ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2012

i really don't buy that red is any weaker than taylor's previous albums. opening run of 10 is untouchable, take away the duets and there isn't actually a bad song.

"all too well" might be her masterpiece? like, every one of her favourite tricks and thematic obsessions put into one song to really devastating effect. love the chekhov's gun/taylor's scarf device. the lines "hey, you call me up again just to break me like a promise / so casually cruel in the name of being honest" and the way she full-on hollers them. apparently the full version is 10 minutes long and seriously this must get leaked at some point

"treacherous" is the other masterpiece but i can't find a non-pitchshifted youtube, suffice to say that the bridge (twice!!!) might be the most satisfying thing she's ever written, and it's the kind of song i can actually imagine miguel doing

the title track is the one that always gets stuck in my head

hoping for dawn > miguel > talabot > kendrick > some random surprise, and for grimes to miss the 77 altogether

the suspense is killing me!

jessie ware sucks. can't believe how much stuff i am familiar with this year. someday I will be on ur level ilm.

have said before I don't care for the Max Martin collabs, and except for "Starlight" and "Holy Ground" the second side is goop. That makes it a B+ or B record.

Miguel
Dawn
Kendrick
Grimes
Talabot

imo RED still has #deepalbumcuts that rival the ones on the others, it's just the singles have been really flat and not as electric as her previous ones

booo @ this placing higher than fearless did in its respective year

like I caned this album a lot cos I love t-swift but it's easily her weakest album imo, the highs are HIGH but it's super patchy

― prolego, Thursday, January 31, 2013 1:54 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean, lex. there are plenty of masterpieces here but there are mediocre songs that aren't the duets - I Almost Do is meh, Sad Beautiful Tragic, esp.

and I love the Max Martin tracks but they don't cohere. they feel like their own little EP?

i dunno. i suppose four meh tracks isn't that more than the two I don't love on Speak Now but RED doesn't really cohere to me in the same way. as much as i loved listening to it and listened to it ALOT it doesn't excite me as a 'work' the way Fearless and Speak Now did.

http://i.imgur.com/EeZV1X4.png

05. GRIMES Visions (1057 Points, 33 Votes, 1 First Place Vote) Spotify

¯(°_o)/¯

'treacherous', 'i knew you were trouble', 'all too well' and 'holy ground' are all maybe better than anything else she'd ever done (although then i think about 'fearless' and 'tim mcgraw' and omg too many amazing songggggs)

― uberweiss, Thursday, January 31, 2013 1:56 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i agree that these four are definitely in her pantheon of best song, tho

~braaap~

Grimes!

I'm in the odd situation of ADORING this album but not really loving the two or three songs that were universally acclaimed off it.

I Almost Do is meh, Sad Beautiful Tragic, esp.

i love these two

same here! xp to alex

like, the record really takes off for me around 'eight' and vowels/be a body/skin are the tentpoles of perfection.

"Skin" is probably my favourite track off Visions.

still upset that that be a body video never got a release lol. it look AMAZING. and 'skin' is my favourite hands down.

"Infinite Love Without Fulfillment" is possibly the most annoying way to open an album I can think of

aoty

the two vinyl only bonus tracks are p. great also?

'life after death' and 'ambrosia' which are on a totally resequenced 12" vinyl, but which i've slotted in before 'nightmusic' and 'symphonia ix' respectively.

I like the Grimes record. Not enough to vote for it. Curious to see what she comes up with next.

Ambrosia <3 <3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EacilOuwrHo

not in love with either of the two consensus grimes tracks, but adore the album - like oblivion and genesis just fine but aren't the best tracks by a wide margin.

personal favourites are Skin which is the one mostly comprehensible ballad and i have FEELINGS about it,

and Be a Body (侘寂) which was supposed to be a single and was going to have a video at some point but that never happened. anyway, this is the best 'dance'/upbeat number on visions

vowels is pretty great too.

― twinkin' and drinkin' and ready to fly (Alex in Montreal), Thursday, January 24, 2013 9:57 PM (1 week ago)

the only good thing to come out of "sad beautiful tragic bore" is it made me realise even more how "last kiss" is the greatest thing in the universe

Grimes wasn't in my top 10 but happy w/it placing, meant a lot to many friends + will be a good time-capsule for 2012 re: general intersection of certain strands of fashion/art/music/~internets~.

the grimes album falls off something serious in the last 1/3 but it's still a pretty dope record

definitely a time capsule of 2012, for better or worse

"Infinite Love Without Fulfillment" is possibly the most annoying way to open an album I can think of

― Ima R.A.E.D. (DJP), Thursday, January 31, 2013 11:11 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

although, honestly, the earlier two grimes records are pretty ace too and anyone who loved this should double back? more collage-y especially the first one Geidi Primes but that has 'avi' and 'Rosa' which are two of my favourite tracks by her.

Halfaxa is good also, although i never fell in love with it. 'Heartbeat' off the European release of that got a killer Laurel Halo mix.

and if you haven't heard 'Vanessa' from that split 'Darkbloom' EP from 2011, you should get on that.

kinda wonder how much damage "infinite..." did with to first-time listeners

i think the next grimes record might well be amazing but this was pretty scattered

"Phone Sex" song she did with Blood Diamonds was near the top of my other ballot. Can not get into anything off this album.

i remember "vanessa" came up in the ilm knife-like thread - that was the first time i'd heard of grimes. was a bit baffled and disappointed by it at the time. album confirmed that she's just terrible.

I'm currently up to "Oblivion" and my overwhelming reaction is "I would like to go out and shake some children"

the only good thing to come out of "sad beautiful tragic bore" is it made me realise even more how "last kiss" is the greatest thing in the universe

― prolego, Thursday, January 31, 2013 2:14 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is so true.

I love Taylor's heartbreak waltzes, but 'Last Kiss' is the epitome of them? 6:08 of perfectly paced sadness without recrimination and without ever making me bored. culminating in that plan for a change in the weather and time / but i never planned on you changing your mind bit? /ugh/

and the whole 'not much for dancing part' and so many many many tiny remembered details. Sad Beautiful Tragic takes all the specificity out of it, and so I have nothing at stake in the song. so it just ends up being LONG.

ilx poster "etc" describing the Grimes moment as:

an uncanny convergence of artschool twinks and Tumblr pagans

so otm imo

It will be very interesting who she lines up (if any) to produce/mix the next album. The main flaw I hear in Visions is the thinness and clunky presets of the backing tracks.

Jesus Christ "Eight" is terrible

this entire album feels like an exercise in "let's make an album that DJP would love on paper, but arrange and record it in the most repellant, off-putting manner possible"

xp she's spoken on that before, she's going to keep producing her stuff

I've moved past shaking kids and now want to uppercut puppies

i mean? it's entirely possible she'll line up someone else to produce or mix the next album, but the thinning and presets seem to be to be part of the point of the project at this point? maybe not tho.

it's more polished up than early on, but on record that's always been her deal to varying extents (maybe less so on halfaxa?). live the tunes tend to BANG a lot more and maybe that's the direction she is going/wants to go, but it's just as likely to my ears that this was totally intentional.

i think she's good at production if this record is any indication

i love "last kiss", but i don't really consider it among speak now's best tracks - not compared to say "enchanted" or "back to december". my favourite bits of "sad beautiful tragic" are the acres of space around the central twanging guitar - it's basically taylor doing mazzy star - and the middle eight, the sudden soft rush of all those words falling out of the song. "kiss me / try to fix it / could you just / try to listen / hang up / give up / for the life of us we can't get back..."

feel like the "sad beautiful tragic" vs "last kiss" comparison exemplifies one way in which red is a progression on her past work: she really knows how to work the sonics, and sometimes concentrates on them above the actual words, in a way she never used to

https://twitter.com/Grimezsz/status/242774596212883457

This is the result of what she could do with an outside producer: http://youtu.be/FxmCvdY4NZQ

Dunno why she balks at the idea, because this song is awesome.

Frank Ocean vs Badu comparisons upthread are eye goggingly fucked up

what I've learned today is that I think an electro version of Sleigh Bells is one of the worst things in the world

she hits a great high note on "Circumambient", to say something positive; kind of a shame about everything else

I'm glad for the rise of the EP again, the 'album' has always felt like a cludgy format to me

― 乒乓, Thursday, January 31, 2013 7:32 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah there's only like tens of thousands of great albums, p dud format in retrospect

frank ocean got robbed, really surprised it didn't place higher. i came around to that album late but in a big way

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

04. DAWN RICHARD Armor On (1174 Points, 31 Votes, 3 First Place Votes) Spotify

now this rules