With the long arm of the internet putting any and all music at our fingertips, it should make for a glut of bands getting their due attention. In the end, though, what really happens is so many great acts get hidden in plain view, lost among a constant flood of new bands, new releases, and selective buzz doled out here to point us in the right direction. But maybe it’s best to drown, to get overwhelmed and then, when the flood recedes in the year’s end, see what sticks. Maybe buzz doesn’t matter as much as what outlasts our constantly turning attention, what keeps it while the tastemakers snap their fingers to turn our heads to the next next-best-thing. These ten albums are all excellent, the kind of music worth celebrating this year and coming back to for years to come. They may not have got their due, at least not yet, but these acts all gave us some great music in 2012 and, if they somehow slipped through the cracks for you, they’re a great place to start when you look back on what you might have missed this year. In a year with no clear-cut future classics or stand-out record, these hidden gems, even if they didn’t get some big promo push or get the big review, are exactly what made 2012 a great music year anyway. These are our favorite overlooked albums of the year, so check them out, enjoy, and maybe let us know what else you think got overlooked this year. Viva la underdog! Matthew Fiander
Album: Developer
Label: Antenna Farms
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/reviews_art/s/social_studies_developer.jpg
Display Width: 200
Display as: List
List Number: 10
Social Studies
Developer
One thing is for sure: Social Studies is a smart band. Developer pulls a clever trick, because it sounds gauzy, airy, full of opaque textures and space. But under all that atmosphere, these songs are built on lean, crystal-clear parts — the jagged guitars on “Delicate Hands”, the steady rhythm section and haunting organ of “Developer”, the clean keys that brighten up the overcast “Still Life”. This combination of meticulous layering with clearly defined parts, combined with deep, catchy hooks, stick-in-your-head melodies, and not to mention the rangy, powerful vocals of lead singer Natalia Rogovin makes this album both one of the unsung pop records and one of the subtler but more bracing records of the year. It’s both an energetic and mature set from a band that has just begun to shine. My advice: get in on Social Studies now, on the ground floor.
Album: SNAXX
Label: Doomtree
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/reviews_art/m/mike_mictlan.jpg
Display Width: 200
Display as: List
List Number: 9
Mike Mictlan
SNAXXX
Minnesota hip-hop collective Doomtree saw their biggest release this year in P.O.S.’s We Don’t Even Live Here, but fellow Midwestern rapper Mike Mictlan gave us an equally impressive and surprising set on SNAXXX, an album he released for free late in the year. Mictlan, who also stole the show on Doomtree’s group album, last year’s No Kings, continues to prove he’s one of the most fired-up voices in underground rap. He recalls Ice Cube’s strident hunger on his early solo records, spitting opposite the cooler Greg Grease against “parmesan cheesy rappers” and “subculture products”, among other conceits on “WZRD SCIENCE”, or recalling late-’80s bangers on the clean beats but thorny raps of “Scottie Pippen”. The whole of SNAXXX reimagines earlier rap tropes — those ’80s sounds, boom-rap in the ’90s, etc. — but meshes them with fresh flourishes of electronic music (see “Creeper Status”) and a modern, unique, and charming eccentricity. This is a varied set of tracks, from the cool, blippy “SKYE!” to the dramatic banging of “Give It to Mikey”, SNAXXX will catch you off guard with each new beat. But it’s Mictlan’s intricate yet muscled-up raps that will win the day for you. Following his work on No Kings, it’s pretty clear Mictlan is on his damn grind, and there’s more than one Doomtree member with a great record in 2012.
Album: Sexy But Not Happy
Label: self-released
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/reviews_art/m/museum_mouth.png
Display Width: 200
Display as: List
List Number: 8
Museum Mouth
Sexy But Not Happy
With the ubiquity of home-recorded music and home-recording music computer programs, lo-fi music is alive and well, though we seem to overlook the best purveyors of those grainy sounds. Museum Mouth is one of those unsung greats, and Sexy But Not Happy is a great rock record that challenges the limitations of basic recording. Despite the lo-fi hum that coats the record, the band is not content to hide behind the tape hiss as a fundamental aesthetic. Instead, they bounce from the moody skronk of “For Mom” to the punky bounce of single “Blood Mountain” to the narcotic, blessed-out pop of “I Was a Teenage Paladin”. The album has an undeniable pop zeal, but it’s also surprisingly subtle in its layers and mature. This is pop music not content simply knock a few chords out into a program, scuff ’em up, and put ’em out into the world. Sexy But Not Happy is proof that lo-fi doesn’t mean lazy, and that a great band — like Museum Mouth — can do with a half-hour record what most rock bands can’t do in a career. You don’t have to sift through the fuzz on this one to find the hooks, they’re right up front, they’ll catch you off guard, and they are top-to-bottom fantastic.
Album: The Sister
Label: Box of Cedar
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/music_cover_art/n/nadler1.jpg
Display Width: 200
Review: http://ded5626.inmotionhosting.com/~popmat6/pm/review/159083-marissa-nadler-the-sister/
Display as: List
List Number: 7
Marissa Nadler
The Sister
All right, so Nadler isn’t all that overlooked these days, especially in the wake of her excellent eponymous 2011 album. The Sister, though, was a bit overshadowed by that album and, as a self-defined “companion album”, feels inextricably linked. But The Sister, though it may be more of a grower than its predecessor, is worth coming to on its own merits. Nadler stretches out here haunting folk-cum-dream-pop tunes into new territory here, from the synthy, clattering “Constantine” to the guitar squall of “Your Heart is a Twisted Vine”. Even songs that feel in Nadler’s wheelhouse, like “The Wrecking Ball Company”, reveal themselves over time to be faint sunbursts, glimmers of dim light that cut through the usual shadows of her work. The Sister finds Nadler’s narrators scraping and clawing their way — hauntingly, carefully — up from the darkness. And, unsurprisingly, Nadler’s beautiful voice conveys these bittersweet tales with striking restraint and resonance. We’ve come to know Nadler over the past couple years, and how good she can be, and The Sister is not the Nadler record to overlook. Go back and take a listen and you’ll hear why.
Album: I’m Not Alone
Label: Tangible Formats
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/reviews_art/f/flashlights.jpg
Display Width: 200
Display as: List
List Number: 6
Flashlights
I’m Not Alone
Florida’s Flashlights, on I’m Not Alone, immediately remind you of whatever your favorite ’90s rock band was. They’ve got the lean fury of Superchunk or Archers of Loaf or insert-the-band-that-comes-to-mind, and in that way fall into a nice tradition with their own catchy rock tunes. But here’s the thing: they are not merely dealing in ’90s nostalgia or revivalism. Flashlights is a vibrant new rock band, and though I’m Not Alone clocks in under 25 minutes, it covers a whole lot of ground. The slicing riffs and sweet, bleating melodies of opener “Choking” is a perfect introduction to the band, as catchy as it is furiously noisy. Other songs like “Mel Has a Problem” or “It’s Raining” are really maudlin pop songs in disguise, hiding a rainy-day bittersweet feel behind walls of buzzing power chords. The band can power through rock songs as well as anyone, though they can also break open into epic, slow-building guitar theatrics on closer “Shane Swenson”. Flashlights may sound, at first listen, like exactly what you think of with the term “indie rock”, but make no mistake, they establish their own voice quickly and charmingly on I’m Not Alone, and in doing so gave us a record worth going to find, spending some time with, and falling in love with. The way you did with those other bands way back then, when they were new too.
5 – 1
Album: Whatever Brains
Label: Sorry State
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/reviews_art/w/whatever_brains.jpg
Display Width: 200
Display as: List
List Number: 5
Whatever Brains
Whatever Brains
It’s been a great year for North Carolina bands (Exhibit A: Spider Bags, below), and Whatever Brains, one of the state’s most exciting rock outfits, is right out at the forefront of that greatness. There’s much to be said about the eccentricity of this punk-rock ground, since they seem to crank out new, bizarre demos at will, and they’ve now put out two records called Whatever Brains, though they maintain neither are “self-titled”. But can we forget all that for a second and realize just how much these guys flatly kill it on this new record? This is both as fiery as rock music gets and as experimental and exciting as pop music gets. “Summer Jammin’ 2” meshes Jay Reatard’s concision with Tom Waits’ circus-y antics, while the expansive “Marquee Welfare” lets guitar riffs ring out and break down over its five minutes, dragging the band’s usual fury through some noise-experiment muck, and “Diptheria Trot” turns the album 180 into jangle-pop folk sweetness. There’s also the pure rock heft of “Bad Dads” or the punk speed of “I’m Going Martin” to remind you these guys are here, first and foremost, to melt your face off. Whatever Brains is buckshot rock, spreading out and hitting all kinds of different targets, but only partially. In the end, it’s hard to call this sound anything other than theirs. If it recalls others, it’s only because those sounds got caught in their creative vortex. Whatever Brains is a band operating on its own turf, building its own sound and aesthetic one puzzling but brilliant rock song at a time. It isn’t that its weird, it’s that it’s so damn good, so damn honest in its weirdness. That’s what makes these guys a band you should know already. But, hey, better late than never.
Album: Dark Shores
Label: self-released
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/reviews_art/s/strand_oaks.jpg
Display Width: 200
Display as: List
List Number: 4
Strand of Oaks
Dark Shores
Strand of Oaks’ Tim Showalter turned heads with his last album, the oddly expansive and great Pope Kildragon, but this year he quietly put out his best record yet not by expanding, but by stripping down. Dark Shores is a beautiful record about isolation, one that smartly puts Showalter’s love-worn voice and songwriting front and center. Produced by JohnVanderslice, the album strips songs down to the essentials, on the basic hook and guitar crunch of “Trap Door”, say, or the lonesome, bluesy folk of “Maureen’s”. It’s an album with a distinct mood, as the “stormclouds” and “Dark Shores” Showalter sings about show themselves in some negative space around these songs, highlighted by a subtle echo in his voice, as if he’s singing out into a void. But what makes Dark Shores brilliant is that Showalter’s isolation isn’t, well, isolation. It’s bracing. This album is a subtle, if bittersweet, declaration, both for Showalter as a person in the world and as a fine songwriter. Though he twists tropes here — see the off-kilter, twisted folk of “Little Wishes” — there’s no sleight of hand to this album. Showalter is putting himself out there, getting as close to you as he can. And, at every turn, you’re bound to be transfixed by what he has to say.
Album: Live at the All Hands House
Label: All Hands Electric
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/music_cover_art/w/woodsy.jpg
Display Width: 200
Review: http://ded5626.inmotionhosting.com/~popmat6/pm/review/159348-woodsy-pride-live-at-the-all-hands-house/
Display as: List
List Number: 3
Woodsy Pride
Live at the All Hands House
It’s a gutsy move to make your first full-length record a live album, but that’s exactly what Woodsy Pride did, and they did it flawlessly. One of many great bands on New York label All Hands Electric, Woodsy Pride is a trio that makes lush, deeply resonant music, music that shifts and swirls but never quite loses shape. These songs dip into Americana and classic rock but they don’t borrow, they build. The working-class pressure of “Reason on My Mind” feels fresh, with Bill Augustus’s honeyed groan punctuated by John Studer’s drums and Uriah Theriault’s singular, impossible to define but undeniably arresting guitar work. Woodsy Pride approaches rock and folk tropes with the loose experimentation and intuition of jazz musicians, and the results are unique in their charms. These songs don’t establish borders or shapes but rather form as you hear them, so, for instance, “All for My Love” doesn’t pile on so much as it blooms, revealing its sweet secrets over time. Woodsy Pride is one of the great young bands working right now, period, and the laid-bare beauty of this live record is proof positive of that. Woodsy Pride clearly has nothing to hide, and no wonder with a sound this striking.
Album: Scorpion
Label: Undertow
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/music_cover_art/s/scorpion-500.jpg
Display Width: 200
Review: http://ded5626.inmotionhosting.com/~popmat6/pm/review/163062-will-johnson-scorpion/
Display as: List
List Number: 2
Will Johnson
Scorpion
Johnson may be the most high-profile artist on this list since he fronts Centro-matic and South San Gabriel and has played with everyone from Jim James to Jandek, but his solo career has always flown under the radar, and never has that been more of a shame than on his heartbreakingly beautiful new album, Scorpion. It marries the haunting space of South San Gabriel with a striking yet not broken-down isolation, one that allows his sweet, creaking voice to sound all the more powerful set against stark but intricate backdrops. The ringing guitars and distant, thumping percussion of “You Will Be Here, Mine” conveys the want and anticipation behind Johnson’s restrained vocals, while “Bloodkin Push (Forget the Ones)” transforms from solitary guitar phrasings into an expansive folk epic. Around these big sounds, the more contained “Riding from Within” or “Winter Screen Four” feel no less slight, and as Scorpion takes shape, it becomes clear that Johnson is not just one of our most distinct voices or one of our great songwriters, but also one of the great pure musicians and arrangers working. It’d be a bold thing, for a man with so many records under his belt, to call Scorpion his masterstroke. But guess what? It may be just that.
Album: Shake My Head
Label: Odessa
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/s/spider-bags-shake-my-head.jpg
Display Width: 200
Review: http://ded5626.inmotionhosting.com/~popmat6/pm/review/161207-spider-bags-shake-my-head/
Display as: List
List Number: 1
Spider Bags
Shake My Head
North Carolina’s Spider Bags took the zealous genre-hopping of their last record, Goodbye Cruel World, Hello Crueler World and, on Shake My Head condensed it into the most unpredictable, rollicking, and purely brilliant rock album of 2012. The album gets all claustrophobic and tensed up by talking about the ever-closing borders of a hometown, but never gives into whining, instead pushing back at complacency with the R&B-tinged stomp of “Simona La Ramona” or the twanging garage rock of “Keys to the City” or the (relatively) softer power-pop of “Quatzelcoatl Love Song”. Shake My Head is hardly about despondency, or giving in, but rather about blowing those borders away. The howling vocals, the blistering guitars (see “Friday Night” for the band in prison-break fury mode), the charging rhythm section — it all meshes into a tight, endlessly impressive set of tunes. These rock songs may be lean, but they still keep secrets, little flourishes that reveal themselves over time. This is the kind of rock record built to last, from a band that — hopefully — isn’t going anywhere. If you’re wondering what you may have missed in 2012, the band at the top of that list should be Spider Bags.