Best Fit's Favourite Albums of 2012 So Far: Part Two
Racing through the year like a hot knife through butter, we appear to have already – already – reached 2012′s halfway point. Which seems as good a time as any to press the pause button for a moment and take a glance back at what we think has actually, when you turn around and look at it again, been a pretty exciting six months of album releases.
We here at The Line of Best Fit have taken this opportunity to revisit some of our favourite releases from the start of the year, and we’ve come up with a list of twenty. Today, we present the last ten of our list (noted in release-date order) accompanied by what our writers thought of them at the time of release. How many will stay in the top 20 for the end of year lists, we wonder…
Find Part One of our selection just here.
THEESatisfaction – awE naturalE (Sub Pop)
“Within these short timespans, however, there is an enormous compression of ideas to be found, making the album an intense non-stop thrill ride through the stuttering, brightly coloured “eldritchtronica” of Oneohtrix Point Never and Gang Gang Dance; the dreamy, drowsy hypnagogic pop of Ariel Pink and Rainbow Arabia; and the neo-AfroFuturism of Shabazz Palaces…Clearly the most thrilling and assured debut of the year so far.”
Death Grips – The Money Store (Epic)
“There’s an urgency to the way its textured samples and apocalyptic synthesisers have been rendered, dumfounding the dogmatic illusion of crossover, to morph into something new. Whether it’s the armour-piercing oriental terror drone of ‘Bitch Please’ or the Salt ‘n’ Pepa-bastardising ‘I’ve Seen Footage’, The Money Store feels like being waterboarded into accepting a new status quo.”
Poliça – Give You the Ghost (Memphis Industries)
“While Leanagh’s soaring, auto-tuned vocals are placed prominently in the mix and will justifiably get a majority of the attention, the propulsive double-drum attack of Drew Christopherson and Ben Ivascu, along with the fluid bass lines of Chris Bierden, give Poliça’s songs a rich soulful texture that only adds to the record’s mercurial ambiance. (…) These stirring, evocative songs prove that something deeply meaningful can arise out of moments of misery.”
Father John Misty – Fear Fun (Bella Union)
“Dumping the sticks, leaving the supremely successful canoe-carrying band and changing your name to become a pervert prophet of Big Pink (no, not that one) nostalgia and classicism? A great and exemplary choice Mr Misty.”
Michael James Hall, 7 May 2012
Niki and the Dove – Instinct (Mercury)
“Dahlström’s vocals are delivered with an urgency and intensity that stops you dead in your tracks and her power is multiplied by the efforts of her band mate, Gustaf Karlöf , who provides various synth flavours and a wall of sampled vocal textures that offer an apocalyptic assault on the pop genre. What follows is the post-apocalyptic pop world where Dahlström presides as the new royalty and conventional formulaic pop songs are few and far between.”
El-P – Cancer 4 Cure (Turnstile / Fat Possum)
“El-P has a penchant for the verbose and lyrically dense. So when he challenges, he does it his own way. As he puts it, he’s a “garbage pail kid” who “sat at piano, lap of my father/Watching him talk harmonic”. And he’s telling you all of this because, well, he never gives up. Even after his father left, he still felt (and I imagine, given this record’s content, feels) unbreakable – kinda like those “The Few, the Proud, the Marines” ads, but without all the jingoism. While El-P has kept such defiance up throughout a record – both lyrically and sonically – before, it’s still impressive, even awe-inspiring, to watch him do it over the course of these 50 minutes.”
Liars – WIXIW (Mute)
“Really, it’s just fantastic. Blinding. A blinding record from a band who surprise so often it’s pretty much unsurprising. Gaze upon it in a state of slack-jawed awe.”
Japandroids – Celebration Rock (Polyvinyl)
“Celebration Rock is cigarette butts, spilt beer, hoarse voices and the smell of stale dope smoke. This is REAL party rock, and like the best nights out, it leaves you sweaty and exhausted and ready to do it all over again. Unlike the best nights out, however, you don’t have to wait another day to do so.”
Echo Lake – Wild Peace (Slumberland Records)
“Guitarist Thom Hill and lead singer Linda Jarvis plus band conjure up a graceful storm, and it’s as if nothing and everything happens all at once. And you’ll never want to leave, because once you’ve heard these ten tracks the outside world will seem like a painfully noisy, pointless irritation compared to the ethereal kicks you could be having with this London-based bunch.”
DIIV – Oshin (Captured Tracks)
“Oshin’s thirteen songs are so precisely crafted and impressively executed (the drumming and guitar playing in particular are spellbinding) that DIIV sound like they’ve been together for years. But early tracks like ‘Sometime’ were written, recorded, posted online and picked up by blogs just weeks after they formed. It’s rare for a band to hit upon something this special so early on in their career and then be able to hone that initial energy and excitement into a debut as accomplished as this.”
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