The usual proviso/disclaimer with these things - this list is not in any order of value, some of these tracks I like more than others but that's about it. It's been a good year for music but every year is a good year for music, there'll be none of this "Things were better in (insert year)" false nostalgia from me. Some of these aren't actually all that new, just new to me, so if you're reading it to scoop up stuff you've missed this year from just this year then you will definitely, definitely be disappointed. But if you really want to get technical about it, plenty of songs released this year weren't recorded last year anyway, were they? Quite a few of these songs aren't new but they're new to me. So if you're reading this (highly unlikely, I only write things like this to get it out of my system and avoid boring my friends, family and strangers) you may still discover something great. There are 45 songs in this multi part, and there may well be multiple tracks by the same artist but I'll try to keep it down per entry. Definitely only one per album.
45. The XX - Chained (from Co Exist)
No beating around the bush here, this year's XX album sounds just like the first XX album sounded - sparse, saying nothing really but said it beautifully. When I heard the first new track Angels I liked it a lot, but this second track provoked the age old "this is brilliant" reaction - I put it on again, and again, and it's lost none of its splendour (which SHOULD go without saying, yeah, but there're plenty of songs that provoke the repeat listening reaction only to be drained by that burst of replaying). This is sparse but there're always new details I pick out, even if I'm picking them out for the 10th time. That Burial-esque "2step with one foot in the grave" rattle that underpins the whole thing, loads of people are doing it (I'm one of them) but Jamie XX is one of the best among them to my mind, even if Far Nearer by him has a sample that sounds like someone singing "I fell down a well" all the way through it. He's far better with The XX, especially the Tracey Thorn-esque longing in Romy Madley Croft's voice.
44. Patrick Wolf - Vulture (from Sundark and Riverlight)
I'm not one for the "rework your own material" glorified best of album, Kate Bush's attempt last year, while interested, didn't really add anything to most of the songs. Vulture only came out a few years ago, too, on the Bachelor album that it's trendy to slag off (possibly as he's an openly bisexual artist who makes political statements and is sonically inventive, not the done thing these days). I loved the perv-pop of the original but this version actually moved me. I'm really interested to see what he does next, after what was to me the misstep of Lupercalia he's definitely back on form it seems. Maybe he's realised that trying to be too "normal" doesn't suit him.
43. Fleetwood Mac - Tango In The Night (from Tango In The Night)
Not a new one by any means, in fact it's from before I was born but after seeing a documentary on Fleetwood Mac I realised how nuts their story was and Lindsey Buckingham's contributions were, are and will continue to be. Also Pictureplane's Seven Wonders sampling for the track Goth Star pushed me to check out this album, and when I finally listened to it this track blew me away. The strange operatic chorus consisting of the word "Tango" stretched out for ages, the dated synths playing off his trademark fingerpicking, the vague but evocative lyrics and the closing solo where he shows why he's the envy of and a huge inspiration for guitarists who hear him - what's not to like? It's great that a band who were this big had moments this odd on their records. The weird glitziness of this has rubbed off on me a bit.
42. Death Grips - I've Seen Footage (from The Money Store)
I'm not your typical "spell everything out" journalist so if you're reading this and don't already know about the No Love Deep Web fiasco/promo stunt then look it up, it's exciting stuff and a great shooting yourself in the foot punk gesture. People who're prepared to risk legal battles to defend their right to be prolific, I can't knock that. It'd be more powerful if this had been one of the tracks on No Love Deep Web, instead of the (subjectively, to me) inferior material on it. I've Seen Footage reminds me, in a weird way, of Replicas by Tubeway Army, and that whole period of Gary Numan's career. You can't get much higher a compliment from me (unless I'm comparing you to one of the instrumentals which marrs Replicas). Is there more hip hop that sounds like angry crackheads shouting over late 70's - early 80's Numan outtakes? Please find me some if so.
41. Angel Haze - New York (from Reservation)
If this was in order of merit this'd be near the top. The second I heard Angel Haze I fell in love with her delivery but this track (which happily everyone else has picked up on and realised how brilliant she is) is just something else, isn't it? Jamie XX rears his head again, a track from his Gil Scott Heron remix album sampled as part of the beat - it's a pretty minimal beat but it needs to be to make room for her performance. When she half-sings "I run New York" you believe she could if she wanted to, and due to her delivery "I'm Satan and I'ma take your ass to church now" is one of the lines of the year for me. Hard to pick a track off Reservation, there's so many good ones on there, it was this or the remix of Das Racist's Jungle Fever.
40. Kanye West featuring Big Sean, Pusha T and 2 Chainz - Mercy
Yes, 2012 was when I really got hip hop, mainstream or otherwise, and picked up on the mixtape phenomenon really late in the game. It was a natural progression as I'm a lyric man - I like lyrics to look good on the page and sound good too, but the meaning is almost secondary as because I'm usually not au fait with the life of the artist and what went into the song I'm going to be projecting my own meaning onto it anyway. Even if I know the artist's intentions, I'm going to project another meaning onto it anyway. I also like a bit of arrogance, and there's spades of that in hip hop, miles apart from the "muttering into their sleeves, waiting for approval of their opinion" indie mileu. DON'T tell me you're just like me in interviews and in your songs, it's insulting to both of us. If Bowie had done that, we wouldn't have Ziggy, Low or even the much underrated 1.Outside. It's okay to have dreams and aspirations!
All this is lending false profundity to Mercy which is basically your standard bitches and money mainstream chart-rap brag. Of course it sounds good, a hell of a lot of people worked on it, most of them making more in a day than we would in a decade. The chopped up hook is good, even if it is basically an advert for Lambourginis, but there's a real energy about this track. It's impeccably produced, with the Shakespeare sample, the synths and the piano line that gets stuck in your ears like wax, but there's still something off about it as there often is with Kanye's stuff, whether it be 808s and Heartbreak and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy clipping all over the shop or as here the way the drums are slightly out of step and 2 Chainz drop happens before Kanye's even stopped rapping. This just adds to the appeal, for me. Funny how he gets main billing on what is basically a posse track as he only does one verse and also shares production duties, but quibbling aside it's great - I especially like how the beat changes for his verse (and "Most rappers taste level ain't at my waist level" shouldn't be as good a line it is but it's all down to delivery).
This record is so good because when I write it down I don't get why I like it so much but when I play it I do.
39. Perfume Genius - Hood (from Put Ur Back N 2 It)
Now this track hit me full in the heart when I first heard it and still does. It's short and very bittersweet and again, shows how a good lyric can be something majestic with the right delivery. Very few music videos are actually worthwhile, as far as I'm concerned, but the bold, beautiful video to Hood (Mike Perfume Genius playing the twink dressed up in drag and later as Freddie Kruger by a large, hairy, musclebound porn star) is a piece of art in it's own right. The video also showed the homophobia/sexual wrongheadedness still shamefully prevalent even in more purportedly liberal quarters of society - this video judged inappropriate by Youtube, but you can listen to songs like ET by Katy Perry where she sexualises the idea of abduction without censure, don't worry about that. All that pales into insignificance when you hear the sub-2 minute girl-group-pop via David Lynch song itself. The sentiment "You would never love me if you knew me truly" is one that's easy to relate to, but the yearning he somehow pours into the line "I wish I grew up the second I first held you in my arms" is indescribable so just listen to it. I'll even forgive him spelling his album title like a twat.
38. Lana Del Rey - Born To Die (from Born To Die)
Strictly speaking last year, but I only heard it this year and it's lodged in my head today so here it is. Someone else using that now trendy Lynch aesthetic, someone else to spark the hoary old authenticity debate - for the last time, The Beatles, Pistols and Elvis were all controlled by their managers and Springsteen's had more plastic surgery work done than her so stop going on about her lips, the multi-millionaire symbol of the working man was going bald in the 80s and now has a lower hairline than I do, go figure. Smeone else doing great pop songs that lodge in your head. Lana is a hip hop literate Doris Day, I would've put Video Games in the list, obvious and great as it is, but I just like this one more. The high concept video does the opposite to me that the last track does, glorifying as it does women being drawn to physically abusive "bad boys" - but not showing that it happens isn't going to stop it, really.
Part of what appeals to me is the unabashed bleakness and nihilism of that statement - "we were born to die", true as it is, a subversion of "we were born to run" but it means exactly the same thing. There's a lot of bleakness and nihilism in the charts, sugarcoated in shitty Euro production that could be from any point in the last 20 years, music originating in gay clubs being danced to by beer sweating homophobes. The production is better on Born To Die, the songwriting is better, her voice is great, communicating so much in a sighing, numbed way and if Richey Edwards was alive he'd love it too.
37. Jesu - Tired of Me (from Jesu)
The two link up as far as I'm concerned, both are expressions of the same emotions, it's just Justin Broadrick's version is marginally less produced and sugar coated. It just so happens that instead of doomy trip hop beats and swaying strings he uses a doomy trip hop beat (but slower and through a few more pedals) and layers of distorted down tuned guitars. The melody is no less beautiful, and although many people categorise Jesu as metal I wouldn't as when I think metal I think purism and Broadrick's work is never totally straight ahead, there's always a lot of influences feeding into it - this is a man who's gone on record being equally enthusiastic about drum'n'bass 12"s, Teenage Fanclub, Celtic Frost, Public Enemy and Red House Painters. What he feels is what I feel - it's not about genres, it's about mood, and there's a melancholy running all the way through his work that really strikes a chord with me. "I'm so tired of me, withered and unclean, I'm too blind to see shit that is me". He's really not dressing it up but the soaring melody attached to it makes it uplifting, til the instrumental coda with the military drums confirms that tiny germ of an idea that it's going to be alright. That's always the point you may feel there's something in your eye, and your other eye, and your heart.
36. Odd Future - Oldie (from Odd Future Mixtape Vol. 2)
A 10 minute epic with most of Odd Future on it from this year's Odd Future Mixtape Vol.2 (mixtapes are supposed to be free guys, keep up). The album's not flawless, there's plenty of lazy shock tactics and as with a lot of hip hop albums it goes on way too long but it's better than Kanye's Cruel Summer (not saying much). Another one where written down I should hate it - it drags on too long, loads of cliches and dead wood, but the bits that're good are so very very good that it still winds up on the list (which again isn't in order of merit otherwise this'd be at the bottom. But still on there.).
The very very good bits are Tyler's verses and especially his second one that ends the song; Frank Ocean's verse - Ocean should do more rapping, he's got a real lazy golden age of hip hop voice; and Earl's verse, by miles. It's only been a year or two since his Earl tape came out but he's already developed so much that it's scary. This is best illustrated by the fact that his verse is longer than anyone else's, and he completely steals the show. The beat is pretty good, too, I'd swear it was made of old funk samples if I didn't know that Odd Future productions don't use samples.
35. Disco Inferno - Summer's Last Sound (from the 5 EPs)
This isn't a new band either and the fact that it isn't really made me sad. I heard this and thought "What the hell is this, it's brilliant", the bird song intro giving way to a steady build up that never quite crescendos with this voice ranting with great intensity but a kind of weary detachment too. "Fruits get bricks in windows and foreigners get hushed up trials", true as ever. There was something Joy Division like about it but if Joy Division formed now more informed about sampling and synthesis and immersed in the good side of shoegaze and hip hop, not a retro-fetishist glorified tribute to the great band. I wanted to hear more by them and then I looked to see this had been released the year I was born, and to be honest I felt quite angry because we've not moved on at all since then.
The lyrics are the thing about this, they look good on paper and they sound good low in the mix, half-ranted, but the meaning I'd project onto them seems to be the meaning Ian Crause intended. I read a great interview with him by Neil Kulkarni on the Quietus and his intensity seems undimmed, I bought a copy of the 5 EPs and excitedly played this track to someone I wanted to work on some music with, saying, "This is what we have to live up to". He just looked at me blankly, not getting why I was moved so much by it and to be honest this was around the point I realised it wasn't going to work. Not because he didn't like it but because he couldn't see the value of that or anything else I threw at him. Pop music telling unpopular truths, that's the stuff dreams are made of. If you're not touching people's hearts, then what's the point?
This touches mine. Thank you, Disco Inferno.
45. The XX - Chained (from Co Exist)
No beating around the bush here, this year's XX album sounds just like the first XX album sounded - sparse, saying nothing really but said it beautifully. When I heard the first new track Angels I liked it a lot, but this second track provoked the age old "this is brilliant" reaction - I put it on again, and again, and it's lost none of its splendour (which SHOULD go without saying, yeah, but there're plenty of songs that provoke the repeat listening reaction only to be drained by that burst of replaying). This is sparse but there're always new details I pick out, even if I'm picking them out for the 10th time. That Burial-esque "2step with one foot in the grave" rattle that underpins the whole thing, loads of people are doing it (I'm one of them) but Jamie XX is one of the best among them to my mind, even if Far Nearer by him has a sample that sounds like someone singing "I fell down a well" all the way through it. He's far better with The XX, especially the Tracey Thorn-esque longing in Romy Madley Croft's voice.
44. Patrick Wolf - Vulture (from Sundark and Riverlight)
I'm not one for the "rework your own material" glorified best of album, Kate Bush's attempt last year, while interested, didn't really add anything to most of the songs. Vulture only came out a few years ago, too, on the Bachelor album that it's trendy to slag off (possibly as he's an openly bisexual artist who makes political statements and is sonically inventive, not the done thing these days). I loved the perv-pop of the original but this version actually moved me. I'm really interested to see what he does next, after what was to me the misstep of Lupercalia he's definitely back on form it seems. Maybe he's realised that trying to be too "normal" doesn't suit him.
43. Fleetwood Mac - Tango In The Night (from Tango In The Night)
Not a new one by any means, in fact it's from before I was born but after seeing a documentary on Fleetwood Mac I realised how nuts their story was and Lindsey Buckingham's contributions were, are and will continue to be. Also Pictureplane's Seven Wonders sampling for the track Goth Star pushed me to check out this album, and when I finally listened to it this track blew me away. The strange operatic chorus consisting of the word "Tango" stretched out for ages, the dated synths playing off his trademark fingerpicking, the vague but evocative lyrics and the closing solo where he shows why he's the envy of and a huge inspiration for guitarists who hear him - what's not to like? It's great that a band who were this big had moments this odd on their records. The weird glitziness of this has rubbed off on me a bit.
42. Death Grips - I've Seen Footage (from The Money Store)
I'm not your typical "spell everything out" journalist so if you're reading this and don't already know about the No Love Deep Web fiasco/promo stunt then look it up, it's exciting stuff and a great shooting yourself in the foot punk gesture. People who're prepared to risk legal battles to defend their right to be prolific, I can't knock that. It'd be more powerful if this had been one of the tracks on No Love Deep Web, instead of the (subjectively, to me) inferior material on it. I've Seen Footage reminds me, in a weird way, of Replicas by Tubeway Army, and that whole period of Gary Numan's career. You can't get much higher a compliment from me (unless I'm comparing you to one of the instrumentals which marrs Replicas). Is there more hip hop that sounds like angry crackheads shouting over late 70's - early 80's Numan outtakes? Please find me some if so.
41. Angel Haze - New York (from Reservation)
If this was in order of merit this'd be near the top. The second I heard Angel Haze I fell in love with her delivery but this track (which happily everyone else has picked up on and realised how brilliant she is) is just something else, isn't it? Jamie XX rears his head again, a track from his Gil Scott Heron remix album sampled as part of the beat - it's a pretty minimal beat but it needs to be to make room for her performance. When she half-sings "I run New York" you believe she could if she wanted to, and due to her delivery "I'm Satan and I'ma take your ass to church now" is one of the lines of the year for me. Hard to pick a track off Reservation, there's so many good ones on there, it was this or the remix of Das Racist's Jungle Fever.
40. Kanye West featuring Big Sean, Pusha T and 2 Chainz - Mercy
Yes, 2012 was when I really got hip hop, mainstream or otherwise, and picked up on the mixtape phenomenon really late in the game. It was a natural progression as I'm a lyric man - I like lyrics to look good on the page and sound good too, but the meaning is almost secondary as because I'm usually not au fait with the life of the artist and what went into the song I'm going to be projecting my own meaning onto it anyway. Even if I know the artist's intentions, I'm going to project another meaning onto it anyway. I also like a bit of arrogance, and there's spades of that in hip hop, miles apart from the "muttering into their sleeves, waiting for approval of their opinion" indie mileu. DON'T tell me you're just like me in interviews and in your songs, it's insulting to both of us. If Bowie had done that, we wouldn't have Ziggy, Low or even the much underrated 1.Outside. It's okay to have dreams and aspirations!
All this is lending false profundity to Mercy which is basically your standard bitches and money mainstream chart-rap brag. Of course it sounds good, a hell of a lot of people worked on it, most of them making more in a day than we would in a decade. The chopped up hook is good, even if it is basically an advert for Lambourginis, but there's a real energy about this track. It's impeccably produced, with the Shakespeare sample, the synths and the piano line that gets stuck in your ears like wax, but there's still something off about it as there often is with Kanye's stuff, whether it be 808s and Heartbreak and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy clipping all over the shop or as here the way the drums are slightly out of step and 2 Chainz drop happens before Kanye's even stopped rapping. This just adds to the appeal, for me. Funny how he gets main billing on what is basically a posse track as he only does one verse and also shares production duties, but quibbling aside it's great - I especially like how the beat changes for his verse (and "Most rappers taste level ain't at my waist level" shouldn't be as good a line it is but it's all down to delivery).
This record is so good because when I write it down I don't get why I like it so much but when I play it I do.
39. Perfume Genius - Hood (from Put Ur Back N 2 It)
Now this track hit me full in the heart when I first heard it and still does. It's short and very bittersweet and again, shows how a good lyric can be something majestic with the right delivery. Very few music videos are actually worthwhile, as far as I'm concerned, but the bold, beautiful video to Hood (Mike Perfume Genius playing the twink dressed up in drag and later as Freddie Kruger by a large, hairy, musclebound porn star) is a piece of art in it's own right. The video also showed the homophobia/sexual wrongheadedness still shamefully prevalent even in more purportedly liberal quarters of society - this video judged inappropriate by Youtube, but you can listen to songs like ET by Katy Perry where she sexualises the idea of abduction without censure, don't worry about that. All that pales into insignificance when you hear the sub-2 minute girl-group-pop via David Lynch song itself. The sentiment "You would never love me if you knew me truly" is one that's easy to relate to, but the yearning he somehow pours into the line "I wish I grew up the second I first held you in my arms" is indescribable so just listen to it. I'll even forgive him spelling his album title like a twat.
38. Lana Del Rey - Born To Die (from Born To Die)
Strictly speaking last year, but I only heard it this year and it's lodged in my head today so here it is. Someone else using that now trendy Lynch aesthetic, someone else to spark the hoary old authenticity debate - for the last time, The Beatles, Pistols and Elvis were all controlled by their managers and Springsteen's had more plastic surgery work done than her so stop going on about her lips, the multi-millionaire symbol of the working man was going bald in the 80s and now has a lower hairline than I do, go figure. Smeone else doing great pop songs that lodge in your head. Lana is a hip hop literate Doris Day, I would've put Video Games in the list, obvious and great as it is, but I just like this one more. The high concept video does the opposite to me that the last track does, glorifying as it does women being drawn to physically abusive "bad boys" - but not showing that it happens isn't going to stop it, really.
Part of what appeals to me is the unabashed bleakness and nihilism of that statement - "we were born to die", true as it is, a subversion of "we were born to run" but it means exactly the same thing. There's a lot of bleakness and nihilism in the charts, sugarcoated in shitty Euro production that could be from any point in the last 20 years, music originating in gay clubs being danced to by beer sweating homophobes. The production is better on Born To Die, the songwriting is better, her voice is great, communicating so much in a sighing, numbed way and if Richey Edwards was alive he'd love it too.
37. Jesu - Tired of Me (from Jesu)
The two link up as far as I'm concerned, both are expressions of the same emotions, it's just Justin Broadrick's version is marginally less produced and sugar coated. It just so happens that instead of doomy trip hop beats and swaying strings he uses a doomy trip hop beat (but slower and through a few more pedals) and layers of distorted down tuned guitars. The melody is no less beautiful, and although many people categorise Jesu as metal I wouldn't as when I think metal I think purism and Broadrick's work is never totally straight ahead, there's always a lot of influences feeding into it - this is a man who's gone on record being equally enthusiastic about drum'n'bass 12"s, Teenage Fanclub, Celtic Frost, Public Enemy and Red House Painters. What he feels is what I feel - it's not about genres, it's about mood, and there's a melancholy running all the way through his work that really strikes a chord with me. "I'm so tired of me, withered and unclean, I'm too blind to see shit that is me". He's really not dressing it up but the soaring melody attached to it makes it uplifting, til the instrumental coda with the military drums confirms that tiny germ of an idea that it's going to be alright. That's always the point you may feel there's something in your eye, and your other eye, and your heart.
36. Odd Future - Oldie (from Odd Future Mixtape Vol. 2)
A 10 minute epic with most of Odd Future on it from this year's Odd Future Mixtape Vol.2 (mixtapes are supposed to be free guys, keep up). The album's not flawless, there's plenty of lazy shock tactics and as with a lot of hip hop albums it goes on way too long but it's better than Kanye's Cruel Summer (not saying much). Another one where written down I should hate it - it drags on too long, loads of cliches and dead wood, but the bits that're good are so very very good that it still winds up on the list (which again isn't in order of merit otherwise this'd be at the bottom. But still on there.).
The very very good bits are Tyler's verses and especially his second one that ends the song; Frank Ocean's verse - Ocean should do more rapping, he's got a real lazy golden age of hip hop voice; and Earl's verse, by miles. It's only been a year or two since his Earl tape came out but he's already developed so much that it's scary. This is best illustrated by the fact that his verse is longer than anyone else's, and he completely steals the show. The beat is pretty good, too, I'd swear it was made of old funk samples if I didn't know that Odd Future productions don't use samples.
35. Disco Inferno - Summer's Last Sound (from the 5 EPs)
This isn't a new band either and the fact that it isn't really made me sad. I heard this and thought "What the hell is this, it's brilliant", the bird song intro giving way to a steady build up that never quite crescendos with this voice ranting with great intensity but a kind of weary detachment too. "Fruits get bricks in windows and foreigners get hushed up trials", true as ever. There was something Joy Division like about it but if Joy Division formed now more informed about sampling and synthesis and immersed in the good side of shoegaze and hip hop, not a retro-fetishist glorified tribute to the great band. I wanted to hear more by them and then I looked to see this had been released the year I was born, and to be honest I felt quite angry because we've not moved on at all since then.
The lyrics are the thing about this, they look good on paper and they sound good low in the mix, half-ranted, but the meaning I'd project onto them seems to be the meaning Ian Crause intended. I read a great interview with him by Neil Kulkarni on the Quietus and his intensity seems undimmed, I bought a copy of the 5 EPs and excitedly played this track to someone I wanted to work on some music with, saying, "This is what we have to live up to". He just looked at me blankly, not getting why I was moved so much by it and to be honest this was around the point I realised it wasn't going to work. Not because he didn't like it but because he couldn't see the value of that or anything else I threw at him. Pop music telling unpopular truths, that's the stuff dreams are made of. If you're not touching people's hearts, then what's the point?
This touches mine. Thank you, Disco Inferno.
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