Best 13 Albums of 2012
It sure felt like it was an awful good year in music this year. It's been interesting compiling this list after paying so much closer attention to new releases on a week to week basis: some of the albums released in the first quarter of the year feel like they came out a decade ago. Still, these selections have managed to stay at the forefront of my mind, and I fully expect to be reaching for these albums often in the years to come. 13) Tribes - Baby
I listened the hell out of this album at the beginning of the year. Old-school 90's Britpop with plenty of singalong choruses.
We Were Children
Low Cut Connie - Call Me Sylvia
I was unaware of this band before yesterday, but I have to say that today I am an enormous fan. Everyone should support this band: they're just a no-frills, raucous, throw-back rock and roll bar band, the perfect kind of music to play from a (ideally coin-operated) jukebox when you're having a bourbon in a seedy dive bar at one in the morning. The music is suitably retro without relying too heavily on any one source; there's some dirty garage rock, doo-wop, more than a little honky tonk piano, and some R&B from the time when those letters actually stood for rhythm and blues. Over this the lead singer exudes old-school swagger, singing about such diverse topics as drinking, fucking, and longing for more drinks to drink and girls to fuck. If there's any act that they recall more than others, it's the Faces. What I'm saying is that this band has probably cracked my top ten of most wanted-to-see live acts.
Call Me Sylvia is actually the band's second album - their first was self-financed and came out in 2011 - and I also recommend checking out that album, entitled Get Out the Lotion. This second album is actually more contemplative than the relentless party of the first album (at least in that cry in my beer contemplative way drunks can get). Either way, this is definitely definitely definitely a band to keep an eye on.
