My Top Albums of 2012

In alphabetical order:

Bear In Heaven – I Love You, It’s Cool: Haunting love songs gloriously filtered through rave sounds.

Damien Jurado – Maraqopa: Nearly sacred songs, grounded in buried rock excellence.

Delicate Steve – Positive Force: Post-Ratatat with way more shredding and sunshine vibes. (more feelings here)

Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan: Modern pop, broken down into its component parts and reassembled into other-universe manifestos or something.

Frankie Rose – Interstellar: Space music from an earth girl without all the fiddly digital bits.

Infinity Shred – EP 001 (Gnar Dream): All the fiddly digital bits, exploding inside the heart of space.

Japandroids – Celebration Rock: Just when you thought it was safe to go through life without paying attention or really even breathing, this album came and pushed you on the ground and gave you a mean look but then you shared a beer and now you’re pals so it’s cool.

The Mountain Goats – Transcendental Youth: The soundtrack to the next morning after that night of beers and deciding living time is now.

Ombre – Believe You Me: After discovering how to strip all of the cheese from latin jazz and ambient music, Roberto Carlos Lange and Julianna Barwick used their formula to slow down time.

Sinkane – Mars: 100% groove and has a heart and soul birthed from the past and the future getting cozy together.

Twin Shadow – Confess: Pure, perfect pop that doesn’t need to try to be better than everyone else because it just is naturally the best pop album of the year. And with percussion to die for.

Tycho – Dive: I’m tired of calling things “chillwave”, can we just call this gorgeous dance-blog ambient “Pure Feels”?