The Top Ten Albums of 2012

This might well be one of the more eclectic lists of the top albums you will find for the year 2012. In order to qualify for my list the album must be one that I reviewed earlier in the year, that is, one that I was interested in enough at the time to listen too. In this way I know that I am not mirroring any of the more conventional lists that we all find this time of year.


10. The Once and Future Carpenter by The Avett Brothers - The Avetts as well as their compatriots Mumford and Sons released new albums this year. While the latter received more press it is the Avett's who make my top ten list. While the Mumford's first single I Will Wait might be the best of the lot it is the Avett's album that is broader and more balanced. Doing nothing more than what they do album in and album out The Avett's show why they are one of the most popular touring acts today.

9. Red by Taylor Swift - I cannot really call myself a Taylor Swift fan but one does have to recognize her ability to turn anything into a song. Watching my daughter skip and sing around the house this fall in her thirteen year old way I remembered how much music means to someone at that time in their lives. For millions of young girls and older girls too Swift makes the music that means the most to them. And it is intelligent music. For all of the adults who spent the fall trying to get " We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together " out of there head accept that it is hopeless. Swift can craft a tune like few today.

8. Born and Raised by John Mayer - Mayer coming off a year of bad publicity showed that when he stops talking and start singing all will be ok. With nary a bad song on the album and many like the title cut and Shadow Days are long to be remembered.

7. That's Why God Made the Radio by The Beach Boys - With a 50th anniversary tour and a new album it was an exciting year for the boys. It might well be that we do not want to know what recording methods made the music sound like the sixties version of the band but what there is no doubt of is that the harmonies on this song are as good as they have ever done. Pacific Coast Highway and the other songs of the second side of the album make this a true work of art similar in type of not in scope to the second side of Abbey Road.

6. Heroes by Willie Nelson - On this album which on many of the cuts Willie is joined by friends and members of his family Nelson's voice is still a treasure. Singing covers such as Just Breathe by Pearl Jam and Coldplay's The Scientist Nelson never sounded better. When he is joined by Billie Joe Shaver and Jamey Johnson on Hero and Snoop Dogg on Roll Me Up it is clear that Willie has friends in high places indeed and they all add to the fun of the album. Come On Back Jesus is another song of strong note.

5. Gospel Plow by Elizabeth Cook - I have just reviewed this in depth but suffice to say that I have listened to no album as much as this all year.

4. Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance by Patterson Hood - This solo effort by the lead singer of The Drive By Truckers was one of the strongest albums of the year. The title cut is one of the best tracks of the year, Hood's mumble drawl fits perfectly. After the Damage and Better Than the Truth are both great tracks and of course no Patterson Hood/Drive By album would be complete without a talk song, this album features another Alabama history lesson called Untold Pretties. A truly great album.

3. Tempest by Bob Dylan - One of the few albums in recent years to receive five stars from Rolling Stone Dylan's new album was superior. With the only song that made me get caught in public rocking out behind the wheel, Early Roman Gods, along with a tribute to John Lennon called Roll on John the album was an instant classic. Dylan's thirteen minute tale of the sinking of The Titanic, the albums title cut mixes truth and Dylan fiction in a classic way that is perfect the whole way through.

2. Battle Born by The Killers- It has to be considered true that The Killers are very good at copying the art of Springsteen and to some extent U2. Still sometimes the followers better there leaders and on The Killers later effort they have completed a supremely confident album. With song after song that one can imagine on the radio, if FM radio still played rock music, and that additionally you know would be perfect in arenas all around the country. Brendan Flowers has cut his hair, he looks like a male model, but there is no denying one thing, he can sing like few others. This is a very strong album, perhaps not as classically influential as some of the others but sometimes precision and perfection of the type displayed here but must be acknowledged.

1. Channel Orange by Frank Ocean - Truthfully it was not even close. I am not a rap music fan. I am not a connoisseur of blues, funk or soul. I know an album of incredible depth and magic when I hear it however. Orange's album is a salute to it seems each of his predecessors from Marvin Gaye to James Brown to certainly Prince. With songs such as Forest Gump, Pyramids and especially Thinking About You and Super Rick Kids Ocean proved himself a force beyond all forces in music this year. This was clearly the most influential and superior album of the year.

More in depth reviews of all of these efforts can be found on this blog from earlier in the year.

That's Why God Made the Radio by The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys landed in Bangor, Maine last night. We did not get tickets to the show, the tickets were fairly expensive, and I decided that having seen them back in the eighties that I did not need to see them again.

Over the last couple of weeks having read articles about the band and it's tour, their fiftieth anniversary tour in fact, in Time, Newsweek and Rolling Stone I was more interested in seeing them. Overall the tour has gotten good reviews, my concerns about how good they would sound, and of course about if Brian Wilson is capable of touring and performing turned out, according to most sources, to be unfounded. In short the Boys were playing a 150 minute set of forty or more songs that fans of all ages were enjoying.

One could not really have had any sense of expectation over the album of new material that The Beach Boys recorded and released recently. Truthfully I certainly did not. I was wrong.

Unexpectedly this is a refreshing, beautifully recorded album of layered vocals and harmonies that certainly would have felt at home on a Beach Boys album in the mid sixties. I have listened to the album three times and each time I listen to the last six songs, a connected Abbey Road type sonnet, that ends with the wonderful Summer's Gone I am more impressed. Brian Wilson has always been known as a musical genius even as he struggled with mental health issues. What becomes apparent quickly is this is his album, he orchestrates all the arrangements, the layering of vocals and instruments. If possible this album is not getting enough positive buzz even though all the reviews I have heard are positive.

This album makes me wish I had the big speaker ed stereo I had in high school and college with lights all over it, so that as I lay in the dark on a hot summer night I could feel the breeze and listen to the Beach Boys cope with growing older while still being true to their sound.

The single on the radio, the title cut, is a very catchy enjoyable song. It is however pale in comparison with the sheer beauty of the last six songs. Starting with Daybreak Over the Ocean the feelings of retrospection and the incredible arrangements are really beyond compare.

Is it possible that with their surfing music in it's seeming simplicity dominating our perception of The Beach Boys that we sold them short. Of course this was always the battle between Wilson and Mike Love, the latter wanting to make the music that he perceived as safe and sure to be popular and Wilson wanting to stretch and challenge both himself and his listeners. Wilson's genius is known far and wide. It was after all Paul McCartney who said that God Only Knows was the most perfect song ever written.

McCartney might well be right, but listening to the last two songs on this album, Pacific Coast Highway leading to Summer's Gone and one has to wonder, as great as this as, as great as they were, how much more could they have accomplished if we had not lost Brian for twenty years or more.

This is a good album. It has some great moments however. This is not rock and roll per say it is in the latter song perhaps a song on a par with our greatest, Sinatra, Rodgers and Hammerstein and yes McCartney and Lennon.

Brian Wilson is out of bed, finally. We are all lucky for it.

That's Why God Made The Radio by The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary this summer. The tour will be making a stop on the shores of the Penobscot at The Waterfront Concert Series. I have seen the Boys back in the eighties a couple of times, they were actually my first concert, and with the prices a bit pricey we will not be attending.

Still The Beach Boys are an institution and the huge amount of publicity they are receiving right now is well deserved. Even as a person in his mid forties I have no recollection of The Beach Boys ever be anything more than a nostalgia act. Any band that included John Stamos on drums in any incarnation has to really stretch to call themselves cool.

In the 1960's however the Boys were more, they passed many of the tests to qualify as a true rock and roll band. The album Pet Sounds was the precursor to the Beatles Sgt. Pepper and the Beachers were considered as a progressive band. Brian Wilson created the album Smile as a response to Sgt. Pepper but his band rebelled, calling it too far out there. Finally released forty years later it does not seem that revolutionary to me, but in the moment it was.

In short The Beach Boys are a huge part of rock and roll history. The new single is nothing new. It is however a very good song, the harmonies and high notes are perfect. We can wonder what studio magic has been done to make this happen, these men are all pushing seventy after all. I prefer not to know or to think about it. What I do know is this song fits with their catalogue in a very nice way. Brian Wilson, ragged from years of drug abuse and mental issues, still is worth hearing. Listen to this song and you can imagine some Sixties Beach Movie Actors trying to sell you a Time Life Collection of Feel Good Songs from the Beach Music Era. The fact that a new song can make you feel that shows that Boys have not strayed too far from home.

This is a good thing.