My Top 9 Albums of 2012

Yes, only 9 made the cut this time, rather than the usual 11. To be honest, I was disappointed in a lot of the albums I had been looking forward to this year. As always, these selections are not supposed to be “the” top albums of the year. In no way am I suggesting these albums are better than all other albums that were released this year. These are simply the ones that I enjoyed the most.

Without further ado…

1. Vital – Anberlin

This is by far Anberlin’s best album since 2007’s Cities – and might be even better. Anberlin’s sixth studio album is a career-defining work. If we had to suffer through the mediocrity of two lackluster albums (New Surrender and Dark Is A Way, Light Is A Place) to get here, it was well worth the wait. “We knew we had to do something different, change it up,” frontman Stephen Christian said of this album in a recent interview. And change it up they did – Vital is Anberlin’s successful perfection of the metal guitars and 80’s-throwback-synth blend that they have been evolving towards for almost a decade. After two albums full of forgettable mid-tempo ballads, Vital is a harder-edged, grittier Anberlin, shifted into 6th gear. Adding in a hefty mix of electronic instrumentation, the band bursts out of the gate with the fantastic opener (“Self-Starter”) and maintains a high-energy, pounding, and often frenetic pace (“Desires,” by far the heaviest song Anberlin has produced to date) for the majority of the next 10 tracks. I was also impressed when I found out that Stephen Christian said the lyrics for many of the songs (“Someone Anyone,” “Orpheum”) were inspired by the youth-driven “Arab Spring” protests in Tunisia and Egypt – although his undimmed rose-colored optimism about the Arab Spring, as evidenced in this November 2012 interview, did make me cringe a little.

Standout tracks: “Self-Starter,” “Little Tyrants,” “Someone Anyone,” “Desires,” “Orpheum,” “Modern Age”

2. Some Nights – fun.

About 20 seconds into the neurotic Queen-esque opening track, I could tell that Some Nightswas going to be quite a departure from Aim & Ignite. By the time the sweeping harmonies of the title track kicked in, I was sold on the new direction. Taking a chance by teaming up with legendary producer Jeff Bhasker (Kanye West, Beyonce), Nate Ruess and his bandmates took whatever was left of The Format’s acoustic-pop and burned it in a glorious drum-machine hip-hop-infused fire. And the gamble paid off – launching fun. from indie rock obscurity into Top 40 superstardom. The brilliance of the singles speak for themselves, but I personally love the admittedly Elton John-inspired “Why Am I The One” and especially “Carry On,” which I think Ruess captured beautifully in the album’s Spotify commentary: “We wanted [the song] almost to feel like you’re on a ship and its filling up with water…[not] in a desperate way, like you’re panicking or you’re worried. It’s like the ship is filling up with water and that’s what you want.” Not to mention the killer guitar riff halfway through.

The risk-taking didn’t always pay off – I don’t think anyone is quite sure what the band was aiming for with “One Foot,” but they didn’t get there, and Ruess admitted that the band wrote the lyrics and music for “It Gets Better” in a single day, and frankly, you can tell. But the album’s beautiful, phenomenal closer (“Stars”) is the home run that adds an exclamation point on to the end of the album – a testament to what a band can do when it refuses to settle for making the same record again and boldly embraces experimentation. Ruess claimed to have improvised the entire vocal part in the second half of the song on the spot in the studio, and fired back at critics of the band’s artistic (and brilliant) use of autotune: “If anyone [heard that song and] said to me, ‘ugh, autotune,’ I’d either punch them, or start crying.”

Standout tracks: “Some Nights,” “We Are Young,” “Carry On,” “Why Am I The One,” “All Alright,” “Stars”

3. Walk The Moon – Walk The Moon

Recommended to me by a friend, I would argue that this is by far the most fun you’ll have listening to any album this year. Cincinnati-based Walk The Moon’s debut LP is an infectious blend of poppy dance-rock laced with killer guitar and synth riffs and instantly memorable choruses. Honestly, “Anna Sun” and “Tightrope” must be two of the catchiest songs I’ve heard this year. Lyrically most of the songs are lighthearted diddies about romance, lust, and exes, so obvious they just went ahead and put the girls’ names in the titles (“Lisa Baby,” “Jenny,” etc.), but this album’s strength is not its lyrical depth. Though the album is blatantly front-loaded, with nary a down-tempo song to be found on tracks 1-6, the flurry of energy eventually lets up for the impressive ballad “Iscariot.” And I’m not quite sure why, but the oddly endearing closer “I Can Lift A Car” somehow seems to perfectly encapsulate everything that Walk The Moon is.

Standout Tracks: “Lisa Baby,” “Anna Sun,” “Tightrope,” “Jenny,” “Iscariot,” “I Can Lift A Car”

4. Celebration Rock – Japandroids

This is indie rock for people who hate indie rock. Eschewing the neurosis and cynicism of many of their counterparts, this Canadian rock duo belt out feel-good anthems about living life to the fullest and partying hard with your best friends. “Don’t we have anything to live for? Well of course we do,” vocalist Brian King sings on the opening track. “We don’t cry for those nights to arrive, we yell like hell to the heavens!” Celebration Rock‘s 8 tracks are a nonstop onslaught of high-energy distorted guitars and low-fi gang vocals, but its short length (just 36 minutes) suits it well. You’re fairly exhausted by the time you finish rocking out to “The House That Heaven Built,”one of the best songs of the year. “Remember saying things like ‘we’ll sleep when we’re dead’?” King sings wistfully on “Younger Us,” which is simultaneosly a nostalgic paean to youth and a call to arms written for all the mid-to-late-20-somethings who ever felt like life just isn’t as much fun as it used to be.

Standout Tracks: “The Nights of Wine and Roses,” “Evil’s Sway,” “Younger Us,” “The House That Heaven Built”

5. The Peace of Wild Things – Paper Route

Probably the biggest surprise of the year after Yellowcard’s Southern Air (see below), Paper Route’s superb follow-up to their 2009 full-length debut Absence successfully avoids the sophomore slump. At first I thought that toning down the guitars and emphasizing the pop and electronic aspects of their sound would be a losing formula (at least for me), this album grew on me substantially with subsequent listens. Far more pronounced production of frontman J.T. Daly’s unique vocals and Gavin McDonald’s percussion pay off on poppy tracks like “Two Hearts” and the single “Better Life.” In my opinion, this album is worth buying for the stunning “Glass Heart Hymn” alone – a masterpiece, complete with relentlessly pulsating synth instrumentation, soaring harmonized vocals, and haunting children’s choir. Daly’s crooning on the heartfelt, piano-driven “Sugar” is no less impressive, and although it may be somewhat buried in the back half of the album, I think “Letting You Let Go” is an insanely catchy highlight. Also, just listen to the dual male-female vocals on the hauntingly eerie “Tamed” while walking home at night. The stuttering, screeching “Rabbit Holes” is an obvious attempt to replicate the awesomeness of Absence‘s “Gutter,” but the dissonant chorus isn’t quite as successful, though fortunately the gorgeous closer “Calm My Soul” ends the album on a high note.

Standout tracks: “Two Hearts,” “Better Life,” “Glass Heart Hymn,” “Sugar,” “Letting You Let Go,” “Calm My Soul”

6. The Heist – Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

Ah yes, the album that everyone aged 16 to 30 has on their Top Albums of 2012 list. Only the second hip-hop album to ever make my top albums list, pretty much everything I could say about this album would either be a) already cliché, or b) already wryly dismissed by Macklemore himself (“A Wake”). So I won’t even try. Lyrical genius and perfectly executed production choices. Released independently without any major label support (see “Jimmy Iovine” for the story on that), these guys deserve every penny they make off this record. Macklemore’s socially-conscious sermonizing can get a little overly preachy at times, but he says it all so well that you can’t help but forgive him.

Standout tracks: “Ten Thousand Hours,” “Can’t Hold Us,” “Thrift Shop,” “Make The Money,” “Neon Cathedral,” “A Wake,” “Starting Over,” “Cowboy Boots”

7. Southern Air – Yellowcard

Maybe it was because I didn’t have high expectations for this album, I don’t know. But this was one of the biggest surprises of 2012 for me. After 2011’s decent but very unremarkable album When You’re Through Thinking, Say Yes, Yellowcard’s eighth studio album is a breath of fresh air from a band I thought had pretty much expended most of its freshness back in 2007. I raised my eyebrows approvingly at the pitch-perfect opener “Awakening,” and by the time the singles “Always Summer” (killer violin solo!) and “Here I Am Alive” (co-written by Patrick Stump) were through I knew this album was going to be in heavy rotation for me this year. Evoking the youthful exuberance of 2003’s Ocean Avenue while also showcasing the band’s growth and maturity in its songwriting, Southern Air features an impressively solid slew of catchy, high-energy pop-punk tunes with fantastic hooks – and a lot more electric violin. Also, I’m a sucker for the epic rock-out riff in the outro of the title track closer.

Standout tracks: “Awakening, “Always Summer,” “Here I Am Alive,” “Telescope,” “Rivertown Blues,” “Southern Air”

8. Babel – Mumford & Sons

Yes, I know, it’s basically Sigh No More: Part II. But then again, if you’ve found a winning formula (and your debut album went single, double, triple, and quadruple platinum in 7 countries), why tinker with success? Marcus Mumford and company took the bluegrass-folk-pop sound they mainstreamed with Sigh No More and polished it to an extremely fine sheen, while adding in a healthy dose of the energy found in their live performances. In short, they played it safe, and the result is an extremely enjoyable, though ultimately very predictable collection of songs that follow the same slow-build-to-epic-banjo-fueled-stomp-fest formula that fans have come to know and love. These guys are phenomenal musicians, so here’s hoping they push the envelope a little bit more the next time around.

Standout tracks: “Babel,” “Whispers In The Dark,” “I Will Wait,” “Holland Road,” “Broken Crown,” “Below My Feet”

9. Everybody Left – The Forecast

It’s not quite as good as 2010’s self-titled effort, but it’s pretty amazing how consistent this band is. Entirely funded by KickStarter donations from fans, Everybody Left is a more melancholy, subdued version of the Peoria, IL-based quartet’s trademark Midwestern rock sound. The Friday Night Lights-inspired hook-laden single “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts” and the sing-along-chorus of “Skyline” are standouts, but “Like A Habit” and “Sing It Out” shine as well, and I love Shannon Burns’ vocals on the outro of “Take Me Down.” Everybody Left is full of thoughtful, introspective reflections on feeling trapped in a small town, having big dreams, and yearning to join friends have already ventured out into the wide world to chase their own.

Standout tracks: “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts,” “Like A Habit,” “Skyline,” “Sing It Out,” “Take Me Down,” “Way We Were”

Honorable Mention:

The 2nd Law – Muse

Red – Taylor Swift

Overexposed – Maroon 5

Neck of the Woods – Silversun Pickups

In Currents – The Early November

Kids In The Street – The All-American Rejects

Go – Motion City Soundtrack

Top 11 Songs of 2012:

1. “California Gold Rush” – Audiostrobelight (really wish I could link to the soon-to-be-released music video for this song…)

2. “Some Nights” – fun.