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The 25 Best Albums of 2012

Whatever the future holds, 2012 showed that the album remains a viable method of expression.

The 25 Best Albums of 2012
Photo: Interscope

A Nielsen survey conducted earlier this year revealed that 64% of American teenagers listen to music primarily through YouTube, a shift that highlights the distressing state of the album as a viable art form. Combined with the usual series of big-selling albums mostly comprised of singles and fluff, the further rise of the iTunes store as the modern-day equivalent to the record shop, and the biggest salvo yet from figures-obsessed, singles-oriented hit machines lurking beyond our borders with “Gangnam Style,” signs indicate that the format might be in dire straits. And yet, even in these apparent latter days, the album still had a banner year, with a host of efforts that reinterpreted or reimagined the outlines of the form, from expanded mixtape digressions to gonzo outliers to diamond-hard works of composed throwback nostalgia, resulting in such a crowded field of great albums that it was difficult to just choose 25. The diversity and range was broad and stunning, from bedroom R&B to small-batch hip-hop to electronics-enhanced rock, establishing technology as a savior, putting the means of production more firmly in the hands of artists than ever before, with a wide range of them still interested in making ambitious, cohesive works, even if the payout is lower and the fame is more tempered. Whatever the future holds, 2012 showed that the album remains a viable method of expression at a micro level, whatever the larger economic situation. Jesse Cataldo

Editor’s Note: Check out our list of the 25 Best Singles of 2012.


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

25. Thee Oh Sees, Putrifiers II

In most cases, it would be difficult to pinpoint a quintessential album from a band that churns out so many good ones, but Putrifiers II manages to crystallize much of what makes John Dwyer and company tick: hazy, West Coast-style garage-rock that has a charming pugnaciousness running through its SoCal vibe. Putrifiers II manages to distill the group’s various quirks into three or four chunks of pure, distorted joy, from the eerie acid romp of “Lupine Domnius” to the low, rickety throttle of “Wax Face.” Disciplined and on point without ever seeming rigid, Thee Oh Sees skillfully merge the warmth of ’60s-style psychedelia with a much more cantankerous punk sound, proving that playing in an irreverent stoner-rock band and possessing a deft, disciplined hand aren’t mutually exclusive. Kevin Liedel


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

24. Shearwater, Animal Joy

More nature fetishism from the fervent poindexters in Shearwater, whose albums continue to function as the musical analogues to top-tier nature specials, fixated on communicating the grandeur of the natural world. Animal Joy is all soaring melodies and operatic crescendos, and while it doesn’t aspire to the topographical mania of The Golden Archipelago (which came with its own 50-page booklet of maps and charts), it beats it in terms of crowd-pleasing songcraft, with lead singer Jonathan Meiburg for the first time writing songs that work as standalone pieces rather than parts in a grand conceptual experiment, more concerned with the acute mechanics of a chorus than the migratory patterns of rooks and terns. Cataldo


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

23. Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Psychedelic Pill

Psychedelic Pill is the strangest album Neil Young has released, with or without his band Crazy Horse, in at least a decade. It’s also a furious, classic double disc, all razor’s-edge guitar dueling and tales of sturdiness in the face of aggression. “Ramada Inn” finds Young in tragic-storytelling mode, while on “Twisted Road” he smiles at the memory of hearing Dylan on the radio: “Poetry rollin’ off his tongue/Like Hank Williams chewin’ bubble gum.” For a real fright, “Walk Like a Giant” offers 27 minutes of rueful hippie regret, punctuated by Ralph Molina’s caveman drum-stomp and the eventual appearance of the beast itself. That’s the album, in a nutshell—a slow and sometimes lumbering thing, but awesome to behold. Ted Scheinman

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The 25 Best Albums of 2012

22. Flying Lotus, Until the Quiet Comes

Taking the multi-genre blur that was Cosmogramma and upping the writhing quotient resulted in Until the Quiet Comes, a teeming, dizzying album even by Flying Lotus’s standards. What listeners get isn’t a careless, ADD-addled carnival ride though: FlyLo’s work here is vignette-like, a carefully constructed mosaic of electronica, dance, and hip-hop experiments that speed gracefully by like nighttime vistas spied from a taxicab window. From the wistful, broken strains of “Me Yesterday//Corded” to the twinkling, glitchy march of “All In,” Until the Quiet Comes is the colorful patchwork of an artist who’s becoming just as mature as he is mercurial. Liedel


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

21. Action Bronson, Blue Chips

Rap has always had its lyrical obsessives, from the devoted coke salesmen of Clipse to the magisterially inclined Rick Ross, but there’s never been as culinarily fixated a figure as Action Bronson, a former chef with the bear-like presence to match his gigantic appetites. Of the six albums and mixtapes he’s released in the last two years, Blue Chips is the best, a grimy feast for the senses, defined by super-specific references and an unabashedly low-rent production style (the Mac volume-adjustment sound is audible at some points). Dropping about 80 allusions to edible varieties of cheese (culminating with a loafer/robiola couplet on “Tapas”), Bronson establishes himself as a Ghostface analogue with better taste in food, combining dense funk beats with thorny, complex lyricism. Cataldo


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

20. Kelly Hogan, I Like to Keep Myself in Pain

Despite having a couple of terrific albums to her credit, Kelly Hogan has long been best known for her work as a backup singer for Neko Case. But I Like to Keep Myself in Pain, her first album in eight years, proves that Hogan is simply too good to remain in the background. It isn’t just the warmth of her vocal timbre or the sheer power in her deliveries that make Hogan an interpretive singer with few equals. What makes the album such a heady listen is Hogan’s uncommonly keen ear for quality songs that span eras and genres of popular music, as well as her ability to bring those songs together with a real sense of scope and vision. Jonathan Keefe


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

19. Poliça, Give You the Ghost

In which an unheralded electro-soul duo from Minnesota suddenly makes Auto-Tune cool again. Poliça’s stream-of-consciousness lyricism and largely ad-libbed approach to recording Give You the Ghost lend an impulsive allure to details both large and small, from the ever-present electrical fuzz that pulses sexually throughout each snaking track to Channy Leaneagh’s alien-meets-android vocals echoing endlessly into a neon-tinged beyond. Perhaps what’s most surprising about Poliça’s debut, then, isn’t that two Gayngs veterans have employed a much-loathed pitch-corrector so effectively, but that they’ve taken something inherently artificial and predictable and made it sound suddenly organic and extemporaneous. Liedel

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The 25 Best Albums of 2012

18. Maps & Atlases Beware and Be Grateful

In an era where rock bands are either clinging desperately to the past or fleeing beyond the bass/drums/guitar spectrum, many of the ones still doing interesting work have gone small, shrewd, and amorphous. The songs on Beware and Be Grateful are intricate, cyclical puzzles, employing a woolgathering effect that builds on the accretion of looped parts, incorporating bits from all kinds of foreign genres while never becoming defined by those gleanings. Sacrificing the spontaneity of live recorded, jazz-inspired rock, Maps & Atlases used the album as an occasion to solidify the potency of their style, writing songs that feel fractured but also satisfyingly whole. Cataldo


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

17. Iris Dement, Sing the Delta

When No Depression interviewed Iris DeMent prior to the release of 2004’s collection of traditional gospel standards, Lifeline, she said the reason she hadn’t released an album of new material since 1996 was that she hadn’t “written twelve songs [she] wanted to make a record of.” It took another eight years for DeMent to write a dozen songs that were up to her exacting standards, but Sing the Delta was well worth that lengthy wait. Weaving autobiographical details into narratives of profound spiritual questioning, DeMent writes her own unique gospel that challenges both musical and religious traditions as she searches for truth. Keefe


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

16. Alabama Shakes, Boys and Girls

Singer Brittany Howard is the public face of Alabama Shakes, with her earthy tornado of a stage presence and a microphone-melting garage-soul delivery, but the band’s heart lies equally with Heath Fogg, whose two- or three-string guitar figures evoke both the textural dynamism of the Stax guys and the Ron Wood-style riffery of ’70s British roots rock. Fogg feels the contours of a song like Steve Cropper and maintains, like Howard, an elemental focus on dynamics (remember that the band cut its teeth covering both Otis Redding and Led Zeppelin). “Hold On” is the indelible single, and it’s a bouncy glory of a song, but look to “Hang Loose,” “Rise to the Sun,” “I Ain’t the Same,” and “Heartbreaker” for the band at its free and easiest, with verses skipping around the beat rather than hewing to it as anguish and hope entwine in the 23-year-old’s absurdly precocious voice. Then there’s “Be Mine,” a haunting, “Moonlight Mile” sort of groove under the rawest vocal performance on the whole disc. Scheinman


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

15. Ben Sollee, Half Made Man

Whether he’s singing about his relationship with his young son or the plight of laborers in eastern Kentucky whose livelihood has been threatened by mountaintop removal mining practices, Ben Sollee’s music speaks to his deep-seated sense of empathy. What makes Half Made Man such an inspiring album is that it isn’t just a bunch of bleeding-heart platitudes about how the world should be somehow better than it is, but about knuckling down and putting in the difficult work to make real changes happen on a personal level on a day-to-day basis. Sollee recognizes that we’re all works in progress, and he’s never been better than he is on Half Made Man. Keefe

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The 25 Best Albums of 2012

14. Carina Round, Tigermending

“Pick up the phone, I’m pregnant with your baby” isn’t just the message Carina Round ostensibly leaves on some sorry sap’s voicemail; it’s also the salutation that greets us on the singer-songwriter’s fourth solo album, Tigermending. While “Pick Up the Phone” is lyrically theatrical, however, it’s otherwise unusually subdued for Round. Lead single “The Last Time,” the wonderfully wobbly upright bassline of which is exceeded only by a chilling breakdown that pairs Round’s supernatural voice with eerily yawning guitars and horns, and “You Will Be Loved,” the album’s gorgeous centerpiece, are better examples of her predilection for dynamic, dramatically shifting arrangements. But it’s the songs that break new sonic ground for the British songstress—like “The Secret of Drowning,” which features an ominous synth track composed by Brian Eno and Dave Stewart, and the lullaby-ish “Simplicity Hurts”—that make Tigermending more than just an extension of Round’s already-impressive catalogue. Sal Cinquemani


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

13. Dr. John, Locked Down

The trend of guitar-band demigods collaborating on winning albums by artists of a certain age has begun to feel like community service. (Think Jeff Tweedy and Mavis Staples, Jack White and Wanda Jackson, Jim James and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, et al.) But Dr. John’s Locked Down, produced by guitarist Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, offers something more than intergenerational revivalism. What may be the funkiest album of the year also represents a pleasing new sound from the Doctor, as spacey, guitar-driven uptempo numbers like “Ice Age” share time with Funkadelic breakdowns and the warped delight that is “Kingdom of Izzness” (rhymes with “witness,” somehow). Auerbach keeps the horns on speed dial while guitar, bass, drums, and a very Pink Floyd organ do most of the heavy lifting. The Black Keys have done two Danger Mouse-produced LPs to date, and Auerbach seems to have learned something from the DJ about experimentalism via minimalism. The result: a dreamy new configuration of the Doctor’s inimitable voodoo. Scheinman


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

12. Swans, The Seer

The beastly, dreadful strains of “Lunacy” open up The Seer like flaring beacons, warning listeners of the murderous, looping ride ahead. Indeed, resurrected by post-punk mastermind Michael Gira, the reborn Swans offer a menacing conglomeration of sounds: raw, Tom Waits-inspired vocalizations; the throbbing art-metal heaviness of Tool; sinister, Nine Inch Nails-style industrial loops; and even the dark, depressed grit of American Recordings-era Johnny Cash. What results is a larger-than-life rock opus that’s hellish and rustic. Indeed, possessing not one, but two tracks that pass the 20-minute mark and still manage to be ominously enthralling every second of the way, The Seer is positively operatic. Liedel


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

11. Niki and the Dove, Instinct

Whether you consider Niki and the Dove’s striking similarities to both the Knife and Stevie Nicks (and, occasionally, Donna Lewis!) strengths or weaknesses, it’s impossible to deny the Swedish trio’s knack for deep-burrowing earworms. Songs like “Tomorrow,” the opening track on their debut album, Instinct, and the Prince-esque “The Drummer” percolate discreetly before cracking open like piñatas, the pop hooks showering down like confetti. The nods to other artists can be distracting (you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s the Welsh Witch herself and not singer Malin Dahlström imploring on “The Beach,” “Now did you ever dream of the desert?/Did you ever dream of making a mess?”), but Niki and the Dove even manage to make pop archetypes like the DJ-as-savior trope of “DJ, Ease My Mind” sound impossibly fresh, if not entirely original. Cinquemani

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The 25 Best Albums of 2012

10. Jack White, Blunderbuss

On first blush, Jack White’s first solo album doesn’t present much of a departure for the singer/guitarist/franchise: tight three-chord hooks and plenty of guitar-thrash workouts embedded in songs of convincing moral indictment and a general awe of womankind. But his riffs are more direct than ever: three- or four-note things that somehow buoy whole songs, and heavy songs, too, about jealousy, hypocrisy, and the various other bluesy perils of being mortal. Rotating all-male and -female bands, White recorded more numbers with the women, but both are tight recording units schooled to their leader’s specifications. The songs that don’t blossom into anthemic territory self-destruct in sonic warfare. This is White’s guitar at its sharpest (on “Sixteen Saltines,” he basically does the work of a one-man AC/DC), but the high point is the lone cover, Rudy Toombs’s “I’m Shakin’,” a call-and-response with the female singers that swings hard even as White loses his wits to that demon love. Scheinman


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

9. Lana Del Rey, Born to Die

However much hate she may have accrued for her sleepy, sarcastic take on pop stardom, Lana Del Rey emerged as one of the year’s true success stories, pushing past her dreadful SNL performance, past the flash-in-the-pan accusations into a uniquely absorbing post-modern figure, succeeding not in spite of the remarkably exposed, freely exploitative bent of her music, but because of it. Born to Die stands out as a startlingly composed premiere effort, a daring, dead-eyed statement from a chanteuse who wears her character on her sleeve, making herself immune to the flung arrows of detractors by exaggerating the sexuality, vapidity, and artificial gangsterism to cartoonish levels, an album of lush orchestral pop capped by Del Rey’s inimitably somnolent delivery. Cataldo


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

8. Father John Misty, Fear Fun

Josh Tillman’s latest effort, under the alias Father John Misty, is a stoned and beautiful act of self-assertion after the singer-drummer-guitarist’s departure from Fleet Foxes. These are misty songs indeed, with lyrics about “Heidegger and Sartre/Drinkin’ poppy tea,” but also disarmingly direct, the sound of a conscience taking stock of itself. Composed after a mushroom-fueled trip down the West Coast and subsequent bout of novel-writing, the tunes on Fear Fun form an ethereal scrapbook of a frame of mind, bursting with ex-girlfriends, books left unwritten, and dreams of flaming swords. Muscle Shoals suggests itself here and there, but the album is buoyed on string quartets and a scratchy, Creedence Clearwater Revival-style Telecaster under Tillman’s gracefully extended secondary vocal lines that float as though wafting down from his smoky perch in Laurel Canyon. One or two suspiciously Fleet Foxy songs appear, but the guy doesn’t need madrigals when his melodies are this good. Scheinman


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

7. Japandroids, Celebration Rock

To dismiss Japandroids, as some critics have in this year’s post-analysis, as milking middle-aged white-guy nostalgia is to miss entirely the broad populism that drives Celebration Rock. Songs like “The House That Heaven Built” and “Adrenaline Nightshift” are all about looking at even seemingly inconsequential interactions as an opportunity for deep, personal connections, and then asking if there’s anything that could possibly be more enduring or important. The duo’s massive, perfectly constructed hooks, which build to rousing sing-along choruses, only reinforce the idea of shared experiences. Ultimately, Celebration Rock isn’t about empty nostalgia, but about being truly present in what’s happening now. Keefe

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The 25 Best Albums of 2012

6. Chromatics, Kill for Love

A too-long, wispy ramble of an album, or a brilliant statement on reclamation and decay, exhaustion and inspiration? Either way, Kill for Love contains an embarrassment of riches, full of songs that push beyond the typical ’80s fetishism, spinning those tropes into odd, repetitive exercises in genre-tweaking. Opening with a remarkably disassembled version of Neil Young’s “Into the Black,” the group uses this virtuoso reimagining as the template for a series of daring digressions, from the hypnotic echo effect of “Lady” to the washed-out soundscapes of “A Matter of Time,” using Ruth Radelet’s lonely voice as an eerie siren’s call. Cataldo


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

5. Dirty Projectors, Swing Lo Magellan

Without sacrificing too much in musical intricacy, David Longstreth offers ever-more-inviting albums with each passing year. Take 2012’s Swing Lo Magellan, a more straight-ahead effort than 2009’s Bitte Orca. Longstreth’s much-touted, medievally derived vocal arrangements remain alluring, but they’re less likely to spin your head this time around, even on good speakers: Simpler arrangements win the day, and Swing Lo Magellan is Dirty Projectors’ most tuneful disc to date. The canticle-turned-rocker (“Offspring Are Blank”), the piano-led meditation (“Impregnable Question”), and the horn orgasm (“Unto Caesar”) are all winners, but the lead single bears more than cursory attention: “Gun Has No Trigger” finds Longstreth sounding less like a choirboy and more like Thom Yorke. In other words, “the bowl of tears” finally sounds as though it belongs to him. Sure, the band’s lyrics still include verbs like “redact.” But what with all the acoustic leg-stretching and sing-along arrangements, Longstreth’s suddenly coming off as a musician rather than a magician. It’s a neat trick. Scheinman


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

4. Bat for Lashes, The Haunted Man

The Haunted Man is the least immediate of Natasha Khan’s extraordinary trio of art-pop albums. In particular, “Horses of the Sun” and “Oh Yeah,” one of only a few tracks not adorned by an orchestral arrangement, aren’t as initially inviting as the lush synth-pop offerings on 2009’s Two Suns. But your attention is greatly rewarded, as exquisite details like the softly chugging aquatic pulse that underpins album closer “Deep Sea Diver,” reveal themselves. Though the album lacks an obvious crossover hit like “Daniel,” a would-be smash single in a much cooler universe than ours, the muted, Brazilian-inflected guitar on lead single “All Your Gold” is reminiscent of the Luis Bonfá sample from Gotye’s ubiquitous “Somebody That I Used to Know.” Stardom, however, might be out of reach for Khan, as she seems to get a little bit closer to Earth with each new album. Cinquemani


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

3. Santigold, Master of My Make-Believe

With her punk-yelp drawl, Santigold at first seems to be trying to affect Karen O’s style on her second album’s first single, “GO!,” but then the beat drops out and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman herself takes the mic, all elongated syllables and spliced-up vocals, and it’s clear Santi isn’t just playing dress-up, but skillfully, reverently co-inhabiting Karen’s world. Santi is a shapeshifter, and the beats and arrangements of each track are likewise perfectly tailored to their lyrics. “Don’t look ahead, there’s stormy weather,” Santi warns just as guitar licks crackle like electricity on “Disparate Youth,” an expertly layered piece of dub-pop, while her cavernous background vocals reverberate beneath the mechanical rhythm section of “God from the Machine.” Even if hip-hop-leaning tracks like “Freak Like Me” and “Look at These Hoes” feel more derivative than the album’s copious nods to new wave and synth-pop, Master of My Make-Believe is still a genre-defying exercise in exerting one’s mastery over all. Cinquemani

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The 25 Best Albums of 2012

2. Jessie Ware, Devotion

Quietly, almost sneakily, a modern wave of British-born soul has slinked its way back into musical vogue. Adele’s success has certainly helped, but the tracks currently being laid down by the xx, Burial, SBTRKT, Roses Gabor, and Jessie Ware seem to be a better—and more diverse—indication of the coming soul-pop renaissance: simple, chilled, house-infused concoctions that borrow liberally from both indie electronica and Sade-style R&B. With the dusky, siren-like Devotion, Ware switches easily from darkly romantic electro-ballads (“Running”) to breezy late-night jams (“110%”) to trickling dream-pop (“Something Inside”) without ever seeming forced or contrived, quickly establishing herself as the most promising and versatile of the young vanguard. Liedel


The 25 Best Albums of 2012

1. Frank Ocean, Channel Orange

In a year where plenty of artists simply toyed with the seductive power of ’90s-style R&B, Frank Ocean full-on pursued, captured, and tamed it to produce the saga that is Channel Orange. But the album’s smooth confidence, evident in everything from the jazzy bounce of “Super Rich Kids” to the juiced-up funk of “Crack Rock” and “Pyramids,” is only part of the draw. The remainder is Ocean’s storytelling, where he breathes life into dozens of imperfect, alluring characters that are just as desperate, confused, and beautiful as their narrator. Channel Orange did more than just prove that Ocean is far and away the most talented of the Odd Future crew; it established him as a songwriter whose lyrical and musical craft borders on the literary. Liedel

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