Best of 2012 (Now w/ Hindsight!)

I'm gonna be honest, 2012 did not pop out to me as much of a year in the way of new music, at least not like 2011 did. However, I'm a year older and more cynical and less impressed by the nostalgic musical textures making the rounds these days. Cold wave is totally bored and dead, 70s revival has been done to death by now, post-80s 808s now make me gag, witch house was always shit and indie rock needs embalming, its rigor mortise is rampant. That being said, I managed to scrape together 10 records that made their way to my earholes in the last 370 days, which is my standard for whether something should have been heard at all - I heard it. Mind you I heard some other things, this list isn't purely lazy, but what you see hear are the things I made it all the way through more than once without being strapped into a dentist's chair.

 

 Zeus blew up on the Toronto bar scene nearly half a decade ago when they ditched Jason Collett to pursue their brand of uber-catchy, Abbey Road revival album rock. Having been to a handful of their truly scintillating live shows I eagerly awaited a recorded debut. Their Sounds Like Zeus EP and Say Us full length presented a tame, analog rendered version of their energy. It is on Busting Visions that they have perfectly captured what was so great about the '70s harkening sounds of Sloan's Navy Blues, with even more clarity in their sonic vision of the past. Are You Gonna Waste My Time? Anything You Want Dear and Proud and Beautiful are the most recent songs to adequately re-imagine the studio-rock legacy of 10cc in the modern day. A great listen the whole way through. 8/10 

Busted 

 

This one had to go up here as it is a) the best album title of the year and b) a welcome return to form for PE pioneer weirdo Boyd Rice. While I missed the NON project on their first time round at the end of the last century I will surely be looking into them having heard this immense tour-de-force of post-apocalyptic, grating mid-range abuse. If you like anger and sadism, nothing else released this year rivals this newest gospel from the master. Extra points for an old-school Warm Leatherette rendition.

Back To Mono

My introduction to this female singer-songwriter powerhouse came in the form of this seminal release. Tramp is a total breath of fresh air in the world indie-folk lady songstresses as its themes of love, possession, heartbreak and infatuation range from candidly intimate to icy cold in performance. While the textures on this album could have been more varied, the songs themselves are perfect. The stoned haze which the songs sound like they were written in conveys a character on record who is refreshingly as paranoid and guarded as she is subdued and seductive. Looking forward to more from Ms. Van Etten. 

Give Out

Sludge and doom are not easy. These sub-genres are predicated on very basic cliches and thus, like with any music that's been happening for more than 20 years, a surplus of generic and unoriginal bands is continually mounting. This makes seeking out the innovators or even just the talented acts can be exhausting. Luckily I have friends and band mates to do that for me. Monarch are undoubtedly part of that select few. With Omens they demonstrate their monolithic ability to effortlessly create plodding riffs that keep you interested and in the dark while generating an atmosphere that pulls the listener deeper into a darkened pit of depravity. 

Transylvanian Incantations           

 

 A Thing Called Divine Fits is 2012s answer to Kill The Moonlight. This record recognizes Britt Daniel as the true champion of the claustrophobic pop he first perfected with Spoon on the aforementioned 2002 opus. After a decade, Daniel shows that, having wandered down that 70s glam garden path with his old outfit, he can reinvent himself in the idiosyncratic idiom that suits him best. Bonus points for stealing my preferred high school cover of Nick Cave band the Boys Next Door's Shivers.

Baby Get Worse

*** I heard this one early on this year and genuinely forgot/did not realize it was a 2012 release, it seemed too good, too instantly nostalgic. Sleigh Bells have come out the gate firing on all cylinders in a Reign of Terror I hope continues for years to come. Impressively tackling textures as disparate as hair metal shred guitar revival, shoegaze soprano vocalise and grind drum machine programming. The result is a dizzying display of sugary sweet pop melody atop throbbing mechanical heavy metal dance beats. Boom.  
 Never Say Die

 There's not much people won't have said about this one. Frank Ocean completes his ingenious one-two punch of releasing a largely plagiarized mix-tape of improved-upon hits with sonic interludes that made reference to the influential medium within which he was working by creating a near flawless original album that tackled another medium of popular media consumption: television. As we're guided, flicker in hand, through a series of episodes in the young, talented and recognized artist's mind, we experience an emotional roller coaster boiled down to snapshots of unwitting patrons seconds before they drop. Along the way are odysseys of the heart, addiction, commitment and frivolity that grip the listener at every turn, keeping them glued through advertisements.  

 Pyramids

 Aldebaran have long been in the above mentioned distinguished league of funeral doom hordes. Their newest and sophomore effort took a surprising turn for the melodic after the bleak and brooding sludge of 2007's Dwellers In Twilight. Boasting one of the most Thergothon comparison worthy tracks of the past decade (clocking in at a couple under half an hour), Aldebaran's newly donned depressive harmony is a welcome change that does all but eclipse their debut stronghold.

Forever In The Dream of Death  

Cloud Nothings managed to spur a great Albini rant on reddit this year as well as deliver a biting full-length of moody 90s post meets pop punk that brings as much new melody and songwriting as it does familiar textures with King Dick behind the boards. From gloomy mid-tempos to infectious hooky rockers, Attack On Memory carries more excitement than an online scrabble match.

 Fall In

 

By far the most exciting and innovating record this year and shockingly put out by Sub Pop! Spoek Mathambo is equal parts eccentric, hip, South African dance, hip-hop hooliganism and post-rock angst. Father Creeper is an unsettling and idiosyncratic afro-futurist vision of a generation who outlive the end of morality and the world as they know it. With the accompaniment of an extraordinarily versatile band, drum programming and minimal sampling, Spoek manages to realize an apocalypse that's profound nature comes in that it is social and not environmental. And most of this happens over an irresistibly complex dance beat.

Put Some Red On It

SWANS second reactivated effort trumps all with its impeccable conceptual fortitude and all-encompassing range of material. Gira has managed a piece that is retrospective and inventive at the same time, which fits well into the album's theme of endings as new beginnings and vice verse. Culling unfinished compositions from throughout his 30 year career and up to the present day, Gira demonstrates his unchallenged diversity in musical texture. The 30 minute title track alone weaves through avant garde tonal walls, tense marital swells and into the SWANS own brand of bludgeoning proto-sludge droning incorporating, along the way bagpipes, tubular bells, dulcimers, gongs, harmonica and what sounds like a power drill. Through The Seer the SWANS/Angels of Light catalog has been given new meaning and continuity. That's no easy feat.

Avatar 

Don't shoot the messenger

Disclaimer: I in no way take lightly, am unsympathetic to experiences of nor, least of all, condone rape. I have known both women and men who have been sexual assault and rape victims. My contact with these issues on a personal level has fixed my stance to be staunchly intolerant of the moronic "cultural" insensitivity that arises around these issues. However, I am an enemy of any kind of censorship or inhibition of freedom of speech, including PC-motivated forms of this. If the issue exists in our society, it must be talked about. Making people afraid to use the word 'rape' or address the fact - in any light - that such inhumanities exist is several steps backwards in regards to ever resolving or dealing with such an issue. Music has been the only platform for much discussion of omnipresent social taboos over at least the course of the last half a century and more. I refuse to accept that there is any subject that cannot be addressed through music and lyricism as we have very thoroughly closed so many other doors to avenues of discussion of these topics culturally. With that, I give you both one of the most controversial and influential bands of the 1980s:

Whether you love or hate him (I go back and forth), Steve Albini's impact on electric guitar-based music, record engineering and independent music making is indelible. While his assumed "politics" (remember that term audio-politics I coined?) and overall anti-populist approach to every aspect of the music business has polarized general opinion of him, the sonic signature he left is far from being forgotten. This short-lived, highly provocative follow-up band to his Big Black, named after a disturbing Japanese manga series, are an example of Albini's musical memorability, in spite of negative public reaction. The fact that the comic book which the band cited as the source of the name garnered nowhere near as much criticism (if any at all) from protesters of the band evidences a late 80s PC mentality that was not in search of addressing larger issues but prefered they be skirted and not brought up at all. In case you were wondering, the music here is not overly offensive nor explicit, in fact I'd say less so than most of Big Black's output. Sonically, this is confrontational music, like the rest of Albini's catalog. Being the first band of his with drums, there are amazingly audible similarities to the sounds of bands he would later engineer, such as Nirvana. Vocally, Steve really comes into his own here, defining the soft/loud approach that would mark the grunge era. The recorded sounds themselves are impressively defined, marking the beginning of his thorough 'precise presentation of performance' style of strategic mic placement and minimal effects/overdubbing. Nods to the Cockrock canon of bands like Golden Earring and ZZ Top, with numbers like Radar Love Lizard and a cover of the latter's hit, Just Got Paid, continue what I see as Albini's career-long satire of rock patriarchy. This is where I feel the lyrical subject matter of Big Black, Rapeman and Shellac are most widely misconstrued. It is one thing to be a man making rock music with other men obliviously, another to self-criticize and try to eschew that cliche and another entirely to try and embody all the negative implications of the cliche. I, for one, commend Mr. Albini for his attempt at the latter. After all, isn't that what punk was all about?

This file is really big for some reason...

Somebody gave the GOVERNMENT a FLAT TIRE

In honour of ANONYMOUS' mighty retaliation to Megaupload's shut down and time bought as well as minds changed for the SOPA/PIPA bill, I have decided to post a bite-sized Canadian new wave treat. The Government are a band with a small output and even smaller legacy, but who remain a sought after name in the world of obscure early art punk and new wave 7"s. This is, no doubt, a result of the unique sounds contained on this plastic cylinder from 1979. A perfect sonic polaroid of a highly anamolous moment in music and counter-culture. Quite unlike anything else to come out of Canada and it's punk scene at the time, these four numbers are some delightful little oddities set to a metric, chugging beat. My personal fave remains Flat Tire, which seems a fitting tribute to the impressive work of our fellow online-activist brethren and at least the temporary thwarting of the powers of evil and greed in recent days. Enjoy with beer and salted sarcasm.

Spongey

Reverse Crystal

Yamantaka//Sonic Titan is a very cool art collective, I suggest you read about them on the interwebs. They also became a cool band this year and put together a simply amazing S/T record that invokes sounds reminiscent of gamelan, garage rock, Deep Purple, Can, Cure, Soft Machine, Amon Duul II and Cocteau Twins. Sounds pretty fucked right? It is. This psychedelic black noise soup is best served chilled with a heaping side of mind fog. Truly one of the more original projects active in the Montreal scene at this time. Bravo!

Sea of trees

Strangely Merciful

Perhaps the most unnerving quality to be found in the music on this record is the way in which its eerie arias float as comfortably above the earthy rhythms as a UFO above a vivid memory of your childhood home. Annie delivers alien material from her now familiar human form through which she manipulates us with her natural and artistic beauty. We being hardly the only thing manipulated, her clinical approach to the textures on Strange Mercy shows Clark's meticulous control and integration of all elements of her music as a defining characteristic of her recorded output up to now. While she tightens up the rhythmic/chordal palette and restricts herself to 3 or so guitar tones, Annie continues to cultivate and communicate her expressionist pop tendencies, isolating into lead gestures that move in parallel to the songs' pulses. Take, for instance, the "Bodies..." motif of lead single Cruel; the near operatic, soaring melody disjointedly floats atop an updated disco beat and is continually interrupted by the song's hooky verse and choruses. In much the same way St. Vincent super-imposes her geometric mannerist melodies with fuzz guitar onto her deeply magnetic moods. Bearing its weak links (Cheerleader, Hysterical Strength) the album overall shows an interplay between Annie's guitar and the rest of the instruments that would seem to reflect her still rapidly developing ability to write for unique ensembles. A fun trip.

Champagne year

EMERGENCY AT 30: Rocktober appended!

Alright so I know what I wrote and I lied, this is the actual last post before my 2011 in review series (starting Dec. 15). It's just that I realized I had foolishly overlooked perhaps the two most monumental works of our nineteen-thousandth and eighty-first year. Perhaps this oversight could be compared to another I often have which-due to it's close proximity and sovereignty from predominating music trends of the rest of the States-is to intermittently grant Portland honourary Canadian residency in my mind. Having never been there, only through the famed records and tales of the legendary minstrels of the mythical, woodsy city, can I romanticize the darkly shadowed rock 'n' roll pasts which dwell within it and the hearts of its fabled tune-smiths. As is characteristic of  the nature of most great thriving punk scenes, there is a lineage to the creators of these two PDX punk masterpieces, found in the bucket bashing of Sam Henry. Henry had, in fact, exited Wipers by Youth of America but his memorably dynamic driving of the band's 3 minute masterpieces made him a sure fit for what tHe rAT$ went for with Intermittent Signals.

Defiance!

First we have the highly coveted second installment in the short-lived but brilliant punk brainchild of Fred and Toody Cole (later of Dead Moon fame). While their S/T debut established the band with bubblegum punk classics like Teenagers and an overall endearing ferocity and knowing naivete, Intermittent Signals rips through the sturdy punk facade to reveal a band in reflection, equally inspired and disillusioned by the arrival of the 'New Wave'. It's all just "the same shit playing on the radio" to these newly christened rock and roll vets. A string of both imposingly punchy and seductively catchy proto-pop-punk anthems, Signals burns a blazing trail through the cannon with such underground hymnals as Descending Shadows, Defiance and Nightmare. It is the silhouette of this artistically ingenious twosome and their undying contribution to their scene that thoroughly consumes my mental musical landscape of PDX. The originals for over 30 years!

Can this be?

Unlike tHe rAT$ sophomore, with its assaying of the airwaves, Wipers traverse more direct connections to your cerebral cosmos via a Sage's circulation of cyclic licks in cylindrical orbit to the grooves on your disk. Indeed one can hear echoes of Greg's mystical lead playing in the reverb drenched leads Cole plays on In The Graveyard and throughout much the rest of DM's catalogue. There is no question Youth of America is a fate-altering classic all the way from monolithic title track through to feedback infinity. If you are averse to doing acid you might as well drop this on your ears, it's the perhaps the only way your mind will be freed.

Rocktober's over: The Final Curtain Call

Here are the last three essential records turning 30 this year, not to say there aren't more but these are the ones that really matter to me at the moment. Feel free to complain in the comments section about my oversights. The first two of these I held off posting because I couldn't easily find download links, but then I thought you know what, everyone needs to own these. If you don't already know easily the most legendary hardcore release of the 80s or the most popular interpreter of Berlin-era Bowie/Iggy then you have plenty of research to do.
The Raincoats are a different case, what an underrated band! I had my first exposure to them at their POP Montreal performance this year which, while it only came close to blowing my mind but was undeniably badass and got me really excited to dive in to their back-catalogue. This record in particular is so far beyond most of the rest of the 'radical' music coming out of England at the time. For all those that assumed (like I did) the Raincoats to be another '77 retro punk outfit whose novelty was being composed of lady punkers you're way off. This record somehow manages to bridge the gaps between mid to late 70s avant-rock experimentalists like Fred Frith and Henry Cow with the progressive pop sensibilities of a Robert Wyatt and a dry, generally guitar-driven post-punk recording aesthetic. On top of it all these gals endow the performances here with effortless displays of 20th-century-classical training and involved knowledge of exotic idioms which gives an early world music edge to the compositions. Combined with the heart-on-their-record-sleeve politics, this album is one that requires far more championing than its got.

Odyshape

It's the witching hour...

Happy Hallowe'en

The album art is better than the music inside...

You may not think this is very good, and you would be very wrong. You may think this is very good, and you would be wrong. While we've all come around to the fact that the Sex Pistols were not the most important, original, authentic or even interesting punk band, their influence is undeniable and don't lie, you still like listening to No Feelings and dancing/singing along to it in your room in pajamas. However, PiL are an even harder band to make a case for. Were they influential? Yes. Ok, but why? Were they original, authentic, interesting and important? Yes to all but the last one. I wouldn't say they were in no way important but what I think makes PiL the more authentic John Lydon project is their excess. We really didn't need a bunch of white kids making what they thought was cultured, experimental music when it was really just them getting high and jamming and getting attention for their shelved punk-rockstar careers. But in a way you think Johnny knows this and likes to rub it in all the more because of this. How else can you rationalize dumping the rest of the band in the mid-80s only to rip-off a Flipper album title, make charts with a pop single and hire an all-star band including Tony Williams, Ginger Baker, Shankar and former P-Funk organist Bernie Worrell? Clearly our snot-nosed idol understood just how far he could to push his notorious celebrity, and continues to. All that being said, this album is great either for when that too-stoned, cabin fever paranoia sets in or you start believe you're the messiah come to tell about the end of days and other reasons for all the rest of mankind to become Rastafari.

Keep banging the door     

Your new favourite Cure album (you're welcome)

Why this remains the sole record people in their first big Cure phase seem to overlook or just find completely uninteresting is still beyond me. Sure, Primary is no A Forest or One Hundred Years but does anyone listen to a Cure album just for a single standout anthem? I hope not, because most their albums are an immersing series of anthems, each more compelling than the one that came before, until you see the larger whole. What makes Faith different is that it is a typical Cure album from this period in a much more subtle sense. While every song still contains that anthemic quality inherent to the band's writing at this time, the emphasis in the songs here is on mood and atmosphere and there is little else from this formative time for this kind of music that does this in a fashion so tastefully nuanced. Try and not fall into the gloomy existential depths of All Cats Are Grey, the distance and frigidity of The Funeral Party or the brooding reflection in Doubt, it's nearly impossible. The images contained here are some of Smith's most bleak, at times despairingly universal and at others desperately emotionally opaque. After 30 years this knows any depressed 20-yr-old's psyche better than they ever will. Not for the happy-go-lucky.

Doubt

Broken Record

This is the record that broke sound, first in CBGB's 30 years ago and later (2006) in a particularly mind-bending Dilla donut. Don't fuck with Frith.

Speechless

This might be the record that broke music, for good.

just killing time...

This record was made broken.

Down Below

Rocktober: Upping the Ante

Apologies again for inconsistency but let's just say my weekend was hijacked by turkey...

Tempted?

You'll Never Be A Man

Go To Sleep

There, satisfied? I hope so, back in '81 this was the best London had to offer (ok except maybe that whole 'punk' fad but I'd have trouble stretching my definition of rock here enough to include that). You may look at this hefty trio and wonder how the last record fits in here and it is that very record I want most to talk about. Scenes and reputations and legacies aside there is no question in my mind that these are three revolutionary records, though for very different reasons.

If Squeeze's more well-known, schmaltzy bubblegum singles left a bad tang on your tongue then indulge in the alt-pop feast presented here. Underwhelming at first listen, it is a complex palette of ever-so-subtly twisted ditties with infectious hooks, rock solid arrangements and each with it's own weird edge to it. Mid-record you'll have your mind gradually blown by F-Hole at which point the truly original contour of this album is fully revealed. 

From 77-86 Elvis Costello had one of the most impressive runs in rock/pop history. Trust just happens to be sandwiched between Get Happy! and Imperial Bedroom and it is in this trilogy where I believe the scope of his genius is most effortlessly demonstrated. Maintaining the high-energy, to-the-point performance of pop anthems from the former while making a clear progression towards the programmatic moodiness of the latter, Trust is one of his most concisely engaging and rewarding listens and features some seriously underrated classics.

This Heat's Deceit stands out here both in aesthetic and influence but provides a contrast I believe necessary to getting a accurate image of the whole of London's music scene at the time. Recorded in a converted meat freezer (Cold Storage Studios) with the band's own D.I.Y. set-up, Deceit sounds like nothing before or after it. Nor will any album ever come close to capturing such an audible nuclear-arms-race-inspired paranoia as this does. This Heat were onto so many idiomatic innovations with this record it's sort of not surprising this completely fell under the radar; it's hard to know what to make of what's going on here now, let alone 30 years ago. Each song is a totally unsettling and morose atmosphere unto itself, making the whole as accurate a tableau of the proposed dystopia Thratcher's government represented to disillusioned British youth as we'll get.

While Squeeze and Elvis were wrapping their political commentary in love-story allegory and Discharge and Crass wore their anarchism on their armbands, This Heat crafted the most convicted and visionary depiction of an apocalypse that, instead of bringing about desolation, left us some of the most inspired original sounds, sowing seeds for numerous forms of post-punk musical expression to come. 30 years later it's still spine-tingling.