PataMetaData: Top 10 Albums of 2012

For the last few years I've written top ten lists of my favorite music. While I usually keep this blog focused on the web and librarianship, I'm going to detour for this post and relate my 2012 favorites. Back to your regularly scheduled programming in the new year.

Kindred / Burial - Anthemic electronica from the best dubstep producer ever. After Kindred came out, I listened to nothing else for a week. Burial shifts focus a bit, selecting sub-bass & texture over the usual manipulated vocal samples & rimshot snares. It's such a gray album. Music for long drives, rainy days, loneliness. At three songs, it's technically an EP, but together they stretch over a half-hour.
Kings and Them / Evian Christ - I stumbled across "Fuck it none of y'all don't rap" on a blog & was instantly blown away. Evian Christ made the most sophisticated album of the year out of a single rap song's worth of vocals, tinny snares, & haunted minor intervals. The hyper-repetitive raps (let's repeat the word "back" for a minute, shall we?), vocal pitch-shifts, & eery background dissonance of wind chimes somehow come close to a mixture of Salem & Dälek, but with a better sonic sensibility. Christ's beats are simple but deeply enmeshed with the vocal samples & mood. The album feels idiot savant in its execution, putting together repetition & atmosphere in a way that the idiots somehow missed.
Quakers / Quakers - I admit it, other than Guilty Simpson, I haven't heard of any of these rappers. This is always already the best album of rappers you've never heard. This album is like twenty Busdrivers on top of twenty MadLibs just fucking killing it. The brevity of the tracks actually makes it easier to digest such incredible variance in beats & voices. I cannot understand how good Quakers is.
Shrines / Purity Ring - Electro-pop without too many frills. The music is synth-heavy, its only distinguishing element the occasional staccato vocal samples. But the lyrics & singing are spot on: a mousey female voice sweetly reciting disturbing lines like "cut open my sternum & pull my little ribs around you." The bodily lyrics & voice-in-the-machine production combine to make a stunningly consistent album where every other song is perfect.
The Seer / Swans - When I discovered Swans last year, I promptly listened to their entire back catalog. Their impressive trajectory (from brutal industrial to something resembling art rock) is complete with The Seer, which is epic noise rock on an almost unparalleled scale. Despite a two-hour runtime, the music never drones on too long. The scraping metal of 93 Ave. B Blues becomes atmospheric ballad The Daughter Brings the Water. The title track could stand to be its own album.
Sorrow and Extinction / Pallbearer - metal is at its best when it is unapologetically bleak. Pallbearer's debut album lives up to its title, as huge, molten sludge buries some faint, rare vocals. The album accomplishes a rare combination of consistent atmosphere & heavy riffs. Good black metal typically relies on atmosphere, rarely displaying interesting guitar riffs such that their music begins to drone on repetitively. More riff-based metal, such as Torche, often has captivating guitars but without the gravity of black metal's atmosphere. Pallbearer combine both effortlessly, making almost the entire album (with the exception of the first few minutes of acoustic guitar, unfortunately) compelling.
WIXIW / Liars - An album that grew on me quickly. I think the idea of an electronica Liars album turned me off, but the truth is this album is little more synthetic than the unsurpassable Drum's Not Dead. The better songs (Flood to Flood, Brats) are near the end. Liars took their strong but scattered album about Los Angeles depravity (Sisterworld, which reminds me of Hail to the Thief in that the songs are excellent individually but fail to amount to much in sum) & remade it. The wreckless songs & the redemptive ones both shine brighter now.
G is for Deep / Doseone - This album also disappointed me on first listen, not because it was bad but because Doseone has entirely eschewed rapping. I became obsessed with Dose because of his raps; he's one of those rare rappers who not only has unparalleled skill but also a unique artistic vision. His lyrics are closer to poetry than braggadocio. G is for Deep has its occasional bits of rap—mostly quick refrains, rarely full verses–but for the most part Doseone sings. However, the music is solid (much of it reminds me of bright synths of Radiohead's "Worrywort" b-side), the lyrics surprisingly catchy (the "Last Life" chorus gets stuck in my head easily), & Doseone frequently uses mini-song outros to great effect. These outros aren't completely new fare for him–Subtle's "The Mercury Craze" single features a commercial jingle parody as it fades out. But on G they're more essential, in fact they're often the highlight of the songs.
Visions / Grimes - Grimes is weird. Her songs almost ring as normal electropop & she tends to (convincingly) imitate R&B diva melismas. But there's all this inexplicable zaniness: why is the album cover heavy metal artwork? what the hell is going on in the Genesis music video? what are the lyrics to any of these songs? Visions strides the line between pop catchiness & alienating oddity in a way few others can match.
Held / Holy Other - the "With U" EP blew me away with its lonely trances. It felt like Burial but from another angle: slower, breathy, codeine-dependent. Held didn't quite live up to the EP's promise but it's still very good & remarkably consistent; each song maintains the same emotive thrill without wearing the listener out.