That's My Dad.

Bat for Lashes - The Haunted Man

U.K. indie pop queen Natasha Khan returns as Bat for Lashes with an emotionally stunning 3rd LP, “The Haunted Man”: a breath-taking baroque pop record sculpted from some of the most mature, detailed and innovative musicianship and dramatic potency we’ve heard from Khan as well any other poet this year. (8/10) 

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Top 50 Songs of 2012: #20, Young Magic - Sparkly

Take my name plate, it screams for you. 

The first time I listened to “Sparkly”, I felt like I just discovered my best friend was a belly dancer. I can hear my heart thumping as I hear dozens of dancers with bangles on their ankles crash against each other as they pound the floor. Soaring vocal samples and hypnotic lyrics, it’s like a blanket of sound wrapping around you to bring a faded coziness. Brooklyn’s Young Magic bring along a bundle of fresh sonic textures to often conventional psychedelic and electronic music, but there’s a slick payoff to be found here. An element of familiarity dipped in exotic marvel: your best friend, a belly dancer. 

(Source: Spotify)

Top 50 Songs of 2012: #23, Bat for Lashes - Laura

You’re the train that crashed my heart.

Who writes the rules on sentimentality? Where is the line drawn between a teenage girl crying in her room or a film star slitting their wrists? How can I or anybody else quantify or qualify vulnerability? Often on Bat for Lashes’ “The Haunted Man”, Natasha Khan comes from an age of curiosity where the answer for these questions are urgently needed. Her single “Laura” is a manifesto to such troubles. Khan writes up a story of a legend in her lyrics and places them on a fragile pedestal: like a glass ballerina on a mantelpiece ready to fall. and break into a million little pieces. Vulnerability. “Laura” is a daring emotional piece, one far from Bat for Lashes’ repertoire. From the shakiness of her voice to the audacity of her words, there’s an almost stunning level of disparity in this character study. It’s a level of artistic nakedness that makes you wonder, painfully wonder, who Laura truly is. 

Top 50 Songs of 2012: #32, Fiona Apple - Every Single Night

The rib is the shell and the heart is the yolk and I just made a meal for us both to choke on.

After seven pain-staking years, one of the most eccentric and idiosyncratic female singer-songwriters returns on their 4th LP: “The Idler Wheel is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do”. And on Fiona Apple’s latest work, we’re compelled to believe in Apple’s eternal abilities as a poet and as a remarkable emotional meltdown, ready to slip and crack upon a moment’s notice. On it’s own, “Every Single Night” accentuates nearly every trademark quality of Apple’s lyrical, vocal, pop and instrumental style and plays out like her crown jewel single. It’s like the first stepping stone into the rest of Apple’s erratic, debasing and, otherwise, fucked up repressed love stories she’s been collecting (or concocting) in the last few years on “The Idler Wheel…”. Expect to be equally enchanted and emotionally inflicted.  

Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

An unforgettable chamber pop record that unorthodoxically brings those two words: “chamber” and “pop” into a stellar merger of something stunning, heartbreaking and devilishly catchy. (9/10)

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Top 50 Songs of 2012: #42, Father John Misty - Funtimes in Babylon

Look out Hollywood, here I come. 

Former Fleet Foxes drummer J. Tillman, going under the moniker Father John Misty, is begging to be heard and, goddamn, you oughta give him the pleasure of being heard. On his debut LP, “Fear Fun”, we follow through the whimsical and ingenuous diary entries in Tillman’s resonant and, quite frankly, under-rated song-writing ability. The album’s opening track, “Funtimes in Babylon”, is a prime example of Father John Misty’s emotional capabilities and often dazzling folk rock production value. It’s an impressive single from a promising poet you should keep your eyes on in years to come. 

(Source: Spotify)

Flying Lotus - Until the Quiet Comes 

When the eclectic Steven Ellison, a.k.a. Flying Lotus, released the multi-genred “Cosmogramma” in 2010, IDM and beat music became cool over-fucking-night. If you weren’t an oddball independent hip-hop or electronic producer, listening to beats and instrumentals of such densely experimental proportions was a practice totally unheard of. Most of this genre’s recent surge can be attributed to masterful success of Flying Lotus, hence making his latest LP, “Until the Quiet Comes”, one of the most anticipated albums of this year.

Alas, one of the forgotten golden rules of music is that every genre or culture has a correlating payoff. Pop music has its catchiness, hip-hop owns human adrenaline and jazz offers a pure sonic catharsis. The best experimental projects who blend multiple genres discover and offer a new payoff, one that wasn’t conceived to us before. Through all of its sound-scape glory and stunning audio textures, “Until the Quiet Comes” is a record with no relative payoff. Ellison draws out a world ready to be explored, but we slowly realize there’s not a lot of activities here. The opener track “All In” opens with a promising beat and an defiant air of anticipation, which is when we realize this drags on for the entirety of the song. Songs like “Tiny Tortures”, “Pretty Boy Strut” and “Electric Candyman” among many others prove most frustrating; its like rummaging through a chest of promised treasures only to find old, mysterious scrolls of writing in a foreign language. Eighteen tracks of such mystifying experimental music causes one’s patience to wear thin, discouraging much excitement one could possibly conjure for an LP so demanding.

“Until the Quiet Comes” should be credited for pulling none of the punches “Cosmogramma” packed, a common artistic temptation to repeat guaranteed successes. FlyLo certainly expands its own potential and despite it’s shortcomings, “Until the Quiet Comes” is exactly the type of album you’d expect from Ellison. Admire it all day for its abundant aesthetic, advanced production abilities or adventurousness, but my appreciation for “Until the Quiet Comes” doesn’t go beyond that. It’s electronic music that behaves like jazz, but all I see are a lot of pretty neon signs with empty buildings. (5/10)

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David Byrne & St. Vincent - Love This Giant

Daddy said Christmas would come early. But his bonus was given to someone else.

‘Twas a musical collaboration for the ages. Like we’d be getting a double package of “Strange Mercy” and “Remain in Light” meshed into something beautiful; album of the year, I say! Indie darlings David Byrne and St. Vincent tag-team to create “Love This Giant”: a funky, discomforting, horn-heavy indie rock record that not only deserves accolades for being one of the most disappointing records in many years, but also as a prime example of experimental music sounds like when prepared with a set of crude creative concepts. (5/10) 

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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

It’s hard to rank or compare singer-songwriter albums of this year when the queen of the genre has returned. On her 4th album, her first in seven years, Fiona Apple brings forth a cultivated collection of restless, nimble, gorgeous, viciously bitter and often bellowing songs of heartbreak and fierce poetry more emotive than Alanis Morissette, Ani DiFranco and Cat Power all tied together on train tracks, all attempting to sing their escape away. And while her musicianship remains deceptively bare-boned, Fiona Apple works like a truly possessed witch with the most complex incantations. Which is where “The Idler Wheel…” finds its eternal voice: in Apple’s dire emotional urgency, in the ever-crashing waves of lyrical genius that emerge from Apple’s psych with maddening desperation and complex rage and, most importantly, in the fact that no poetic sorcerer has ever felt so poignantly human. (9/10) 

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The Walkmen - Heaven 

Let’s face it. The “Bows & Arrows” Walkmen is gone; gone with age. No longer is the cherished indie rock quintet filling up your hearts with picaresque and youthful A-grade post-punk vigor, instead The Walkmen have worked on a greater career act spanning seven albums including their latest 7th: “Heaven”. With each release, The Walkmen allowed themselves to age gracefully through their music and not hold up a forte, growing weaker over time. It’s a rare quality, considering how many rock bands get pressured into sustaining a profitable sound and image or refuse to leave their comfort zone. The Walkmen utilizes a long term band’s worst enemy and took it in as their pet, progressively creating more mature work as the calender pages flip over. “Heaven” alternates gracefully between quietly captivating songs like “We Can’t Be Beat” or “Southern Heart” to glistening gems like “Love is Luck” about charming memories of yesteryears and intricate characters throughout the thirteen tracks. Not only does the album prove as a rewarding and sensitive listen but reminds us of the true capabilities rock bands have within their own conditions. (7/10)

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Deerhunter - Halycon Digest

There is a feeling all too familiar with the sincerest of audiophiles. A brief silence followed by a tune that instantly impresses you fills the air in the local record store. “Who is this?” you ask the jaded yet mildly satisfied record store owner. You’ve fallen in love with a new band and chances are you won’t forget his answer to your question.  

Deerhunter’s “Halycon Digest” is an astounding feat for its ability to bottle that moment up and serve you a set of eleven tracks following that golden thread; each with a character of its own. Deerhunter’s craftsmanship and uncanny level of peerless originality oozes out from every sequence, making for an airtight record without a moment or idea to spare. From the dazzling heart-breaker “Sailing”, the swelling punk/shoe-gaze “Desire Lines” to the masterful neo-psychedelic track “Helicopter”, “Halycon Digest” is an exemplary gem that’ll serve as a mark for the unprecedented level of detail artists could put in their music because they were allowed to. In that respect, “Halycon Digest” goes beyond just being a quality record, but an important one for our generation’s independent music culture. (9/10)

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Lambchop - Mr. M

Good tension in music comes from a calculated set-up. St. Vincent’s 2011 LP “Strange Mercy” was a bipolar masterpiece; it understood how to take ugly and beautiful and sync it up for dramatic results. Through all the madness, it found something very poetic. Lambchop’s “Mr. M” falls right through the potholes in the creating process of musical tension. The album offers mouth-watering, angelic productions but pairs it up with startlingly out of place vocals by Kurt Wagner. The opening track “If Not I’ll Die,” in itself, begins masterfully with a picaresque string and mild-mannered drum accompaniment and then you hear a 54-year-old alt-country singer oddly deliver the lyric “Don’t know what the fuck they talk about.” Listening to this album brings the same uncomfortable feeling of walking in shoes several sizes smaller than yours. Despite its passive-aggressive deliberations, “Mr. M” results as an unorthodox experience that baffles the mind trying to find the beauty in this confusion. (5/10)

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Tune Yards - W H O K I L L 

Take your contemporary experimental influences: Dirty Projectors, YACHT, St. Vincent and move them to a deserted island where they meet a savage African tribe and the both decide to make music. You may find that their album might sound a lot like Tune-Yards’ 2nd album “W H O K I L L”, an endlessly energetic and zany indie release that stretches what music is capable of just a little more. Regardless of personal preference, ”W H O K I L L” is a release I will continuously recommend to all listeners; I believe there is something here for practically everyone. (9/10)

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Grimes - Visions

With it’s devious synth sounds, bubbling bass effects and bizarre, uncontrollably high-pitched vocals, Grimes’ Visions is the freakiest pop record of this year so far, and I’m loving every second of it. (8/10)

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Top 25 Albums of 2011 (1-10)

1. The Weeknd - House of Balloons

2. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

3. Battles - Gloss Drop

4. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

5. Frank Ocean - Nostalgia, Ultra 

6. The Head and the Heart - The Head and the Heart

7. Shabazz Palaces - Black Up

8. James Blake - James Blake

9. Bon Iver - Bon Iver

10. Florence and the Machine - Ceremonials