As the year draws to a close we are inundated with lists, polls and best ofs, whilst GIITTV’s best 100 albums of the year list is a further addition to this maelstrom of retrospection.It is also a reflection of the great diversity of taste and sound that fills these pages every year, plus the unquenchable passion and insight of our fine writing team. Based upon a democratic poll we present to your our finest longer players from this year, it’s a consensus of opinion not any one individuals thus it is a subjective snapshot of 2012 in music. It is a collective poll for your reading and listening pleasure we hope you enjoy it and maybe discover some albums that may have passed you by this year.
Before we begin our countdown here are some albums that just missed out: Sirs // Straylings – Entertainment on Foreign Grounds // We Are the Physics – Your Friend, the Atom // Guillemots – Hello Land! // Karriem Riggins – Alone Together // Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel… // The Music Tapes – Mary’s Voice // Band of Skulls – Sweet Sour // Liars – WIXIW // Gaz Coombes – Here Comes the Bombs // Polica – Give You the Ghost // Johnny Foreigner – Johnny Foreigner versus Everything // Dexys – One Day I’m Going to Soar // The Twilight Sad – No One Can Ever Know // Viv Albertine – Vermilion Border // Mark Lanegan Band – Blues Funeral // Beth Jeans Houghton & The Hooves of Destiny – Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose // Gaggle – From the Mouth of the Cave // 2:54 // The Shins – Port of Morrow
GIITTV Zine’s top 100 albums of 2012: self-titled unless otherwise stated;
100 Bishi – Albion Voice
99 The Walkmen – Heaven
98 Emeli Sande – Our Version of Events
97 Trapped Mice – Winter Sun “Sure there’s angst, but there’s humour here, too. And on the evidence of this whole album, the band more than hold their own against the likes of Meursault, Withered Hand and the Savings & Loan, to pick three very fine bands from the contemporary Edinburgh scene. And like the best albums, even before it’s over, you just know that this is an album you’re going to want to play again and again. It’s one of the strongest albums I’ve heard this year-so make sure you hear it, too.” Read More
96 The Lost Rivers – Sin and Lostness “Earlier in the year I was raving about A Place To Bury Strangers and here’s another band in that same Black Rebel Mary Chain mould of noise/goth rock. They’re called The Lost Rivers and they’re only German aren’t they?! They’ve released a few singles and EPs and now the debut album, ‘Sin And Lostness’, from whence this racket emanates.” Read More
95 People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz – The Keystone Cut Ups “Ergo and People Like Us’ Vicki Bennett always bring a certain captivating empirical charm to their respective endeavors, none more so than on The Keystone Cut Ups. This conceptual union of art, film and music works on so many levels, and will appeal to a broad audience. The most pleasurable and melodious education you could ever hope for.” Read More
94 Lucy Rose – Like I Used To
93 Rolo Tomassi – Astraea
92 Azealia Banks – Fantasea
91 Saint Saviour – Union “Six years in the making ‘Union’ is an album of peerlessly impressive pop music, each track pierces the heart revealing Saint Saviour, a sophisticated female artist with a startlingly resonant talent that shines through each composition and reaches beyond the fads and at times towards outstanding brilliance.” Read More
90 Miguel – Kaleidoscope Dream
89 Future of the Left – The Plot Against Common Sense
88 Neil Halstead – Palindrome Hunches ‘Palindrome Hunches’ is a record that can fill your autumn and winter with glowing warmth, rustic pleasures and rounded, delicious tunes. It’s undoubtedly one of the finest British records released this year, happily by someone who is soundly at the top of their game despite years trudging through the mire of the UK music industry. Perhaps this is Halstead’s moment to find himself firmly and deservedly at the centre of things? Even if not – what a tremendous culmination of the man’s considerable talents.” Read More
87 MewithoutYou – Ten Stories “Mewithoutyou’s fifth and latest album Ten Stories is a culmination of everything that the band have done before. February 1878 is clearly the sequel to January 1979, a rocking brooding little number full of distortion and intelligent angst that gets under your skin in exactly the same way as the bands earlier material did. Foxes Dream of the Log Flume has the deep grooving bass lines, rhythmic drumming and classic vocal delivery that first compelled me to be interested in the band. While songs like Elephant in The Dock and Aubergine have the feel of the bands more folk elements but Elephant in The Dock especially has a twisted and dramatic undertone to it making it less twee than what the band have created previously.” Read More
86 Chairlift – Something
85 JJ Doom – Key to the Kuffs
84 Alt-J – An Awesome Wave “An Awesome Wave is an exceptional debut that sees Alt-J set for their prominent future. It features clever song-writing and instruments, resulting in delightful outcome, that is, An Awesome Wave.” Read More
83 Dark Horses – Black Music
82 Converge – We All Leave Love Behind
81 Patti Smith – Banga “Way way back in 1975, Patti Smith was the first lady of punk and part of the NY scene that was fostering a phase in music that was to have a greater impact than any other. Now 65 years old, you have to question whether she is able to make a credible contribution to the modern scene, so news of a new album didn’t necessarily fill me with excitement. It’s called ‘Banga’ and whilst it lacks the venom of her early material, it does have a compelling earthiness to it.” Read More
80 Admiral Fallow – Tree Bursts in Snow
79 Allah La’s -S/T
78 Calvin Harris – 18 Months
77 The Decemberists – We All Raise Our Voices to the Air (live album) “That the Decemberists can disguard ’16 Miltary Wives’ one of their more well known compositions is testament to the strength of the material on show here. Each one a chapter, each section a player in this world they have created. Despite the fact that they have recently announced a hiatus, The Decemberists rightly hold the mantle as the thinking person’s band in their hands, on this evidence it is safe in their possession for a time to come!” Read More
76 Spiritualized – Sweet Heart Sweet Light “There’s no doubt that Spiritualized polarise critics, including myself. Fans, followers and advocates of the Pierce school of reverence drone and halcyon psychedelia will lap this latest opus up regardless’” Read More
75 Josephine Foster – Blood Rushing Foster evocatively brings the pioneering tumult era of America back to life; taking the Hispanic rich landscape on a tour through the last two hundred years, with varying degrees of success. Blood Rushing is another feather in the cap for the chanteuse, and her second release of the year to make my 2012 list of highlights.” Read More
74 Orbital – Wonky “Recently reunited following a long sabbatical, Paul and Phil Hartnoll are back. Playful humour and warm humanity are woven into Wonky’s fabric – from the heart-tugging harmonies and woozy vocal layers of Never and Distractions, to the guest appearance by the highly acclaimed LA-based electronic musician Zola Jesus on the brooding, atmospheric epic New France. These are machine-made symphonies to stir the soul and electrify the senses.” Read More
73 Gallon Drunk – The Road Gets Darker From Here
72 Pond – Beard, Wives, Denim
71 Field Music – Plumb “Recorded over the course of 2011 at their new studio on the banks of the river Wear in Sunderland, comprises 15 songs in a succinct 35 minutes. It largely abandons the classic songwriting conventions embraced on their 2010 double album ‘Field Music (Measure)’ and instead remodels the modular, fragmented style of the first two Field Music albums; only now shot through with the surreal abstractions of 20th century film music from Bernstein to Willy Wonka and with the off-beam funk and pristine synth-rock developed on the brothers’ School of Language and The Week That Was albums.” Read More
70 Patrick Wolf – Sundark and Riverlight
69 Diiv – Oshin
68 Exitmusic – Passage “Aleksa Palladino and Devon Church bring a tense dynamic the star of the show being Aleksa’s voice, way down there in some underground bunker.” Read More
67 Heathers – Kingdom
66 NZCA/Lines
65 The Mars Volta – Noctourniquet “Prog rock was created by the likes of Syd Barrett and Frank Zappa almost half a century ago and was then bloated out in the seventies by a whole host of bands that John Peel loathed, like Yes, Genesis & Tangerine Dream. Sadly, it didn’t die then, although the emergence of various new genres have pushed it firmly to a point where only hippies dwell. The Mars Volta seemed intent on thrusting it in our faces again. I like it, I only friggin’ well likeit!! . The album title is the only really pretentious thing about it and that’s “Noctourniquet”
64 Shoes and Socks Off – Miles of Mad Water
63 Hysterical Injury – Dead Wolf Situation “There is a universal truth that underpins Gardiner’s songwriting, it leaves it untouchable; and as long as this songwriter keeps peeling away with the same intensity, and obvious passion, the key elements to ‘the sound’ will always fall perfectly into place. Nowhere is this more apparent than on single closer ‘The Third Man’, an Annie solo cut, originally recorded as part of an ongoing side-project, Excellent Birds. It may indeed be the best song Gardiner has recorded to date.” Read More
62 Wild Nothing – Nocturne “For this their second album, Tatum steps out of his low-fi Virginian bedroom and returns to the synth, echo and reverbed, drum blueprint of their 2010 debut, ‘Gemini‘. With ‘Nocturne’, Tatum welds a much bigger production sound to those contagious pop melodies which he now immerses in layers of shimmering guitars, quietly understated strings and illusory, breathy vocals.” Read More
61 Taylor Swift – Red
60 Errors – Have Some Faith in Magic “After a brief but hugely-influential time away Errors return with ‘Have Some Faith In Magic,’ on Rock Action Records; their third album, it counts as far and away their greatest shift in sound yet, heralding in a sound of serenely cosmo-gazing sugar-tipped pop” Read More
59 Blood Red Shoes – In Time To Voices “I fell in love with Blood Red Shoes in 2008 with their debut album “Box Of Secrets”, which has a wonderful blend of punk and pop. They were Brighton’s answer to The White Stripes, as they are a male/female duo, although never laid claim to being related on two levels and the geezer plays the drums. Then, two years later, the next album did prove to be the ‘difficult second’ one and was good enough, but not great. So what of album number three, “In Time To Voices” which came out at the end of March? Well it probably sits between the previous two for me.” Read More
58 The Crookes – Hold Fast “Lammo’s latest young boys The Crookes return with the excellent Hold Fast, specialising in a 60s-streaked dedication to swooning and a keen attentiveness to upbeat, visceral jangling. Much more believable and fun in the business of British, grey, romantic longing than gurning monkeys Frankie and the Heartstrings, or weird lopsided-Burberry-adverts-singing-deformed- Smiths-songs The Heartbreaks, The Crookes have humanity, and the tunes firmly on their side.” Read More
57 Adrian Crowley – I See Three Birds Flying
56 How to Dress Well – Total Loss “The second album by Chicago based singer and producer Tom Krell AKA How To Dress Well. Recorded by Krell himself and producer Rodaidh Mcdonald (The xx) over the space of ten months in London, New York, Chicago and Nashville has been praised for both its fiercely unique, diverse musicality and its extremely affecting, elegiac emotion alike. Skilfully channelling influences as disparate as Janet Jackson and tape loop practitioner William Basinski into a unified whole, Total Loss is a record that exists entirely on its own terms – blurring the lines between experiment and straight-up pop majestically.” Read More
55 Sun Kil Moon – Among the Leaves
54 Trash Talk – 119
53 Soap & Skin – Narrow “Narrow is not an easy album to listen to. At times, I had to walk away, take a deep breath, and brace myself for the aftermath. However, this is by far, the most musically unique and influential album of 2012 so far. It is a classic. It buries its way under your skin, and into your bones, it confronts you with feelings and subjects you no doubt would rather forget. To listen to it is to leave your comfort zone and enter Plaschg’s pain fuelled world for under a hour. It is worth it though. Part of you will fall in love with this album, and part of you will want to hide it away forever. I’ll leave that choice with you.” Read More
52 Micachu and the Shapes -Never
51 One Leg Mary – Yes Exactly, Maybe Not
Coming up later this week our top 50 albums of 2012!
Listen to many of the albums on our spotify playlist:
