ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2012

my indie favorites were mostly on day 2 thx

big run of uneven records today

Surprised by this. Three great tracks but very patchy.

ilm is spinning off its axis

also love non-classical songs where a dude gets to sing a bass G

country-gospel quartets?

also doo-wop

Wondering whether Smalhans will crack the top 10...

hoping it will crack the top 1

Le1f album was my #1, love the mastering tbh. I voted for that and Neneh Chsrry (many xposts)

And Tame Impala placing I am done talking about my ballot until the top 10

And with Tame Impala etc

yesss, pleasantly surprised to see mungodelics place. it was a lot better than i thought it would be, i've come to really like every track.

People On Strong Stuff is the only one I ever skip.

this is another total lounge album that I am really, really digging

http://i.imgur.com/03AZy9q.png

28. IAMAMIWHOAMI Kin (430 Points, 13 Votes, 2 First Place Votes) Spotify

Was pleasantly surprised at the highness of this one. Sanpaku and Kitchen Person, should they show up sometime soon, will likely feel the same way.

Well, either the "sure-fire certainties" from my ballot are going to place incredibly high, or they weren't actually sure-fire certainties at all. I'm hoping the former.

this is an album I always think I'm going to enjoy more than I actually do when I play it

i refuse to listen to an artist with such a ridiculous name. to make things worse it is even in capitals.

um

Actually, it's in all lowercase. Just all caps here.

she was better when she was xtina

haha otm

Kin grew on me more than any other album in 2012. Ended up in my top 5 despite being really rather unimpressed by it initially.

From the name I assumed they must be some metal/indie act which has put me off checking them out.

listening to the voices from the lake that's on spotify -- the combination of artificial sounds and natural sounding sounds is pleasant. i like it -- there's a weird heartbeat effect that is making me kinda anxious though!

i can't really get into this; not sure why tbh

xxp Does have a touch of iLIKETRAINS, or w/e it was, about it. Excellent Swedish electro-pop though.

Is there a particula track to check out first?

r

I only have time to dip in and out of this during the rollout, but I just want to say that I am enjoying the grayscale debate as a sideshow to the poll. Discussions of thread aesthetics are one of the things that set ILM polls apart from the rest of the world.

I'd recommend "Play". xp

"Goods" would be another fine choice.

thx

Her best track so far (imo) came prior to the album. It is called ";John" (yes, with the semi-colon).

I like iamamiwhoami well enough, but I don't really get how this would place higher than Purity Ring, which is very similar, but better executed.

more people voted for it

lol

waaaaay too low for the chairlift and neneh cherry albums

what ended up being the deal with this shit? just some random woman?

Middling Swedish singer-songwriter. Not unknown but no profile to speak of outside of her home country.

wait was this the band/person with a series of mysterious youtube vids a year or 2 ago/

the grayscaling of the covers could be seen as a "democratic" gesture. now all albums look similar. even the coloured ones are black and white. before the black and white ones were set apart, now their aesthetic has "won" which actally destroyed their special appeal.

It's Jonna Lee. She'd released some albums under her own name of folkie/coffee shop pop before this. xps

And I'd largely given up hope. Yes, its opaque vaguely unsettling synthpop, but no, its not The Knife rip musically. This stuff has a lot of antecedents. The songs are melodically catchy (and more immediate there than The Knife) but stay well this side of saccharine.

Novel promo strategy where the albums (this is a followup to bounty, which will get a 2013 physical release) are conceived as audio-visual suites first, slowly rolled out over months of YT videos. But Kin's a grower even on earphones.

http://i.imgur.com/q5usjHC.png

27. SAINT ETIENNE Words & Music By Saint Etienne (434 Points, 12 Votes, 4 First Place Votes) Spotify

Saint Etienne fans don't fuck around. 1/3 of all votes cast were first place votes.

Hi there! 1 of 4.

I love Saint Etienne but I wasn't overwhelmed with what I heard from this. Maybe the whole meta-pop thing has got boring for me.

hadn't looked closely at it before, but that is a good album cover for playing name the artist