PowerTier II - The Mars Rovers

The countdown to the top 12 albums of 2012 is further protracted. First we have to get to the ones that almost made it. Honestly, had I compiled the order on a different day, they might have.

Howlin' Rain - The Russian Wilds

It was the year 2012 and I was convinced rock n' roll had departed for the Undying Lands, marking the end of the third age. I even scribbled down the lines "The fate of rock n' roll proves / That everything I love will eventually leave." But it may be still alive in this cathedral of neo-classic rock, complete with gritty vocals, driving backbeats, crunchy guitars, and an almost 1:1 song to organ solo ratio. Evoking all of the epic sounds I wish I had experienced in the 70's, The Russian Wilds is something like a tour-de-force, but not as overused of a phrase.


Jack White - Blunderbuss

I think I lost a lot of potential friends by going up to strangers on my way to class one day and singing, in my best overdriven falsetto, "I EAT SIX-TEEN SAL-TEEN CRACKERS THEN I LICK MY FINGERS!" But if they didn't get the reference, then maybe I don't want to be friends with them anyway. White comes out with a high energy, hard grooving album, which sounds like higher-fi version of his previous acts.


Lord Huron - Lonesome Dreams

We've had to put up with a lot of self-indulgent indie singer songwriters in the past few years, most of whom were two white to now what a real beat is and instead lost us in a fog of self-indulgent harmonization and flannel. Since they are, on paper, an indie folk band hailing from LA, Lord Huron could easily be a caricature of the aforementioned type of band. Sure, I did discover them via Shazam (on an Android NOT an iphone, people) in an overpriced knicknack shop of some kind (with wooden spoons for forty dollars, why I was there I have no idea) but I went home and listened to them one GrooveShark, not Spotify! While eating spaghetti, made with no organic ingredients! Then I probably watched football, drank a Coors Banquet Beer, and argued against performative gender roles! I guess if I'm going to be usefull they sound kind of like Local Natives but without the weak attempt to sound worldly.


The Sea and Cake - Runner

Last year, I described The Sea and Cake's sound as the molecular distillation of cool. I stand by that statement. When you're trekking through Bakersfield, this is good music to keep the zombies away. (I'm sure Bakersfield is a very nice city with much to offer but I have yet to see it.)


Dispatch - Circles Around the Sun

Maybe if I had got the chance to see these songs performed live I would have rated this a little higher, but I did not get to see this with the added magic of live Dispatch. They're all great tracks in their own way, but what makes you fall in love with a Dispatch song is the live rendition. That's the way it was with the new EP that came out last year, and I hope it will be that way when I see them again. Don't get me wrong, I am ecstatic this exists. January 1st, 2011 the band announced they were touring again, and I got my tickets right away. Then I found out there was a new EP. This wasn't just a reunion tour. This was a full on resurrection. Then we got word of a new album. I know it's not quite the same as when they were a vague rumor on the breeze that you would then discover on Napster and experience full force when they rolled up to your college campus in two beat up vans, but still, they're a force the universe needs. Also, the title track may be the best song about space exploration since "A Space Oddity," which, coming from the Ozone Shack, is saying something.


The Sheepdogs - The Sheepdogs

"My heart is won by southern fantasy / could you understand how much that means to me." These lyrics encapsulate all you need to know about the Sheepdogs, who might be the Allman Brothers Band reincarnated as Canadians. Granted, they are from Saskatoon, which is kind of like the Deep South of Canada. Well, actually, maybe that's Calgary. Much like the Gaslight Anthem wants to be in the universe of a 50's motorcycle movie, I can tell The Sheepdogs want to be the hard rockin, hard drinking, heavy tokin guys raising hell in backwater Mississippi. I don't know, don't quote me on that. Just listen to this album.


The Bouncing Souls - Comet (Also Winner of Album Cover of the Year)

The Bouncing Souls prove that you can keep make high-energy, melodic punk without losing any of the attitude or the edge. These guys have been around for a while, at the forefront of New Jersey's pogo punk scene, making quality music for two decades now. (In fact, they started playing as a band before I was born, so when people tell me to tone it down, I can just point at these guys and say you're never too old to fist pump.) I first put on this album driving myself to the emergency room after I got a concussion.

Why was I driving myself to the emergency room? Well, on a Monday, I gave blood, and since I had probably drank too much Coors Banquet Beer and not enough water during the preceding weekend, and had only eaten a pack of fruit snacks and trail mix that morning, I was dehydrated my blood sugar was low. When I stood up upon finishing the machine sucking my blood out, my blood pressure fell over the fiscal cliff and I passed out, hitting my head on the tiled floor. When they revived me, my blood pressure was 80 over 20 - any lower and they would have had to defibrillate me. I went home with nausea, hating light and sound, but thought it was just my brain starved of blood and nutrients. Tuesday night I went to a wine and dessert thing and puked after two and a half glasses of wine, but I thought "ok, I just gave blood, maybe blood loss affects your blood alcohol content more than I thought." Wednesday I felt even shittier, and I assumed that it was some weird kind of hangover. Thursday I felt even worse and I realized something was wrong. Friday morning I called the blood bank and they told me that I should drive myself to the emergency room to be evaluated for a concussion. ANYWAY, I was worried about my ability to maintain focus, so I put on loud, energetic punk to keep me going. And I made it. I'm still here. Thanks guys.


Stay tuned for the top 12, coming tomorrow and Monday!

PowerTier III - The Ridiculously Photogenic Guys

The continuing countdown to the top 12 albums of 2012

Neil Young with Crazy Horse - Psychedelic Pill

Neil young makes a statement here. That statement is: "I am senile, and I don't care what you think." This album starts with a twenty seven minute jam, and has two other songs well over the fifteen minute mark. He also states that he's going to "get a hip-hop haircut," which is the best evidence agaisnt anybody that they're going senile. And because he's senile, Neil Young does whatevere the hell he wants. Therefore, Neil Young proves that rockers are like fine wine: they can age into the perfect state of coolness. This music is best listened to loud. Headphones are acceptable, as long as they drown out all ambient noise of the supermarket. I listened to this album while grocery shopping and I was lost in a haze of a bygone time, when this supermarket would be smaller and their might be woodchips on the floor. The lighting would be a halogen tone, rather than the weird soft warm brown light they fill that place with now. It was a time when they needed get high and turn their amps up just to breathe man. Neil is keeping it a live.

Silversun Pickups - Neck of the Woods

It's tough to be the Silversun Pickups. When you're a band with such a definitive sound - hell, when you invented your own sound - you have the curse of having to push boundaries and also sound just like you did. I know people who say that the original EP, Pikul, was the only "true" Silversun Pickups album. That is, it is the only thing made by the Silversun Pickups that sounds like the Silversun Pickups should sound. So this might have been a bit of an underwhelming release. But it did what I hoped it would do: retain the Silversun Pickups aesthetic while expanding into new kinds of sounds. And really, that's what every band should do. Unfortunately, that kind of artistic sensibility gets bashed by fans and critics alike. Anyone who does so is a martyr in the Ozone Orthodoxy.

Alabama Shakes - Boys and Girls

This was the perfect soundtrack for riding on a Greyhound bus. I was on the bus because they wouldn't let me use a hamper as a suitcase on an Amtrak train. I apparently need to invest in a duffle bag or something. But this music is the kind of music where you can't buy a duffle bag. You can't even by whiskey to drown your sorrows at missing the train. And there is no nice man who will let you exchange your train ticket for a bus ticket. Also, the protagonist of the title track is 22, which is something I can relate to.

Calexico - Algiers

While I seem surprisingly willing to talk about music on the internet, I have a hard time talking to strangers about music in real life. I don't remember how it happened, but I told someone that I was excited to listen to the new Calexico album. He asked what they sounded like. The best I could come up with was "kinda like if Wilco had a lot of south of the border influences." Laid back, dark and brooding, sweeping horn swells, acoustic guitar montunos, upright bass, the perfect soundtrack for aimlessly wandering the southwest.


Michael Kiwanuka - Home Again

The son of Ugandan parents fleeing the Amin regime, London-based singer Michael Kiwanuka might be the heir to the legacy of Soul music. Home Again mixes old-school sounds in with the singer/songwriter aesthtic and a tinge of afrobeat horns. And he pulls off the duality of the great Motown singers who could project both swagger and insecure longing at the same time.


Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - The Heist

I think this is the first time I've recognized an iTunes number one selling album with more than a blurb. Maybe Dispatch's eponymous EP got to number two, I'm not sure. But that's not the point right now. The album was independently recorded and produced by the duo. No major label was involved. I'm not mentioning it because it's what makes this album remarkable. I'm mentioning it because I think this is what makes this album great. Mainstream rap is clogged with excess and extravagances, but this polished without being ornate. Bonus points for the humility as well; most mainstream rap gravitates to statements of grandiosity, and while I know that trash talking is a viable element of the art form, once you get an album contract you have to deviate from that subject matter. Macklemore will admit he has problems, owns up to his alcoholism, stands up to homophobia, and, allegedly, only has twenty dollars in his pocket.


The Mars Volta - Noctourniquet

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala have come a long way since leaving El Paso in a van with At the Drive-In at age seventeen. This album may represent the band coming full circle, in their own strange way. When it was in production, Rodriguez-Lopez described Noctourniquet as "just future punk!" He also was willing to relinquish some creative control, which he has had a notoriously tight grip on previously. This is stripped down, with mostly standard length songs, no ornate horn sections, no ambient buzzing, no five movement suites. Most of the weirdness, and in fact, most of the sounds in general, are electronically generated, and the intricate drum beats, I suppose, make this their dubstep phase.

When I saw the Mars Volta in 2011, they were a minimal five-piece, with one of the members only using a MacBook to make sounds of some variety. Cedric was running around stage, dancing with the mic stand, doing backflips, and at one point tried to rip his shirt off, but for the most part they were subdued. Omar was motionless, the top button on his shirt buttoned, concentrated on picking out the intricate polyrhythms on his left-handed guitar. At this year's Coachella reunion of At the Drive-In, reports indicate, there was no rocking, no thrashing, the energy they brought to the stage as teenagers wasn't there anymore. Being the Mars Volta seems to be taxing on everybody involved. It's been eleven years since De-Loused In the Comatorium, and with every year my hopes that we're going to get another one of those diminishes a little more. This year I think I was willing to put them down for good. But I'm glad for the output from this duo on the last two decades, including this fine piece of whacky craftsmanship.


And speaking of bands in their dubstep phase...

Muse - The 2nd Law

Yes, all you die-hard Muse fans are going to hate me for recognizing this one. It's like the bastard child that should be locked in the closet and fed fish heads and residue from the gruel pot. Say what you will, but this concept-ish album about entropy may be the band's finest effort. Sure, the title suite is a little, well, dubsteppy. They were always trying to be epic, they always had dense carpet of sound going on. Even the haters have to admit, there is some solid guitar work and impressive vocals on this album. Every band has that album when they are at or past the apex of their stardom and puts out their "mature" effort, and I think for Muse, this is that album. Not that it's a bad thing at all. It's much more carefully constructed than The Resistance, and the musicianship is better than even on Absolution. Just don't let the whole entropy thing bum you out.


Check back soon for PowerTier II

The 2012 Album Awards Show Pregame Festivities!

I think I listened to a lot of music this year. During the long, protracted, kick in the balls that was 2012, there was a soundtrack of passably good music with a couple of standouts playing in the background. This is where that music gets recognized.

I spent a lot of time anticipating making this, but once I got into the process, it was terrifying. What if I snubbed some albums, what if I overrated some? Will I lose friends over this? Will I get a severed horse's head on my pillow? The answer to all of those questions is probably yes.

So here's how this works. The top 12 are in their own PowerTier. (Since this is 2012 I suppose that could be #PowerTier, but it's not because hashtags are Ragtime and I'm a classically trained pianist in 1910's Atlanta.) Everything else is grouped into PowerTiers, which can range in size from one album to infinity albums. Outside of PowerTier I albums are not ranked with respect to other albums within their own PowerTier. Albums in the same PowerTier deserve roughly around the same level of recognition, in the eyes of the Ozone Shack.

Of course, there's the disclaimer that this is entirely my opinion. I am not ranking these albums on how they correspond to the Ideal Platonic Universe of Good Music. There is no such thing. The world is only what we make of it.

PowerTier VIII - The Benghazi Coverups
David Byrne & St. Vincent - Love this Giant
Good Old War - Come Back as Rain
State Radio - Rabbit Inn Rebellion
Chiddy Bang - Breakfast
Titus Andronicus - Local Business
The Vaccines - Come of Age
Bad Books - II

PowerTier VII - The Eastwood Debates

Tame Impala - Lonerism
Psychedelic trip-rock that might have been trying to sound a little too much like late-era Beatles, especially in Kevin Parker's vocals. I mean, even the color scheme of the cover is evocative of Abbey Road.


Gojira - L'enfant Sauvage
I guess the French can shred. This was the soundtrack while I did Christmas shopping at the Half Price Bookstore in Berkeley. I got some pretty angry gifts.


The Cult - Choice of Weapon
Post-punk meets classic rock with the epic sensibilities of a prog outfit.


The Maccabees - Given to the Wild
This spacey, well crafted rock made one of my monthly bike rides to K Mart for overpriced cleaning supplies and RC Cola much more bearable. Also, they used Andy Goldsworthy art for the cover, which is bonus points in my book.


The XX - Coexist
I heard about this one on NPR. NP-fucking-R! Where's my tote bag?


Godspeed You! Black Emperror - Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
The band who already gave us too many exclamation marks gives us too more. This is good music to listen to while you are playing Civilization IV on Ambien. In my personal experience anyway. The Sumerian fighter planes kicked my ass though.


PowerTier VI - The Rookie Quarterbacks

Deftones - Koi No Yokan
One kind of sludge that even Captain Planet can get behind!


The Tallest Man on Earth - There's no Leaving Now
The sophomore effort of Swedish singer-songwriter Kristian Matssen offers a richer and more diversified sonic texture. This was a pretty good year for Norse outfits, as we'll find out later.


Circa Survive - Violent Waves
Where will this album fit into the Great Taxonomy of the World? I'm not sure. Like the Ozone Shack, it will probably end up in the miscellaneous pile.


The Shins - Port of Morrow
I purposely underrated this. Maybe because I was waiting for it for so long, or maybe because I know that Pitchfork overrated it (although I have no intention of giving them more traffic by finding out). This once groundbreaking group is settling into their comfortable middle period.


Ian Anderson - Thick as a Brick 2
The follow up chronicling the last thirty years of one of rock n' roll's favorite conceptees, Gerald Bostock. Jethro Tull has aged relatively well. Maybe a little depressing, but so is the fate of rock n' roll.


Anathema - Weather Systems
Symphonic prog metal with guitar textures that sort of remind me of Joey Eppard's style with the edge taken off. Good for implacable nostalgia and a vague sense of emotional dissatisfaction


Tier V - The Joseph Gordon-Levitts

Neon Trees - Picture Show
Well I'll be damned if this isn't my second guiltiest pleasure of the year. Also, their drummer is hot.


Matisyahu - Spark Seeker
Christian Rock is a multibillion dollar industry and generates mostly bland garbage. Jewish reggae is confined to a handful of artists and has a consistently better output. What can I say, God's chosen people.


The Big Pink - Future This
Ok, this looks like it's shaping up to be the Guilty Pleasure PowerTier. But I like music for the way it sounds, not what it sounds like. Yeah, this album is a little electronic hipstery. Actaully, I don't know if it does, that's just what somebody said once. I think his favorite band is Pennywise, so his judgment is questionable.


Isis - Temporal
A fantastic mix of thrash and prog metal textures. This collection of unreleased demos from the band's career  highlight's what made them such a dynamic act.


The Lumineers - The Lumineers
The latest toast of the neo-folk movement serves up forty two minutes of catchy melodies and heavy pickin'.


Rush - Clockwork Angels
Geddy Lee, Neil Pert, Eric Lifesen. One of the power trio of power trios (the other two being Cream and the Jimmy Hendrix Experience), Rush should have burned out a long time ago. But after their synthesizer era and being reduced to a gag in I Love You, Man, Rush is still up and kicking with Clockwork Angels.


Plants and Animals - The End of That
I can't decide if this is alternative rock or just rock. Or are they just the same thing now? Like Rush, they're also Canadian. This is good music for staring at storm drain runoff cutting through a sandbank on the beach and thinking about the disparity between human time and geological time.


Minus the Bear - Infinity Overhead
This one is good for watching pelicans on their fall migration. They look like organic WWII bombers (pelicans, not Minus the Bear).


Power Tier IV - The Higgs Bosons

Passion Pit - Gossamer
A surprisingly sophisticated album for a band whose name is a euphemism for vagina. (I was going to use "Take a Walk" for the sample, but let's face it, you've already heard it.)


Grizzly Bear - Shields
Before I gave this a listen, I was thinking "pff, ok, Grizzly Bear, this'll be interesting." But by some divine miracle, obnoxious stubble didn't appear on my face, and an American Spirit didn't appear in my hand. Sometimes the thick textures in the slower songs still bother me, but I'm willing to look the other way.


Chromatics - Kill for Love
It's not hard to get lost in the haunting beauty of this electric tapestry. Extra ballerness points for opening with a Neil Young cover.


Hot Chip - In Our Heads
Britain's weirdest semi-mainstream band reloads with another fantastic release, possibly their best yet. Eight years ago, they were claiming to be a sighted Stevie Wonder, and now they claim the world is no longer round. Yep, not much has changed, except for maybe higher production values.


Nightmare River Band - Last Goodbye
Underground Punk/Bluegrass/Country band drops their horn section for what is, regrettably, a sophomore slump after their fantastically bizarre Call the Cops!! Am I disappointed? Maybe. But not too much. We're lucky to have them.

Special Honorable Mentions
Before we go on to PowerTier III, I want to take time to mention two albums

Album that I'm Mentioning to Make It Seem Like I Get It: Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan
But really, I don't.

You with me?

Check back soon for PoerTiers III, II, and the top 12 Albums of 2012!