It's that time of the year again, fellow music fanatics: 2013 is almost exactly six months away, so it's time once again to start thinking about our year-end best of music lists. Now, I know what some of you might be thinking: "I really should be looking at porn right now instead of this nonsense." You might also be thinking, "Isn't six months a little early to be laying down the foundations for a year-end list?" While I can't delude you into believing our list of the 10 best indie and alternative rock releases of 2012 (so far) is more entertaining than a good bit of pornography, I can assure you that no, it's never too early. I'm thinking about 2014's list as we speak, in fact. Catch up.
| Releated: Ology Presents: The 50 Best TV Episodes Ever 2012 |
Without further ado, here are my picks (listed in strict alphabetical order… don't worry, I triple-checked) for the 10 best alt-rock/indie albums of the year thus far, as reviewed right here on MusicOlogy. Agree? Disagree? There's a comments section at the bottom with your name on it. Let's do this.
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
Prefacing her verbosely titled new album with a seven year waiting period should've left Fiona Apple's latest collection of musical bruised fruit completely crippled under a smothering layer of "importance," gestating in a sealed vacuum of creative expectations and critical laurels. It is an important album… arguably Apple's most important to date… but not for the reasons you might think. Produced by Fiona and her long-time drummer Charlie Drayton, The Idler Wheel is a stark, foreboding, barely there skeleton of an album: raw, impulsive and immediate as the emotions it serves up… miles away from the recording studio warmth of the Jon Brion records. (More…)
Garbage – Not Your Kind Of People
Don't surprised if, mere moments into Not Your Kind Of People, you forget that it's been seven years since their last studio effort, 2005's Bleed Like Me. Don't be surprised if it's also your favorite thing they've ever done. Leaner, meaner, noisier and better than anything the band (a crack team of producers with Shirley Manson at the saucy center) has recorded since their self-titled debut, Not Your Kind Of People both re-ignites and re-enforces their trademark sound: crunchy electronics, brutal post-glam electric guitars, and, of course, Manson's soulful miserable-ism. (More…)
Glen Hansard – Rhythm And Repose
The real beauty of Once (apart, obviously, from its Oscar and now Tony-Award winning songs) were the quiet, unspoken moments of emotional shorthand between Glen Hansard's lovelorn busker and Markéta Irglová's bruised expatriate—the stray looks, goofy smiles and wanting sighs that can carry an entire lifetime's worth of pain, hope, love and longing without ever making a sound. On the surface, Glen's solo debut is another collection of slow burning, gently brush-stroked chamber folk tunes… yet in between the notes and lines, you can hear the coarse, raw sound of Glen's heart filling and breaking. (More…)
Orbital – Wonky
The veteran techno duo's back-to-basics 2004 LP The Blue Album didn't turn very many heads, and with good reason—brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll's willingness to experiment with hyper-melodic pop and rock influences (not to mention their background in punk and early electro) was always what set them apart from the monotonous pack. Their first album in eight years, Wonky is as wondrously off-kilter as its title suggests—at nine tracks, it is a prodigiously focused, massively catchy, gorgeously melodic work of retro dance pop perfectionism, the likes of which we haven't heard since The Chemical Brothers were bona fide hit-makers. (More…)
Sigur Rós – Valtari
There's an old adage that goes, "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture." It always feels especially apt when I (or others) attempt to describe, decipher, explain or critique the truly otherworldly music of Sigur Rós. Falsely promised to be a more "electronic" outing, Valtari is instead a welcome retread into the warm blanket familiarity of their first two records—glacial, expansive dirges (many pushing the 6-8 minute mark) brim-filled with organic rhythms, shapeless E-Bow guitar textures, cinematic orchestral flourishes and (of course) the free-form, elegantly baffling vocal wails of Jónsi, whose electro-pop solo fare couldn't be less a frame of reference here. (More…)
The Shins – Port Of Morrow
What's changed since The Shins' last Wall Of Sound exercise, 2007's Wincing The Night Away? Well, a few things. Unlike previously tight, focused efforts, Port Of Morrow is an album of two minds—the left half of Mercer's brain wants to make a classic, back to basics Shins record a la Chutes Too Narrow. The other half of the album, though, is a dense, multi-layered, post-Brian Wilson expulsion of neo-psychedelics and progressive pop nuance. (Two guesses which half leaves the more lasting impression.) Port Of Morrow deserves to be experienced through a heavy set of headphones, staring deeply into the eyes of a blissfully flawed, gloriously beautiful boy or girl. This is the one that'll change your life. (More…)
The Smashing Pumpkins – Oceania
In the time it would take to decide exactly where Oceania fits in the "one song at a time" schemata of larger project Teargarden By Kaleidyscope or, for that matter, argue about whether the band that recorded it should be regarded as the same music entity that released Gish and Siamese Dream, albums it will inevitably be compared to… you could just simply listen to it and pleasantly realize that, for the first time since Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, The Smashing Pumpkins sound very much like themselves again without resorting to self-parody or creative back-stepping. (More…)
Jack White – Blunderbuss
"The people around me won't let me become what I mean to, they just want me the same," moans Jack White towards the end of Blunderbuss. He, of course, has given himself a new name—his own. Like the last two White Stripes records, his solo debut bounces from sound to sound (the feral garage punk of "Sixteen Saltines", the pastoral Appalachian folk of "Blunderbuss", the quirky ragtime piano groove of "Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy") with an almost whimsical effortlessness. Its confrontationally immediate songs are, for better or worse, entirely in the moment without much polish or fuss. As always, White leaves the over-analyzing up to us. (More…)
Bobby Womack – The Bravest Man In The Universe
Recently pronounced cancer free by his doctors, it's impossible to avoid reading a lot into the title of soul legend Bobby Womack's latest, The Bravest Man In The Universe. Co-produced by Damon Albarn (with whom Womack collaborated on Gorillaz's Plastic Beach) and XL Records chief Richard Russell, the album is anything but a weepy R&B nostalgia-fest—punctuated by gritty hip-hop beats, gloomy synths, Albarn's mournful piano arrangements and Russell's lively samples, Womack's first album of original material in 12 years aches, roars and moans with purpose and passion. (More…)
Zambri – House Of Baasa
Can I tell you a dirty secret Zambri's dark and foreboding debut album? It's actually a pretty damn good pop record. Don't let the burping analogue keyboards, grinding drums, clanging sheet metal or vocal snarling fool you—the follow-up to sisters Jessica and Cristi Jo's masterful Glossolalia EP holds onto that record's industrial thrash and pervasive gloominess, sure, but adds a new, surprisingly traditional approach to melody and pop structure that manages to engage emotionally while keeping the extensive assortment of buzzings and hissings in close check. At its best moments, House Of Baasa sounds like the soundtrack to a romantic drama set inside a medieval torture chamber. Bleak? Sure. Unsettling? Definitely. Filled to the brim with love? Absolutely. (More…)
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