ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2012

THERE WE GO.

i like this album but i also like JF's move to include some dude quotes

hahaha well i think there's unanimous agreement that including the some dude quotes was a great move

one thing i really love about channel orange is that there's a real dreamlike quality to it... it's a great album to just put on, lay down and close your eyes

it's sort of druggy in its own way

happy that jessie beat frank too. great album!

lol @ only four songs off of Jessie Ware being available in the US

I notice the weaker Ware tracks in a way I didn't even six weeks ago but, boy, the...wildest moments kill me.

one thing i really love about channel orange is that there's a real dreamlike quality to it... it's a great album to just put on, lay down and close your eyes

#vibesnotmoves #vibesnottunes #soboredofvibes

i don't really consider "an album to do nothing to" a great compliment; as an industry-wide aesthetic it's a fucking pox

Dawn will be top three I reckon, maybe even top two. The Goldenheart anticipation will have given her a voting bounce.

the problem w/ the jessie album is that all the best songs were released as singles

was "Night Light" a single?

oh yeah  – cool

i don't really consider "an album to do nothing to" a great compliment; as an industry-wide aesthetic it's a fucking pox

― lex pretend, Thursday, January 31, 2013 1:10 PM (23 seconds ago) Bookmark

or one way of looking at it would be that it's the ultimate complement

it's not about vibes... that word is so useless when you use it that way anyway

the problem w/ the jessie album is that all the best songs were released as singles

she released a ton of singles, like half the album, so while this is true it's not as damning as that would imply

and also, "swan song" and "taking in water" are non-single highlights

So many albums ITT fit Jordan's 'dreamlike' 'druggy' description. I actually find this type of thing a turnoff these days due to its sheer ubiquity.

"Album to do nothing to" is a great compliment, if it means it demands your full attention.

or one way of looking at it would be that it's the ultimate complement

nahhh but why do you think that?

::does nothing::

xp smdh if you think Bad Religion is insubstantial and uncompelling. I agree there are a few weaker tracks but it's the kind of album where it all flows together for me, like 70s Marvin Gaye, so that those weaker songs still feel like satisfying mood pieces. I oscillate between this and the Miguel album - KD is much tighter, song for song, but I'm often in the mood for this looser 70s feel.

Jessie's great - too low

You're not meant to do anything to a symphony.

"Album to do nothing to" is a great compliment, if it means it demands your full attention.

― Matt DC, Thursday, January 31, 2013 1:12 PM (22 seconds ago) Bookmark

Like the remixes I've heard more than the album.

I like 'vibes' FWIW

the other thing about Frank Ocean discourse that annoys me is that I don't think it is a nu-Marvin Gaye album; I think it's a nu-Maxwell album

re jessie i should've said that all the great songs were released as singles BEFORE the album

You're not meant to do anything to a symphony.

frank is not exactly on that level though - like if there was more going on, maybe i could understand & get with the idea of letting this album wash over you and sinking into it...but it's just not that kind of album. it's music to zone out to, not zone into. like, doing nothing with your brain as well as body.

i guess i like to zone out tho

which is why i often start the miguel album at "do you..."

I don't really think of the Ocean album as R&B.

xxxpost

kind of feel there's been an epidemic of zoning out (often zoning out to the internet, though prob not in frank's case). it's fucking boring, people who base their aesthetic on it are fucking boring, be off with you all.

it's a Jackson Browne record

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ef/San_Andreas_Fault_Aerial_View.gif/170px-San_Andreas_Fault_Aerial_View.gif

i'd take Late for the Sky over Channel Orange 365 days of the year

the other thing about 'devotion' -- and i think i'm in the minority here -- is that i think it goes too heavy on the bombast. songs like "no to love" and "night life" and "taking in water" are just way... louder than i want her to be most of the time. my favorite joints on there besides the singles are "devotion" and "something inside"... i wish she would've gone for more tracks like that (or "sweet talk"). but then again the one thing that really got me tripping off her was "110%"

I dunno it obviously means a lot to a lot of people who must be getting something out of it, and there's nothing to dislike even if I don't find much to enjoy either. I am basically cool with people loving Frank and genuinely happy that he is a Big Pop Thing.

to be fair "Super Rich Kids" is awesome and it's the track I still play.

xp Can't it be both? Maxwell is not entirely dissimilar to Marvin Gaye

I like the fact you can zone out in places but songs like Pyramids or Bad Religion aren't exactly hanging around in the background trying not to be noticed.

I'm the opposite to Jordan, I think Jessie does bombast way better than she does intimacy.

I like this distinction between zoning out and zoning in. It's kind of important. You can have ambient/spacey/trippy music that engages you and then there's stuff that just drones on in the background doing nothing but fill up silence.

doesn't zoning in just mean concentrating? I don't think channel orange is a zone out album, but agree w/ J0rdan that it is dreamlike

Jessie Ware is the Coldplay of Alt-R&B.

j/k

bombast and bigness are jessie's THING though - this is why the sade comparisons were so off-base, sade used her subtle drift to disguise the depth of her emotions but jessie uses her overt power to inject even the most relatively mundane scenario with HUGE feeling

"110%" is the exception that proves the rule - it's a bit of a stylistic exercise rather than anything representative of her, though she does pull it off

I'm the opposite to Jordan, I think Jessie does bombast way better than she does intimacy.

OTM. And she doesn't sound like Sade to me – I never got that comparison. She reminds me of Shara Nelson, some kind of post-Shirley Bassey belter.

Lex what do you do to Sandwell District or Voices From The Lake or other hangover techno if not zoning out?

the thing is that i'm with lex when it comes to ~vibes~ music or whatever because it can definitely be used as a crutch for not doing anything interesting... but there's also a way to incorporate the idea of ~vibes~ into your music as a way to strengthen your songwriting or the cohesion of the album. maxwell is actually the perfect example imo, but then again 'embrya' was a pretty divisive album.

shara nelson is pretty spot-on, as well as the more obvious annie lennox one she keeps talking about

http://i.imgur.com/CehGlx1.png

If a song and performance are powerful, it gives off "vibes" already, no?

if i'm not unconscious by the end of your record then it was a failure

Lex what do you do to Sandwell District or Voices From The Lake or other hangover techno if not zoning out?

VFTL is very much zoning in, albeit vacantly

maxwell could write a fucking song and also sing it incredibly