2012 music superlatives
Best concerts I saw
— Opeth/Mastodon at Fox Theater in Oakland, 4.27 [review]
— Laura Marling at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, 6.29 [review]
— Sigur Rós at Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco, 8.11 [review]
Worst album cover: Spiritualized, Sweet Heart Sweet Light (right)
Honorable mention to Death Grips' NSFW artwork for No Love Deep Web, which was purposefully chosen in an act of defiance against the record label
Best album cover:
mewithoutYou, Ten Stories (see artwork below)
Best debut album: Michael Kiwanuka, Home Again
Most disappointing album: Beach House, Bloom
Album that sounded terrible on paper and was:
Green Day's three studio albums in three months, ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré!
Album that sounded terrible on paper and wasn't:
David Byrne and St. Vincent, Love This Giant
Song I Know I Shouldn't Like But I Do: Psy, "Gangnam Style"
Worst album opener: Sleigh Bells, "True Shred Guitar"
Best album opener: Beach House, "Myth"
Worst album closer: Muse, "The 2nd Law: Isolated System"
Best album closer: Fiona Apple, "Hot Knife"
Best song: Beach House, "Myth"
Worst album: Kreayshawn, Somethin 'bout Kreay
Top 25 releases of 2012
25. Ty Segall Band, Slaughterhouse [In the Red] 
24. Burial, Kindred EP [EP] [Hyperdub]
23. Big K.R.I.T., 4eva N a Day [Cinematic]
22. Twin Shadow, Confess [4AD]
21. Lambchop, Mr. M [Merge]
20. Animal Collective, Centipede Hz [Domino]
19. Pig Destroyer, Book Burner [Relapse]
18. Killer Mike, R.A.P. Music [Williams Street]
17. Spiritualized, Sweet Heart Sweet Light [Fat Possum]
16. Jack White, Blunderbuss [Third Man]
15. Converge, All We Love We Leave Behind [Epitaph]
14. Michael Kiwanuka, Home Again [Interscope]
13. Sharon Van Etten, Tramp [Jagjaguwar]
12. Perfume Genius, Put Your Back N 2 It [Matador]
11. The Walkmen, Heaven [Fat Possum]
10. mewithoutYou, Ten Stories [Pine Street]
2012 was a very good year for post-hardcore, with mewithoutYou's Ten Stories being no exception. Lead singer Aaron Weiss went to school while the band took a hiatus. He unearthed a story about the crash of a traveling circus in Montana in February 1878. The Philadelphia group's Pine Street debut finds Weiss singing from the perspective of the animals, which should be clumsy, but he executes like a pro. Bonus points for having the best album art of 2012.
09. High on Fire, De Vermis Mysteriis [eOne]
Oakland's High on Fire churns out an aggressive gem even better than 2010's Snakes for the Divine, pulverizing listeners with a concept record about a time-traveling twin brother of Jesus. Like so many concept albums, the idea is difficult to follow, but it's superfluous when the music is this inventive. "Fertile Green" is as subtle as five knuckles to the jaw while "King of Days" includes some of HOF's best guitar work on record to date.
08. Death Grips, The Money Store [Epic]
One of two Death Grips albums in 2012, this Sacramento duo is ambitious and experimental, but not without having something to say. MC Ride's rhymes are difficult to crack, but when they are discernable, it opens up to another world. On "I've Seen Footage," one of the top tracks of 2012, he talks of viewing his own life with a detached perspective: "Desensitized by the mass amounts of s---." Come for the imagery, maybe, but definitely stick around for the adventurous beats on The Money Store.
07. The Tallest Man on Earth, There's No Leaving Now [Dead Oceans]
Few would've blamed Kristian Matsson for finding it nearly impossible to follow 2010's The Wild Hunt, a standout in an era of numerous noteworthy indie folk albums, but There's No Leaving Now does a smart job. Widening his palette beyond "dude with a guitar," The Tallest Man gets into mournful country folk with the lament of "Bright Lanterns" and "To Just Grow Away" adds brushstrokes of electric guitar. It isn't as front-to-back essential as Wild Hunt, but few artists ever put together three straight albums this good.
06. Swans, The Seer [Young God]
Though it's overlong, Swans' The Seer is one of those efforts that garners respect for its sheer audacity. It's good and sometimes great, too, but definitely requires patience with its two-hour running time, with the title track alone counting for more than a quarter of that. It's a test of the attention span, such as the beginning of "A Piece of Sky," which is 90 seconds of the sound of sizzling bacon. Would 10 seconds have sufficed? Would it have had the same effect? That Michael Gira makes something out of it makes The Seer impressive.
05. Grizzly Bear, Shields [Warp]
After the lavish and unnecessary praise of 2009's Veckatimest, it was understandable to greet Grizzly Bear's Shields with a healthy dose of skepticism. While Veckatimest slipped down the scale from gorgeous ambiance into directionless boredom (save for "Two Weeks"), Shields suffers none of those flaws, a dynamic and compelling listen throughout. It's difficult to believe it's the same band as Shields has texture, tone and intrigue that Veckatimest utterly lacked.
04. Frank Ocean, Channel Orange [Def Jam]
The Def Jam debut of Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All member Frank Ocean has risen to become one of 2012's most acclaimed albums. Channel Orange arrived on the news that Ocean admitted he once loved another man, but when the dust settled, his hip hop-infused R&B stylings remained. "Pyramids" stands as an ambitious effort, a 10-minute neo-soul suite that takes 90 seconds to find its sweet spot without feeling directionless. But so many other quality songs make Channel Orange one of the year's finest.
03. Cloud Nothings, Attack on Memory [Carpark]
Dylan Baldi's pained growl may take some getting past, but there's a tunefulness at the heart of Attack on Memory that makes Cloud Nothing's third LP hard to keep down. On "Wasted Days," Baldi is at his angriest, sounding like he's hit his midlife crisis in his early 20s, howling "I thought / I would / Be more / Than this." "Fall In" and "Our Plans" have song a strong sense of rhythm that their catchiness exceeds the post-hardcore wrapping in which they're delivered, but there isn't a low spot on Attack.
02. Kendrick Lamar, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City [Interscope/Aftermath]
This Dr. Dre protégé makes a splash with his major-label debut, spinning a concept record about Kendrick Lamar's upbringing in Compton. No subject is out of bounds, whether it's the cyclical nature of violence and revenge or theft or puberty. Maybe Lamar can afford to give his fictional namesake such a hopeful ending because he himself wound up with Dre and other contemporary pop culture luminaries making his debut album, but that it ends with him praying with Maya Angelou and wanting to rise above his surroundings is a message to which many can and will relate.
01. Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do [Clean Slate/Epic]
One need look no further than this album's title to realize Fiona Apple has always played by her own rules. The Idler Wheel is an unexpected stroke of genius from one of pop music's best songwriters, marrying her clever wordplay to rudimentary piano and drums arrangements. Apple feels so at ease in her surroundings and the minimal approach to production emphasizes her savage insights: "How can I expect anyone to love me when all I do is beg to be left alone?" What makes this the album of the year is that more than any other Apple effort before it, Idler Wheel feels timeless, like these songs will hold up in the coming years. That's good because with Apple, a long wait between records seems like a certainty. With seven years between Extraordinary Machine and Idler Wheel, if it's going to take that long for another record this good, I suspect many will wait patiently.
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