Albums of the year, so far

I'll be short and sweet with my comments, off the top of my head kinda thing. In alphabetical order

Beach House – Bloom

Pretty, pretty, pretty, sad, happy, dream those tears away.

Bobby Conn – Macaroni

Damn fucking awesome energized experimental political pop punk from a guy I've never heard of.

Daughn Gibson – All Hell

Another guy I've never heard of and another great, fresh-sounding pop album that blends country with scratches and beats. 

Dolphins Into the Future – On Sea-Faring Isolation

Retro-styled emulation of 60's proto-ambient marine biology documentary soundtracks.

Future of the Left – The Plot Against Common Sense

Sounds like the best, most intelligent 90s alternative album that never was. Some people dissed this for sounding too polished and being too far of a departure from McLusky, those people are are no friends of mine.

Go-Kart Mozart – On the Hot Dog Streets

New music from Lawrence Hayward. You may have heard of him...

James Blackshaw – Love is the Plan, The Plan is Death

Man, this dude can play a guitar. The cover art is a painting of a campfire and appropriately so - such beautiful, complex and tremendously emotive acoustic pickings - the perfect kind of hypnotic arrangements which pop and crack like heat pockets among the embers of a campfire.

John Maus – A Collection of Rarities…

Contains reworkings of several of my favorite John Maus songs ("The Law," "The Fear," "Mental Breakdown"), so essentially a proper release of several of my favorite songs ever on a single disc/vinyl. And then there's "Bennington"....

Lil B – God’s Father

A mind-blowing 34 track assault in the form of a mixtape, a mixtape that Lil B says is 'better than some niggas' albums' when the truth is its better than 99% of most rappers -discographies-. Album of the year, probably.

Le1f - Dark York

2012 : the year of progression for rap production.   This is a very listenable experimental-psych-chiptune-club-pcp-melange album, sharing some similarities with SpaceGhostPurrp below, but not quite as sinister feeling.

Saint Etienne – Words and Music by Saint Etienne

A perfect pop album from start to finish, enough said.

 

SpaceGhostPurrp – Mysterious Phonk : The Chronicles of SpaceGhostPurrp

Dark, druggy psychedelic/trance-inducing rap. Lyrically subpar, sonically progressive.

Sun Kil Moon – Among the Leaves

If you're a Mark Kozelek fan like myself, you will like this record and find it's simple folk song structures to be a breathe of fresh air after all the recent classical guitar styles on his previous (also good) album. If you aren't a fan, you'll probably find this to be boring. 

Voices From the Lake – s/t

80+ minutes of deep looping minimal grooves evincing early Richard D. James. For those of you waiting for Selected Ambient Works Vol. 3.....this is probably as close as you're gonna get.