This year proved epic as far as high quality releases go. There were so many albums dropped in so many different genres that Best Of lists I've seen so far have featured wide and varying selections, with some obvious overlap (Frank Ocean, Grizzly Bear, Tame Impala and Kendrik Lamar seem to be across-the-board darlings), but less than you might expect. Even the CL Music Team's own Best Of Lists reveal diverse ideas of what we thought was noteworthy in 2012, each list most definitely following each of our own personal genre preferences. And I don't think any of us were wrong. My own year-end list is followed by those of several other CL Team members, with their Number 1 favorite album of the year [WARNING: there's a NSFW album cover at the bottom] followed by a list of the rest of their faves along with any notes and thoughts on the year. Enjoy, and take a listen to the ones you haven't heard or heard of yet; I'm still cycling through albums from 2012 and will probably continue to do so for the next few months...
MUSIC EDITOR LEILANI POLK
My own Top 10 encompasses those albums and bands I obsessed over most, listened to compulsively, and am still falling back to for comfort even today. I had a great deal of trouble trimming my own list down to 20, let alone 10, so I've narrowed it down to a dirty dozen for 2012, with some honorable mentions at the end...
1. Django Django, Django Django (Ribbon Music)
I pretty much pegged this as my album of the year upon second listen. This youthful UK foursome carries the modern torch of another late, great favorite UK group of mine, the Beta Band, and the resemblance isn't really much of a surprise considering that bandleader, drummer/producer David Maclean, is the younger bro of Beta's keyboardist John Maclean. Django Django's genre-nabbing spans garage pop, '70s rock, New Wave, dance music, art rock and psychedelia, and their layered mix of organic and electronic elements brim with vibrant percussive texture, exquisite vocal harmonies (ethereal, droning, sweet, looped and layered), and bits of sample and synth flotsam scattered amid musical moments that are quirky sweet, darker and stripped-down, or warped chaotic blissful washes of sound. Their eponymous debut pretty much touches on all the notes I love, and it's one that I have a hard time skipping through even when there's a track I really want to hear, since each one holds something unique and appealing. Video for "Hail Bop" after the jump along with the rest of my list and the CL Team's Best Of lists, too...
