Reaper's Favorite Albums of 2012

[Rugby Thompson]

take in Smoke DZA - K.O.N.Y

[Red Brooklyn]

First Aid Kit is the only band I've heard on your list. Actually, I think they are the only band I've even HEARD OF on your list. I'm lame.

[Reaper16]

Originally Posted by Red Brooklyn

First Aid Kit is the only band I've heard on your list. Actually, I think they are the only band I've even HEARD OF on your list. I'm lame.

Really? El-P is out repping Brooklyn his whole career and you don't know the man?

Well, that's what I'm here for I suppose.

[Red Brooklyn]

Originally Posted by Reaper16

Really? El-P is out repping Brooklyn his whole career and you don't know the man?

Well, that's what I'm here for I suppose.

Oh, wait, yeah. I'm not super familiar with his work, but yeah, I'm aware of El-P. Must have glossed over him.

[Reaper16]

10. P.O.S. – We Don’t Even Live Here

Lyrically, this is an album about little revolutions. The idea is that if you can’t abide living in a ****ed-up America, that you make scheme and plot and make your own rules. Make your own place to live. Kick down doors, reject notions of private property, lie. It’s a surprisingly upbeat album, given its fairly revolutionary politics. P.O.S.’ stellar solo albums have typically been full of punk rock drums and raw production. On this, his 4th album, things change a bit. There’s more of an electronic, European influence. It feels like a natural extension in some ways from 2011’s Doomtree crew album, No Kings. “**** Your Stuff,” the lead single, is as commercial a track as P.O.S. is likely to ever produce (so of course it’s very lyrically subversive). Stef raps his ass off on fast-paced songs like “Weird Friends” or “All of It” or “Bumper.” The track “How We Land” is my favorite; a beautiful number about overmedication, featuring guest vocals (and a guest rap verse!) from Justin Vernon of Bon Iver fame. Yes, Bon Iver rap exists. There aren’t a lot of highlights on this album, honestly. Stef’s last album, Never Better, was full of great song after great song. We Don’t Even Live Here is a more cohesive ALBUM, however. It’s an engaging album-length listen. It’s catchy, energetic, and doesn’t get old.

[Mama Hip Rockets]

Originally Posted by Reaper16

10. P.O.S. – We Don’t Even Live Here

Nice.

[Reaper16]

9. Royal Thunder – CVI

Hard rock album of the year, right here. Hell, it’s the Southern Rock album of the year, too (apologies to Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires, who are awesome but whose album missed mu top 30 because of production). Royal Thunder is a Sabbath-inspired rock quartet from Georgia and they are goddamned heavy. They’re fronted by Mini Parsons (she also plays bass), whose mid-range voice works so beautifully with the sludgy guitar riffs. She’s like a banshee drunk off of bourbon. These songs are timeless in a way; these vocal lines and riffs would play just as well in the ‘70s as they do today. You could call them revivalist, but I just call them good. The soaring vocals, the bar-smell atmosphere. The first half of this album is seriously as good as anything released in 2012. Anything. The back half falls off a bit for various reasons – redundancy, lack of catchiness, etc. – but that first half got wore the hell out on my iTunes. They can do short and sweet (“Whispering World,” “No Good”), or they can masterfully use atmosphere and repetition to craft a killer 10 minute long song (“Shake and Shift”). Opening track “Parsonz Curse” is a top 3 song of 2012 for me. The slow build, the driving vocals, the beautiful crescendo of syrup-thick guitars and layered chorus vocals; this song is so ****ing good. This is a band to watch out for in the future, for sure.

[Reaper16]

8. Lazerbeak – Lava Bangers

It feels weird to me putting this album this high. It’s just a beat tape, after all. But it’s a Lazerbeak beat tape, which helps explain its placement. Lazerbeak is one of Doomtree’s two main producers, and he’s absolutely a top 5 producer in all of hip-hop. Dude makes ****ing killer beats. Lava Bangers is an album of short instrumental sequences that Lazerbeak made, with no one rapping over them. I don’t know a lot about the various genres of electronic music. All I know is that I listened to this CD more than any other album this year. This is a list of favorites, right? I'd say this album is a heavy favorite. Each of these tracks are ****ing awesome, but the real magic lies in the sequencing. From the start of the album to the finish, this is phenomenally, perfectly sequenced. This feels like a true album. Some of the song combos are especially transcendent; the track “Smash Hit” leading into “LRL” is a top 5 musical moment of the year for me. Go drive around to this. Go exercise to this. Do anything in your life ever to this album, because it’s ****ing great.

[Reaper16]

7. Swans – The Seer

This album strikes me as the future of music. Hyperbole? Sure. But this album feels groundbreaking to me in so many ways. Were this a best-of list it’d be much closer to 1 than 7. But this is a favorites list, and I can only listen to this album about once a month. Because it’s an incredibly draining emotional experience. Swans take post-rock, dip it into a bucket of Americana, and then ring the thing out like a towel. Words fail me when trying to describe the album. Just listen to the two long songs I’ve linked to. Be prepared for anything and everything. Be prepared to be amazed, to be in a state of thrall.

[Reaper16]

6. Mgla – With Hearts Towards None

I’ve spent this whole list praising black metal albums that take the genre to new, exciting, experimental places. So it’s pretty funny that my favorite black metal album of 2012 takes the genre to exactly zero new places. This album does nothing new. What it does is classic black metal, done exquisitely well. I know that lots of you reading this don’t like black metal. Maybe you haven’t had the right introduction. So here’s my challenge: listen to the first two minutes of the track “With Hearts Towards None III.” That’s it. Keep an open mind through the cool riffs and harsh vocals of the first minute and 40 seconds. Then experience the riff change at 1:50 into the song. If you aren’t motivated by that piece of music, if you don’t feel like you can take on the entire world by yourself, then you will never understand black metal. The simple melodies on this album, being able to hear the attack of the guitar pick on the strings, the simple blastbeats…everything on this album lacks frills but is so, so effective anyway. I mowed lawns to this album. I copyedited to this album. I took gentle walks by the Black Warrior River to this album. Everything I did while listening to this album sort of reaffirmed my own humanity, my own will to live a good life. It’s weird, but that’s what black metal at its best does – through the most extreme, brutal sounds comes something like a life-affirming experience.

[NewChief]

Agree with your take on the Swans album. I appreciate the album, but it's not something I find myself looking forward to unless I'm in the right mood.

[Reaper16]

5. 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

Fiona Apple is back with a damn dynamo of an album. Musically, this is almost entirely piano and occasional percussion. It’s a very stripped-down album, putting the focus on Fiona’s voice. It’s fierce on this album. So is the piano playing; sometimes you can easily picture Fiona slamming down on the keys with all of her force. It’s hard to write about this album, actually. It’s hard to convey why these simple songs with simple arrangements are good enough to be my fifth favorite album of the year. It has to do with the fresh, loopy vocal lines, the physicality of the piano playing. And it has to do with the production, and the little flourishes it takes when it needs to break away from the minimalism. Take the standout track “Werewolf” for instance. It’s about the speaker realizing that her relationship went sour because she brought out the worst in her partner. On the 3rd verse you hear the sounds of playing (screaming?) children in the background. It takes the song to a whole new level of creepiness and makes the damaging nature of that poisoned relationship all the more palpable. The track “Hot Knife” keeps layering on different vocal lines, some contrasting, some harmonized, played simultaneously, training your ears all the way, so that by the end of the song you’re keeping track of like eight different vocal lines all saying separate sentences (or at least saying them at different rhythms). These are just great songs, period.

[Reaper16]

4. Alcest – Les Voyages De L'Âme

The French one-man black metal/post-rock/shoegaze project Alcest is something that’s featured highly on my lists before. Alcest’s last album was 10th on my 2010 list. Their latest finds itself in my top 5 because it has embraced a weird thing for an ostensibly black metal band to embrace: happiness. This is album of soaring heights and prettyprettypretty moments. It sounds triumphant. Melodic and uplifting and full of major scales and droning, repetitive chords that build to soaring crescendos. This description sounds similar to what I’ve said about other albums this year, namely Anathema’s Weather Systems. Alcest achieves its tremendous pretty happy states more naturally in my opinion. It’s about craft and it’s about restraint. This is an album of quiet victories. Songs like “Là Où Naissent Les Couleurs Nouvelles” are what my mind sounds like after getting a publication from a journal I really dig, or eating a perfectly composed bite of food, or getting a kiss under the moonlight from the woman I love. This isn’t a perfect album; it’s the most metal portions of this album that feel the most out of place, actually. But is 9/10 for me, and would have topped my 2011 list had it been eligible. I love this album, and I hope that you do too.

[Reaper16]

3. Killer Mike – R.A.P. Music

Holy shit is this a rap album. Killer Mike has always been a top-notch MC, but his production has been too inconsistent in my opinion throughout the course of his career. Mike lucked out and found El-P to produce this whole album. The result is the biggest collection of rap bangers this year. This album is an incendiary mix of smart-as-hell lyrics, passionate delivery, and beats that will tear your system up. While El-P went crazy on his solo album this year, the beats he crafted for Killer Mike are more restrained, more in line with a Southern rap sensibility. They’re still progressive as hell for the hip-hop scene, but they are bass-forward and free of clutter. They knock, man. Blast this in your car and you’ll feel like the baddest dude on the block. I can’t say enough good things about this album. “Big Beast” is a tour de force. “Reagan” is the best political song of the year. “Willie Burke Sherwood” and the title track show that El-P can create some deeply emotional beats, and that Killer Mike is up to the task as an MC to make sure listeners feel those emotions. Top to bottom this is a future classic rap album. A classic. It’d be the best pure hip-hop album of the year, too, if not for one young MC whose eager to change the game…

[Red Brooklyn]

God I LOVE Fiona's new album. Glad to see her get some love from ya, Reaper.