Stereogum's Top 25 Albums of 2012 So Far

In 2009, Cleveland’s Dylan Baldi began writing and recording lo-fi power-pop songs in his parents’ basement, dubbing the project Cloud Nothings. His music quickly started making the Internet rounds, and fans and critics alike took note of his pithy songcraft, infectiously catchy melodies, and youthful enthusiasm. Baldi soon released a string of 7”s, a split cassette, and an EP before putting out "Turning On"—a compilation spanning about a year’s worth of work—on Carpark in 2010. January 2011 saw the release Cloud Nothings’ self-titled debut LP, which, put next to Turning On, found Baldi cleaning up his lo-fi aesthetic, pairing his tales of affinitive confusion with a more pristine aural clarity. In the interval since the release of Cloud Nothings, Baldi has toured widely and put a great deal of focus on his live show, a detail that heavily shapes the music of his follow-up album, "Attack on Memory." After playing the same sets nightly for months on end, Baldi saw the rigidity of his early work, and he wanted to create arrangements that would allow for more improvisation and variability when played on the road. To accomplish this desired malleability, the entire band decamped to Chicago—where the album was recorded with Steve Albini—and all lent a hand in the songwriting process. The product of these sessions is a record boasting features that, even at a glance, mark a sea change in the band’s sound: higher fidelity, a track clocking in at almost nine minutes, an instrumental, and an overall more plaintive air. The songs move along fluidly, and Baldi sounds assured as he brings his vocals up in the mix, allowing himself to hold out long notes and put some grain into his voice. Minor key melodies abound, drums emphatically contribute much more than mere timekeeping, and the guitar work is much more adventurous than that of previous releases. For all of early Cloud Nothings’ fun and fervor, Baldi admits that it never sounded like most of the music he listens to. With "Attack on Memory," he wanted to remedy this anomaly, and in setting out to do so, Baldi and co. have created an album that shows vast growth in a still very young band.

For their seventh album in 10 years, The Walkmen keep refining their strangely catchy brand of moody indie rock. *Heaven* is a bit slower than its predecessors, but Hamilton Leithauser’s wonderfully drawn-out and affected voice is there at the forefront, floating atop a choppy sea of strummed guitars and thick bass lines. Thanks to the renowned Seattle-based producer Phil Ek (his generation’s answer to Joe Boyd), the electric sparks of a great live show combine with the layered intricacies of a labored-over studio album. “Heaven” is a detuned jangle-romp that flirts briefly with being an anthem before going home and crawling into bed. “Line by Line” is an unabashed lullaby. “No One Ever Sleeps” is the soundtrack to a waking dream. And “Heartbreaker” is a suave little foray into the post-Velvets night. When Leithauser intones “We’ll never leave/The world is ours” on “We Can’t Be Beat,” you pray he’s even a little bit right.

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.

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.

On Lockett Pundt\'s second solo outing as Lotus Plaza, it becomes increasingly clear how critical his contributions really are to his *other* bands (Deerhunter and Atlas Sound). *Spooky Action* works in a vein similar to those outfits, with pop melodies and sensibilities at the heart of music wrapped in layers of fuzz and warmth. There\'s reverb on the guitars and vocals, along with restrained distortion and effects (appropriately lighthanded, since the feel here is decidedly ethereal). Tight, sturdy percussion is the grounding force. The crisp snares and chiming guitar on \"Strange\" anchor the wispy tune, and the weighty kickdrum gives bounce to the shimmering tambourines and gathering clouds of guitar on \"Out of Touch.\" One strength of this set is its range of feeling, from the artfully thoughtful \"Jet Out of the Tundra,\" to the Yo La Tengo–style gentleness of the lovely \"Dusty Rhodes.\" Lotus Plaza\'s music complements the best of Deerhunter and Atlas Sound.

Harmonicraft is Torche in their most unfiltered form and the result is a collection of songs that prove that heavy music can be progressive without being predictable. From the relentless groove of "Roaming" to the melodic grandeur of "Kicking" and sinister syncopation of "In Pieces," Harmonicraft stretches toward the sonic stratosphere and illustrates that the band are growing tighter and more powerful with each passing release.

The title *Interstellar* accurately reflects the atmosphere here—and considering Frankie Rose\'s previous work, it’s a surprising direction. She\'s a former drummer for Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, and Dum Dum Girls, and her earlier solo release (backed by her band The Outs) was noisy, reverb-rich, and influenced by \'60s girl bands. On *Interstellar*, she works with producer Le Chev to create a glossy and spacious synth-pop album that echoes \'80s new wave. The first crystalline notes of the opening title track signal the reinvention of her sound, which is anchored by sparkling, highly polished production. Her vocals are dreamy and clear, light enough to float pleasantly into layers of keyboards and synths. The songs are minimalist, precise, and ringing with clarity. “Know Me,” “Daylight Sky,” and “Night Swim” are bouncy and mesmerizing, with shimmering guitar figures and crisp drumming. The gorgeous ballad “Pair of Wings” has a similarly spare structure but unfolds with a slow, subdued power. It repeats the same sweet melody for three verses, adding texture until the song dissolves into space, creating one of the more memorable passages on an album full of meditative and ethereal moments.

We were all knocked out by the Frankie Rose and the Outs album from 2010, the effortlessness of its gorgeous girl-pop mantras, the intimate immensity of its Spector-esque walls of reverb, the beauty of a song sung sweetly over the most graceful two-chord vamps. But are you ready for the new Frankie Rose? – her transformation into a wholly other kind of pop, the reverie and revelation of "Interstellar," an album that floats free of its maker’s history – time spent with Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls, Crystal Stilts, and creator of one of the most breathlessly compelling girl-pop albums of the past few years – and offers the listener something strangely other, as alien as it is familiar, as compelling as it is enchanting. Talking with Frankie about the record, it’s clear she was itching for a new start. The first big indication – production by Le Chev, remixer supreme (for Lemonade, Narcisse, Passion Pit, and Frankie’s own “Candy”), an ensemble member of Fischerspooner, etc. “We recorded the record in a private studio dubbed The Thermometer Factory in Park Slope. I wanted this record to be totally different and in so doing I knew I had to work with someone who would lend fresh ideas and know how to make sounds that I wouldn't know how to make. I wanted to make a particular record and I knew Le Chev would be the one who could help me do it.” So, out with the reverb of the Frankie Rose and the Outs, and in with something altogether more glam, glittering, shivering. On "Interstellar" Frankie takes the lessons learned with her debut album – like reverb as the holy route to pop-grandeur, scaling a wall of teenage tears – fully digests, and transfers those skills into the brave new world mapped out by ten new songs. In its place is the confident swagger of a singer and auteur fully aware of how to build the simplest of pop moves into aching, full-blown melodramas, how to grab hold of an emotion and ride its darker waves. “I always have a big picture in mind,” Frankie reflects. “I knew I wanted a HUGE sounding record. Big highs, big lows, and clean. There is no fuzz on this record. I knew I wanted to make a streamlined, spacious record with big choruses that sometimes referenced 80s pop.” But that referencing never swamps the melodies: this record isn’t a retro trip. If anything, it liberates sounds familiar from that decade and gives them new context, breathes life into clay golems of sound that too often become basic, pre-set triggers. On "Interstellar," Frankie Rose goes epic, goes widescreen. “Had We Had It” spins the sweetest sugar from chords that ascend into the firmament, a heavenly, palatial blur. “Gospel / Grace” rumbles with passion, a New Order-esque one-finger guitar figure leading the listener into the choral depths mapped by the chorus. “Apples For The Sun” is breathtaking, with Frankie singing out across a lone piano, before a glorious web of voice and organ pirouettes into the air, an arbor of pleasure connecting the verse with its instrumental shadow, a coda that slowly slips from your view, before making the briefest, most tantalizing of returns. A lot of "Interstellar" seems to be about disappearing into, or finding and reveling in, this kind of imaginary zone, something Rose confirms: “The whole record is about dreaming of some ‘other’ place.” And as you drift into the heartbreaking “The Fall,” which floats out to sea on a lunar-aquatic cello riff that’s pure Arthur Russell, you’re ready to conquer those other places, too, to let Frankie Rose guide you out of the album’s spell and land you back in the sensual world, slightly altered, adrift and in awe. How does it feel to feel? With Interstellar, your emotions come out so alive, your only escape is to dive right back in.

Now here is some amusing, candy-coated anarchy. For the blown-out punk-rap act’s second record and (somehow!) their major-label debut, Death Grips fuse abrasive techno with shouted and amped-up hip-hop and crazed distorted backing loops. The Sacramento, Calif.–based group brings together producer Zach Hill of the avant-metal act Hella with vocalist Stefan Burnett and coproducer Andy Morin. Lyrically, there’s a bit of the Rage Against the Machine problem at work here. Songs like “I’ve Seen Footage” and “Get Got” icily remark on the proliferation of violence and the way it desensitizes youth. It’s also easy to see how desensitized youth would just think it’s cool. Two of the least venerated forms of the \'90s—electroclash and digital hardcore—are resuscitated in a way that will cause parents the world over to politely ask that that music be turned down. Yet it\'s undeniably good—always layered and frequently strange.

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.

With leader Jason Pierce pushing his vocals closer to the front of the mix in recent years, *Sweet Heart Sweet Light* again finds Spiritualized coming close to accessible pop music in key spots. It provides clarity to a music that previously excelled as an oblique blur. \"Too Late\" cruises near convention, with a gentle folk melody that could pass for a Mojave 3 number. Elsewhere, there\'s still plenty of sonic detail; buzzing fuzz and psychedelic orchestration make \"Get What You Deserve\" a looping narcotic hit that ends in a torrent of feedback. \"Headin\' for the Top Now\" dives deeper into the distorted sonic soup that made Pierce\'s work with Spacemen 3 such a welcome enigma. Weirdest of all is the unexpected team-up with New Orleans\' gumbo-voodoo legend Dr. John for the co-written \"I Am What I Am,\" where both artists find a way to make their presence felt and reach a common ground, where gospel vamps marry Pierce\'s harshest sonic attacks.

Pierce is still using large orchestras and choirs to take his Robert Johnson blues way past the crossroads, to vistas that are as endless as they are empty. He's still singing his own rock'n'roll gospel: Jesus, fast cars, girls named Jane and Mary, pimps, death, fire, freedom, and God all show up, giving life to Pierce's alternate-universe Eden, inhabited by Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, self-loathing, and a spitty syringe. He's still his own genre-- this tiny voice elevated by the super-church-sized arrangements in his head. "I want to make music that catches all the glory and beauty and magnificence, but also the intimacy and fragility, all within the space of the same 10 seconds," Pierce has said. It's a mad goal. But it's also an inherently intriguing and universal one, just as ancient myths or Biblical tales can be. Pierce isn't religious, but he uses Christian language and figures as a thematic shorthand. "As you have a conversation about Jesus, you know you're talking to him about how it is to be fallible and question yourself and your morals," he told me. "When I sing, 'Help me, Jesus,' you know I'm not asking for help fixing the fucking car." Such an all-or-nothing attitude is risky, but that's the whole point. Pierce mixed Sweet Heart over eight drawn-out months under something of a drug-induced stupor. But it wasn't the kind of drug-induced stupor Pierce is known for. At the time, he was being hit with experimental chemotherapy treatments to combat a degenerative liver disease. (Three doctors are thanked in the liner notes; Pierce is apparently OK now.) During this album's creation, the singer referred to it as Huh?-- a nod to his jumbled mental state. All of which would make one assume that Sweet Heart would be messy, fucked-up, and completely depressing. That is not the case. This is probably the most uplifting album of his career.- Ryan Dombal Pitchfork.com 8.8/10

Recorded over three weeks in a darkened room, the third album from Canadian singer/producer Grimes, a.k.a. Claire Boucher, packs an idiosyncratic punch. At once grating and soothing, melodic and dissonant, *Visions* manages to sound like a pop record above all else, with contorted melodies that seep into your brain. Boucher tangles up her eerie falsetto with crackling beats and pinging synths, resulting in a gnarled amalgam of textures—electro-pop rendered as splatter art. It\'s fascinating and wholly original all the way through.

The story is a good one. Beal is said to have recorded this album on a karaoke machine with a $20 microphone while working nights as a hotel porter; he then promoted himself with hand-drawn fliers that included his home address and phone number. Whether the story checks out, the music here is primitive and evokes the sounds of Daniel Johnston, The Moldy Peaches, and lesser-known \"outsider artists.\" Yet the songs are surprisingly conventional once one attunes to the barebones sound. Beal\'s voice is pleasant, and his lyrics paint pictures in unusual cadences. \"Sambo Joe from the Rainbow\" takes Bill Callahan\'s downbeat approach and adds a touch of sunshine. \"Ghost Robot\" turns in a primitive rap song that makes Beck\'s lowest-fi recordings sound polished. \"Swing on Low\" goes even further into automated sound. \"Away My Silent Lover\" comes across world-weary, with \"Take Me Away\" turning to blues via Tom Waits. This clearly isn\'t for everyone, but for those who enjoy the unusual and a challenge, Willis Earl Beal is an enigma worth figuring out.