Glide's Top Albums of 2012

Named after the keystroke for making a delta (i.e., triangle) sign on a Mac by holding down the Alt and J keys, the Leeds, England–based trio Alt-J is inspired by the symbol’s mathematical definition of change. This makes sense upon hearing the band’s handsome 2012 debut album, *An Awesome Wave*. Its take on postmodern pop mines the best elements from folk-rock, garage rock, dub-pop, indie rock, vintage cinema scores, and a cappella harmony before constructing layered, angular arrangements with sonic ore. Following a dramatic piano part, the opening “Intro” weaves heavily reverberated baritone guitar leads (à la Ennio Morricone) over and around looped beats and random vocal samples that all come together to play like the sons of The Beta Band. These contrast the pointed, geometric arrangements of “Tessellate” with Joe Newman’s flowing, throaty vocals and backing harmonies, which hover above the music like those of Fleet Foxes. Then, in “Breezeblocks”—a mechanically grooving standout in which a toy piano provides the lead—he inflects like Devendra Banhart imitating Jason Mraz, with overt affectation. \"Hand Made” closes with folky minimalism.

In the \'00s, Ariel Pink home-recorded a number of murky and intriguing cassettes. Cobbling together several influences but transcending the hollowness of pure retro imitation, Pink created wonderfully eccentric pop. With the 2010 release of his 4AD debut, *Before Today*, his distinct songwriting and arranging skills were professionally produced for the first time, and the results were impressive. (His band, Haunted Graffiti, is perfectly tuned into Pink’s aesthetic.) 2012’s *Mature Themes* is a fine follow-up. The Beverly Hills native has always had a zany side, and it\'s in evidence here. (Some passages evoke Frank Zappa, another musician with a wiseass sense of humor and a taste for pastiche.) The album opens strongly with “Kinski Assassin,” which features a delightful sense of wordplay and a hook that stays with you. A number of other songs are good, and *Mature Themes* closes strongly with a cover of Donnie & Joe Emerson’s “Baby.” The original could almost be a \'60s low-rider ballad, but it actually was recorded in the late \'70s in the Pacific Northwest. Pink’s version nicely echoes the dreaminess of the Emersons’ smooth jam.

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After two albums of harmony-heavy dream pop, Beach House continued its dazzling evolution with 2010‘s *Teen Dream*, which we named Best Alternative Album in iTunes Rewind. The ethereal, hypnotizing melodies are as gorgeous as ever on the duo’s forthcoming *Bloom*. From the jump, a sinewy guitar melody gets blanketed by blissful atmospheric mist on “Myth.” While *Teen Dream* introduced more complexity (which is echoed on the weightless, organic melodies floating from composition like “Troublemaker”), *Bloom*’s “On the Sea” proves that Beach House can also drop our jaws (and give us chills) with stripped-down, piano-driven journeys.

Bloom is the fourth full-length album by Baltimore-based Beach House. Like their previous releases (Beach House in 2006, Devotion in 2008, Teen Dream in 2010), it further develops their distinctive sound yet stands apart as a new piece of work. Bloom is meant to be experienced as an ALBUM, a singular, unified vision of the world. Though not stripped down, the many layers of Bloom are uncomplicated and meticulously constructed to ensure there is no waste. Bloom was recorded in 2011 at Sonic Ranch Studios in Tornillo, TX and mixed at Electric Lady in NYC. The band co-produced the record with Chris Coady.

Slimmed down to a duo, Brooklyn’s Chairlift combines a sharp pop sensibility with eerie techno ambiance on its sophomore album, *Something*. Beneath the music’s sleek surfaces, Caroline Polachek and Patrick Wimberly capture a sense of emotional volatility. *Something*\'s mood veers from the elegant melancholy of “Cool as a Fire” and “Ghost Tonight” to the jumpy angst of “Amaneaemonesia” and the surging, ominous thrust of “Sidewalk Safari.” The unearthly, echo-bathed “Turning” could fit comfortably on a David Lynch film soundtrack. Polachek’s lithe, immaculately controlled vocals remain seductive even when tinged with shadows of paranoia (as in “Guilty as Charged”). With seasoned pop hitmaker Dan Carey producing, *Something* emphasizes Chairlift’s affinity for ‘80s-era new wave sounds. “I Belong in Your Arms,” for instance, has the bass-driven aggression of a natural radio hit yet mixes its erotic abandon with enough weirdness to remain distinctive.

Dr. John goes on the attack in *Locked Down*, an utterly uncompromised 2012 collaboration with coruscating Black Keys guitarist Dan Auerbach. The 71-year-old hoodoo guru foments rebellion in \"Revolution\" and attests to his salvation in \"God\'s Sure Good,\" riffing and jiving like his life depends on it. The music, a relentlessly rocking assemblage of R&B, funk, rock, and soul, sounds ageless and agile, like all of Louisiana distilled into a heady reborn brew.

When discussing ‘Father John Misty’, Tillman paraphrases Philip Roth: ’It’s all of me and none of me, if you can’t see that, you won’t get it’. What I call it is totally arbitrary, but I like the name. You’ve got to have a name. I never got to choose mine.” He goes on, “‘People who make records are afforded this assumption by the culture that their music is coming from an exclusively personal place, but more often than not what you hear are actually the affectations of an ’alter-ego’ or a cartoon of an emotionally heightened persona,” says Josh Tillman, who has been recording/releasing solo albums since 2003 and who recently left Seattle’s Fleet Foxes after playing drums from 2008-2011. “That kind of emotional quotient isn’t sustainable if your concern is portraying a human-being made up of more than just chest-beating pathos. I see a lot of rampant, sexless, male-fantasy everywhere in the music around me. I didn’t want any alter-egos, any vagaries, fantasy, escapism, any over-wrought sentimentality. I like humor and sex and mischief. So when you think about it, it’s kind of mischievous to write about yourself in a plain-spoken, kind of explicitly obvious way and call it something like ‘Misty’. I mean, I may as well have called it ‘Steve’”. Musically, Fear Fun consists of such disparate elements as Waylon Jennings, Harry Nilsson, Arthur Russell, “All Things Must Pass,” and “Physical Graffiti,” often within the same song. Tillman’s voice has never been better and often sounds like Roy Orbison, “The Caruso of Rock”, at his most joyous, while the music maintains a dark, mysterious and yet conversely playful, almost Dionysian quality. Lyrically, his absurdist fever dreams of pain and pleasure elicit, in equal measures, the blunt descriptive power of Bukowski or Brautigan, the hedonist-philosophy of Oscar Wilde and the dried-out wit of Loudon Wainwright III. The album began gestating during what Tillman describes as an “immobilizing period of depression”, in his former Seattle home. “Songwriting for me had always only been interesting and necessary because I saw it as this vehicle for truth, but I had this realization that all I had really done with it was lick my wounds for years and years, and become more and more isolated from people and experiences. I don’t even like wound-licking music, I want to listen to someone rip their arm off and beat themselves with it. I don’t believe that until now I’ve ever put anything at risk in my music. I was hell-bent on putting my preciousness at stake in order to find something worth singing about.” He continues, “I lost all interest in writing music, or identifying as a ‘songwriter’. I got into my van with enough mushrooms to choke a horse and started driving down the coast with nowhere to go. After a few weeks, I was writing a novel, which is where I finally found my narrative voice. The voice that is actually useful. “It was a while before that voice started manifesting in a musical way, but once I settled in the Laurel Canyon spider-shack where I’m living now, I spent months demoing all these weird-ass songs about weird-ass experiences almost in real-time, and kind of had this musical ‘Oh-there-I-am’ moment, identical to how I felt when I was writing the book. It was unbelievably liberating. I knew there was never any going back to the place I was writing from before, which was a huge relief. The monkey got banished off my back.” Tillman brought the demos to LA producer/songwriter/pal Jonathan Wilson, and in February 2011 began recording at his home-studio in Echo Park. “Initially, the idea was to just kind of recreate the demos with me playing everything, since they were pretty fleshed out and sounded cool, but a place like LA affords you a different wealth of talent, potential, etc than just about anywhere else. I realized what was possible between Jonathan’s abilities, and the caliber of musicians that are just hanging around LA, pretty quickly. People were coming in and out of the studio all day sometimes, and other days, it would just be Jonathan and I holed up, getting stoned, and doing everything. “I was honest with myself about what music actually excites my joy-glands when I was considering the arrangements and instrumentation,” says Tillman. “As opposed to what’s been enjoyable to me in the past – namely, alienating people or making choices based on what I think people won’t like or understand. Pretty narcissistic stuff.” When asked about Laurel Canyon, where he eventually ended up living in the aforementioned tree-house with a family of spiders, Tillman says, “My attitude about it all is pretty explicit in the record. Given my fairly adversarial personal attitude about the music and aesthetic that comes from that place, it’s kind of a huge joke that I live in a former hippie-fantasy land. I have a really morbid sense of humor.” Phil Ek (who everyone knows has worked with Built To Spill, Modest Mouse, Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes) heard the rough versions of the album in May 2011 and offered his services to mix. “Phil and I have known each other for a while by virtue of Fleet Foxes, so he was familiar with my music, but we had never discussed working together. I think he immediately recognized the shift in my writing and singing from a producer and friend’s standpoint. His excitement is really evident in mixes, I think.” Interviews by Richard Metzger and Casey Wescott Written by Paula Zabrey, Jan. 2012

Stepping away from both the pop songwriting machine and his former crew Odd Future’s stoned anarchy, Frank Ocean guides us on a meandering but purposeful journey through his own vast mythological universe on his major-label debut. *Channel ORANGE* breezes from sepia-toned Stevie Wonder homage (“Sweet Life”) to the corrosive cosmic funk of “Pyramids,” which stretches from ancient pharaoh queens to 21st-century pimps. Rendered in pristine detail with calm, dazzled awe, even his most fantastical narratives feel somehow familiar—at once unprecedented and timeless.

© 2012 The Island Def Jam Music Group ℗ 2012 The Island Def Jam Music Group

*Tramp* is a study in controlled power. Soft yet muscular, vulnerable yet tough, the music moves at a languid pace while also conveying urgency and unresolved tension. Sharon Van Etten’s striking voice is the album\'s central feature. Her vocals are commanding throughout, resonating when surrounded by ample space (“Give Out”, “In Line”), in the midst of precise arrangements using strings, keyboards, and artful drumming (“Leonard”, “We Are Fine”), or backed by a squall of electric guitar (“Serpents”). Van Etten closely doubles her vocals on many tracks; by hitting two closely related notes at once, this gives her voice a haunting, ethereal quality. Produced by Aaron Desner of The National, the album also benefits from contributions by drummer Matt Barrick (The Walkmen) and vocals by Zach Condon (Beirut) and Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak). *Tramp* is a triumph of understated beauty and grace.

The shimmering sound of Sharon Van Etten’s Jagjaguwar debut album, 'Tramp', both defies and illuminates the unsteadiness of a life in flux. Throughout the 14 months of scattered recording sessions, Van Etten was without a home -- crashing with friends and storing her possessions between varied locations. The only constant in Van Etten's life during this time was spent in Aaron Dessner's garage studio. Tramp contains as much striking rock (the precise venom of “Serpents,” the overwhelming power of “Ask”), as pious, minimal beauty (the earnest solemnity of “All I Can,” the breathtaking “Kevins,” “Joke or a Lie”); it can be as emotionally combative (“Give Out”) as it can sultry (“Magic Chords”). Contributions from Matt Barrick (Walkmen), Thomas Bartlett (Doveman), Zach Condon (Beirut), Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak), Julianna Barwick, and Dessner himself add a glowing sheen to the already substantial offering.

Australian musician Kevin Parker is a bit of a musical savant. Although Tame Impala tours as a band, the group\'s psychedelic trip-pop is pretty much due to Parker\'s writing, playing, and even producing. Parker sidekick and collaborator Jay Watson shares songwriting credit this time around, notably on two standout tracks: \"Elephant\" (an impossibly delectable blend of Sabbath stomp and Syd Barrett trippy-ness) and \"Apocalypse Dreams\" (a gorgeous, chameleonic tune that reflects Parker\'s noted influence, Todd Rundgren). And though it\'s hard to hear the opening \"Be Above It\" or \"Mind Mischief\" without detecting some *Revolver*- and *Sgt. Pepper\'s*–era Beatles in the songs\' DNA, *Lonerism* is loaded with more synthesizers and ambient sounds than guitars. It\'s definitely a more pop-oriented album than the crunchy *Innerspeaker*, and it reveals another compelling side to Tame Impala. (Check out Watson\'s other band POND, and its LP *Beard, Wives, Denim*, for another dose of satisfying psych-rock.)

Said to be “an album within an album,” the 13-track *Oceania* is part of the greater 44-track *Teargarden by Kaleidyscope* project. No matter what the concept or the intention, Corgan here issued his most melodic and adventurous album since the underrated *Adore*. Other albums aimed for a hard rock aggression that often centered on Jimmy Chamberlin\'s muscular drumming. But with Chamberlin missing from the ranks and a new bassist, drummer, and guitarist, Corgan starts *Oceania* with the psychedelic freakout of “Quasar” before settling into the luxurious “The Celestials,” which itself leads to the mellotron prog of the haunted “Violet Rays.” Looped synth lines, rudimentary keyboard notes, and a lonely electric guitar spend nearly two and a half minutes building up to the acoustic-based ballad “Pinwheels,” where harmonies and further experimentation create the album\'s tripped-out center. The heavy moods of “Panopticon,” “Pale Horse,\" and “The Chimera” further prove that Corgan the explorer is still working overtime.