Slant Magazine's 25 Best Albums of 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

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.

Although Chromatics have substantially changed their lineup since 2002, their 2012 configuration shows a huge development in both musicianship and songwriting. Now with deadpan chanteuse Ruth Radelet on the mic, *Kill for Love* opens with her demure vocals giving “Into the Black” even more tension than on Neil Young’s 1979 recording. The title track blends Italio Disco flourishes with \'90s-inspired indie rock, as Radelet contrasts a catchy vocal melody with a coolly aloof performance. She looks toward Velvet Underground–era Nico for inspiration in “The Page,” most noticeably when singing “I could be your mirror” over cold, gothic guitars that sound imported from The Cure’s *Disintegration*. “These Streets Will Never Look the Same” taps into every young woman’s desire to be Stevie Nicks, with a muted “Edge of Seventeen” guitar stutter that sounds identical to the original.

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

Filled with torch songs influenced by hip-hop, Lana Del Rey wrote and recorded *Born to Die* in a chilling fashion. These noir-shaded numbers are mostly built on orchestral accouterments and subtle vocal samples. Del Rey’s husky narrative lingers like smoke clouds, leaving wafts of rhythmic phrasings delivered by an icy, heartbroken femme fatale.

Singer Malin Dahlström and instrumentalist Gustaf Karlöf create a somewhat mystifying (and magical) blend of arena-worthy dance pop and compelling, edgy electronic music. It\'s a gorgeous, shimmering mix that can both elate and make one retreat inward; it\'s a heady elixir of Kate Bush, Stevie Nicks, and fellow Swedes The Knife. A random sampling of this stunning debut will reveal stratosphere-reaching vocals, clattering and hammering percussion, echoes of decades-old Euro-pop, and melodies that hold for days. Go for \"The Fox\" first; the verses are somewhat haunting, with tremeloed wisps of what sounds like cello and a martial yet sensual rhythm driving Dahlström\'s pleading vocals. Veering from pop diva tunes (\"Love to the Test,\" \"Somebody\") to arty, expressive constructs (\"The Gentle Roar\") and mesmerizing, otherworldly baubles of pop perfection (\"Last Night,\" \"Mother Protect\"), *Instinct* could launch Niki & The Dove into orbit. They have a lot in common with Lykke Li, another Swedish purveyor of sophisticated and deeply textured pop music that even pop naysayers end up embracing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Formed in 2004, the technical ability and deft musicality displayed in the Chicago quartet’s early EP releases saw Maps & Atlases labelled with a ‘math-rock’/ ‘post-rock’ tag, but the band have consistently defied easy categorization - perhaps a factor in engendering a fiercely loyal fanbase. Beware and Be Grateful - recorded last year in a series of week-long sessions at Omaha’s ARC Studios with producer Jason Cupp (The Elected, Nurses, Good Old War) - continues their steady migration into pop territory. Explains lead singer David Davison “The process was somewhat of a continuation of what we were doing with Perch Patchwork but I think that we tried extra hard to pay attention to the instincts of each song. We tried to let them unfold themselves and see what each song was doing and then run with that. I think we also embraced a sense of looseness with these songs. We let them run wild a little instead of trying to tie them up nicely.” And so this non-proscriptive, athletic approach informs Beware and Be Grateful, the experimentation encompassing mellifluous harmonies, percolating rhythms and even – gasp - a full-on guitar solo on album centerpiece ‘Silver Self’. Songs like ‘Remote And Dark Years’ and ‘Fever’ are gloriously fluid, but the instinct for tight kinetic rhythms never obstuficates the impulse toward catchy, asymmetrical pop. Self-assured and astonishingly ambitious, Beware and Be Grateful marks Maps & Atlases’ most fully realized collection to date.

Minneapolis continues its golden run of producing quality talent with the first project to arrive out the Gayngs collective, the super slick electronic pop-soul outfit POLIÇA. Fronted by ice cool vocalist Channy Leanagh who sang with Gayngs, produced by Ryan Olson and featuring Mike Noyce from Bon Iver, it’s a who’s who of the current Twin Cities scene. Continuing the tradition of having friends in high places with Prince and Kanye West among Gayngs fans, POLIÇA have already been backed by none other than Jay Z who posted their video for the new for single ‘Lay Your Cards Out’ on his Life + Times blog: lifeandtimes.com/lifetimes-video-premier-polica-lay-your-cards-out After collaborating in the studio and live with Gayngs in 2010, it became apparent that Channy and Ryan should form a group of their own. “As touring progressed and Channy got more comfortable with the band and singing the songs, she would reinvent the parts she was doing in brilliant ways. It made me want to see where else she could go” explains Olson. Ryan’s pop sensibilities and electronic adventurism would prove to be the perfect vehicle for Channy’s recent growth and evolution as a vocalist and dynamic experimentalist. In June 2011, they began writing together what would become POLIÇA’s debut album, Give You The Ghost. The result is 11 perfectly formed auto-tuned songs that re-shape the intersection of pop and digitised R&B. And for all POLIÇA’s synthetic manipulation, Channy’s soft vocals and Ryan’s electronic soundscapes reveal a tender heart beneath, pulsating with life and raw emotion. Give You The Ghost opens with the attention grabbing sonic of first track ‘Amongster’, the two drummers immediately coming into full effect as it builds to a heady mass of beats, bass and Channy’s wandering vocals. ‘Violent Games’ continues the heavy on the drums theme, with duelling beats that intensify to machine gun-like levels, led by Channy’s urgent and cyclical vocals “Tremble at the taste of / Tremble at the taste of / Tremble at the taste of in his hands”. Born out of the break-up of a recent relationship, the majority of Give You The Ghost reflects the difficulty of facing up to your mistakes and making peace with them; an exorcism via exciting new musical possibilities. “The recurring theme of this record is ‘what in the hell just happened and who in the hell am I anyways’” says Channy. This redemptive mood is key for the track ‘Dark Star’, released online late last year amidst a viral whirlwind. Backed by smooth brass breakdowns throughout and mid-tempo loping rhythms, it’s typical of POLIÇA’s often meditative content fused with the addictive refrain “Ain’t a man who can pull me down from my Dark Star”. First sashaying single proper ‘Lay Your Cards Out’ and the dreamy ‘Wandering Star’ both feature Mike Noyce of Bon Iver on vocals and are equally as deliciously funk laden as they are hypnotic, with more ratatat drums from Ben Ivascu and Drew Christopherson, propelling the lush arrangements and slinky bass, provided by Chris Bierden. The name POLIÇA refers to the word ‘policy’, meaning a definite course of action adopted for the sake of expediency, suggesting they were formed out of necessity. Which is exactly how this album feels and sounds; urgent, original and genre defying, POLIÇA are absolutely essential in 2012.

As a singer/songwriter who\'s found her way into the alt.country sphere, Kelly Hogan captures the feel of vintage roots music, with a touch of soul that\'s garnered her comparisons to Bobbie \"Ode to Billie Joe\" Gentry and Shelby Lynne. Hogan\'s first solo album in 11 years shows it\'s a shame she hasn\'t recorded more on her own. (She\'s lately taken work as a backup singer in Neko Case\'s group.) Here, Hogan\'s backing band is solid and tasteful, starring Booker T. Jones on organ, Gabriel Roth of The Dap-Kings on bass, and James Gadson on drums. Aside from the self-penned \"Golden,\" the songs come from other writers. M. Ward\'s \"Daddy\'s Little Girl\" is presented as an apology from Frank Sinatra to his daughter Nancy. Jack Pendarvis and Andrew Bird\'s \"We Can\'t Have Nice Things\" recounts domestic violence, while Hogan\'s smoky vocal evokes a nightclub feel. \"Plant White Roses\" is a classic tender ballad from The Magnetic Fields\' Stephin Merritt. But it\'s Vic Chesnutt\'s \"Ways of This World\" that really captures the steamy American South of Hogan\'s Georgia roots and her connection to Gentry\'s sultriness. 

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.

Though \"Wax Face\" opens *Putrifiers II* with the mind-melting ferocity that so intoxicated fans on past T.O.S. tunes, the album as a whole is a white-hot brew of everything the supreme psych-rockers do best. If one could distill their two 2011 releases into one edited, cohesive whole—or perhaps distill their entire vast catalog into such a thing—it would come awfully close to *Putrifiers II*. There are strings and woodwinds among other instrumental delights here; we love the droning cello and violins on the Velvets-ish \"So Nice.\" There are also mind-melters (\"Lupine Dominus\" snaps and growls with appropriately feral organs and guitar) and artfully sculpted bad-trip soundtrack music (\"Clouds #1\"). Plus, there are almost-breezy psych-pop tunes with summery strings (\"Goodnight Baby\"), as well as sweetly \'60s-style vocal harmonies and crisp, just-before-the-red production (\"Flood\'s New Light,\" \"Hang a Picture\"). Thee Oh Sees even toss in funhouse-mirror doo-wop (\"Will We Be Scared?\") and dew-kissed baroque pop (\"Wicked Pop\"). John Dwyer and his merry band continue evolving before our very eyes, and that is, literally, awesome.