In keeping with last year, it seems that once again I have allowed a fair amount of the new year to roll over before getting around to writing this, and indeed almost didn't. As it happens, 2012 was an exceptionally strong year for albums, so much so that it was hard to formulate a comprehensive top 10. Honourable mentions go to Kendrick Lamar and Frank Ocean for a pair of darkly mature hip-hop debuts; Green Day, Baroness and The Weekend for some of the least excessive double and even triple albums of all time; Soulfly for making the whole Amazon basin resonate once again with their furious metal riffing; and Xavier Rudd for returning to form in the field of acoustic balladry with just a hint of didgeridoo.
Song of the year goes to Soundgarden for their perfectly-formed album track Halfway There, while video of the year is Odd Future's supremely bizarre Rella:
Onto the list:
10. Avatar - Black Waltz
From the wilds of Sweden comes yet another death metal band purveying brutal riffs, primal vocals and an image straight out of a horror film. This one is different, though - eschewing lyrics about satanism and mutilation in favour of lyrics about, well, not much really. All this on a bedrock of undeniably catchy metal tunes; "groovy" would almost be the word for it, drawing on '70s rock'n'roll more than anything else. It's the kind of music you could dance along to, rather than use as inspiration to summon demons or whatever it is metal fans do nowadays.
9. Infected Mushroom - Army of Mushrooms.
Israel is not a country generally associated with dance music, but Infected Mushroom have been carrying the flag for the Middle East for well over a decade now. Ignore the schlocky album cover, this is a seriously well-honed collection of electronic music, careering between acid house, pulsing dubstep, and even a Foo Fighters cover. Played in its entirety, the album blurs into an ocean of sound, shifting and changing like the sea itself. Seriously professional, and yet never once overproduced or pretentious.
8. Brutality Will Prevail - Scatter the Ashes.
This young metal group hails from South Wales, and their furious debut certainly lives up to their name. Tracks like Second Sight and The Path build sheer walls of sound, assaulting the listener with their power, and yet changing at a moment's notice in favour of new themes and moods. The album opens with dark acoustic twanging and ends with a doom-laden self-eulogy, the work as a whole forming an account of the Black Death outbreak of 1348. It's aggressive, hungry music that would wear itself out given too much room to breathe. The album's running time of just over half an hour means Scatter the Ashes never once becomes boring.
7. Purity Ring: Shrines.
"Beautiful" is a word often applied to music, to the extent that it no longer has much of an effect as an adjective. Shrines, however, is the very definition of the word, a luscious work of sonic art dripping with swelling synths, clicking beats and Megan James' ethereal vocals. It's simultaneously futuristic and timeless: there are plenty of references to the inaugural greats of electronic music like Kraftwerk and Gary Numan, but at the same time it sounds like something that was produced on another planet. Credit must go to programmer Corin Roddick for some of the most technical musical and electronic arrangements of recent years.
6. Django Django: Django Django.
The Cambridge four-piece were heralded as the saviours of British guitar music, which is odd considering guitars certainly do not take centre stage on their self-titled debut release. What does, however, is lush instrumental arrangement beginning with an Ennio Morricone style introduction and drifting through tuneful, technical indie rock. The most obvious comparison would be alt-j, but where that group's 2012 work lapses into tedium, this album is genuinely interesting to listen to - from acoustic strumming to surf rock to electronic pulsing by way of a 12-bar blues incorporating middle eastern scale cycles. So much indie music nowadays sounds like it was made by a group of students who could barely wake up from their drug-induced coma long enough to strum a chord. Django Django have proven that it doesn't have to be like that.
5. Tenacious D - Rize of the Fenix.
It has been a few years since Jack Black last engaged in serious music production, and apparently no one knew it better than the man himself. His return to his old band became the very subject of this album, beginning with a teaser video in which he and bandmate Kyle Gass train to reach their former status again and culminating in their first studio release since 2006. The album itself is almost too clever, folding back in on itself as a comeback album about making a comeback album and the problems relating to that. Musically, the duo do not put a single foot wrong, bringing in strings, horns, and the ever-exceptional Dave Grohl on drums. It's one thing to proclaim yourself the greatest band of all time, but quite another to become it. Tenacious D are certainly back on the right track.
4. Muse - The 2nd Law.
Muse found themselves in a similar situation to Tenacious D in 2012, having gone a few years since their last, underwhelming release, The Resistance. The 2nd Law made none of the same mistakes as their 2009 effort, which fell back too much on what had gone before. Instead, it positively explodes with creativity, flying out of the gates with a song that wouldn't sound out of place as a Bond theme, an electronic dirge (Madness), grandiose funk, an orchestral arrangement and the Olympic anthem Survival. The second half of the album settles down a little, but still contains enough fresh material to make it Muse's best work yet, from the silky-smooth Animals to the pulsating Isolated System. Not once does it cease to be inventive, and that's what Muse needed to deliver on after previously playing it too safe.
3. Diablo Swing Orchestra - Pandora's Pinata.
Everything you need to know about Diablo Swing Orchestra is evident from their name: an eight-piece (almost an orchestra) metal band playing the devil's music with more than a hint of swing, jazz, tango, and in fact anything else that takes their fancy. Pandora's Pinata is their most ambitious work yet, and by definition also their best, since the more eclectic the group become, the better they sound as a whole. The album opens with Voodoo Mon Amour, something akin to a Parisian cabaret tune played over crunching rock guitars, follows up with a pair of metal songs featuring jagged Mexican trumpet rhythms, before segueing into an Arabic-influenced cello solo and demented Japanese-style pop-rock. By the time it gets to Aurora, a space-age piece of Italian opera, nothing is surprising any more, and so the album winds down in a suitable fashion, blasting through funk, choral music and rabid thrash with Annalouice Loegdlund belting over the top like a Wagnerian soprano. The closing Justice for Saint Mary is truly spectacular, morphing from an acoustic love song into orchestral metal and finally descending into industrial grindcore. Not since Mr. Bungle's 1999 masterpiece California has such wildly incoherent music sounded so good. Two videos here, because the sheer variety of the album cannot be summed up in one song.
The Cape Town trio entered 2012 under a cloud of controversy following them being dropped from their label as a result of what was deemed to be an inappropriate music video. They responded in kind by releasing the video anyway from their newly-created label; it gained over a million views in its first week on YouTube. The subsequent album was just as surprising, abandoning the home-made feel of their debut and heading into an entirely different universe with a truly futuristic aesthetic. Not that it's inaccessible - most of this wouldn't sound out of place in a club, especially the singles I Fink U Freeky and Baby's on Fire. Nor is it perfect - Hey Sexy very quickly begins to grate and the spoken-word interlude Uncle Jimmy is just awful. But the fact remains that there is some hugely inventive music on show here: two tracks entitled Never le Nkemise book-end the album and fuse churning dubstep with Zulu choral music, while Fatty Boom Boom is spurred along by clattering tribal percussion and the breathless rapping of Watkin Jones and Andri du Toit. The mysterious yet fantastically talented DJ Hi-Tek pulls the strings musically, despite no concrete evidence that he even exists, at least as one individual. That banned video? It turned out to be a statement for gay rights in South Africa, twisting a homophobic Mike Tyson quote into an empowering message, simultaneously highlighting the oversensitivity of label executives and the plight of homosexuals in Africa. And you don't get that from Nicki Minaj.
1. Jack White - Blunderbuss.
With the White Stripes long gone, and the future of side projects The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather looking increasingly uncertain, it was time for Jack White to try his hand at a solo album. Not that there would be anything particularly revolutionary about this - the Detroit-born blues man had clearly been the major creative force behind his previous bands anyway, and was definitely sitting on unreleased material, meaning it was just a matter of getting his ideas down. When he did, the results were staggering - a frank dissection of his recent divorce and relationships in general, Blunderbuss does not pull any punches lyrically, while melding together the best of all of his musical influences to create something akin to a "sound" without being monotonous. Wistful acoustic heartbreak rubs shoulders with cathartic garage rock and old-school blues, culminating in a bit of all three at once in the closing Take Me With You When You Go. Love Interruption is an almost nauseatingly painful ode to the side effects of a breakup, I Guess I Should Go to Sleep is a cheerful piece of country rock, while I'm Shaking warps a Little Willie John blues tune into a frantic garage-gospel mash-up of frightening power. In terms of songwriting, this is comfortably White's best work to date, and while there are no individual future classics in the mould of Seven Nation Army, the album as a whole flows more coherently than anything in his back catalogue. Polished, professional and yet never too far from the ground, Blunderbuss is the standout album in a year of standout albums. Where Jack White goes from here is anybody's guess, but it is safe to say that for now he is set in stone as a musical legend of the 21st Century.
TJGreenwood.
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