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. 

Beat Rhythm Fashion - Turn of The Century