This year my listening habits were dominated by Spotify, which I fell hard for in late 2011 (and which I don't feel great about -- I'm aware of the ramifications of listeners like me using streaming services that pay pitifully low royalties to artist, and want to go back to buying my favorite music someday when I'm not horribly poor, but for now this is an imperfect but legal compromise). And one pretty direct result of living in the cloud, streaming most of the music I listened to this year from Spotify as well as sites like Bandcamp and DatPiff, is that I heard a lot more full-lengths than in most years previous. The flipside of that, of course, is that I listened to each of those albums, even my favorites, less than I would've in other years. I've never been a big repeat listener, though -- I've kind of taught my brain to savor and remember things from individual listens because I don't really like hearing a record more than once in the space of a week, whereas a lot of music listeners I know will play a new and/or beloved record several times a day, which I generally hate to do unless under a tight deadline.
The long and short of it is that I've been doing a top 50 for a few years that often functions as a kind of 'yearbook' of the majority of what I listened to, ranked from best to worst. This year, I heard so much that it was easy to come up with 50 I feel pretty strongly about and cut everything I didn't actually like or had serious reservations about. It was also the first year I decided to include Baltimore artists in my main list of top albums. Around this time last year I had a conversation with a Baltimore label owner about why I didn't do that, and I stand by the reasons I had then, but it made sense to change up this year. I've always submitted separate 'local' and 'national' lists for the Baltimore City Paper's Ton Ten issue. But since this year I started a band and started collaborating and playing shows with local bands, and some of my favorite Baltimore records were by those collaborators or made at the same studio I record at, there was stuff I omitted from my City Paper lists because of conflicts of interest, and so it only makes sense to at least talk about them here.
I also made a Spotify playlist of one of my favorite tracks from each of these releases (or, rather, the 42 of them that had tracks on Spotify):
1. Miguel - Kaleidoscope Dream
A year ago, Miguel was quickly becoming one of my favorite new
artists in R&B with "Sure Thing" and the other songs from his
sleeper hit 2010 debut, while the new critical narrative forming around the
genre focused on a couple of guys who didn't have hits like Miguel and, more
important to me, couldn't fucking sing like Miguel. He continued to rule 2012 R&B radio, while that narrative
continued to congeal into a big ugly Jell-O mold of received wisdom and
clueless generalizations, made more complicated by the fact that those other
cats started making radio hits, and Miguel finally got overdue props from
critics. R&B was exciting and yielded some great albums this year, but that
was true last year, and the year before, and the year before that, and so on.
Still, better late than never, because Miguel was in the fucking zone this
year, first creeping in with those Art Dealer Chic EPs that,
honestly, would've added up to one of my favorite albums of the year by
themselves if this album hadn't poached most of its best jams (and let me be clear, I am repping for the Target deluxe edition which also inclues "...All" and "Gravity"). But then the
full single version of "Adorn" destroyed everything in its path, and
the album actually managed to live up to that lofty standard by sounding
completely different and dizzyingly varied. The gleaming stadium rock guitars
of "Use Me" and "The Thrill," the popping breakbeats of
"Where's The Fun In Forever" and "Kaleidoscope Dream," the
absolutely bananas stuttering reggae of "Do You," I'm just staggered
by the way this guy is able to draw in all these sounds and make them all sound compatible with his voice.
2. Dead Sara - Dead Sara
It feels like the number of straight-up rock bands, who are
neither so indie that all the rock has been drained out of what they do, or so
metal that heaviness for heaviness’ sake has taken precedent over things like
songs and hooks, have taken up a smaller and smaller piece of the pie over the
years, both commercially and critically. Of course, those bands still exist,
there just aren’t many worth trying to buck that trend to champion, and in 2012
Dead Sara was the most exciting one to me. Not much on their self-titled debut
rocks as hard as the killer single “Weatherman,” but then neither did much else
by other bands. And the album surrounding that song is surprisingly well rounded,
with the band’s formidable wind-tunnel dynamics blasting off even behind some
fairly tender, midtempo stuff without ever turning into a corporate rock power
ballad mush.
3. Future - Pluto
A year ago, I never would’ve guessed that Future would make one of
my favorite albums of 2012 – “Racks” seemed like a derivative fluke hit (which
it was, but has grown on me nonetheless) and “Tony Montana” was just lousy (and
it’s still the worst song on this album). But the singles and mixtape that
followed early in 2012 quickly won me over and I started to grant that, OK,
maybe this guy whose AutoTune hooks and unimaginative ‘outer space weirdo’
rhetoric seemed beamed in from 2009 was actually more talented and unique than
I’d given him credit for. And as the album spun off hit after hit after hit,
and bigger and bigger stars started calling for guest appearances, it felt
stranger and stranger that I’d ever doubted dude.
4. Mark Lanegan Band - Blues Funeral
The idea of Mark Lanegan marrying his iconic grunge growl to
eclectic, beat-driven production looked like a dicey idea on paper, at worst
perhaps even a rerun of the Chris Cornell/Timbaland disaster. But Lanegan,
whose set of collaborators has always belied a more diverse sensibility than
you might expect from the guy from Screaming Trees, knew what he was doing, and
Blues Funeral is ultimately a slightly more daring progression from the sound
he was already putting forth on 2004’s Bubblegum, executed with more vision and even a better ear for hooks.
5. Melanie Fiona - The MF Life
I fell hard for Melanie Fiona’s voice in 2011
on various singles and guest appearances, and was pretty primed for this album
to be great, perhaps better than it ultimately was. But while The MF Life has
its shortcomings, they’re largely cosmetic ones, like subpar guest rappers or
less than ideal sequencing (both come into play when the album opens with a
bland J. Cole collaboration). Fiona’s voice continues to seduce me, though, and
material like “Wrong Side Of A Love Song” just lets it loose in the most
heartbreaking, compelling ways.
6. Rufus Wainwright - Out Of The Game
Rufus Wainwright’s self-titled 1998 debut was one of my favorite moping
albums as a lonely, lovesick 16-year-old. I realize now that the unrequited
love and romantic frustrations of a gay man are poignant for reasons not shared
by those of a straight teenage boy,
but the fact is those songs transcended those differences and resonated with me. I’ve had trouble connecting with most of Wainwright’s subsequent albums
quite as much, perhaps because I wasn’t as much of a sadsack later on, but Out
Of The Game is either a return to form or just my return as a fan. In fact it
surprised me to see that this was being marketed as his ‘danceable’ Mark
Ronson-produced album, because it had struck me as pretty aesthetically close
to that beloved debut. And it’s kind of nice now, as a father and husband, to
hear songs from Wainwright about his own experiences becoming a father and
husband, which I can appreciate have a much different context for him that’s
still resonant. I'm still curious to know where Nels Cline plays on this album.
7. Dwight Yoakam - 3 Pears
On his classic 1986 debut, Dwight Yoakam celebrated “guitars, cadillacs and
hillbilly music,” and on his awesome latest it’s amended only slightly to “dim
lights, thick smoke, and loud, loud music.” In the decades in between, he
became one of country’s biggest stars, then faded from view, and took off his
hat and revealed an unflattering hairline for some impressively unglamorous
acting roles. These days, he could probably do just movies and forget about the
music, but he continues to rock harder and smarter than almost anyone else in
country, while throwing in impishly absurd songs like “Waterfalls.”
8. Dev - The Night The Sun Came Up
When Dev entered the public eye singing about “sippin’ sizzurp” on pop
rap group Far East Movement’s “Like A G6,” it was reasonable to assume she’d
take the familiar role of obnoxious Fergie or Ke$ha-type white girl copping rap
moves. But the album that she eventually released, in some countries in 2011
but in the U.S. and U.K. in 2012, is surprisingly twee: her opaque voice often
dropping any pretense of swag and singing painfully earnest synth pop songs.
Her production team, the brilliantly versatile The Cataracs, are best known for
slick L.A. pop crunk in the vein of “Like A G6” and a handful of other hits, but
their productions on The Night The Sun Came Up are sometimes such delicate
toybox pop symphonies that I could easily mistake them for The Bird And The Bee
songs.
9. Meek Mill - Dreams And Nightmares
It’s been a long time since an East coast mixtape shouter got anywhere
near major label rap stardom, and even longer since one actually retained an
aggressive sound once they finally got to release an album. Meek’s 2011
breakthrough mixtape Dreamchasers was my favorite rap release of that year, and
while its 2012 sequel mixtape and the ensuing album didn’t contain any
head-busters quite as potent as “I’m A Boss” and “House Party,” I’m still very
satisfied that the guy got onto big box store CD shelves with a pretty
hardheaded Philly rap record. The title track to Dreams And Nightmares, an
incredible 4-minute tour de force often inaccurately described as an “intro,”
may be his masterpiece.
10. Dinosaur Jr. - I Bet On Sky
The overwhelming majority of bands who reunite after a long hiatus just
tour the old hits, and maybe do a one-off album of new material. A healthy
number of others get out a second album. And a very small number ever get to a
third. That third album being great is almost astronomically unlikely. And yet
here we are, and the legendarily dysfunctional dudes in Dinosaur Jr. have now
made as many records post-reunion as the original lineup did back in the ‘80s.
More remarkable, their batting average is higher now than it was then (they’ll
never top You’re Living All Over Me, but the other two have more attainable
heights). I’m still heartbroken about the fact that I won’t get to enjoy a
good-to-great new Sonic Youth album every 2 or 3 years anymore, but if Dinosaur
is picking up the reigns I’d be happy about that.
11. Bruno Mars - Unorthodox Jukebox
For the last 3 years, Bruno Mars has been the most talented person in
pop music that it’s really hard to root for or get excited about. The run of
blockbuster hits that preceded and accompanied his debut album had at least one
astoundingly annoying hook or corny joke for every undeniable melody and feat
of pop craftsmanship. Unorthodox Jukebox isn’t totally devoid of bad idea
jeans; one song is about “makin’ love like gorillas,” and the two best-sounding
tracks are both surprisingly nasty odes to gold-digging
12. Among Wolves - This Is A Wave Goodbye
As previously mentioned, this was the first year since I think 2005
that I just integrated Baltimore artists into my big year-end albums list
instead of just keeping them purely on a ‘local albums’ list (although there
were lots of Baltimore people on my 2000-2009 decade list). And Among Wolves
made my favorite Baltimore album of the year. They’re a band I’ve seen live
around town and been really impressed by over the years, and they always seemed
to have all these great unreleased songs in their set from an album that was in
the works for the longest time. So it was exciting just to finally get studio
recordings of those songs this year, which totally lived up to the epic drunken
shows. And after having a bunch of mutual friends, and exchanging some online
pleasantries, I finally met these dudes the other night because I unknowingly
booked an opener at my show (Bryson Dudley & Downbound) that featured
multiple members of Among Wolves. Baltimore’s always a small town like that.
13. Dawn Richard - Armor On EP
I’ve written passionately and repeatedly now about both Diddy-Dirty
Money’s Last Train To Paris and the great solo projects Diddy’s groupmates have
gone on to make since then. Armor On is very much post-Last Train To Paris, but
manages to take that brooding, vaguely dancey vibe way out into its own territory where Richard further refines her voice and persona.
14. Lee Ranaldo - Between The Tides And
Times
For as long as Sonic Youth has been my favorite band, which is
most of my life at this point, I’ve obsessed over every song written and sung
by Lee Ranaldo on the band’s albums, snapped up his various solo projects full
of spoken word and sound sculpture, and fantasized about what it would be like
if he led the band for a full album, or made a song-based solo album. This
year, I finally got to hear the latter, and in a way it just never would be
able to live up to my imagination, but it was still pretty good, with an ace
backing band including Steve Shelley and Nels Cline.
15. The Water - Scandals And Animals
The first time I saw The Water a few years ago, they blew me away
like instrumental bands rarely do, just two guys setting off a bunch of loops
and a homemade lighting rig and playing these huge dramatic tunes. I also knew
almost immediately that my friend and producer Mat Leffler-Schulman of Mobtown
Studios would love them, and sure enough soon after he discovered them
independently of me and started working with them. And their full-length debut
both lived up to my hopes for the band and resulted in probably my favorite
album has produced to date (full disclosure in addition to the above: I wrote
the press bio for this album, and invited the band to play my birthday party
back in January).
16. Ichicuts - Filthy First Year
Another band that I got into just catching a show in Baltimore,
although these guys are based in New York, also a duo that makes a big sound
with help of loops and puts on an impressive show with some low-budget lighting.
Totally different otherwise, though, these guys have kind of a funky,
bass-heavy pop/rock sound, some of the songs are just tremendously catchy.
17. Elle Varner - Perfectly Imperfect
Elle Varner’s debut single “Only Wanna Give It To You” was so
annoying and cloying and self-consciously retro, and the follow-up single
“Refill” was so fresh and unique and perfect, that I kind of feared that her
album would split the difference, or prove that the latter was a fluke.
Thankfully, though, the production of Oak & Pop really brought out the best
in Varner’s over-the-top vocal style and fitted her with one of the best (almost)
front-to-back production jobs in popular music this year.
18. Jeremih - Late Nights With Jeremih
Jeremih’s first two major label albums were, like Elle Varner’s
debut, great overlooked full-length production jobs by a relatively known
beatmaker and songwriter, Mick Schultz. Late Nights With Jeremih, by contrast,
is a free stopgap mixtape full of collaborations with big name producers and
guest rappers. And contrary to some of the enthusiastic but tonedeaf press this
mixtape has gotten, it does not feature Jeremih playing catch-up with The
Weeknd but simply continuing his already established persona and vocal style
with some mildly new production sounds. But also great. I don’t really know why
his label didn’t just fast-track this stuff for his 3rd official
album or at least push one or two songs as radio singles.
19. ZZ Top - La Futura
People tend to take a dim view of millionaires staying in the
spotlight as long as they possibly can, but longevity in popular music is still
kind of uncharted waters that I find fascinating – we’ll never know how long a
band can keep going until the Stones finally give it up or die off. Of course,
the fascination rarely has to do with the new music being especially good,
which is why it was so exciting to hear a band as old as ZZ Top, guys who have
looked like wizened old sages literally since before I was born, turn up with a
pretty kickass record that opens with an interpolation of a southern rap song
that manages to not be embarrassing.
20. Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d.
city
Sometimes the hyperbole around an album is so stifling that just
placing it outside your top 10 amounts to a sacrilegious insult that must be
explained, or at least that’s how I feel putting this here. It’s a good record,
certainly kind of a miraculously uncompromised and timely one for a major label
debut, much less an Aftermath release. But Kendrick has one of the worst voices
ever possessed by an undeniably talented rapper, and said talent can be a bit
overestimated when he rocks the same flashy triplet flow on almost any kind of
beat and his earnest word salads sometimes shake out as eye-rolling nonsense if
you actually think about what he’s saying. Still, some really impressive songs
on here and the kind of sustained mood that’s hard to achieve on any kind of
rap record.
21. War On Women - Improvised Weapons EP
I’d been a big fan of Shawna Potter and Brooks Harlan’s band Avec,
who have been on a break the last few years, and when I was working on my
record decided to ask Potter to record some vocals. After the session, she
mentioned the new band she and Brooks had, War On Women, and I was looking
forward to checking it out. But really I had no idea just how jaw-dropping
incredible the band’s confrontational live show and thunderous debut record
would turn out to be: both roughly 20 minutes of sharply worded, fiercely
intelligent feminist punk that’s as heavy as ‘80s thrash.
22. Keyshia Cole - Woman To Woman
Love her or hate her, Keyshia Cole has a pretty impressive control
over her sound compared to most other contemporary R&B singers; while
others shapeshift and strain to meet producers halfway, every Keyshia album is
full of different writers and producers who all end up making immediately
identifiable Keyshia Cole songs. In that way she’s a little like ex-boyfriend
Young Jeezy. That can have a deadening effect sometimes, particularly on her
subpar last album, but on Woman To Woman she really hits
all those predictable but effective emotional notes she needs to do with the
right backing and the right hooks.
23. The Gaslight Anthem - Handwritten
Major label debuts aren’t the minefield for rock bands that they
once were, or still are for rappers. But the stakes can still at least feel
high, especially for a band like The Gaslight Anthem, whose most obvious
influences play arenas and stadiums, and who stayed on a little indie for one
more album even after the majors came calling, as if trying to delay that
moment when things could either get huge or go down the toilet. Ultimately,
though, they made another Gaslight Anthem album, and even Brendan O’Brien
behind the producer’s chair didn’t exactly turn them into Pearl Jam, for better
or worse.
24. Farrah Abraham - My Teenage Dream
Ended
Phrases like “outsider art” or “so bad it’s good” or “accidental
masterpiece” are loaded terms, meant to put some kind of rhetorical spin on the
simple fact that sometimes unique, compelling music isn’t made by a skilled
artist who’s in complete knowing command of what they’re accomplishing. But I
think there are larger and more interesting gray areas than those concepts
usually make room for, and somewhere in there, a reality TV star like Farrah
Abraham can make a wholly engrossing, emotionally harrowing album full of bent
and broken tropes of modern AutoTuned pop music. I can honestly say that few,
if any, albums have ever captured the existential terror and anxiety of
parenthood as well as this album; it’s a bit like Eraserhead in that way.
25. Mouse On Tha Track - Millionaire Dreamzzz
I always dug Mouse's Trill Ent. productions and was pleasantly surprised by his solo material on the Swagga Fresh Freddie mixtape, so it's good to hear that wasn't a fluke and he's still improving as a rapper and solo artist, smoothing out his vocal presence and connecting it more deeply to his camp's old style and all his Louisiana rap roots. "What A Good Feeling" is such a huge hook, shame about some of the shit he talks in the verses.
26. Heartless Bastards - Arrow
I didn’t spend as much time with Arrow as I had the previous Heartless Bastards album The Mountain, but I got the distinct impression that was my problem and not the album’s, because as I listened to it while finishing this list I ended up bumping it up many spots, love their whole twangy apocalyptic vibe.
27. Ken Stringfellow - Danzig In The
Moonlight
Ken Stringfellow is honestly one of my favorite songwriters of all
time, certainly my favorite who wouldn’t be on barely anybody else’s list – the
guy just has a huge catalog of songs, both with the Posies and solo and with
other projects (like The Disciplines, who were in my top 10 last year) that I
feel in my bones. This album is a strange one for him, from the goofy title on
down, and it’s interesting to see someone so closely associated with an
ostensibly bland genre like “power pop” becoming so increasingly esoteric and
unpredictable as his career goes on.
28. Nas - Life Is Good
Nas’s post-Illmatic career has been spotty and frustrating, but
the inability of hip-hop fans to accept his post-Illmatic albums as neither
masterpieces nor betrayals of his talent is more frustrating. He’s a major
talent who often makes minor records, and maybe as they head into middle age
it’s better to look at him as Dylan to Jay’s perennial blockbuster-factory
Stones. And he’s never sounded more comfortable with that kind of legacy than
he does on Life Is Good, for once having more of a story to tell about his life
than just about whether he’s the greatest rapper alive or if someone’s
challenging his title.
29. Pink - The Truth About Love
Pink doesn’t make a better album than her last every time out (she
may have peaked with 2008’s defiant, heartbroken Funhouse, which this is in
some ways merely a very effective retread of). But she seems to win over more
skeptics and become a more accepted part of the pop firmament with each passing
year and album cycle. Noone wants to put her on the level of Britney or Gaga or
Clarkson, but she’s slowly, dilligently built a catalog that could trump or at
least confidenty compete with any of them. And her latest album is no
exception, with Greg Kurstin stepping in as an effective new producer and
songwriting foil, and the unlikely phase of Pink the wise mother and wife
fitting her better than one could expect.
30. Say Anything - Anarchy, My Dear
I intensely admire Max Bemis and Say Anything both for the
world-beating catharsis of their best work, and the musical and emotional risks
they constantly take to provide both those successes and the occasional
cringe-inducing failure. Their latest album is a pretty even mix of that good
and bad they always walk a tightrope between, but I’m always happy to get a few
new additions to the canon if incredible Say Anything songs – “Overbiter” alone
was worth the whole thing, really.
31. E-40 - The Block Brochure: Welcome
to the Soil Parts 1, 2 & 3
E-40’s late career rally to become the most prolific and consistent (hard things to do at once) rapper over the age of 40 has been exciting and admirable, but 2012
was definitely the year that his outpour of new material started to hit
diminishing returns – he released two albums a year in 2010 and 2011, but this
year he released three solo albums, plus two duo albums with Too $hort where 40
Water was clearly the driving force. Still, the three Block Brochure albums
were pretty damn great when they weren’t just overwhelming in their sheer bulk.
32. Von Vargas - World Famous Lexington
Market
Von Vargas is a guy that had been lurking around the Baltimore
hip-hop scene for longer than I’d been paying attention to it, and somehow I
never really heard his music until this album dropped a couple months ago, and
went and interviewed him and learned about his long history in the game. I love
these kinds of smart, solid underground rap albums that can only be made with a
lot of heart and experience.
33. Gary B & The Notions - How
Do We Explode
Gary B & The Notions are one of my favorite bands in
Baltimore, just a good straight-ahead pop/rock band with a singer whose voice
and viewpoint are just strange enough to keep the whole thing interesting. How
Do We Explode was, appropriately, a little more bombastic and muscular than
their previous records, and to some extent I wonder if they lost a little of
their offbeat charm in the pursuit of a tighter rock sound, but I dunno, it
still might also be their best.
34. Hammer No More The Fingers - Pink
Worm EP
Hammer No More The Fingers are a North Carolina band who are friends
of Gary B’s and have been coming up and playing shows in Baltimore for a few
years. This is the first time they released a record in a year that I was
paying attention, and it was just an EP, but it was a really really good EP
where every song hit pretty hard.
35. 2 Chainz - Based On A T.R.U. Story
Fun, as a virtue, as a guiding principle, is at an all-time low in
mainstream rap these days; even the strip club songs tend to have a grim,
obligatory air. 2 Chainz, suddenly in his mid-30’s a genuine unit-shifting
star, is having the time of his life and totally fucking sounds like it. Based
is no masterpiece, and could’ve used a couple less earnest tracks to really
earn its role as hip-hop’s party album of the year, but I still feel like
dude’s dumb-smart punchlines and irrepressible energy brought more to the game
than most people give him credit for.
36. Gunplay - 601 & Snort
Gunplay, like 2 Chainz, is a gangly, weird-looking also-ran who’s
been getting long in the tooth crewing with bigger stars for years before his
recent, unlikely ascent – he’s just a little earlier in that rise than 2 Chainz
at the moment, and it’s not clear whether his various legal troubles will
keeping from continuing to thrive. But 601 & Snort, the better of his two
buzz-cementing 2012 mixtapes, is probably the most fun I've had listening to an MC wreck other rappers' beats in years.
37. Kalenna - Chamber of Diaries
The other girl from Diddy-Dirty Money may have gotten less
attention than Dawn Richard this year, but it wasn’t because she wasn’t also
making great songs – “Poison” and “Matte Black Truck” are as good as anything
on Dawn’s EP. It’s just that Chamber of Diaries was a mixtape with some really
inessential remixes and incredibly annoying guest rappers, and in general just
lacked a sustained mood or thoughtful sequencing, things that Dawn excelled at.
38. Eleni Mandell - I Can See The
Future
Eleni Mandell has grown into one of my favorite singer/songwriters
over the last few years. I Can See The Future never got under my skin like her
last two albums, Artificial Fire and Miracle of Five, but it’s possible I just
didn’t spend enough time with it. Her soothing voice and dryly sophisticated
lyrics sounded as great as ever, though.
39. Tate Kobang – The Book of Joshua
Tate Kobang is a rapper whose name I haven’t heard around
Baltimore much yet, but I feel like it really should. His mixtape just stood
out in a year when I really failed to pay attention to the scene as much as I
had in previous years and had an even harder time finding new artists to get
excited about.
40. DDm - Winter And The Tinman's Heart EP
I’ve known DDm and been a fan of his music for years and years,
and it’s been great to see him come into his own artistically, in addition to
coming out of the closet and being honest with the public about who he is,
which couldn’t have been easy. This is another EP that’s basically as long and
substantial as most EPs, and I’m pretty curious to see what he does next.
41. Dave Fell – Baltimore Backlog
Schwarz (producer of DDm’s “Click Pow”) put me onto this Dave Fell
record, which I should’ve known about already since Fell played the killer
basslines on one of my favorite Baltimore records of last year, White Life’s
self-titled debut. This is really just a great collection of home recordings in
various states of completion that feels more like an album than anyone could
reasonably expect.
42. Donald Fagen - Sunken Condos
Donald Fagen sounded like a cranky old man at the beginning of
Steely Dan’s career (think about this for a second: “Reelin’ In The Years” is
40 years old now), so to watch the guy actually become ancient has been as
fascinating as with Bob Dylan or Tom Waits or any other formerly-young-old-man.
And the funny thing is he actually sounds enlivened and funky on this record,
still chasing waxy perfection while exploring songwriting territory that no
true soft jazz smoothie would ever get near.
43. Little Feat - Rooster Rag
Little Feat, like Steely Dan, are a band I grew up with on my
dad’s stereo who I’ve grown to love as one of my own favorite bands as an
adult, and have continued to be worth following even in the decades following
the death of founder and songwriter Lowell George. Rooster Rag, however, is
their first album since the more recent death of original drummer Richie Hayward (as well as since the departure of vocalist Shaun Murphy), and instead
of dwelling on that loss they fall right back into the grooves he helped
originate, a rich, idiosyncratic gumbo of southern styles.
44. Loudon Wainwright III - Older Than
My Old Man Now
While other old men were defying mortality this year, Loudon
Wainwright III was contemplating it in the acerbic, light-hearted way only he
can. Rufus may have made one of my top 10 albums this year with his
considerably more melodious voice and sentimental pop smarts, but his old man
that I’ve always struggled more to appreciate made an enduring statement on
what it’s like to endure past your life expectancy.
45. Jumpcuts - Electrickery
As I’ve already
mentioned, I put a lot of records by Baltimore artists in this year’s lists,
many of whom I know in some capacity, and Andy Shankman of Jumpcuts is the one
I’ve worked and hung out with the most, as he’s playing guitar in my band
Western Blot and sings a couple songs on the album I’ve got coming out next
year. But the reason I had worked with him in the first place is I’d dug his
band and felt some kinship with what Jumpcuts were doing, kind of a different
approach to synth-driven rock music. I’d heard the unmastered Electrickery for
a while before it was finally released this year, and “Singular” was always my
jam and still is.
46. Ne-Yo - R.E.D.
It’s easy to be cynical about Ne-Yo making moves towards uptempo
dance pop, after making his name with thoughtful R&B ballads, at a time
when the commercial tide is turning that way and he seems to be just following
in the footsteps of Usher and Chris Brown. But the fact is, Ne-Yo’s smooth,
clean voice has always sounded good on those kinds of songs (“Closer” and the
“Give Me Everything” chorus have always been career highlights, in my opinion),
and his early interviews about this album featuring “six pop records and six
R&B records” were actually deceptive – this is almost entirely an R&B
album with occasional stylistic detours, which include not just dance pop but a
Tim McGraw collaboration that’s better than it has a right to be. It may not be
up to the heights of his first three albums, but it’s a solid return to form after
the deeply forgettable Libra Scale.
47. Young Dro - Ralph Lauren Reefa
Shortly after this mixtape dropped, Young Dro announced that he was
changing his name to 3Krazy or some bullshit like that; I think that’s a good
point at which to say I’m done stanning for dude. There’ve been 6 good years of
mixtapes and guest verses after his first and only major label album, and his
music is still enjoyable, but it’s just sad now. Glad I was able enjoy one last
mixtape, one of his best to date really.
48. Soundgarden - King Animal
It wouldn’t be fair to say Soundgarden went out on top, but Down
On The Upside was probably their most experimental album and one that has aged
well for me. So I operated under the optimistic assumption that if the band
ever got back together, it would be because they wanted to continue that
unpredictable creative path they were on. And I only really started to lose
hope when that bland soundtrack single “Live To Rise” surfaced earlier this
year. But even while the album could never live up to my lofty expectations,
it’s still a Soundgarden album and it has some serious flashes of what I loved
about the band, alongside some of the more generic aging hard rock band moves
and Chris Cornell’s sadly deteriorated pipes.
49. Sara Bareilles - Once Upon Another Time EP
2012 was a good year for middle-tier major label acts to drop EPs and mixtapes that revealed heretofore unexplored musical or emotional range, experimentalism or X-rated material. If you were an R&B singer that fit into a popular critical narrative, that is. If you were my VH1 boo Sara Bareilles, then your offbeat, intimate EP, featuring a gorgeous a cappella opening on the title track, the killer brooding pop song "Lie To Me" and the pottymouth novelty "Sweet As Whole," then no, nobody cared but me.
50. Firewater - International Orange!
Firewater definitely peaked with their early ‘90s albums, but
they’ve staged a bit of a comeback with the last couple records playing up
their whole drunken international wedding band schtick more than ever and
having fun with the contrast between that sound and Tod A’s seedy down-and-out
wordplay. And, as with their last album, this one grew on me more after seeing them give one of the best live shows I saw all year.
