Albums in My Life: 2012

2012 was a pretty big transitional year for me. I graduated from college, started grad school, worked my final year of summer camp, met my girlfriend's family, finally got around to getting my driver's license; the list goes on.

Fiona Apple- The Idler Wheel.....
The Idler Wheel... was the first Fiona Apple album I bought when it dropped. I had heard Extraordinary Machine a few months previously, and by some random coincidence, her new album was just about to drop. It's been about 7 years now, so it's almost time for the next album. I bought the composition notebook edition of the CD and played the album constantly that summer. I still return to 'Every Single Night' and the crazy counterpoint on 'Hot Knife'.
What I like about a Fiona Apple album is that even though they come out very sporadically, they have enough density to stand on their own until the next album comes out.


Frank Ocean- Channel Orange
As popular as Channel Orange was, you've got to admit it's a weird album. It's kind a pastiche of ideas loosely assembled into a somehow cohesive product. It's held together by Frank's singing and a general theme of rich kids with nothing to do but get high and make mistakes. Some of the little soundbytes in between tracks remind me of channels changing (maybe by the title, that's the point). It took me a while to come around to Blonde, and I outright rejected Endless, based on the previous greatness Frank already reached on this record.



Odd Future- The OF Tape Volume 2
This was probably Odd Future at the peak of their popularity, and the album also ushered in the return of Earl Sweatshirt from his Somalian exile on the posse cut, 'Oldie'. I think this album was a pretty good introduction to all the sub groups and artists within the Odd Future collective, though some get a little more shine than others. It's been very interesting to see where everyone's career has gone since the release of this record.





Panopticon- Kentucky
This probably the best example I would go to when describing an album with polar opposite influences. With this album, Austin Lunn expertly mixed atmospheric black metal with American bluegrass and folk music for an intriguing sound and concept revolving around a Kentucky coal miners' union strike. It's kind of baffling how well this works, but I guess if other folk metals exist, why not Americana metal? I don't think Austin got the ratio quite right again until his latest monstrous opus, The Scars of Man Upon the Once Nameless Wilderness, which was my number one album of 2018.



Swans- The Seer
This was the first album I ever heard by Swans, and I definitely came in at a interesting place in their discography. I had recently starting Pitchfork regularly, and made a habit of giving 'difficult' records a shot. A noisey, dark, arty post rock double album sounded right down my alley, and it was. I had never really anything like the bands incremental progressions and explosive peaks. The closest I had ever come was Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but Swans was so much more explosive, dark and hypnotic. This album not only opened up the door to Swans for me, but to more bands in this vein.




So, that was my musical 2012. In the next and final edition of Albums in My Life, I'll take a look at the records that really influenced me in 2013. After 2013, I figured you could just check out my year end top 10s if you were interested in my favorite albums from those years, since this blog started in 2014. See you next time.



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