Top Ten Albums of 2012 - #10
Ben Gibbard's Former Lives
Editor's Note: This is the 1st in a quasi-weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2012. The 10th edition is wrapped into the larger year-end post I call "The Ho Media Awards", which will be published just after the new year. Stay tuned!
We kick off the 2012 music season with the hardest-to-choose slot in the countdown. So many good records hit the stores this year that it feels criminal to pare it down to just ten. It took a wild combination of scoring methods (to be detailed in the final awards post) to get the top nine, but the tenth slot saw a 4-way tie that had me listening to the contenders repeatedly for two weeks.
Ben came out on top. "Fun" isn't usually a tag that gets you very far in a countdown like this with me. My M.O. follows a melancholy track pretty much top to bottom - autumnal albums that warm the air of a drizzly day like sunlight filtered through those dark, rainy clouds. But this album is a solid collection of catchy pop that pulls out of the gloomy prospects portended by the last three DCFC albums. It's a real jukebox, opening with an a capella track, moving through a clap 'n' stomp number, a couple of acoustic ballads, and even a mariachi number before it ends on a semi-predictably soft number. The duet with Aimee Mann is a dud; her voice grates on my ears and doesn't compliment Gibbard's very well at all.
It's also been proven to be a baby-calmer on multiple occasions. Tie broken, problem solved.
Album highlights: Shepherd's Bush Lullaby; Duncan, Where Have You Gone?; A Hard One To Know
Editor's Note: This is the 1st in a quasi-weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2012. The 10th edition is wrapped into the larger year-end post I call "The Ho Media Awards", which will be published just after the new year. Stay tuned!We kick off the 2012 music season with the hardest-to-choose slot in the countdown. So many good records hit the stores this year that it feels criminal to pare it down to just ten. It took a wild combination of scoring methods (to be detailed in the final awards post) to get the top nine, but the tenth slot saw a 4-way tie that had me listening to the contenders repeatedly for two weeks.
Ben came out on top. "Fun" isn't usually a tag that gets you very far in a countdown like this with me. My M.O. follows a melancholy track pretty much top to bottom - autumnal albums that warm the air of a drizzly day like sunlight filtered through those dark, rainy clouds. But this album is a solid collection of catchy pop that pulls out of the gloomy prospects portended by the last three DCFC albums. It's a real jukebox, opening with an a capella track, moving through a clap 'n' stomp number, a couple of acoustic ballads, and even a mariachi number before it ends on a semi-predictably soft number. The duet with Aimee Mann is a dud; her voice grates on my ears and doesn't compliment Gibbard's very well at all.
It's also been proven to be a baby-calmer on multiple occasions. Tie broken, problem solved.
Album highlights: Shepherd's Bush Lullaby; Duncan, Where Have You Gone?; A Hard One To Know
Comments
I'm interested to hear about your honorable mentions. Though I'm sure you will save those until the end to avoid spoilers.