When I was on my college newspaper staff, I lived for doing CD reviews. Every article about a movie I just saw, a TV show, a DVD that was coming out, they were really just things I had to do before I could review more CDs. I mostly stuck to the music I knew: rock, alternative rock, punk rock, rock, indie rock, and also rock. It's not that I didn't appreciate hip-hop or R&B or anything like that. In fact, there are some artists (Kanye, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake) that I absolutely thought were brilliant, but c'mon, what do I know about that kind of music? Anybody can listen to Kanye and be like "wow, he's pretty good!" I opted for reviewing a few more obscure bands that maybe not everyone knew about.
My 2012 top ten follows the same vein: I could've tried to be eclectic and add my favorite hip-hop CDs of the year (like Lupe Fiasco or Nas), some of the EDM that I got into (like Morgan Page), or even the more baroque-pop artists that everyone loves, myself included (like Fiona Apple and her approximately 35-word CD title). But I'm not interested in being eclectic for the sake of being eclectic. That's not honest. I'll always like my 10th-favorite rock CD more than my favorite hip-hop or "other" CD, save for a truly memorable CD like Late Registration. So this list reflects that reality.
Away we go!
10. Minus the Bear- Infinity Overhead
I’ve been a big Minus the Bear fan since ’05-’06. In fact, I even
enjoyed the near-universally derided Omni.
Luckily, Infinity Overhead is the
kind of record that apologists such as myself, as well as the more
discriminating types, can enjoy without guilt. Five albums into their career, I
doubt Minus the Bear is very interested in the guitar-tapping epics that they
made their name with, so it’s good to see the band write some solid mid-tempo
tunes such as “Listing” and “Heaven is a Ghost Town.” However, this record
really makes its bones where the Bear fuses its ADD past with the more restrained
pop songcraft of their later years (“Lies and Eyes” and “Zeros”). I’ll say
again, on the record, that I like Omni.
But Infinity Overhead is the album
that should have followed up Planet of
Ice, as I think it combines the best of Minus the Bear’s past with some
sounds that can carry them into the future.
9. Best Coast: The
Only Place
If there is a goofy song that better encapsulates my
feelings about the state of California than “The Only Place,” I don’t give a
fuck, because that’s how perfect the opening track from Best Coast’s sophomore
record captures the zeitgeist of my adopted home state. Best Coast is probably
bracing for the cease-and-desist letter from Jenny Lewis at any moment, but
until then, the indie pop of The Only Place
will be found on many car stereos stuck in traffic on their way down Newport
Blvd (Ok, Wilshire Blvd. Newport Blvd. is more of a 40 Oz. to Freedom kind of street). And “Last Year” is the best Rilo
Kiley song I’ve ever heard, and I hate to keep making the comparisons, but
there’s no doubt about who Best Coast is most indebted to. And while the 60’s
lo-fi production values of their last CD are probably gone for good, I’m pretty
excited to see where Best Coast ends up next. Despite the sometimes-grating lyrics,
there’s enough originality here for something really special.
8. Coheed and Cambria- The
Afterman: Ascension
Loved these guys since high school. They’ve been a guilty
pleasure, but unfortunately for me, the “guilty” started to heavily outweigh
the “pleasure” on 2007’s uneven No World
For Tomorrow and 2010’s even worse Year
of the Black Rainbow. Perhaps the constraints of their highfalutin comic
book-ish concept led their music to a dead end where there didn’t seem to be a
pot of gold at the end of that black rainbow. But Coheed has rediscovered their
propensity for fun on The Afterman:
Ascension, the first installment of a double album (they haven’t totally abandoned
The Big Concept). For a fan who could never be bothered with the bigger story
penned in their lyrics, Ascension keeps
the rock fresh with new sounds like the vulnerable title track or the
electronics on “Subtraction.” Furthermore, “Goodnight, Fair Lady” is the best
song the band has crafted in years.
There are still cringe-worthy moments where the ideas fall flat or are
just laughable (“Key Entity Extraction II: Holly Wood the Cracked”…yup, that’s
the title). But the hits greatly outweigh the misses, and Claudio Sanchez
sounds downright manly in this era of Fun.s and Passion Pits. Welcome Home!
7. Bloc Party- Four
I pretty much always respect, if not actively like, Bloc
Party releases, but boy am I happy that on Four
they left the confusing detours of Intimacy
and A Weekend in the City and have
gone back to doing what made them unforgettable on Silent Alarm: put on an atmospheric post-punk clinic (“Day Four”
and “VALIS”). Perhaps more striking is their attempt to write the heaviest
songs of their career without always falling completely flat, as “Kettling” can
attest. There are still some clunkers: for example, Bloc Party can’t really
hack Metallica-style riffing on “We Are Not Good People,” yet enough of their
old magic shows up on “Octopus” and “Team A” to put this record solidly at the
runner-up position in their discography. Not many CDs can come close to
recapturing the immediacy and (positive) tension (get it?) of Silent Alarm, but Four is pretty close.
6. Sleigh Bells: Reign
of Terror
I’m starting to think 2012 is the year of the coed indie
rock duo (The White Stripes still suck, by the way) what with Sleigh Bells and
Best Coast, but hey, distortion + delay pedal + sugary vocals = noise rock
goodness, and Sleigh Bells show no sign of slowing down here on their sophomore
disc. While the candy-coated noise of their debut Treats may have been sonic junk food, Reign of Terror is a much more satisfying listen overall. (Food metaphors!)
I’ll be damned if I didn’t psych myself up for many a kickball game in 2012
with the pep rally from hell fun of “Crush,” and “End of the Line” is how I
would imagine a breakup would feel like while under the influence of
psilocybin. Meanwhile, the crunch of “Comeback Kid” is perfect for any
occasion. On either end of these mid-record gems, Alexis Krauss and Derek
Miller fill Terror with enormous
space and nuance, leading me to believe that if the sky is the limit for Sleigh
Bells, and Treats was the plane being
taxied from the terminal, Reign of Terror
is a pretty successful takeoff.
5. The Smashing Pumpkins: Oceania
No, I’m not kidding. After nearly fifteen years spent mostly
embarrassing himself, Billy Corgan proved to us that he still had a few good
tunes spinning around his long-bald dome. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he
has the best incarnation of the Pumpkins, chops-wise, that I’ve yet to hear. But
no matter how good the rhythm section gets (see the second half of “The
Celestials”), it’s of course all about Corgan’s wall of fuzz, and he doesn’t
disappoint. “Inkless” and “The Chimera” could’ve easily been on Siamese Dream, and the haunting intro to
“Violet Rays” proves that not all of the Pumpkins’ late-90s foray into
electronica was for naught. As for the lyrics, I’ll just say that they aren’t
as bad as they usually are for a Corgan release. I’ll also ignore the fact that
these 13 mostly-stellar tracks are apparently part of a larger 44-song concept
called Teargarden by Kaleidoscope (facepalm)
and focus on the task at hand. With Oceania,
Corgan finally puts together most of the Pumpkin remnants that he eagerly
smashed (pun!) to bits over a decade ago to create a record that doesn’t sound
as nearly out of place as you’d think in 2012.
4. Nada Surf- The
Stars are Indifferent to Astronomy
Nada Surf didn’t make an all-time favorite on par with Let Go or The Weight is a Gift, but even a less-than-perfect record from Nada
Surf is better than the best ones from almost any other band. Probably 2012’s
go-to album for anyone who wants to think about old places and faces, titles
like “When I Was Young,” “Teenage Dreams,” and “The Future” drop not-so-subtle
hints about the lyrics put forth by Matthew Caws: nostalgia, regret, wondering what
your ex is up to, and uncertainty about what’s next. Luckily, these sometimes-uneasy
trips down memory lane are softened by the 70’s-esque power pop that Nada Surf
has been cranking out effortlessly ever since they stopped joking about being
“Popular.” There’s still room for curveballs, and it’s no surprise to me that
“Jules and Jim” and “Let the Fight Do the Fighting,” the record’s two most
offbeat songs, are also my favorite. After so much time producing A-level indie
rock, Nada Surf is perfectly justified in turning in a B+.
3. Japandroids: Celebration
Rock
I found the soundtrack to your next party. Celebration Rock takes the roots of
Japandroids’ impressive ’09 debut Post-Nothing
and builds a skyscraper out of the empty bottles one usually finds strewn
across their apartment after the kinds of nights an album like this is written
for. Sometimes, album titles tell you exactly what you’re getting. Celebration Rock is just that: an eight-song,
35-minute ode to the shit that you probably spent most of college doing, regretting,
then doing again once you couldn’t find a real job. No wasted moments on this
record, or really, a second to breathe. “Adrenaline Nightshift” is exactly what
the title implies, and “The House That Heaven Built” may have the most
triumphant chorus of 2012. And unlike the sparse lyrics of Post-Nothing, Celebration
Rock is downright poetic on tunes like “Fire’s Highway” and “Younger Us.” There’s
something to be said for the fact that this guitar-and-drum duo sounds like a
five-piece, and it’s best said by turning up my car stereo. Get hooked on these
guys while you have the chance: stars that burn this bright tend to fade out
pretty fast.
2. Circa Survive- Violent Waves
Doylestown, PA’s finest became yet another entry in the long
list of bands that swung for the major-label fences and missed, through no
fault of their own: Blue Sky Noise
was a great record, even if it wasn’t the band’s magnum opus. Two years later, Violent Waves shows Circa Survive has
given up the arena rock pretense and is back to their old ways: the opening and
closing tracks both eclipse seven minutes in length, so it’s pretty apparent
that no honcho had a finger on the studio controls. In between those two epics
are some of Circa’s best songs to date. “Sharp Practice” is the most accessible
track but is by no means formulaic, and “Suitcase” shows Anthony Green’s
oft-cryptic lyrics at their most literal and poignant, made all the more
obvious by the roomy instrumentation. “Think of Me When They Sound” was written
for driving in the dark at night, “The Lottery” sounds like it was written for The Hunger Games, and while Green isn’t
flooring me with the vocal dexterity of “In Fear and Faith” anymore, he’s by no
means lost his fastball on either track. Or anywhere else for that matter on
this, the best album yet from Circa Survive.
1. Deftones- Koi No Yokan
Koi No Yokan sounds
like Diamond Eyes, which sort of
sounded like Saturday Night Wrist,
which took good elements from both White
Pony and Deftones. My point is, I
usually deduct brownie points from bands who stick to their comfort zone, but
with a band as good as Deftones, they could release Koi No Yokan fifteen more times and I’d probably still love it.
Unfortunately, their love of 7-string guitars and Dickies shorts led Deftones
to be thrown in with the Korns and Bizkits and other MIZ-SPELLINGZ of the late
90’s-early ‘00s. This was unfair at best, and musically criminal at worst:
Chino Moreno has more talent in his goatee than those bands do overall, and
here it shows again. The band sounds downright seductive on the one-two punch
of “Swerve City” and “Romantic Dreams,” while “Leathers” and “Tempest” contain
Deftones’ usual soaring choruses above the crunch of Stephen Carpenter’s
eight-string (yes, eight-string) guitar. “What Happened to You?” is the best
closer to a Deftones album since “Pink Maggit,” and is the closest Deftones
gets to “experimenting” on here, in that it owes more to REM’s Murmur than Meshuggah. Leave the
experimenting for everyone else, Deftones. Never, ever change.
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