Today I wrap up the final post on my Albums of the Year, confirming the five best long-players of the year.
As with yesterday's post, the headings link to album reviews where they exist, and there is a Spotify player and an affiliate link to the MP3 on Amazon.co.uk where possible.
Once again, don't forget there is a Spotify playlist including songs from almost every album on the top ten and the long-list, together with songs from some of the best single and EP releases this year. You can check out the playlist here.
2012 felt like it would belong to Chromatics entirely at one point, up until Frank Ocean came along, but it goes without saying that it was the band's biggest year to date.
Kill For Love's gothic tones, all black lace and poison, may be the first thing listeners noticed upon the opening bars of Neil Young cover 'Into The Black'. It is the dalliance with futurism that made this album so essential however - a haunted reflection of a future we can only hope to avoid, and the perfect soundtrack to late night driving.
Get it on Amazon.
4. Channel ORANGE - Frank Ocean
I was never as taken with Frank Ocean's Nostalgia, Ultra as everyone else and as a result it was some time before I gave Channel ORANGE the room it takes to worm its way into your head. Unusually for a popular R&B star the appeal of Ocean's music isn't instantly all that obvious - the joints are well seasoned but the production work isn't as quick to deliver as that of either the Neptunes or Timbaland in their heyday.
The real reason Channel ORANGE is a classic album is because of the depth of Frank's mind it portrays. Whether it is the spellbound, unrequited and insistent 'Thinkin Bout You' or the paranoid and jealous slow-epic 'Pyramids', it was the words Ocean used that really made this album appeal. So rare is it to hear such attention to detail and sophistication on a record so commercially successful.
Get it on Amazon.
On which Kevin Parker takes every element of his début Tame Impala release Innerspeaker and builds on them in every way. Lonerism was a psychedelic trip through its creator's mind with a soundtrack obviously influenced by the past but created in a way that is only possible right now.
No other album had as much incredibly dense and startlingly beautiful production work this year. At it's best, as on 'Nothing That Has Happened So Far Has Been Anything We Could', Lonerism sounds like we're all just dreams inside Parker's head.
Get it on Amazon.
This year the top two positions on my list were more heavily contested than during any other year. John Talabot created an electronic album that seemed to re-imagined what the format could do. Much more for the hardcore than anything from the likes of Cut Copy or Hot Chip and yet it retained a similar sense of immediacy.
Crucially Talabot made an album that appears to be universally loved, doing something for almost everyone. Fin feels like a sign-post for the future - the raw, bluesy vocal refrain from 'When The Past Was Present' represents 2012's conflicted nature perfectly - encouragingly futuristic and yet overwhelmed with uncertainty.
Get it on Amazon.
1. The Haunted Man - Bat For Lashes
Before The Haunted Man Natasha Khan already made fascinating pop music. By focusing on a specific theme - moving on from ghosts of the past - Bat For Lashes achieved so much more with much less.
The Haunted Man may not exactly be a straight-forward pop album, but everything from the restrained artwork to the immaculately handled production screamed that this was an album Khan had poured everything in to, determined to create a living, breathing record (in the original sense) of herself.
And it works, consistently and excellently, across the entire 52-minute duration. Every track creates a surprising moment, and yet the whole is both accessible and consistently themed - an album soundtracking the end of Khan's emotional winter, complete with snowy soundscapes.
The shadow of Kate Bush is impossible to ignore but Khan uses that inspiration to create an album of incredibly well-defined songs that are all unmistakably her own, and much more interesting than those of her contemporaries.
As with any great album there are too many brilliant tracks to call-out, but it would be difficult to avoid mentioning the naked-yet-elegantly-wasted 'Laura', a poignant tribute to the trappings of fame. The Haunted Man's greatest moment however is the title track, complete with its all-male choir, aerial synth line and rumbling bass. This may be a pop album, but it's unlike any other you will have heard all year.
Get it on Amazon.
And that's it. Thanks for staying with the site this year and please feel free to comment, call out what I've missed or what your favourites are. Normal service will be resumed next week!
