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2012

FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2012:
A Church That Fits Our Needs by Lost in the Trees
All We Love We Leave Behind by Converge
Attack on Memory by Cloud Nothings
Celebration Rock by Japandroids
Fear Fun by Father John Misty
Foreign Body by Mirrorring
Held by Holy Other
Holiday by Port St. Willow
I Want to Believe by Religious Girls
Luxury Problems by Andy Stott
Maraqopa by Damien Jurado
Metz by Metz
Nootropics by Lower Dens
Total Loss by How to Dress Well
Until the Quiet Comes by Flying Lotus
Vacation by Shlohmo

FAVORITE SONGS OF 2012:
“Aimless Arrow” by Converge
“Climax” by Usher
“Cold Nites” by How to Dress Well
“Cut You” by Cloud Nothings
“Fire’s Highway” by Japandroids
“I Belong in Your Arms” by Chairlift
“I Love It” by Icona Pop
“In Difference” by Holy Other
“Museum of Flight” by Damien Jurado
“No Future/No Past” by Cloud Nothings
“Nothing is the News” by Damien Jurado
“Oblivion” by Grimes
“Ocean Floor for Everything” by How to Dress Well
“Old Haunts” by Memoryhouse
“Paper Landscape” by Dntel
“Red” by Lost in the Trees
“Set It Right” by How to Dress Well
“Silent From Above” by Mirrorring
“Talking to You” by How to Dress Well
“Tense Past” by Holy Other
“Vines” by Lost in the Trees
“Working Titles” by Damien Jurado
“Younger Us” by Japandroids

FAVORITE MOVIES OF 2012:
Case de Mi Padre
The Dark Knight Rises
Samsara
Skyfall
Sound of My Voice

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Dirty ProjectorsSwing Lo Magellan [Domino; 2012] In 2009, Dirty Projectors set off a shimmering, shattering, broken bombast in the form of Bitte Orca. It was an effervescent explosion of angular, off-kilter guitar, loose drumming and vocal melodies shooting off in every direction. Now, all that shrapnel and broken glass come to rest on the beaches, in the form of Swing Lo Magellan – a distillation of the band that softens all the edges and exposes their interior sheen. This is likely the closest Dave Longstreth and company will get to a pop record friendly for the masses. Lead single “Gun Has No Trigger” sports an odd simplicity unlike anything Dirty Projectors have done before. Longstreth drops the guitar altogether to serve as true frontman. Bass and drums slink through a sultry R&B while he croons and howls like a late 70’s Elvis Costello. He dictates the litany of a man’s shortcomings with a cool wit and wry smile. The album’s namesake is a nod to the opportunities and perils of following the lead of GPS navigation – where it can get you and just how wrong it can steer you. To it’s credit the band’s own Magellan has led them northward up the California coast, away from the suburban sprawl of the “Temecula Sunrise” to the Big Sur shimmer of the title song. They’ve settled and cooled. It’s apparent in the cooing of Amber Coffman and Haley Dekle – the duo now noticeably without Angel Deradoorian. Where they were the horses threatening to pull apart each song on Bitte Orca, they now are the relaxed, in-tune adhesion underlying the majority of Swing Lo Magellan. Despite the calm consistency on this LP, Dirty Projectors have not left us without a few surprises. The album’s standout is the epic, amphitheater filling “Maybe That Was It.” The song is a slow, deep piece of prog-rock, with Longstreth’s guitar and voice both howling to the moon. It’s a primitively romantic end to the most hot, star-filled of summer nights. Swing Lo Magellan may not display the same upfront, non-stop energy and fight of its predecessors, but it proves the band were not just succeeding in a brief heat. Oddball they may be, Dirty Projectors have shown themselves capable of a broader accessibility and longevity through stretching slowly out in every direction their GPS can take them.
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James BlackshawLove is the Plan, the Plan is Death [Important; 2012] Those first phrases of lone acoustic guitar, ringing out America – that dissonant, discordant America once belonging (perhaps only) to John Fahey – mark the deception that James Blackshaw has come full circle to where he began. It’s the first in a litany of expectation defying, history shedding maneuvers that brim Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death, his tenth solo album in a career still shy of a decade. The first, quite apparent, alteration to his tradition lies within these first few seconds of the opening title track. No longer the 12-steel-stringed guitar indigenous to both the aforementioned Americana and Blackshaw’s earlier recordings, he now wields the six nylon strings of more classical fare. With the change of instrument also comes a change in environment. Rather than bright, airy, reverberant room filling, this performance is head filling. Blackshaw’s guitar is captured at such close range you can hear each slide of his fingers up and down the strings, and each slow, nasal breath. Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death consumes with a sort of warm, wet intimacy, making clear that the man is drawing something of himself through his guitar and piano. These aren’t songs written for just any instrument, but channeled through each one’s respective voice. As for the human voice, Blackshaw has performed vocal pieces before – if you count spoken numbers under a blanket of guitar and percussion as vocal pieces. Here he delivers his first melodic, lyrical song in the form of “And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways.” The voice, belonging to Genevieve Beaulieu of dark droning Menace Ruine, moves low and slow, almost operatically, as an off-kilter piano tornadoes around her. The two intertwine and take alternating command of their conversation. From all the heavy romance, Blackshaw concludes by springing new life from his ‘death plan,’ as “The Snows are Melted, the Snows are Gone” grows his piano in the direction of the sun. It’s the revelation of that intimacy which brings both loss and awakening realization. From our breath and fingertips, to our voice and our instrument, to our love and our death, the path either followed, or diverged from, will eventually lead toward the heavens.
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PumicePUNY [Soft Abuse; 2012] New Zealand’s Stefan Neville may have been toiling away at his Pumice project for a good 15 years, but now just might be the time it was meant for. His latest opus, PUNY, is tailor-made for the new cassette culture, celebrating noise to near excess. Neville’s voice and keyboards are overdriven and oversaturated to a brittle, as distortion and feedback ride every acoustic guitar, Casio synth, and loose snare drum. A little tape hiss might be just the aesthetic choice he intended, serving as the phantom instrument to be played by the listener. “Hey Crap Crab” and “Smell the Towel” are experiments rather than structured pieces, the foundation for something bigger. Sloppy drums don’t bother with keeping time; a capella vocals swell with feedback, slowed to a moan and barely leaving a discernible melody. Everything starts and stops, and starts and stops. It’s a jigsaw puzzle with unmatched pieces jammed into place – a deliberate force that insists this is not amateur sloppiness, but the art of a man enamored with broken sounds. To the contrary, 12-minute standout “Trophy” is a sailor’s funeral dirge that progresses imperceptibly. Its lone organ gives way to the rolling of distorted waves, succumbing to the sea. It could easily occupy one side of an LP all its own (perhaps it should) and stands as proof that Neville knows exactly what he’s doing. “Trophy” bears the pace of his slow heart and steady breath; it honestly feels alive. Between the meditative and outright exploitation, the duality of Pumice is uncomfortably at odds. PUNY crackles brightly with sonic anomalies, but suffers out of tune street urchin one-man-band tendencies. It’s clear that Neville, when restrained, is capable of making a clean collage from a musical waste, but it’s a rare find on PUNY.
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Lost in the TreesA Church That Fits Our Needs [Anti-; 2012] There are two types of funerals: the arguably selfish ones where everyone mourns the loss of someone they love and don’t want to be without, or the joyous gathering of friends and family to celebrate a life truly lived. It’s far easier to lament that someone has left this world too soon, or resent them for doing so willfully. With A Church That Fits Our Needs, Lost in the Trees’ mastermind Ari Picker has managed to stave off negativity and take the latter approach. You don’t have to look long or hard to find the details of what preceded the album’s writing – the tragic, haunting events that catalyzed Picker’s narrative. Suffice it to say; A Church That Fits Our Needs is devoted to the memory of the songwriter’s artist mother, who took her life shortly after his wedding. True to its title, the record serves as a public house for worship, meditation, and visitation. Picker has built this place to commune with his mother and left it open for all to come and go as they please. He doesn’t attempt to paint her as infallible matriarch, but offers that which makes her human. Like captivating Bible tales, we are not shown how to live a perfect life; rather we are taught that we are allowed to try, to fail, and to try again. Flawed as she may be, he will whole-heartedly defend her, as in “Icy River” he vehemently instructs, “Don’t you ever dare think she was weak-hearted.” Picker is acutely aware that life is difficult, and finding the struggle to be too much does not make you a quitter. In a cathedral of elaborate orchestration, Lost in the Trees fluidly express the complexity of all this feeling. Arching high, strings and horns marry conventional rock band instrumentation almost indiscernibly. A Church That Fits Our Needs is not a collection of pop songs with string arrangement, but a full ensemble working through all seven stages of grief in concert. Lead single “Red” bares a pristine tension – a nervous guitar line falls all over itself, harps swarm and flutter and Mellotron-imitating strings warble as bass and drums start and stop enough to induce whiplash. Each musician adds and subtracts, while Picker’s haunted (and haunting) falsetto remains the only constant. The result is humanly unpredictable and dynamic, nearing the cinematic, as if to soundtrack the life and loss of this brilliant and tragic figure. A Church That Fits Our Needs is heartbreaking without wallowing, lamenting without pitying. Ari Picker has crafted a place to keep his mother, so that he may always keep her close. The joy is ours to be able to share in such a life and visit that church as often as we like.
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MemoryhouseThe Slideshow Effect [Sub Pop; 2012] Memoryhouse are hell-bent on disproving anyone who ever pigeonholed them as dream pop or chillwave. It seems the duo of Evan Abeele and Denise Nouvion harbor some resentment to the blog culture that helped catapult them from bedroom project to Sub Pop’s newest darlings, and they’re not shy about saying so (see the band’s song-by-song commentary for “The Quietus”). As a result, their debut full-length, The Slideshow Effect, is deliberate – forcibly. True to the band’s form, every song on The Slideshow Effect is set for a slow dance,with the setting in constant flux – “Heirloom” goes to the beach; “Walk With Me” is 80’s John Hughes fare; “Bonfire” trades the vinyl hiss of debut EP, The Years, for cricket chirps. The skeletons of these songs are everything Memoryhouse have built their trademark on, but those bones are restlessly covered in any camouflage they could find – country, a capella, Tropicalia, nu jazz. By the time they reach the last two songs on The Slideshow Effect, Memoryhouse have run out of distracting gimmicks, and they’re the better for it. This closing set proves a lucent juxtaposition of all the duo is capable of – the best of where they started and just where they might be going. “Kinds of Light” recaptures the gauzy sunset-on-water romance that made The Years shimmer, while managing to stay fresh and progressive. The (un)ending “Old Haunts” is the grandest, most cinematic piece the duo has conjured. Abeele’s guitar playing is outright tense, while Nouvion’s oft-melancholic voice stretches as high and low as it possibly can, filled with an insatiable longing that runs right off the end of the song–both offering only a moment’s relief. Then comes a crashing of wave after wave of drums and distortion, and as she repeats, “It’s enough,” you know it will never really be enough.
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Damien JuradoMaraqopa [Secretly Canadian; 2012] More than 15 years and 10 albums in, longtime fans know better than to expect a consistent, linear path from Damien Jurado. From the lo-fi reel to reel folk ofGhost of David, to the dissonant overdrive of its follow-up, I Break Chairs, Jurado has touched on nearly anything a guitar-wielding singer-songwriter can accomplish. Jurado’s latest album,Maraqopa, gives the sense that he has finally found a unique niche to settle into. Thirty-four seconds in, you know the trajectory of Maraqopa. Opener “Nothing is the News” is a full-on psych-blues jam; Jurado howls, reverb pushes every sound into cavernous corners. There’s a big organ rocking out. It’s a sound that’s bursting with confidence. Like the man has never been so relaxed or sure of what he was doing – and he keeps that confidence throughout the record’s ten songs. Jurado finding his stride is owed, at least in part, to his teaming with producer/arranger Richard Swift. Having felt each other out on 2010’s Saint Bartlett, the two now find themselves growing loose and intuitive in their partnership. The songs on Maraqopasound like a couple of seasoned veterans (which they truly are) grabbing the nearest instrument and trusting their instincts. The result, recorded at a breakneck pace, seems almost improvised, yet entirely right – as if divinely guided. In songwriting, Jurado has left behind his signature vignette storytelling for something more ethereal. There’s a sense of collective conscience in songs such as “Life Away from the Garden” and the title track; an examination of the spiritual and the universal. The themes may trend toward the biblical where Jurado has always had a foot, but he seems far more interested in the shared human experience that transcends beliefs. In Maraqopa, Damien Jurado has brought his gospel to the people. It is a one-man (with a little help from his friend) passion play, soundtracked by the retro R&B and folk of an old soul. From arrangement to lyricism, these songs are beyond time and being, an ageless shared experience.
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Sharon Van EttenTramp [Jagjaguwar; 2012] Tramp is a coming out for Sharon Van Etten. For the last several years, she’s been Brooklyn’s co-ed duet partner of choice, guesting on songs from The Antlers to The National. Now, with her second full-length – her first for Jagjaguwar, Van Etten is showing her full breadth as a songwriter and proving her place at center stage. Right out the gate, Van Etten comfortably assumes her position as chanteuse and bandleader, opening Tramp with a trio of the most assertive songs she has written. No longer the demure acolyte to her famous friends, she is learning to show some teeth, to spit and growl as much as she croons. Van Etten is as much Courtney Love or Brody Dalle as she is Joni Mitchell or Norah Jones, incredibly fierce while exercising full restraint; she tiptoes from the pleading to the downright venomous. On standout “Give Out,” she manages to make her antagonist sorry for a crime he has yet to commit, dejectedly asserting, “You’re the reason why I’ll move to the city/You’re why I’ll need to leave.” It rings not only as prematurely heartbroken, but preemptively cruel, a defense to dull said future pains. Van Etten’s penchant for duets does get her into some trouble on Tramp. The album’s latter half pulls the focus from her with back-to-back duets, “We Are Fine” and “Magic Chords.” “We Are Fine” makes the mistake of letting Beirut’s Zach Condon – one of the more powerful and singular voices in indie rock – take over its second verse. By two minutes in, it’s easy to forget Van Etten isn’t just backing up another of her Brooklyn brethren. Missteps aside, Sharon Van Etten has asserted herself as one of our top-notch contemporary American songwriters, working that space between acoustic folk balladry and bracing punk defiance. Growing more focused and concise, she has shown she can hit hard and fast, and leave a lasting impression. Van Etten’s days of supporting the voices of her male counterparts are assuredly over.
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pacificUVWeekends [Mazarine Records; 2012] On their third full-length, pacificUV starts off with the slippery, backwards-looping “Friday Night Dream”–a song that is standing on the precipice of a panoramic musical experience; its climbing bass synth and cello even hinting at the cinematic. Sadly, it’s the last bit of excitement or anticipation Weekends provides, as it drops abruptly into “Funny Girl,” a juvenile romance set to scraps of Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark castoffs. The landscape that follows is a static one, narrowed by a meticulous craftiness that only serves to limit the scope of pacificUV’s one-time yearnings for space. Weekends is music by smart people with marginal ability: calculated and formulaic without a clear point of view or talent for songwriting. Every synthesizer arpeggiates too perfectly in time; vocalist Clay Jordan whispers a narrow one-octave range bordering on Sesame Street in its lyrical simplicity; steady sub-100 bpm 808 beats keep a pace barely above a walk. By its second half, Weekends stumbles into a dull repetition bordering on redundant and auto-tuned vocals that suck whatever life is left in Jordan’s voice. At this point, it’s hard to remember human hands are even at work; this could be the product of a Deep Blue programmed to write “perfect songs.” Having spent more time hibernating than actually releasing albums in their near-fifteen-year career, pacificUV give little excuse for what’s been taking so long. Weekends is the lament of an exhausted and apathetic band no longer interested in any of the challenges that come with making interesting, evocative music.
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Cloud NothingsAttack on Memory [Carpark; 2012] During the process of writing his sophomore release as Cloud Nothings, Dylan Baldi thought seriously about changing the band’s name – and for good reason. Attack on Memory is a stark move away from the lo-fi garage pop of the self-titled debut. While still brimming with the youth of its 20-year-old songwriter, this collection of eight songs wastes no time running straight into, and wrestling with, Baldi’s biggest fears. Teamed with Steve Albini’s hyper-realistic engineering, Cloud Nothings has bashed out a very immediate, very live album. A listen with headphones is a trip to a dark, sweaty basement show filled with seething, angst-ridden teens. The band is very much there and the audience has no choice but to be there, instantly apparent as opener “No Future/No Past” claws slowly with a teetering, dissonant piano line and steady drum cadence, building an almost unbearable tension until it bursts open on Baldi’s distant screams and string breaking tears at his guitar. It’s like he’s been caught in an extremely personal bedroom moment. Attack on Memory is a weight holding its listeners, and its performers, under water. While helpless and breathless, the album’s course is one of yearning and fight. Tense and fearful, Baldi knows he’s in a losing battle with whatever outside forces are at play here, but he will writhe and tear to the very end. On “Our Plans,” he repeatedly reminds us, “we won’t last long.” “Fall In,” meanwhile, is the only song reminiscent of what Cloud Nothings made a name on – a bright, playful coastal pop-punk with a sweet boy/girl vocal harmony. It is a necessary intermission in the middle of what would otherwise be an overwhelmingly sad, agitated set of songs; a reminder that this feeling won’t last forever. By the end of the closing “Cut You,” the 34 minutes of Attack on Memory feel like a marathon – one with creeps jumping out at every corner. Startling and cathartic, its effects are palpitating. For all the anxiety and exhaustion, Attack on Memory is equally cathartic and invigorating.
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