ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2012

scott should definitely do a "call me maybe" viral video

I completely adore the first track on this Blondes album

Scott needs to do panto this xmas.

carly should guest on the next converge album.

carly rae & scott walker should collabo

wouldn't be the first person on this list that he's collaborated with

okay yeah I am gonna be digging into this Blondes album later, good shit

scott walker was my #1.

SW singing 'Call Me Maybe' has to happen. Although having difficulty imagining CRJ singing 'This is my job/I don't come around and put out your red light where you work'.

nice one silverfish

DJP - I was gonna ask whether the Blondes alb went downhill from there but ok like me you were really bowled over by that first track.

i'm interested in hearing lex's opinion on Bish Bosch. you liked it a bit except for the jokey bits, IIRC?

I think the first track on Blondes is the best one too, but Wine is also good.

imo the first couple of tracks on the blondes album are, if anything, the least essential

xp i listened twice i think and maybe i just haven't been in the mood - even with the latter-day scott i genuinely love it's not like i listen to it regularly - but it didn't inspire the same forbidding sense of awe i was expecting, partly because of the *shudder* sense of humour

I like Tilt a lot, but don't really care for either this one or the previous one. And even so, I only listen to Tilt about once every other year.

DJP - I was gonna ask whether the Blondes alb went downhill from there but ok like me you were really bowled over by that first track.

I love love LOVE the thudding kick drum on "Hater", the second track

at some point I'm going to need to skip to the next album but I really don't want to

Y'all aren't ready for #15.

Dan you have to skip straight to 'Wine' before you move into the next album, that's the best track IMO.

farrah next?

Well, AG was ready I see.

http://i.imgur.com/1uOUkxo.png

15. FARRAH ABRAHAM My Teenage Dream Ended (652 Points, 21 Votes, 2 First Place Votes) Spotify

TOO LOW

too lol

TOO LOW

^^^

TOO ????

fitting that it comes directly after CRJ and SW though

why did none of the Blondes' stuff make it onto the tracks poll oh i wonder.

someone please explain this to me in 140 characters or less

fitting that it comes directly after CRJ and SW though

Yeah, this makes a boatload of sense.

Good job, ILM.

I liked this the two times I played it but haven't felt like going back to it. P much the same way I feel about the first Crystal Castles record.

all explanation in What do you think of MTV Teen Mom Farrah Abraham's first single?

suffice to say that i now love this album beyond the WTF/LOL reasons - i find it genuinely emotionally effective. pure artistic expression~

I like and voted for this record, but DJP was saying earlier something along the lines of "the people who liked it REALLY liked it", and I think I buck that trend somewhat. A couple of the songs really stand out (that keyboard melody on 'On My Own'! Amazing!) but equally some of them fall flat, and I don't think it's a mark of avant-genius or anything, but rather a nicely off-kilter slant on pop. Perhaps knowing nothing about the source means I don't quite appreciate it in the same way, I'm not sure.

someone please explain this to me in 140 characters or less

A wholly inept reality star pours her heart out into an album and comes across as massively unhinged and tragic

This was my #25, really liked the run of tracks towards the end.

Has anyone read the accompanying book?

also I think this is too low

btw if the first three tracks on the Blondes album are the least essential, this is the best fucking album of 2012 IMO

Farah Abraham as midpoint between CRJ and SW is kinda funny. I find this album obliquely fascinating in much the same way as Scott, and as directly fun as CRJ.

Blondes is three EPs back to back really and they got better at the refining their aesthetic as those EPs progressed.

So the line on Farah Abraham seems to be that she tried to make a pop album, but it came out sounding more like some kind of unhinged Crystal Castles instead. Are we sure she wasn't trying to sound like Crystal Castles?

Did we ever find out who's responsible for the production on this btw?

Actually I'm maybe being presumptuous in assuming it wasn't her.

"F.L.A are my initials, appeal to me." Has stayed with me for some reason.

i don't think it's fair to assume she tried to make a pop album - it was sold as the "soundtrack" to her autobiography, i don't think she was aiming to have any hits off it or whatever.

it sounds like she was pretty much using music as catharsis, with the sonic palette of pop but not the aim to be pop

the most interesting thing about FA album is just how inconceivable it is. I voted for it, but there are moments in there where it teeters so much between ineptitude that it comes out the other side as something approaching genius. and yes, once you start looking at the lyrics it starts to make some weird kind of sense. the only thing i can equate something like this with is something like the Shaggs.

ugh, sorry that was horribly written. just free-thinking here

i know nothing about Farrah Abraham, but the album title and cover lead me to believe that she's taking a step outside the usual parameters of how an album is made. that's pretty intriguing in itself.

I find the entire discourse around this record so offputting I've never actually listened to it. The very idea of it makes me feel slightly uncomfortable.

So the line on Farah Abraham seems to be that she tried to make a pop album, but it came out sounding more like some kind of unhinged Crystal Castles instead. Are we sure she wasn't trying to sound like Crystal Castles?

Not 100% sure, but this type of mangled output from a semi-straightforward endeavor is a direct metaphor of her life story as it has played out on Teen Mom, so it would not surprise me if it was an intentional artistic choice if it wasn't for the fact that her public persona plays out as someone incapable of intentionally making that type of artistic choice. Which makes the whole project more fascinating to me, because either story line is awesome and the end result is still endearing.

This reminds me of Neil Young's Trans, of all things.