12 For '12: Anteater's Top Albums Of 2012

Anteater · 01-03-2013, 04:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mrd00d

Cool list. Wish I could find that Brian Auger and Twelve Foot Ninja. Downloaded some old stuff of each.

Ne Obliviscaris was pretty cool too.

Still checking into some 2012 albums.

Well, you and anyone else here are free to PM me with album requests....because I obviously own all of them.

Anteater · 01-07-2013, 02:44 PM

With the main list out of the way, I can now focus on a couple of other records that, while very good in their own right, didn't quite punch through to my top spots for one reason or another. Enjoy!

Glass Kites - S/T

For those of you hankering for some of some ambient, post-rock melancholy comfort food generally provided by bands like Radiohead, Mew and Sigur Ros, Canada's got a hot new commodity for thee...and they are kites made out of glass!

That being said, these guys have some insane promise despite coming out of pretty much nowhere last January. Vivid production work, gorgeous hooks & song progressions, topped off with a lean mean running time of 36 minutes made this an album I returned to periodically throughout last year. I've already introduced it to a couple of people here on MB, but now the rest of you get to enjoy it too! Start with 'Terra' directly below -- what a monster!

Also, you can buy the album at a price of your choosing from their Bandcamp -- http://glasskites.bandcamp.com

Anteater · 01-09-2013, 01:28 PM

The Night Flight Orchestra - Internal Affairs

No matter what decade you call home as far as musical taste is concerned, its hard to escape the 70's. Everything you like generally has one root or another in the era, from hard rock pyrotechnics to New Wave to your favorite electronic music. What a surprise, then, to find that a supergroup comprised of members of Soilwork, Arch Enemy and Mean Streak had come together and created the best damn love letter to FM radio that I've ever had the pleasure of listening to. Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Bruce Springsteen, Boston, The Bee Gees, Toto....this is the stuff that dreams are made of, and elements of all these great bands are wonderfully present and bursting forth on The Night Flight Orchestra's debut record Internal Affairs.

Every song here, 1 to 12, is the best highway cruising single that you've never heard before. You have your suites (the rollicking 'Siberian Queen' and bar-hopping odage 'Transatlantic Blues') your groovy West Coast rockers ('California Morning', the crazy catchy 'West Ruth Ave') and even a heartland anthem here and there ('Green Hills Of Grumslov'). Great variety, great hooks, topped off with some excellent production. Turn this sucker up! It nearly cracked my own top 12....perhaps it might do the same for the rest of you!

Anteater · 01-12-2013, 11:20 PM

Susanne Sundfør - The Silicone Veil

Well, I won't beat around the bush: Fiona Apple bored the living fuck out of me in 2012, as did about 90% of what ended up on NPR and Pitchfork's Top 2012 lists. We don't (and shouldn't) celebrate artists just for being arty: we celebrate them for making art that isn't pretentious for the sake of impressing your fedora-wearing amigos and isn't shoved up its own avant-garde asshole (such as Swans The Seer: people bitch about Yes and Tales From Topographic Oceans, and yet they can sit through 30 minutes straight of Gira's endless repetitive noodling and treat it like a spiritual orgasm. It's a good record, but that's still a double standard, folks: give me a break!)

That rant aside, Susanne Sundfør is a babe from the land of the ice and snow who'd normally get pigeonholed in the generally "quirky/Indie" sphere of female singer-songwriters who magnetically attract critical acclaim in the same way that Daniel Day Lewis attracts Academy Award nominations. That being said, this girl is in a league of her own. Partly because she can actually sing in tune, and partly because the songs themselves on this 3rd studio outing, The Silicone Veil, from the arrangements to the production style to her choice of instrumentation, are gorgeous even when they don't knock your socks off. Think Depeche Mode meets the lovechild of Bjork and Joanna Newsom and you'll have some degree of comprehension on how this clicks together.

The YouTube videos below can instill a more thorough appreciation of her particular sound than I could in words, but nevertheless: this is a beautiful album that's slipped under a lot of people's radars for the last couple of months....don't let it slip through yours! It nearly made my list after all.