Favorite '12 Songs
General indie bs in no particular order save for the first few. 2012 was sweet. |
| 45 |  | The Shins
Port of Morrow
40 Mark Strasse - I can't quit you James Mercer |
| 44 |  | Lord Huron
Lonesome Dreams
Time To Run - Mumford & Sons if they meant something |
| 43 |  | Hospitality
Hospitality
Eighth Avenue - overlooked indie pop record of the year |
| 42 |  | Heavenly Beat
Talent
Faithless - guy from Beach Fossils makes a compelling case to do things his own way |
| 41 |  | Chromatics
Kill for Love
Kill for Love - I took a pill almost every night |
| 40 |  | Liars
WIXIW
No. 1 Against the Rush - swampy |
| 39 |  | Nada Surf
The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy
Clear Eye Clouded Mind |
| 38 |  | Submotion Orchestra
Fragments
Thousand Yard Stare - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxopViU98Xo |
| 37 |  | Metric
Synthetica
Lost Kitten - Tell me one thing you will never do / I was looking for a hooker when
I found you. |
| 36 |  | Dum Dum Girls
End of Daze
Lord Knows - your new soundtrack to rehab |
| 35 |  | Benjamin Gibbard
Former Lives
Bigger Than Love - Gibbard needs to do more duets. |
| 34 |  | Taylor Swift
Red
State of Grace - Red may be overwrought and bloated and shocking to those who
want Taylor Swift to stay the same virginal pop princess she made a mint on, but
"State of Grace" makes a strong case that she remains the best pop star out there. |
| 33 |  | The Helio Sequence
Negotiations
Harvester of Souls - about as creepy as it sounds |
| 32 |  | Simian Mobile Disco
Unpatterns
Interference - chk chk chk |
| 31 |  | Blur
Blur 21
Under the Westway - our long international nightmare is over. New Blur |
| 30 |  | Dirty Projectors
Swing Lo Magellan
Impregnable Question - another band I normally dislike releasing a song I can't
resist. So deceptively retro. |
| 29 |  | The Men
Open Your Heart
Candy - more of this please Men |
| 28 |  | Maps & Atlases
Beware and Be Grateful
Remote and Dark Years - i-i-i-i-i-i-i |
| 27 |  | Bat for Lashes
The Haunted Man
Laura - like Spektor this year, Natasha Khan can't even write a mediocre album
without accidentally including something brilliant |
| 26 |  | Andrew Bird
Hands of Glory
Beyond the Valley of the Three White Horses - if you haven't heard this EP and you
liked Break It Yourself, you need it immediately. This song is Bird's version of the
apocalypse and the disintegration is haunting to hear. |
| 25 |  | Divine Fits
A Thing Called Divine Fits
Shivers - Britt Daniels + Dan Boeckner = effortless bliss. |
| 24 |  | School of Seven Bells
Ghostory
Lafaye - losing one Deheza sister may have been just what these guys needed to
properly shoegaze. |
| 23 |  | Miike Snow
Happy To You
God Help This Divorce - the weirdest song on an album that increasingly doesn't
make that much sense to me, but it's tripply inflections and general psychedelic
malaise work out exceedingly well where the rest of the album can't decide what it
wants to do. |
| 22 |  | Burial
Kindred
Ashtray Wasp - tough choice |
| 21 |  | Wild Nothing
Nocturne
Only Heather - pure love |
| 20 | | First Aid Kit
The Lion's Roar
Emmylou - a nice reminder that whatever we will ever do, the Swedes will do it
better. |
| 19 |  | Grimes
Visions
Skin - name your genre |
| 18 |  | Sharon van Etten
Tramp
Serpents - insert "venomous" pun here |
| 17 |  | John Talabot
Fin
Destiny ft. Pional - ok Dev you win |
| 16 |  | Tame Impala
Lonerism
Feels Like We Only Go Backwards - i'm in a purple tube of consciousness |
| 15 |  | Cloud Nothings
Attack on Memory
Wasted Days - authentic enough for you? |
| 14 |  | Regina Spektor
What We Saw From The Cheap Seats
Firewood - in spite of herself, Spektor can't stop making gems, even if they are in
short supply on the lackluster Cheap Seats. Firewood is a classic. |
| 13 | | Godspeed You! Black Emperor
'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
We Drift Like Worried Fire - mandatory GY!BE mention |
| 12 |  | Cat Power
Sun
Cherokee - the wolf effect pushes this dangerously close to cheese territory but not
quite. Plus that beat! |
| 11 |  | Lost in the Trees
A Church That Fits Our Needs
Golden Eyelids - this is what it sounds like to lose something |
| 10 |  | The Walkmen
Heaven
We Can't Be Beat" - a giant middle-finger to growing old. |
| 9 |  | Andrew Bird
Break It Yourself
Lazy Projector - hard to pick one from here, but "Lazy Projector's" slow burn to that
cathartic "I can't see the sense in us breaking up at all" is the pinnacle of the
record. |
| 8 |  | Passion Pit
Gossamer
Constant Conversations - whitest R&B |
| 7 |  | A.C. Newman
Shut Down The Streets
I'm Not Talking - i'm still not sure whether Shut Down the Streets was disappointing
as a whole or just disappointing because the rest of the album had to follow up this
immense opener. Perhaps Newman's best song, and if you're including his New
Pornos work, that's something. |
| 6 |  | Fiona Apple
The Idler Wheel...
Werewolf - nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key, indeed. Never change
Fiona |
| 5 |  | Menomena
Moms
Plumage - having never been a huge Menomena fan, it was a fairly tall order for
one song to immediately flip my perception of a band, but "Plumage" did that and
more, all pretty easily. |
| 4 | | The Tallest Man on Earth
There's No Leaving Now
1904 - metaphors! Sometimes noise is just your mind. |
| 3 |  | Hot Chip
In Our Heads
Flutes - a seven-minute jam of everything Hot Chip have ever done well, sprawling
yet tightly controlled and relentless in its beat. |
| 2 |  | Japandroids
Celebration Rock
"The House That Heaven Built" - this record wore on me--I liked when they were
doing the exact same thing for the first time--but damn if this song isn't the second-
best song they've ever written (the first is "Younger Us"--it's pretty close though). |
| 1 |  | Islands
A Sleep And A Forgetting
Oh Maria - on a breakup album filled with bleak, depressing songs, "Oh Maria" is
probably the simplest, but it connects on such a fundamental level of love and
permanent loss that I still feel pangs listening to it, for the 152nd time, ten months
later. RIYL: Buddy Holly, Maria Elena Holly, plane crashes |
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