au Plus Haut Des Cieux
Barbara Monk Feldman - The Northern Shore
Michael Finnisy - Second & Third Quartets
Hans Werner Henze - In Lieblicher Blaue
Annea Lockwood - In Our Name
Anthony Pateras - Collected Works 2002-2012
Katharina Rosenberger - Texturen
Skogen - Ist Gefallen In Den Schnee
Frances White - In The Library Of Dreams
Joanna Wozny - As In A Mirror, Darkly

― Albert Crampus (NickB), Thursday, 6 December 2012 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Appreciated Nick - checking out an interview with Rosenberger

Finnissy and a rec of Etude Australes (arguably the last great piece of his) are obvious highlights.

That Ariel Pink record's cover would make more sense (and be 10,000x more awesome) if it was called Ku Klux Clam.

points off for not being "Klam"

The KKK took my baby's vajayjay...

Klan Slam (thank you ma'am)

hey ship, not sure whether you're a dude who thought dashboard confessional was an elaborate joke or not, but the new further seems forever record seems in your emo/modern rock wheelhouse? it might end up in my list

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Friday, December 7, 2012 10:30 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha yes dashboard stigma may be too much for me

Dummy's 20 best songs:

20. CFCF – Exercise 5 (September)
19. DELS – You Live In My Head
18. Girl Unit – Ensemble
17. Angel Haze – Cleaning Out My Closet
16. TNGHT – Higher Ground
15. Holy Other – Held
14. Disclosure – Latch (feat. Sam Smith)
13. Darkstar – Timeaway
12. d’Eon – Al-Qiyamah
11. Mykki Blanco – Wavvy
10. Evian Christ – MYD
9. Main Attrakionz – Love is Life
8. Kendrick Lamar feat. Gunplay – Cartoons and Cereal
7. Jai Paul – Jasmine
6. Jessie Ware – 110%
5. Kwes – Bashful
4. Kanye West feat. Big Sean and Jay Z – Clique
3. The xx – Fiction
2. Dean Blunt feat. Inga Copeland – The Narcissist
1. Usher – Climax

dying at this writeup from al's blog, part about "stop trippin, you can't control that freak" otm

3. Trey Songz f/ T.I. - "2 Reasons"
#7 R&B Hip-Hop Songs, #43 Hot 100
This year one of my favorite pet obsessions was to track the growing number of clappers on on urban radio, mostly because it'd been kind of an otherwise unremarked-upon phenomenon, but also because no one producer owned the sound, and pretty much every one that tackled it had their own take. And my favorite in 2012 was definitely "2 Reasons," which is just a fucking killer beat with all these squeaky turnarounds in the synth and an utterly ridiculous kick drum. I've always been kinda hot and cold on Trey Songz, but he's reliable with club bangers, and this one-ups "Bottoms Up" and even my beloved "Say Aah": "stop trippin', you can't control that freak" may be the single greatest vocal moment of his career. And unlike pretty much every other song on this list with a guest rapper, T.I.'s verse actually adds to the song. If the ignorant chorus bothers you, it's always easy to come up with replacement lyrics; my personal favorite is "I ONLY CAME HERE FOR 2 REASONS: DEEEEEEZ NUTZ!"

"stop trippin', you can't control that freak" may be the single greatest vocal moment of his career

yes

the way the drums knock on that part of the song is so sick too

I'm always distracted by T.I.'s hipster R&B outfit in the video clip.

"stop trippin', you can't control that freak" may be the single greatest vocal moment of his career

yes

― teledyldonix, Saturday, December 8, 2012 8:40 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the way the drums knock on that part of the song is so sick too

― some dude, Saturday, December 8, 2012 12:03 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

i kind of resented my first exposure to songz' 2012 material being in album form, he's such a singles artist but you can't help resent him a bit when you have to listen to 18 tracks or however many for work

Man that Dummy list is weird, not at all what I'd expect from them. It's a poll with a very small sample size though, sure to be somewhat random.

I had to stop riding for Songz as an album artist when he put out an album I could not get through this year. Ah well.

kalenna, elle varner, jade alston, keyshia cole, nikkiya, lyrica anderson, estelle, nina sky, even (relatively) dawn richard <= little to no buzz this year even though they made music that was as good or better than ocean, weeknd, miguel, jeremih

― #YOLO ONO (lex pretend), Thursday, December 6, 2012 12:05 PM (2 days ago)

wtf at putting miguel in the second camp

kalenna, elle varner, jade alston, keyshia cole, nikkiya, lyrica anderson, estelle, nina sky, even (relatively) dawn richard <= little to no buzz this year even though they made music that was as good or better than ocean, weeknd, miguel, jeremih

― #YOLO ONO (lex pretend), Thursday, December 6, 2012 12:05 PM (2 days ago)

a, bunch, of, artists, i, personally, like, a, great, deal <= better than a bunch of things most people seem to talk about

How is this not the plight of any person ever who actually digs a little deeper for music instead of just listening to the radio and buying, maybe, 6 cds a year?

http://i.imgur.com/DJGup.gif

i didn't buy any CDs this year

miguel makes perfect sense in the 2nd group. xp

i didn't buy any CDs this year

Well yeah, now the tables have turned and most of the people who still buy ANY cds are the ones not paying attention. Not so long ago, it was the 6 cds people vs. the 150 cds people. Now it's the 6 cds people vs. the 4000 mp3 albums people.

My baby's ill at the moment and I'm mega tired. I read this entire thread mistaking Cody Chesnutt for Vic Chesnutt, which was confusing on about ten different levels. I was like, I just don't understand anything any more. Why is he hipster R&B, the rules for this stuff are off the grid...

Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone, etc.

i have no prob with Miguel becoming a critical darling this year because he had literally the biggest (and imo best) R&B single of 2011 and critics fucking slept on him then, "Sure Thing" was #77 on Pazz & Jop. if it took him doing that 2 years in a row for critics to notice, good for them, better late than never!

Yeah Miguel totally feels like a mainstream artist that indie types have cottoned onto rather than a dude who started with an indier fanbase and took that into the mainstream as The Weeknd/Frank Ocean did.

I'm having trouble placing the dude who made 'Birthday Sex' in any hipster darling's equation as well.

That would've baffled me, too, had I not read this:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/jeremih-late-nights-frank-ocean-weeknd-birthday-sex/Content?oid=7249509

the Jeremih mixtape is very good but i have no idea how it's 'ambitious' -- it's a mixtape that sounds like a mixtape, has some good producers/rappers of the moment.

yeah i mean i love it but i wouldn't call it ambitious in any way and truly i don't see any connection between frank ocean & the weeknd beyond "a mixtape" and it's not like the weeknd and frank ocean were the first ever r&b singers to release mixtapes. there is one song that sounds like the weeknd but that's it.

basically my least favorite critical stance is "i'm going to force together three records i like by imagining the artistic shortcomings of all the other equally similar/worthy records i haven't listened to"

that piece reminded me to listen to that mixtape after everyone on ILM was trashing it but it definitely was really straining for something that isn't there

listened to it a fair bit more since the big skirmish the other week, remains fine enough with the exception of 'feel the bass' which i'm surer than ever is up there among the best r&b cuts of the year

it's a decent mixtape i listened to it a bit. gucci's vere on 'outta control' i love and i regularly catch myself singing 'fuck you all the time' while doing the groceries. not as good as the albums but whatevs it's free music.

"doing" the groceries? gross, gudda gudda

are you guys talking about 2 different jeremih mixtapes?

'late nights'

oh you mean the piece was straining for something that isn't there nm

Pop Matters' The 75 Best Albums of 2012
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/tools/full/166270