Popular With Me 2012: Buzz Bands LA’s favorite local albums of the year
Kevin Bronson on
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What a year. More than 140 Los Angeles-sired albums passed through the Buzz Bands LA headphones this year, not counting EPs, mixtapes and singles. Judging from the detritus at my desk – handwritten lists, stacks of CDs, press releases – and my unopened emails, there were a lot more out there.
It came in all flavors. 2012 was a robust year for folkies and faux-folkies, hard rock and harder rock, for electro and popgazers, for scads of seemingly interchangeable garage-rockers, for radio bands and scruffy DIYers, for electronic dance music and electronic dumb music, for R&B and glitch&B and, especially, for indie-rock bands trading in boy/girl vocals. Comebacks were made. Newbies came and went like shooting stars. But what stuck?
What follows are my Top 25 L.A. albums of 2012, the favorites of an aging rockist who runs through a lot of music, doesn’t feel conversant in hip-hop (you wanna write about that for this blog, my contact info is above) and usually doesn’t abide numerical rankings on anything except his batting average. Have at it:
Buoyed by the return of Carah Faye Charnow, the quartet of Jeremy Dawson, Chad Petree, Mikey Martin and the renascent singer responded with a sleek collection of emotional electro-rock as perfect for modern-rock radio playlists as it is for fans of M83-styled production. “III” oozes with the drama for which STG is known; I matriculate to non-singles such as “If I Lost You.”
||| Previously: “Waiting Alone”
The quartet’s proper debut slinks between classic rock, power-pop and disco-rock, all of it suggesting the fun musical theater that these film-schoolers embraced more than three years ago on their debut EP. A/J Jackson and crew try hard to write singles, succeeding with “Puzzle Pieces,” “1997” and “At Least I Have Nothing” and even hitting a home run with the vaudevillian “Benny Goodman.”
||| Previously: “Benny Goodman,” more, “1997,” “At Least I Have Nothing,” “Puzzle Pieces”
The third album from the soulful folkie reveals the 25-year-old’s gifts as both a lyricist and arranger. How he is not huge in his hometown (he’s had more success in Europe) is a mystery; Francis’ melodic poesy and rich, older-than-his-years voice give this former pupil of John Frusciante emotional heft that spans moments of grandeur as well as chilling intimacy.
||| Previously: At the Troubadour; “Some Things Never Change”
As a sideman man for artists ranging from the country genre (Dwight Yoakam) to indie-rock (Apex Manor), and plenty who work in between, Whelan knows his craft. His songwriting reflects classic roots influences, and on his long-in-the-works debut his persona shines like a man five albums into his career. “Decider” is the kind of work that never goes out of fashion.
||| Previously: “Decider”
In a year stuffed to the grins with uplifting indie-rock, Wade Ryff and his sextet made some of the best – instrumentally and emotionally sprawling jams that work like big hugs against the menaces of lost love and isolation. Harmonies from Devon Lee and Breanna Wood bathe Races’ jangling rockers in optimism, and the band’s rhythmic shifts are sometimes like throwing open a window on a bright day. Jam on.
||| Previously: “Lies” video, at the Echo, “Lies,” “Big Broom,” interview
Ramona Gonzalez’s disco R&B doesn’t scream in your face or even bump your hips terribly hard, but it’s sneaky-good, built on alluring bass lines, insistent beats and just enough vocal come-hither that you’d want to spend the night. It’s a welcome step from her beginnings as a lo-fi collagist, which obfuscated most of whatever she was trying to say. Here, clearer and more confident, Gonzalez shows she has plenty.
||| Previously: “P.Y.T” cover, “What We See” (with Julia Holter), at FYF, interview, “In the Dark”
The Silver Lake stalwarts floated off into a dreamier, darker netherworld on their third album, which frontman Brian Aubert likened to a horror movie. Compared to their first two action flicks, it was film noir at the very least, not as deep in hooks but brooding and beautiful all the same. The bombast of “Bloody Mary (Nerve Endings)” offered a blast from the past; their concise nod to ’80s synth-pop “The Pit” offered, perhaps, a glimpse in to the future.
||| Previously: At the Santa Monica Civic, at the Mayan, “Bloody Mary (Nerve Endings)”
Packing as much swagger as any group of guys who favor Hawaiian shirts possibly could, White Arrows blended druggy rock and insistent electro into a concoction they call “psychotropical.” It does indeed work on the psyche, and it makes remixers champ at the bit. Fans of their 2010 EP (“Coming or Going” and 2011 single (“Get Gone”) knew this was coming. Dry land may not be a myth, but Mickey Church and gang have created an album with substantial mystique.
||| Previously: At FYF, “Get Gone” video, more, “Save Me a Place,” “Get Gone,” “Coming or Going”
The classically trained experimentalist’s follow-up to 2011’s “Tragedy” is so different from anything else on this list maybe it should be on a list of its own. This haunting work, which has drawn comparisons to Laurie Anderson, Arthur Russell and Julianna Barwick, is at once innocent and worldly – the voice of an angel floating above sparse electronic arrangements, pop and not all at once.
||| Previously: “Goddess Eyes,” off “Tragedy”
Destined to be one of those “lost albums”? Maybe. The quartet’s third album is one of the sharpest indie-rock records to emerge from L.A. this year. Frontman Christopher Richard was too busy performing in Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros to play out with band mates Jesse Hoy, Michael Hughes and William Etling, so “All in Time” didn’t get much push. Many will tell you the ghost-obsessed quartet should have been a force by now – and certainly Etling’s precision guitar work deserves better than anonymity – so you’d do well to give “Maine,” “Spirit of the Stairs” and the title track a test drive.
||| Previously: Album stream
The second installment of Summer of Love-inspired music from Alex Ebert and his merry band of train-ridin’ folkies didn’t quite have the same heat as “Up From Below,” but it had enough spark for a campfire or two. “Man on Fire” and “All Wash Out” are the Zeros at their grandiose best, but the sleeper track is the heart-stopping “Child,” penned by guitarist Christian Letts.
||| Previously: “Give Me a Sign,” “Child,” at the Greek, KCRW session, “Big Easy Express” documentary
Maybe it’s the nightmare I had of crashing my Sting-Ray bicycle while slaloming to the stone-cold classic “Only in My Dreams” that keeps me from loving this album more. Weird and wonderful and (thankfully) not lo-fi, “Mature Themes” feels like an album Todd Rundgren would have made (“Kinski Assassin” = “Hungry for Love,” for instance). A good thing. Don’t ask me about “Schnitzel Boogie,” though. I have no idea.
||| Previously: “Only in My Dreams”
Even if some of the glitchiness gets in the way of Ocean’s vibe (that’s “modern” R&B, I guess), “Channel Orange” is drunk with beauty. As a singer, he has his own tasteful style, and, more impressively, Ocean avoids the lyrical clichés – in fact, his narratives and couplets are compelling and quotable – that render some superstar singers unlistenable over the course of a whole album. The instrumentals are a nice touch too. In fact, everything here is a nice touch. Curse me for not giving it more love.
On their third album for their third label in a little more than four years, Russell Pollard and his quintet stretch beyond their center-lane rock ’n’ roll approach. The meat and potatoes are still there – thankfully some bands can still whip up comfort food – especially on the epic “Into the Grey” and the rapturous “Rapture.” Present, too, is a playful expansiveness that owes to Pollard, J. Soda, Joel Graves and Eli Thomson having done the first round of “Ownerless” sessions with production buddha Richard Swift. Not quite haute cuisine, but tasty nonetheless.
||| Previously: “Ownerless,” more, “Rapture,” “Into the Grey”
Mastermind Nima Kazerouni seems to have an idea every two minutes, and a compulsion to turn every one of them into two-minute gems. His echo-laden pop ditties sometimes come off as undernourished (if not underproduced) – So Many Wizards deal in flashbacks rather than full-on memories, I guess. But however fleeting, “Lose Your Mind,” “Into a Daze,” “Lose Your Mind” and “Inner City” reveal a nostalgic warmth, emotional core and sonic adventurousness. Ariel Pink for shorter attention spans.
||| Previously: “Lose Your Mind” video, more, “Lose Your Mind,” Crown Plaza side project, “Inner City” video
As soon as the steel kicks in on the opening track of “Sparks Fly Again,” Beachwood Sparks’ first album in 11 years feel like an essential thread in southern California’s musical fabric. The original lineup of Chris Gunst, Brent Rademaker, Farmer Dave Scher and Aaron Sperske had made two long-ago albums and EP that marked them as torchbearers for cosmic California country, and as scads of indie-folk came back around to that sound, the quartet (with some notable guests) showed the flame still burns brightly. File under showing the kids how it’s done.
||| Previously: “Sparks Fly Again”
Whatever Becky Stark is selling, I’m buying. In the case of Lavender Diamond’s overdue second album, the DIY follow-up to 2007’s “Follow Your Heart,” it’s the need for real human connection. That might sound all hippy-dippy or New Age-y, but in the hands of the honey-voiced singer and her cohorts, keyboardist-composer Steve Gregoropoulos, drummer Ron Rege Jr. and guitarist Jeff Rosenberg, “Incorruptible Heart” (produced by OK Go’s Damian Kulash) is as pure as it gets, no matter the stylistic shifts between folk, electro-pop and R&B lite. Ms. Stark, “Light My Way.”
||| Previously: “Light My Way,” “Everybody’s Heart’s Breaking Now,” “Oh My Beautiful World”
Whenever you think the world’s going to hell in a glowstick, listen to albums No. 9 and 8 on this list consecutively. Embry, a longtime pillar of the L.A. scene as a songwriter, producer and side man, broke away from playing in Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros to deliver this 10-song hymnal. Blessed with a crystalline voice, virtuoso skills on a four-string tenor guitar and a heart of gold, Embry makes folk music in its finest traditions.
||| Previously: “Raven’s Song,” “Moon of the Daylit Sky,” at the Greek, an intro
In repeatedly recommending Soft Swells’ debut to any indie-rock fan who’d listen, I would refer to the album as a “musical happy pill.” Tim Williams’ songs have a buoyant effect, imbued as they are with the spirit of striving and perseverance. They’re catchy as hell too, and clever, built upon spry melodies and beats that yank you toward irresistible choruses. Soft Swells serve no currently cool indie sub-genre, but fashion be damned: More of us need albums like this.
||| Previously: “Summer Song,” “Put It on the Line,” “Every Little Thing”
What, an L.A. hard-rock band that wasn’t sucked into the cliché wormhole of the Sunset Strip’s past? Indeed, the quartet of singer/rhythm guitarist Emily Armstrong, shredder Siouxsie Medley and rhythm beasts Sean Friday and Chris Null made their stew of metal, punk and blues sound fresh, with Armstrong’s primal vocals earning comparisons to a hall-of-fame cast of rock frontwomen. Her range – musically and emotionally – warrants them; few singers today can go from tough to tender so seamlessly.
||| Previously: “Snow in Los Angeles,” SSMF, Doors tribute, photo gallery, “Weatherman,” “Lemon Scent”
The collectivist folk-pop of Robbie Arnett, Graham Fink, Andrew Heringer, Marlana Sheetz and Curtis Marrero is not for you if you like a band with a strong front person. The quintet doesn’t have one. With those first four sharing vocal duties, the band’s debut offered pretty-as-a-rainbow harmonies to go with their sepia-toned meditations. At turns grand and intimate, “Milo Greene” seems to bring the whole notion of “the greater good” within reach.
||| Previously: At the El Rey, “1957” video, more, at Make Music Pasadena, “Autumn Tree” video, “Don’t You Give Up on Me”
So much good punk rock, so little time. The irrepressible quartet’s collar-shirted rabble-rousing places them squarely in punk’s intelligentsia, swilling post-irony like tallboys and launching shout-sung missiles into the hipster masses. They know irony, are good at post-irony but cling to the romantic notion rock ’n’ roll is essential to the fabric of being, and not a fashion accoutrement. “Every band we ever loved / is selling out or breaking up,” they rant. You might say “whatever,” but me and the Henry Clays, we wanna punch something.
||| Previously: “EveryBandWeEverLoved,” “Fakers” video, “Hide,” “25 For the Rest of Our Lives”
The onetime Fleet Foxes drummer released several nice albums as J. Tillman last decade, but plop him in L.A. for a couple of years and he becomes The Entertainer. Inspired, as Tillman has said, by a mushroom-addled road trip down the West Coast, the narratives on “Fear Fun” have the highest smile-per-couplet ratio of any album in recent memory. Call it racounteurism. Oh, and the album rocks too, in a devil-may-care, folky way. Charisma carries a tune.
||| Previously: At FYF, at SXSW
Far from the first L.A. band to meld the spaghetti Western pastiche and rock ’n’ roll – newbies who only vaguely know Ennio Morricone’s work should investigate the music of psych-rock sophisticates Spindrift – Lord Huron nonetheless delivered a debut of rapturous soundscapes. Michigan native Ben Schneider embraced the horizons of the West with equally expansive folk-rock, his cinematic visions suggesting romances that persevere after the final credits.
||| Previously: “Ends of the Earth,” “Time to Run” video, “Time to Run”
The most unlikely comeback album in a year of great comeback albums, Redd Kross’ first outing in 15 years represents a triumph of spirit over Father Time, and not just to middle-agers wistful over the fact the quartet never got its due back in the day. Fortysomething brothers Jeff and Steven McDonald, abetted by Robert Hecker and Roy McDonald, tap rock’s rebellious vein with as much vigor as any punk half as old, and they deliver their riff-roaring power-pop anthems and colorful imagery with bratty abandon. You reach a certain age and you reflect on the naiveté and and regret the foibles of your youth, right? “Researching the Blues” suggests the McDonalds have somehow made a record then with what they know now.
||| Previously: At FYF, at the Roxy, “Researching the Blues”
Special mention
Love on a Real Train, “Love on a Real Train”
The Soft Pack, “Strapped”
Michael Andrews, “Spilling a Rainbow”
Dot Hacker, “Inhibition”
Gangi, “Gesture Is”
That Silversun Pickups was top five for me. Great record.