HIT LIST
The ten best albums of 2012
by Matt Ashare |Published January 18, 2013
Maybe I've just become more attuned to it as the year has come to a close, but I feel like I've been hearing an awful lot of talk about the decline and potentially imminent collapse of the music business as we know it. It's nothing new, really. But, as we stumble toward the so-called fiscal cliff, record companies are indeed bracing for yet another assault on their bottom lines: Thanks to a provision written into a 1978 copyright law, artists have the legal right to reclaim ownership of their recordings in the U.S. after 35 years. In other words, beginning in 2013, anyone who put out a record in 1978 can and in many cases will begin relieving big labels of a major revenue stream, namely back catalog reissues. Oh well. . .
Of course, industry insiders have been wringing their hands over the plight of the music business since well before the dawn of the internet, as if anyone who's not employed by a record label has reason to care. The truth is, cassette recording didn't destroy music, and neither has downloading. . . at least, not yet. If anything, there's simply more music in more forms out there, created by artists who continue to find all kinds of interesting ways to effectively navigate our brave new digital world. And that, in turn, has made it increasingly difficult for any one person to accurate single out the "best" releases of the year because, frankly, it's impossible to listen to all of it.
I was particularly struck by that simple truth as I set out to compile a list of my favorite albums of the year and quickly realized that for the first time, in 2012, I listened to more downloads — in my mind, virtual albums — than actual CDs. Thanks to iTunes, a running count of how many times I played various tracks does exist, which handily provides a kind of quantitative measure of value. At the same time, I couldn't help but notice the alarming number of tracks that I downloaded but never had a chance to play over the course of the year. With that in mind, here's a list of my ten favorite 2012 releases, along with a respectful nod in the general direction of all the great music I never got around to. . .
Aimee Mann, Charmer (SuperEgo)
It's a little hard to believe that it's been nearly three decades since Mann first emerged as the icy blond, bass-playing frontwoman of MTV faves 'Til Tuesday. It may have taken her a while to remake herself as a serious singer/songwriter, but eight albums into her solo career she's fairly well established as critics' darling who approaches her art like a craft and plays her cards close to her vest as she cooly, and alluringly, explores the crushing vagaries of romantic dysfunction. That said, what makes Charmer such a charmer is her willingness to dip back into her new wave past and toss devastating lines like, "You lie so well, I could never even tell/What were lies in your artful rearranging," over big, synth-driven hooks. There's no shame in that.
Beck, Song Reader (McSweeney's)
And, my award for canniest business move of the year goes, not to Ke$hsa for bringing a Black Key, an Iggy Pop, and the Flaming Lips to the party that is her new Warrior, but to another alt-rock dude she might have put on the guest list. Rather than recording a new album, Beck just wrote it and released it as a handsome hardcover book of sheet music, lyrics, and colorful illustrations. It's only been on shelves for a couple of weeks and I've already heard one-off takes of half a dozen of the twenty songs in Song Reader performed by various ensembles on the radio. And YouTube is teeming with video versions, some of which are sure to go viral. Indeed, I won't be the least bit surprised if the new year brings with it a full-on tribute disc of some kind, or if Song Reader spawns a bunch of virtual albums. A wicked smart move by a wicked smart dude.
Frank Ocean, Channel Orange (Def Jam)
To be honest, I passed on Channel Orange when it first came out back in July. I was too busy listening another contemporary r&b crooner, R. Kelly, and the neo-classic, retro-soul of his impressive Write Me Back. I didn't even jump on board after Ocean, who got his start in the the LA hip-hop collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, made celebrity news by revealing his sexual orientation in November. But the Grammy nominations — six for Ocean — did peak my interest, and it didn't take long for the slow-smolder grooves and deceptively sparse, willfully idiosyncratic arrangements on Channel Orange, Ocean's first proper studio album, to win me over. Ocean hasn't exactly reinvented soul music, but this year he definitely gave reigning king R. Kelly a run for his money.
Green Day, Uno, Dos, and Tré (Warner/Reprise)
Sure, writing, recording, and releasing three full albums of new material in less than a year is an impressive feat. Even two would have been pretty good. But what's truly remarkable about what Billie Joe Armstrong and the band he's been piloting since the early-’90s pulled off with Uno, Dos, and Tré has nothing to do with numbers. No, what seals the deal here is the infectious energy and the genuine sense of fun Green Day buzz with throughout this hook-packed trilogy. They didn't merely rediscover their platinum punk roots; they went all the back to punk's nascent incarnation as ’60s garage rock and, in spite of the existential angst and suburban alienation that Armstrong's made of a career out of channeling, had what sounds like a really good time in the process.
Jack White, Blunderbuss (Third Man/Columbia)
White's staked his career as much, if not more, on being a consummate stylist — a forward-thinking, retro-leaning tastemaker — as he has on his outlier charisma or his considerable songwriting skills and musical talent. At heart, he's a conceptual artist and, as it turns out, the duo-tone, guitar/drums partnership that was the White Stripes weren't necessarily his most convincing creation. On Blunderbuss, his solo debut, he dips deeply into the classic r&b cannon, even putting his own distinct mark on Rudolph Toombs raucous novelty number "I'm Shakin'," and leaves his rocking' stamp on a suite of songs that, in an alternate universe, mighta come crawling outta Memphis in the mid-’60s. It's White Stripes with the big box of Crayola's to color outside the lines with.
Joe Strummer, The Hellcat Years (Hellcat/Epitaph)
Sadly, Joe Strummer's post-Clash career was cut short when an undiagnosed congenital heart condition took his life in December of 2002, just three short years after he reconnected with his punk-rock muse and found firm footing with a new backing band (the Mescaleros) and the Rancid-affiliated indie label Hellcat. Fortunately, he managed to record two albums and start a third before his passing, all of which are represented on this 57-track retrospective, a download-only compilation that includes a whole bunch of live tracks, including half a dozen Clash classics, three of which feature Mick Jones jumping in on guitar. There were a bunch of great reissue packages this year — the Archers of Loaf and Sugar sets from Merge come immediately to mind — but this was by far the sweetest.
Kathleen Edwards, Voyageur (Zoe/Rounder)
And, the award for most plays on my iTunes, calendar year 2012, goes to. . . Voyageur, a bittersweet slice of Americana from Canadian songstress Kathleen Edwards, tenderly tweaked by indie-rock darling Justin Vernon of Bon Iver fame. Edwards has displayed a natural gift for finding that sweet spot between spare, confessional folk portraiture and gritty roots-rock release since her 2003 debut, Failer. But, on Voyageur, Vernon bathes Edwards' countrified constructions in dreamy pop ambience that highlights her alluring voice and accentuates the melodic hooks in a collection of songs that delve, with disarming delicacy, into the intimate aches of a broken romance. "Hang me up on your cross," she croons stoically on the album's devastatingly acute final cut, "For the record, I only wanted to sing songs." Well sung.
Mark Lanegan, Blues Funeral (4AD)
According to iTunes, I also spent quite of bit of time cuing up this album by the ex-frontman of Seattle's Screaming Trees. Lanegan has been singing his own wryly twisted version of the blues since he hooked up with Kurt Cobain to play Leadbelly covers in the early ’90s. But, having indulged in a quite a bit of genre jumping of late, in league with Scottish indie-folkstress Isobel Campbell (of Belle & Sebastian), Josh Homme's dark-metallic Queens of the Stone Age, and the British techno-groove duo Soulsavers, Lanegan's perfectly comfortable leaving his comfort zone on Blues Funeral, an artistic leap of faith buoyed electro-magnetic pulses and disco grooves, and weighted with heavy grunge guitars and an aura of deep, deep blooze. Lanegan's always done dark just about as well as anyone in a leather trench coat, but here he touches on epic in songs that revel in bleakness. As he intones in "St. Louis Elegy," with black sheets of guitars raining around his growl of a voice, "If tears were rain/I'd have drunk myself sick."
Neil Young, Psychedelic Pill and Americana (Warner/Reprise)
Neil Young may be a legacy artist, but he's mercurial enough to have maintained a certain relevance for over five decades, in large part because, while he does have quite an impressive catalog dating back to the ’60s, he been far too impertinent and, well, idiosyncratic to rest on any laurels. Thankfully, that didn't keep him from feeling the nostalgia and feeding off of it when he reconvened with his longtime compadres in Crazy Horse for the first time in a decade to record what turned into two distinct projects — a double-album sized dose of churning Crazy Horse fury, replete with long, winding guitar solos and aptly titled Psychedelic Pill, and a single disc of radically reworked folk tunes dubbed Americana. Let's just say that, like it or not, Young definitely left his mark on 2012.
Regina Spektor, What We Saw From the Cheap Seats (Sire)
My apologies to Fiona Apple, whose The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do not only has a much longer title than What We Saw From the Cheap Seats, but was also on my list until iTunes reminded me that I've spent quite a bit more time with avant-folk songstress Regina Spektor over the past year. A veteran of NYC's anti-folk scene, Spektor's a classically trained pianist with a puckish penchant for courting the absurd even as she delivers slanted pop enchantments, something that she keeps finding new ways to do on this, her sixth studio album since she debuted with 11:11 in 2001. Plus, Apple's bound to end up on plenty of year-end lists, so I thought it would be nice to close out 2012 with one last plug for Regina Spektor. Happy 2013. . .
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