MusicOlogy presents… The Top 50 Albums In Ology History: our look back at the best albums, mixtapes and EPs of the past three years.
Since January 2009, our crack team of smarter than the average bear music editors has scoured every last corner of the internet to bring you… the frustratingly smart and dazzlingly attractive readers of Ology.com… the absolute best new music in the world. From leaks to street dates, reviews to Rewinds, we've brought you all the latest in pop, hip-hop, indie/alternative rock and more with wit, know-how and, most of all, enough tasteless sarcasm to last two or three more lifetimes.
| Related: The 10 Best Indie/Alternative Albums Of 2012 (Halfway Edition) |
Three and half years and a billion cups of coffee later, we presented ourselves with a seemingly simple challenge: compile the definitive list of the 50 greatest music releases in the history of our (we think) pretty awesome web destination. What did that entail, exactly? So glad you asked. Since April, music editors Brett Warner and JT Langley have been digging through three years worth of music, checking out your suggestions, staying up sleepless nights and eventually debating, deciding and arm-wrestling the pool down to a final 50.
We'll be rolling out the entire list every Monday all this month here at MusicOlogy, so keep checking back to see if your favorite records made the cut. (Last week: Nos. 40-31)
Maestro, if you please...
Sigur Rós
Valtari (2012)
Perhaps jokingly promised to feature a more electronic-heavy sound, Sigur Rós' Valtari is, thankfully, instead a return to their broad, sweepingly cinematic early sound: a slow-building and then descending wave of orchestral grandeur, cathedral choirs, majestic guitars and Jónsi's transcendent falsetto. The band hadn't released anything this spacious since ( ), and at moments, Valtari is an even more somber, ponderous, slow to move affair, reaching heavenly climaxes and burrowing itself in quiet stillness with equally stirring results. A grandiose, painstakingly beautiful listen, the new Sigur Rós record is an absolute marvel that reinforces their rightful place amongst the most innovative, dependably fascinating bands of ours or any other generation.
Our Favorites: "Varúð," "Rembihnútur" and "Dauðalogn."
Big K.R.I.T.
Return Of 4Eva (2011)
4Eva Na Day (2012)
The pair of Wuz Here follow-ups Return Of 4Eva and 4Eva Na Day (Live From The Underground was excluded due to not being released when this list was organized, but rest assured, it’s in company) presented us something we couldn’t quite figure out through the usual instinct of immediately categorizing what we see. K.R.I.T. holds pieces of Outkast and Goodie Mob in his music, though is no Atlanta carbon copy, and leans the way of UGK and Scarface, though can’t be labeled Texas. At best, he’s a descendant, but the evolution of individuality throughout his discography, both on the lyric, methodical and production ends, is something where we’re truly seeing a reinvention of Southern hip-hop. Everything of 4Eva Na Day and Return Of 4Eva takes the angle of the genre past former limits while maintaining the signature elements, and while most twenty-five-and-under emcees are busy crawling toward the same ideals, K.R.I.T. is laying out a cartography in a manner as equally energetic as anything we’ve caught from Memphis, Houston and the respective neighbors, and doing it in a more emotional and literary standard that brings another aspect of the soul to the lower states. Return Of 4Eva and 4Eva Na Day have revitalized the spirit of Southern hip-hop.
Our Favorites: "Dreamin'," "Highs & Lows" and "Country Sh*t (Remix)" (Return Of 4Eva); "Boobie Miles," "Me and My Old School" and "Temptation" (4Eva Na Day).
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 (2012)
Don't let its verbose title fool you: Fiona Apple's long awaited fourth studio album (an agonizing seven years in the waiting) is her starkest yet, both sonically and emotionally. Divorced from the billowing production flourishes of producer Jon Brion, Apple and percussionist Charley Drayton coat these songs (already dense in both subject matter and implication) with just the lightest amount of sonic embellishment: a shuffling rhythm here, an understated upright bass there. Which isn't to say there isn't anything happening here; quite the opposite. Apple takes her jigsaw puzzle poetry to astounding heights, dashing into astoundingly unexpected harmonic territory while filling each note with chill-inducing levels of hurt, paranoia, emotional ache and spiritual momentum. There's a lot of life in every word… every tangle of stray sound… and it makes for a slow revealing, consistently enthralling listen.
Our Favorites: "Every Single Night," "Werewolf" and "Anything We Want."
Foo Fighters
Wasting Light (2011)
Dave Grohl's first collaboration with producer Butch Vig since Nevermind, the Foo Fighters' seventh studio album shed all of the radio-ready sheen of their '00s work, boasting an almost unbearably raw post-hardcore sound and the group's best batch of songs since the Colour and the Shape days. Recorded exclusively in Dave's garage, the album featured spot-on cameos from Hüsker Dü's Bob Mould and Nirvana's Krist Novoselic as well as the long-overdue return of Pat Smear on guitar. When they're not simply pummeling the shit out of their instruments, Grohl & Co. manage to evoke the DIY spirit of pre-grunge underground rock with feverish energy and focused temerity. There aren't any bells or whistles behind Wasting Light—it's simply a refreshingly hard-hitting, brutally real old school hard rock record from one of the few bands left willing or able to make them.
Our Favorites: "Rope," "Dear Rosemary" and "Bridge Burning."
Mello Music Group
Self Sacrifice (2012)
Mello Music Group is the hip-hop mine you’ve been looking for, and in Self Sacrifice, you’ll find a touch of every gem attached to the backlogged discographies of each producer, emcee and DJ that reads into what their solo work tells. Major labels like Roc Nation, G.O.O.D. Music and Maybach Music Group are all geared to drop collective LPs, so have Self Sacrifice handy, because side-by-side, you’ll be in the clarity dividing family from the lesser glamour-crowd working their own intentions to thumb that thicker paycheck. There’s no expiration date here, and the vivid styles hide strokes to be discovered in each different listen, which is a true rarity in music these days where you can figure out the picture with only a single glance.
Our Favorites: "Slow It Down" (Oddisee), "On Stand" (Oddisee and yU) and "Fight Through A Day" (Final and Nick Tha 1da).
Common
The Dreamer, The Believer (2011)
Common caught a raw end of Wrong Release Date Syndrome due to the late Christmastime release of The Dreamer, The Believer, and hip-hop lost a major slice of that going-back-home style we’ve been begging from Com since the Like Water For Chocolate days. Aside from bringing on the full collaboration with No I.D. that echoed back to Resurrection and One Day It’ll All Make Sense, the Maya Angelou feature and return of Lonnie “Pops” Lynn put The Dreamer, The Believer in the early moods and Common Sense atmospheres that had slightly faded from Com’s drive into the mega-mainstream throughout the new millennium, and the conveyance of cultural commentaries through the self and experience took the tracks to an era we thought Common had moved away from. The right dose of aggression and ominousness balance the taste of the album, and overall, The Dreamer, The Believer was one of the penultimate revivals from a hip-hop great we’ve known in some time.
Out Favorites: "The Dreamer" Feat. Dr. Maya Angelou, "Lovin' I Lost" and "Ghetto Dreams."
Beach House
Teen Dream (2010)
The Baltimore dream pop duo's third album and Sub Pop debut, Teen Dream is a small record that crams an immense wealth of sonic and emotional treasures behind its homemade lo-fi exterior. As with previous efforts, the songs here are awash in gorgeous keyboard textures, Alex Scally's shimmering electric guitar lines and, often best of all, the aching, arresting vocals of Victoria Legrand, floating over and diving into waves of pure and glorious sound with graceful purpose. A little Scott Walker here, a little Beach Boys there—the influences aren't hard to spot, but what makes Teen Dream such an essential listen is its striking sense of tangible atmosphere and an undeniable amount of soul, percolating through every moment from the rapturous sweep of "Walk In The Park" to the gliding guitar melancholy of "Norway" and beyond.
Our Favorites: "Walk In The Park," "Lover Of Mine" and "Used To Be."
XV
Zero Heroes (2011)
Vizzy managed to land on the top spot on our Best Mixtapes of 2011 list last year (again), and digging back through the original review for Zero Heroes, I recall comparing XV’s mental evolution and artistic realizations to Marcel Proust’s Remembrances of Things Past, which may seem excessive, and surely pretentious; however, looking at the emotional depth of Zero Heroes, it’s difficult not to address the strength of personal experience that crafted the narrative core of a mixtape that expressed such a heavy panorama of the human condition. Autobiographical and culturally critical as it is, Zero Heroes is an album written with hits, as XV shows us once more that his ability to write near-literary levels of lyricism still manage to reach a pure level of catchiness. The equilibrium of emotional relation and quality of listenabilty is something that’s been long-under-appreciated in XV’s music and Zero Heroes, which I’d nominate as his magnum opus, best conveys the exceptionality of his talent.
Our Favorites: "Pictures On My Wall," "Swervin'" and "When We're Done."
Radiohead
The King Of Limbs (2011)
No other album in recent memory was released like or sounded at all comparable to Radiohead's eighth studio album, announced without notice back in February 2011 and released less than a week later. A willfully dense revision of the post-Amnesiac blueprint, The King of Limbs is, at an almost painfully brief 37:30, an otherworldly plume of shuffling rhythms and sampled, looped and manipulated sound, constantly churning and folding in over itself like a wounded animal. Its first five songs are an impossible jungle of jagged guitars, dub bass and disjointed electronics, while its final three are a lush slow-burn of funereal piano, campfire acoustic guitars and, as always, Thom Yorke's wraithlike yowling. You either loved it or hated it, but there was certainly no escaping The King of Limbs that spring; easily the band's most aesthetically alien effort to date, it's also one of their all-time best.
Our Favorites: "Codex," "Little By Little" and "Separator."
J. Cole
Friday Night Lights (2010)
The Warm Up (2009)
Once upon a time, J. Cole stifled hip-hop with his Warm Up mixtape while the names of now were still beginning to emerge, and in a later time where Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was smothering hip-hop, his Friday Night Lights follow-up managed to still put on the momentary rival while most other releases in proximity dissolved. With the predecessor Come Up, Cole is fairly credited as the emcee that dragged hip-hop out of the snap-rap and glitter of the mid-2000s, and ushered in the Digital Era of artists, so it’s nearly-sinful to disregard the genius of what he accomplished through mixtapes that peaked at best-selling album quality. The Warm Up and Friday Night Lights exist in their own time outside of the run of music surrounding them, and present something that can’t rightly be labeled copycat or unconventional. Cole World: The Sideline Story might have hit longtime Cole fans more on the negative side, but all predecessors gave back an artistic something that hip-hop had been longing for while Cole reminded us that the emcee can remain a person rather than a personality in brilliance.
Out Favorites: "Can I Live," "World Is Empty" and "Dreams" (The Warm Up); "Before I'm Gone," "In The Morning" and "Villematic."
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Don't forget to leave your responses/reactions in the comments section below and be sure to check back next Monday (July 23), when we'll be unveiling Nos. 30-21 in our list of The Top 50 Albums in Ology History. See you all then.
Nos. 50-41 | Nos. 40-31 | Nos. 30-21 | Nos. 20-11 | The Top 10
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