A Year in Summary - 2012, Parts 2 & 3: Best in Show / Albums of the Year

With 2012 rapidly drawing to a close, The Professor casts his mind back and picks out some of the highlights of the year. Songs, albums, artists ... it's all here. A big THANK YOU to anybody / everybody who has read my blog this year and I hope to make 2013 an even brighter better place for us die-hard music fans. Watch this space! Salud!

Electik Electrik Presents The Best In Show Awards 2012

Best Debut Album: Royal Thunder – CVI

This was the hardest fought category of the lot. A good debut album is a pleasant introduction to a band or artist that you will grow to love. Royal Thunder's CVI is so much more than that. It was like witnessing a fully-grown person emerging from the womb – beautiful in a way but fucking shocking in many others. Mlny Parsonz, Lee Smith, Josh Coleman, and Josh Weaver have proven their caliber from day one. Will this have set the bar impossibly high for album number two? Only time will tell but I will be eagerly anticipating the outcome either way.

Runners Up: Storm Corrosion – Storm Corrosion, Pallbearer – Sorrow & Extinction

Best Comeback: Soundgarden

2012 was the year that Soundgarden crossed the line from nostalgia act running out the clock on the reunion tour circuit to full-blown shit-kicking rock band (again). Reasonable doubts had been raised about how well a band that built their reputation around powerhouse live performances would fare as they approached middle age. Their response was King Animal, an album that taught us not to be such cynical jerks all the time.

Moral Victory of the Year: John Frusciante

In 2010 guitarist/singer/songwriter/freakazoid John Frusciante announced that he had parted ways with Grammy winning act The Red Hot Chili Peppers, replaced by his own understudy Josh Klinghoffer. To 99% of music fans that pretty much doomed him to obscurity, because if you aren't in a famous who cares, right? Such attitudes tend to obscure the fact that he has been making music outside of the Chilis since 1994 (twelve albums and counting, along with two as Ataxia, and numerous Mars Volta collaborations besides). RHCP's last album, I'm With You – their first without the guitar wizard since 1995 – literally bored me to tears, whereas Frusciante's PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone continued to push the envelope and freak people the fuck out. RHCP, 0, John Frusciante, 1.

Musician of the Year: Godforbid

To this very day I maintain that it is a travesty that neither That Handsome Devil, or their eccentric frontman Godforbid, receive the international acclaim that they so dearly deserve. Godforbid has been a busy boy in 2012. First of all, That Handsome Devil released a free EP based on Disney's The Jungle Book and followed that up with a superb Pogues cover for Christmas. Godforbid's hip-hop collective Alaskan Fishermen released their long-overdue second album. Then as a solo artist he dueted with songstress Kendra Morris and released American Style Cardboard in collaboration with New York DJ Doc Delay. Congratulation, Godforbid, you have raised the bar for sarcastic, anti-social weirdos everywhere. I tip my hat to thee.

Best use of a Song in a Videogame: The Heavy – 'Short Change Hero' (from the intro of Borderlands 2)

You and three strangers are riding a train through the frozen wastes of planet Pandora, speeding towards the promise of adventure and untold riches. It becomes apparent that all is not as it seems as heavily armed robots storm the train cars and all hell breaks loose. This is the bleak and action-packed opening to Borderlands 2, a game packed full of humour and guns of ridiculous proportions. What makes the whole sequence so memorable are the spaghetti western strains of 'Short Change Hero' that ring throughout. It is as if The Heavy (best known for that 'How Do You Like Me Now?' song from every comedy movie trailer in the past three years) penned the perfect tune to accompany this very sequence in 2009 - years before the game was even made.

Runner Up: Incinerating the marijuana plantation in Far Cry 3 to Skrillex's 'Make It Bun Dem'

Best in Metal

Pallbearer – Sorrow & Extinction

Nachtmystium – Silencing Machine

Deftones – Koi No Yokan

Best in Prog

Storm Corrosion – Storm Corrosion

Ancestors – In Dreams and Time

Rush – Clockwork Angels

Best in Hip Hop

Doc Delay/Godforbid – American Style Cardboard

Death Grips – The Money Store

JJ Doom – Keys to the Kuffs

Best in Rock

Graveyard – Lights Out

The Men – Open Your Heart

Smashing Pumpkins – Oceania

Best in Funk & Soul

Galactic – Carnivale Electricos

Nick Waterhouse – Time's All Gone

Bobby Womack – The Bravest Man In The Universe

Best in Alternative

Mark Lanegan – Blues Funeral

John Frusciante – PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone

Grinderman – Grinderman 2 RMX

Best in New Zealand Music

Left or Right – Buzzy

Delaney Davidson & Marlon Williams – Sad But True

Logic Defies Logic – Logic Defies Logic

And finally, without any further ado, Eclectik Electrik's best albums of 2012

#10 Crippled Black Phoenix – (Mankind) The Crafty Ape

 

# 9 Tame Impala – Lonerism

#8 Band of Skulls – Sweet Sour

#7 Muse – The 2^nd Law

#6 Mars Volta – Noctourniquet

#5 Soul Savers – The Light The Dead See

#4 Royal Thunder – CVI

#3 That Handsome Devil – The Jungle Book EP

#2 Baroness – Yellow & Green

#1 Diablo Swing Orchestra - Pandora's Piñata

 

A Year In Summary - 2012, Part 1: My favourite songs

With 2012 rapidly drawing to a close, The Professor casts his mind back and picks out some of the highlights of the year. Songs, albums, artists ... it's all here. A big THANK YOU to anybody / everybody who has read my blog this year and I hope to make 2013 an even brighter better place for us die-hard music fans. Watch this space! Salud!

2012 was the year that Spin Media (in their infinite wisdom) declared the album to be a dead format. They really should have told that to the thousands of artists planning to release a record in 2013 because, you know, apparently nobody wants them to. Underneath that very trite statement there is a small nugget of truth: not all great songs come from uniformly great albums. Sometimes an album (or even a band) will only be remembered for one particularly outstanding track. Here I have compiled five stand out tracks from this year's crop of offerings that continue to tickle my fancy.

#5: Muse – 'Survival' (from the album The 2^nd Law)

I find it hard to put a finger on exactly why Muse's latest album just clicked with me when The Resistance left me feeling so underwhelmed. Whatever they did I just can't get enough of their wacky 21^st century nonsense. When picking a “best song” from The 2^nd Law my gut feeling was the outrageously funky 'Panic Station' but my mind said 'Survival'. After all it was featured in the freaking Olympics, how much more epic could you want? The campy piano intro gives way to Bellamy's sky-shattering falsetto, furious guitar solos, and the ever living spirit of Queen guiding it to an epic climax.

#4: The Dø – 'Tightrope'

In 2010, Janelle Monae, Queen of the future-pop revolution, delighted with her debut full-length The Archandroid. It ran the gamut from R&B, to rockabilly, to score, to soul, and more. Enter French/Finnish indie rock duo The Dø. They took the (relatively) normal 'Tightrope', stripped it of its futuristic P-Funk agenda and warped it into a brain-bending prog rock anthem for the ages. From sweet and sultry beginnings to the chaotic free jazz breakdown in the middle, 'Tightrope' is well enough to give you goosebumps.

#3: Diablo Swing Orchestra – 'Honey Trap Aftermath' (from the album Pandora's Piñata)

I can still scarcely believe that I didn't know about the latest album from Diablo Swing Orchestra until it landed in my lap. A few years back I fell instantly and madly in love with these Swedish carnival metallers on their Sing-Along Songs for the Damned & Delirious album. Pandora's Piñata contains just the right blend of groovy hard rock, ripping solos, swing beats, and operatic vocals but the real treasure on the album is 'Honey Trap Aftermath'. Against all odds it is an unironic pop song from a fairly ironic bunch. Are they “selling out”? Goodness no – just proving that they can out-write any piece of top 40 flim-flam you care to name AND rock the fuck out.

#2: The Black Keys & RZA – 'The Baddest Man Alive' (from The Man With The Iron Fists Soundtrack)

How far The Black Keys have come from playing dive bars in Akron, Ohio and forever being compared to The White Stripes (because of the names, you see). Now they are selling out arenas across the world and making some formidable friendships in the world of hip-hop. 'The Baddest Man Alive' is the natural extension of these two polarizing personalities. The Keys hold down a groovy base and a loping hook while Wu-Tang legend RZA does his thing with flair. Every line is a violent or hilarious boast to paint himself as the titular baddest man alive. My personal favourite? “I date rape Beauty right in front of the Beast”. Yep, he went there.

#1: Gorillaz – 'Do Ya Thing'

It was a sad day for the professor when in February this year Gorillaz packed up their toys and called it a day. The magical pop outfit were (and had been) one of modern music's hottest properties for over a decade and their ever evolving pastiche pop never ceased to delight. We can be comforted by Damon Albarn's “never say never” attitude towards their future but for now the chips are down. Think of 'Do Ya Thing', their most recent / potentially last ever single, as a kiss off to the faithful and what a spectacle it is. Albarn is joined on vocals by LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy and the irrepressible Andre 3000 all in the name of promoting Converse shoes. Of the two guest vocalists, it is Andre 3000 who knocks this song out of the park with his deliciously loose verses and wall-to-wall charisma. Want even more Andre for your buck? Then try the absolutely mental 13 minute version where he proclaims to be “the shit” in various ways for minutes on end. Do ya damn thang do ya thang ya thang, indeed