ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2012

Lovely as ever, but nothing on THM has latched on to my brainpan like "What's a Girl to Do" or "Daniel". Production here was perhaps too stripped down for its own good.

better than the album before but still not very compelling. except laura. she reminds me a little of tori amos. esp. on oh yeah. without the fairy queen aura.

Too low. Not as instantly engaging as Two Suns but a really rich, rewarding piece of work. Especially love Laura, Lilies, All Your Gold, Oh Yeah and Marilyn.

I never hear anyone talk about it, really, but "Oh Yeah" is my favorite track on this record

Yeah, that's a good one. I kind of hear an echo between the "oh yeah"s there and on the Chap's "Even Your Friend": http://youtu.be/frrO0y2pqZQ

three strong songs i that i can remember off the top of my head on the haunted man (marylin, laura, all your gold), but the rest was a bit mushy iirc

marilyn

she names all her best songs after people

'ronald reagan' was a p bad song tho

she reminds me a little of tori amos.

every time someone posts this about B4L it delays my giving her a real chance because i just go off and listen to tori for a while instead

If you guys want to look at the albums in color, I made an appendix imgur gallery. Only up to #51 so far. I'll do the rest after lunch:

http://imgur.com/a/HGHgu

I often have a problem with BfL albums where I don't immediately link songs to their titles but it was even more pronounced on this album; before the tracks poll I could have only told you the title of "Laura"

having said that, I really really love "Lillies", "Oh Yeah", "Horses of the Sun" and "All Your Gold" as well

damn a bunch of my faves hung up in the 40s

bfl was my #3, it's a fantastic record imo

There was a Purity Ring thread? Shrines was my number one. Love that shit to pieces apart from 'Grandloves', which had a hugely annoying guy singing one of the verses. Pretty much resigned to the fact that ppl are sorta indifferent to them now, but when I first heard 'Ungirthed' I thought OMG this is gonna be huuuuge.

i am now going to listen to "lillies" again and be completely baffled by the stripped-down production comments

BfL suffered by dint of coming in on the heels of a bunch of other albums that I was super obsessed with and I therefore didn't give it as much time as I did the previous two; however, I did give it enough time to put it on my ballot

haha "stripped-down production" won't make any sense unless you play that song right after "Glass"

yeah i mean two suns was maybe a little overstuffed in places, i'd call haunted man "more focused" w/out necessarily having less going on

they're both awesome albums, i guess i just feel w/e ppl were saying earlier about anco and dirty proj abt how haunted man was received

I heard a lot of records this year that sounded fine and diverting but not too many that had this much detail and substance and unfolded a bit more each time I played it. Not that I wouldn't have liked another pop song as good as Daniel.

the last song "deep sea diver" is pretty impressive, it has something haunted about it, some nice percussion on it.

"rest your head" is a major sleeper on the back half of the record, probably my 2nd fav track on it after "oh yeah".

4 more today?

http://i.imgur.com/G66aa92.png

44. BEAK> ">>" (332 Points, 13 Votes, 1 First Place Vote) Spotify

>> @ 44

@< @< @<

great album

yarg, this is great! wish i would have listened to it in 2012!

not really feeling it but >> >>>>> > imo

Updated: http://imgur.com/a/HGHgu

okay lol seriously? All of my deep obsessions from 2012 are showing up here!

one of my biggest outrages from the tracks poll was discovering at voting time that no one had nominated "Wulfstan II"

2 tracks in and loving >>

this was #6 on my ballot and probably could have gone higher depending on my mood

also given where it placed I sort of wish the album had been named $$

i was a little underwhelmed by this. on paper they make exactly the kind of music i love. but in real life they just do not seem to be able to be interesting for more than the first minute of a track. then they just push the repeat button. the subdued vocals don't really help.

i'm a big fan of repetition so i dig it.

oh hey this is cool. krautish.

read that as "krautfish"

http://i.imgur.com/6273W2Q.png

43. ARIEL PINK'S HAUNTED GRAFFITI Mature Themes (334 Points, 12 Votes) Spotify

i loved Before Today but could not get into this one on the same level, too much novelty and not enough sincerity

there is some truly woeful shit on that record ("schnitzel boogie") but its not as bad as people make it out to be.

I think I heard about 2 minutes of something off that Ariel Pink album once?

"farewell american primitive" and "only in my dreams" are two of the best songs hes ever done

or maybe the problem is just the goofier songs on this one are even goofier and the juxtaposition is just too much

Yeah, too much goofy/gross humour on this one for me but I loved 'Only in My Dreams' and a couple of other tracks.

Someone that I've enjoyed enough in the past but didn't really need to hear any more of, sorry old toots

okay hahaha I think it was actually two minutes into this first song before I tapped out, mostly because I was led to believe this was going to be OUT THERE music and when I heard a bland 60s pop pastiche with a dude chanting "WHO SUNK MY BATTLESHIP" I stopped playing it and thought to myself "some ppl need to get out more, or at least listen to that Farrah Abraham album before extolling this on quirkiness/weirdness grounds"

second track started out weirder but now it's a 60s Men Without Hats song, only totally unappealing

sounds quite interesting in the beginning but gets boring after a while. does not sound very commercial, is that the indie of the 2010s?

tracks 3 and 4 are the only ones i really like