NPR Music's 50 Favorite Albums of 2012

Take a cue from biting tracks like \"Pineal Gland\" and \"SOPA\"—rapper Ab-Soul is as clever as he is crass, as sharp as he is straight-forward. Indeed, *Control System* is the high-concept dramedy to the unflinching drama of fellow Black Hippy member Kendrick Lamar\'s *good kid, m.A.A.d city*. (The refrain from \"Mixed Emotions,\" for example, is \"Who got a Sprite?\") Ab\'s rhymes can be unapologetically out-there at times, such as when he\'s rapping about Sumerians or nodding to *Seinfeld* on \"Nothing\'s Something,\" a song about, well, nothing. But a heart beats resoundingly at the center of *Control System*. You hear it most affectingly on \"The Book of Soul,\" on which Ab mourns the suicide of ex-girlfriend Alori Joh; she guests on multiple tracks here.

With the rollicking, retro-tinged rock ’n’ roll of their debut, Alabama Shakes injected a righteous dose of guitar-driven jams into the musical landscape of the ’10s. Led by Brittany Howard’s gritty howl—her turn on the soulful stunner “I Ain’t the Same” is a punch straight to the gut—*Boys & Girls* shows the power of keeping things simple. The head-nodding groove of “Hold On” delivers a summery, hypnotizing haze, while the slinky guitar and bright piano bounce of “Hang Loose” inspire deep chill vibes.

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.

While many electronic music listeners in the U.K. were enthralled by dubstep and grime in the late ‘00s, that era also saw the rise of darker, less accessible sounds from a group of defiantly hermetic producers on small labels like Modern Love and Blackest Ever Black. These producers took the metronomic throb and dark minimalism of deep house pioneers like Frankie Knuckles and Virgo 4 as creative touchstones, deliberately eschewing dubstep\'s then-fashionable jungle-derived break beats. Manchester-based producer Andy Stott is among the most formidable and creative practitioners of this deeply introverted brand of U.K. techno. His 2011 release *Passed Me By* set the basic template: trudging tempos, cavernous dub-like ambiance, and house-derived beats, all enlisted in the service of creating an atmosphere of unremitting dread. On 2012’s *Luxury Problems*, Stott put another layer atop this already-compelling sound, inviting Alison Skidmore to add her spectral, unearthly vocals to his sparse, unnerving instrumentals. The result is positively mesmerizing, a haunting late-night listen that stands as one of Stott’s strongest albums.

Recorded after Damon Albarn spurred the soul great’s return to music as a guest in Gorillaz, Bobby Womack’s final album evokes his past glories while sounding contemporary. Musical settings range from the title track’s symphonic trip-hop to the eerie electro-gospel of “If There Wasn’t Something There” to a haunting duet with Lana Del Rey on “Dayglo Reflection.” But for all their variety, the songs keep Womack’s weathered yet impassioned voice front and center, ensuring he gets the swan song he deserves.

El tercer LP de esta banda colombiana es la evolución de su sonido. La cumbia electrónica ha madurado en diferentes tarimas alrededor del mundo hasta convertirse en Elegancia Tropical. Once canciones construidas con letras profundas y sonidos envolvenes que viajan entre el Caribbean Power y El Alma Y El Cuerpo. " This is a young band that seems to be doing all the right things" NPR Music's 50 Favorite Albums Of 2012.

On 2012’s reflective *El Objeto Antes Llamado Disco*, their seventh full-length album, Café Tacvba seamlessly combine indigenous folklore with Latin alt-rock. Like a vibrant carnival in rural Latin America, the invigorating “Olita del Altamar” sees Cafeta tinkering with elated Andean pan flutes that merge well with surf-pop riffage. Chicano rock shines through on rockabilly ballad “Aprovéchate” à la Ritchie Valens, and the psych-tinged “Zopilotes” lets loose some whirling, shoegaze-y guitar feedback. On the flip side, the band displays childlike candor on the effervescent lullaby “Espuma.”

A decade after his debut, *The Headphone Masterpiece*, Cody ChesnuTT refines his blend of old-school R&B and hip-hop attitude on *Landing on a Hundred*. Here, the Atlanta native sheds his bad-boy persona for a more mature outlook without losing his lyrical wit or musical daring. Partially recorded at Memphis’ legendary Royal Studios, the album often suggests Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, and (especially) Marvin Gaye in various combinations. More importantly, ChesnuTT asserts himself as a highly individual singer/songwriter as he acknowledges his past sins while expressing gratitude and faith. Tracks like “’Till I Met Thee,” “Everybody’s Brother,\" and “Love Is More Than a Wedding Day” are sweetly melodic excursions carried by his smoothly emotive vocals. The brooding “Don’t Follow Me” offers a cautionary tale, while the slinky “What Kind of Cool” and the urgent “Under the Spell of the Handout” take on social issues without preachiness. Punchy horns, billowing strings, and propulsive bass lines render the album’s crisp funk lines and melodic balladry with consistent excellence.

Dan Deacon\'s electronic music works many different angles, far beyond what many similar artists consider their realm. The Baltimore chopper slices and dices his influences with irreverence, and *America*—his first album for the estimable independent label Domino—isn\'t afraid of getting tangled up in difficult emotions. \"Guilford Avenue Bridge\" sets the tone; it\'s an ambient instrumental that neither settles as wallpaper nor kicks up to raging ecstasy. Indie pop underpins the high-energy romp \"True Thrush,\" while \"Lots\" and \"Crash Jam\" come closest to the pure mania most listeners associate with 21st-century electro-pop. With \"Prettyboy,\" sounds start to boil over with a sense that something big and rather ominous is coming. And it arrives. The four-part \"USA\" series features a mix of programmed and live instruments that create an orchestral suite beyond anyone\'s expectations. \"USA II: The Great American Desert\" is a rumbling and tumbling epic with beats that flutter to and fro. Dan Deacon proves that electronic music can still be affected by a human touch.

*No Love Deep Web* is the equivalent of an exposed nerve: raw, throbbing, and deliriously painful. Where previous albums showcased Death Grips’ dense productions, this time the trio strip their sound to its barest essentials. “Come Up and Get Me” and “No Love” are skeletal monstrosities built from subterranean boom, technoid synths, and MC Ride’s tormented lyricism and gory acrobatics. The group also increase their reliance on programmed drums (as opposed to Zach Hill’s live drumming). As a result, cuts such as the paranoid “Lock Your Doors” possess a hulking, Techno Animal-style cyborg propulsion.

Debo Band is an 11-piece ensemble based in Boston but rooted in Ethiopian psychedelic jazz. Bandleader Danny Mekonnen is an Ethiopian-American saxophonist whose direction lets the band play the music with a natural contemporary feel, rather than a genre-worshipping throwback style. “Akale Wube” opens with a timeless groove; the rhythm section sounds like it could have been recorded in the late \'60s or in 2012. Over this, the brass section plays like a troupe equally raised on world music and late-\'70s ska albums from 2-Tone Records. Lead singer Bruck Tesfaye has both a commanding and charismatic presence. Check out “Ney Ney Weleba,” where his vocals follow the rhythmic cadence and also coast above it with serpentine-moving melodies. Still, it’s the layered cacophony at the song\'s end that\'s most arresting—especially when Mekonnen reels back the maelstrom into one kinetic movement. Even when the band breaks from its preferred style and takes on klezmer (\"Habesha\") or cabaret (\"Ambassel\"), it keeps a thick, pulsing root of handsome Ethiopian soul.

On Dirty Projectors sixth album, Swing Lo Magellan, songwriter and leader David Longstreth shows he really doesn't know how to do the same thing twice. Where prior Dirty Projectors albums investigated 20th-century orchestration, west African guitar music and complex contrapuntal techniques in human voices, Swing Lo Magellan is a leap forward again. It's an album of songs, an album of songwriting. Swing Lo Magellan has both the handmade intimacy of a love letter and the widescreen grandeur of a blockbuster, and if that sounds like a paradox -- it's because it was until now.

The opening track on Exitmusic’s second album needs every second of its more than five minutes to stretch, rise, fall, rise again, and then coil quietly into the night. Aleksa Palladino’s voice is a husky, howling swirl of emotion (forget gleaning the lyrics from listening to the track) that packs a visceral wallop. She often recalls powerhouse vocalists like PJ Harvey or Björk when she’s going for brambles and thorns. At the spectrum\'s other end, her ghostly coos and whispers on tracks like “The Wanting” and “The Night” offer up a velvety bed of roses, their blood-red petals dangerously close to their thorny counterparts. The singer, guitarist, keyboardist, and actress (she plays a mob wife on HBO’s *Empire Boardwalk*) is undeniably the central force of Exitmusic. But it would be a lesser thing without her partner/husband, Devon Church, who creates billowing tents of guitar or stormy gales of post-shoegaze textures. *Passage* is a bleak, brooding, beautiful thing that\'s both emphatically romantic and mysteriously distant—always an intoxicating combination.

Electronic pop auteur Flying Lotus (a.k.a. Steven Ellison) displays a new clarity of vision on Until the Quiet Comes as he reins in the scattershot tendencies of 2010’s Cosmogramma in favor of a more unified approach. The composer/producer still offers inspired pastiches of jazz, hip-hop and ambient sounds. But where his earlier work could be intentionally jarring, this album takes the listener on a smoothly-sequenced journey through inner landscapes. Ellison is aided by such notables as Erykah Badu (floating diva-like above the tribal groove of “See Thru to U”), Radiohead’s Thom Yorke (making his dark presence felt in “Electric Candyman”) and the Long Lost’s Laura Darlington (cooing her way through the eerie expanses of “Phantasm”). There’s plenty of sinewy pulsation amidst the billowing electronica, supplied by Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner’s insistent bass lines and Ellison’s jittery programmed beats. From the funkified growl of “The Nightcaller” to the robotic munchkin twitch of “Putty Boy Strut” and the sweet psyche-soul of “DMT Song,” Flying Lotus infuses the album with mystical vibes laced with subversive humor. Unearthly yet inviting, Until the Quiet Comes’ sonic spell is hard to resist.

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

Never has such unadulterated glee, desire, and youthful exuberance been so perfectly filtered as it has on anthems like \"We Are Young,\" \"All Alone,\" or \"Some Nights\"; rarely has a pop vocalist come through such lavish instrumentation and prodigious production with the results Nate Ruess delivers. His voice reaches and stretches, always with enough plaintive sincerity and sparkling energy that it avoids saccharine pop purgatory with room to spare. Producer Jeff Bhasker (who produced Kanye West\'s *My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy*) knows the meaning of the word \"big,\" and precious few are the studio wizards who know exactly when to rein it in. *Some Nights* is an undeniably massive record, in all the good ways.

First of a Living Breed is Homeboy Sandman's first full length album for Stones Throw. Artwork by Jeff Jank, Photo by Joel Frijhoff.

An Arkansas native now living in Iowa with her husband, folk musician Greg Brown, Iris DeMent is still a Southerner at her core. It\'s been 16 years since her last album of original material, 1996\'s *The Way I Should*. Now DeMent returns after sitting on the sidelines for the entire alt-country explosion, which her music surely inspired. Her songs have an unhurried, timeless quality that adhere to no premeditated schedule. \"Go on Ahead and Go Home\" starts at the piano with just a New Orleans–inspired lick and DeMent\'s gospel best waiting on the band that slowly joins her until even a Hammond organ takes a quick solo. However, it isn\'t long before DeMent slows down for the mournful \"Before the Colors Fade.\" The upbeat \"The Night I Learned How Not to Pray\" highlights the shaking of faith in a young girl who watches her young brother pass away despite the prayers. \"Makin\' My Way Back Home\" offers a subtle execution of classic country. Co-producers Bo Ramsey and Richard Bennett coax great performances and provide steady but never heavyhanded guidance and comfort.

The product of a remarkable cross-cultural collaboration, *En Yay Sah* finds Sierra Leonean singer and musician Janka Nabay enlisting a cast of talented Brooklyn musicians to cut a series of rambunctiously imaginative songs in the Bubu style. Bubu\'s relentless rhythms are derived from the pulsing ceremonial music that accompanies the Ramadan festivities of the Temne people of northwest Sierra Leone. Nabay was the first musician to incorporate these sacred rhythms into popular music; as a young man he sold cassette recordings of his harsh, electronic variation of Bubu music throughout Sierra Leone. These recordings made him into a national star, but bloody civil conflict soon forced him to flee to the United States, where he eventually discovered likeminded musicians in the New York underground. Members of local noisemakers Gang Gang Dance, Skeletons, and Starring make up Nabay’s crack backing outfit, and their work on *En Yay Sah* displays not only a mastery of Bubu\'s demanding polyrhythms but a willingness to engage African musical forms without becoming beholden to them.

West Coast hip-hop elders like Snoop and Dre have virtually anointed Kendrick Lamar to carry on the legacy of gangsta rap. His second studio album *good kid, M.A.A.d city*, conceptual enough to be a rock opera, certainly uplifts the genre with its near-biblical themes: religion vs. violence and monogamy vs. lust. Verbally nimble, Lamar experiments with a variety of different lyrical styles, from the Bone Thugz-type of delivery on “Swimming Pools (Drank)” to the more straightforward orthodox G-funk flow on “m.A.A.d. City feat. MC Eiht.” Like prog rock, Lamar’s tracks have songs within songs—sudden tempo changes with alter egos and embedded interludes, such as unscripted recordings of his parents asking for their car back and neighborhood homies planning their latest conquest. These snippets pepper the album providing an anthropological glimpse into his life in Compton.

On *Old Ideas*, his 12th studio album, the iconic singer/songwriter/poet continues his exploration of the spiritual, the sensual, and the cycle of life over the course of 10 songs. His unexcitable, half-spoken baritone is a calming, lyrical guide, with vocalists Dana Glover and The Webb Sisters and longtime collaborators Jennifer Warnes and Sharon Robinson providing tonal contrasts. With dual piano and organ accompaniment, “Show Me the Place” has the solemn levity of a modern hymn. The bluesy “Darkness” and the cabaret-friendly “Different Sides” showcase Cohen’s noirish and uptempo sides. “Banjo\" has a rural North Americana arrangement, appropriately enough, with an unexpected, Dixieland-like clarinet-and-trumpet interlude.

With fizzled record deals and forced image makeovers in his past, a frustrated Miguel Jontel Pimentel took control of his career and creativity on *Kaleidoscope Dream*. As a result, his second album not only sounded utterly singular—a swirling, moody mix of hip-hop, rock, and psychedelic soul—but it also placed the Southern Californian singer in a vanguard of new artists redefining the idea of the male R&B star (see also Frank Ocean, the Weeknd). Though just as sex-obsessed as the smooth lovermen who came before him, Miguel here projects a far more fractured and colorful view of romance tinted by deep self-reflection, hallucinogenic augmentation, and spiritual yearning. All of which tracks for a guy who grew up idolizing artsy types like Prince, Bowie, and Hendrix, but whose voice happens to sound like crushed velvet. To that last point, there’s “Adorn,” a tribute to wholehearted love that evokes Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” and shows just how sweet a Miguel album of simple, throwback R&B would be. But *Kaleidoscope Dream* is not that album—and it’s better for it. The next song, “Don’t Look Back,” lays shuffling ’60s pop over throbbing electro-house as Miguel warns a partner to run before the moon turns him into a womanizing beast. And then comes “Use Me,” where, over a plush blanket of grinding guitar, he cops to being nervous in bed. Whether he’s likening coitus to ballet (“Arch & Point”) or vamping with Alicia Keys over a tumbling drum loop (“Where’s the Fun in Forever”), Miguel proves himself a thrillingly unpredictable host. It’s no wonder this breakthrough LP led to sonic trysts with artists as wide-ranging as Kendrick Lamar, the Chemical Brothers, and Beyoncé.

Neneh Cherry is best known to the pop world as the artist who gave us \"Buffalo Stance,\" but as the stepdaughter of jazz legend Don Cherry, she\'s always been well educated in less popular and artsy strains of music. This collaboration with Scandinavian free-jazz trio The Thing (which took its name from a Don Cherry tune)—like her ventures with Gorillaz, Groove Armada, Massive Attack, and Tricky—illustrates her versatility as a singer, plus her fellow musicians\' eclectic taste and ability to transform material into something entirely new. Their version of Suicide\'s \"Dream Baby Dream\" brews for more than eight minutes, with Mats Gustafsson\'s sax, Ingebrigt Haker Flaten\'s upright bass, and Paal Nilssen-Love\'s drums forming a web of sound that\'s rich beyond its simplicity. The sound is that of an experienced trio whose members have established lines of communication within the notes. The Stooges\' \"Dirt\" retains its punkish hue, while Gustafsson\'s sax hits fever pitch. Ornette Coleman\'s \"What Reason Could I Give\" evokes a gentler side.

Take note: the shortest song on this five-track LP from the Arkansas doom-rock upstarts is more than eight minutes long. But who cares that brevity isn’t Pallbearer\'s strong suit? The punishing lethargy and smear of sludgy, distorted guitars give tunes like “The Legend” and “Foreigner” a furious, protracted intensity. An impressively mature debut, *Sorrow and Extinction* sounds a bit like playing a Sabbath record at 15 RPM. Or in a word: awesome.

Patrick Watson’s music is like a sunset: the slow, deliberate songs reveal new intensities moment to moment, one color giving way to another with grace and purpose until the evolution\'s complete and every burning pixel dissolves into black. *Adventures* is the fourth full-length record by the band Patrick Watson (his only solo outing was back in 2001), and the group wisely stays the path of bewitching and beguiling, with the occasional glimmer of whimsy. The brilliant “Lighthouse” gently opens the collection, with a timid piano creeping into a soundscape that slowly awakens with Watson’s aqueous falsetto, a gentle cascade of piano notes, shadowy percussion, and subdued strings. At three minutes in, electric guitar and spaghetti western trumpets blare and the entire mood shifts. (Fans of the Cinematic Orchestra, with which Watson has worked, will note an *ah-ha* moment here.) At the other end of the album, “The Things We Do” has a bluesy, sensual tone, its muscular backbone supporting crackling snares, prickly guitars, and a bleating saxophone.

*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.

A NOTE FROM MICHAEL GIRA “The Seer took 30 years to make. It’s the culmination of every previous Swans album as well as any other music I’ve ever made, been involved in or imagined. But it’s unfinished, like the songs themselves. It’s one frame in a reel. The frames blur, blend and will eventually fade. The songs began on an acoustic guitar, then were fleshed out with (invaluable) help from my friends, then were further tortured and seduced in rehearsals, live and in the studio, and now they await further cannibalism and force-feeding as we prepare to perform some of them live, at which point they’ll mutate further, endlessly, or perhaps be discarded for a while. Despite what you might have heard or presumed, my quest is to spread light and joy through the world. My friends in Swans are all stellar men. Without them I’m a kitten, an infant. Our goal is the same: ecstasy!" HOW THE SONGS CAME TO BE The songs The Seer, Ave. B Blues, Avatar, and The Apostate were developed organically as a group in rehearsals and on tour. They morphed constantly throughout the last series of Swans tours, and were captured and lovingly adorned in the studio. The remaining songs on the album were developed from the ground up in the studio with the participation and input of all the contributing musicians, guided by an invisible hand... Recorded at Studio P4 and Andere Baustelle in Berlin, by Kevin McMahon and at Marcata Studio, Gardiner, NY, by Kevin McMahon. Additional recording at Trout Recording, Brooklyn, NY, engineer: Bryce Goggin. Mixed by Kevin McMahon at Marcata. Produced by Michael Gira. FULL CREDITS SWANS Michael Gira voice, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, harmonica, casio, sounds Norman Westberg electric guitar, voice Christoph Hahn lap steel guitars; electric guitar, voice Phil Puleo drums, percussion, hammer dulcimer, voice Thor Harris drums, percussion, orchestral bells, hammer dulcimer, handmade violin thing, vibraphone, piano, clarinet, voice Christopher Pravdica bass guitar, voice, incredible handshake Honorary Swan: Bill Rieflin piano, organ, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, drums, percussion, casio, synthesizer, bass guitar, voice, bird idea SPECIAL GUESTS Karen O lead vocal on Song for a Warrior (Karen appears courtesy Interscope Records) Al and Mimi of Low co-vocals on Lunacy Jarboe backing vocals and voice collage on Piece of the Sky and backing vocals on The Seer Returns Seth Olinsky, Miles Seaton, Dana Janssen (Akron/Family) backing vocals on Piece of the Sky Caleb Mulkerin and Colleen Kinsella of Big Blood accordion, vocals, dulcimer, guitar, piano and assorted other instruments on the Seer Returns Sean Mackowiak (the grasshopper) acoustic and electric mandolins, clarinet, various songs Ben Frost fire sounds (acoustic and synthetic) on Piece of the Sky Iain Graham bagpipes on The Seer Bruce Lamont horns on The Seer Bob Rutman steel cello on The Seer Cassis Staudt accordion various songs Eszter Balint violin, various songs Jane Scarpatoni cello various songs Kevin McMahon additional drums on the Seer Returns, electric guitar, sounds on various songs Bryce Goggin piano on Song for a Warrior Stefan Rocke contra bassoon on the Seer Produced by Michael Gira. Recorded at Studio P4 and Andere Baustelle in Berlin, by Kevin McMahon, assistants Marco and Boris, and at Marcata Studio, Gardiner, NY, by Kevin McMahon. Additional recording at Trout Recording, Brooklyn, NY, engineer: Bryce Goggin, assistant: Adam Sachs. Mixed by Kevin McMahon at Marcata. Mastered by Doug Henderson at Micro-Moose Berlin. Pre-mastering by Jamal Ruhe at West Westside Music. Artwork: Paintings and Swans photo portraits by Simon Henwood.

Dark, crusty fuzz guitars dominate the music of Ty Segall, whose prolific output threatens to dilute the attention that should be paid to his committed allegiance to vintage rock \'n\' roll. Shades of psychedelia present themselves in the mercury-like lead guitar lines and translucent melodies that date themselves back to the mid-to-late 1960s. \"Love Fuzz\" takes on guitar work worthy of modern fuzzheads like the Bevis Frond and Dinosaur Jr. and matches it with a rhythm track copped from the Stooges and a mock-falsetto that exposes Segall\'s love for bubblegum 60s pop. \"Handglams\" throws in a descending guitar riff worthy of any garage-punk collection. Fans of MC5, The Pink Fairies, Blue Cheer, the grungier tones of Monster Magnet and the Stooges should find much to outright *love* with this swamp of sound. \"Gold On the Shore\" throws in an acoustic number with harmonies that are enhanced by a production that keeps things a beautiful blur. 

It ain't two records, but it is called Twins. Ty's new mind-blow won't just make you see double, it'll make you be double! Fold in on yourself endlessly, hold your own hand, and leap towards the mega-Segall-meteor of 2012, Twins.