Focused on the Music, Vol. 2

Top 75 New Albums of 2012.


Part II -- Numbers 60-51:


60. North American Tour (EP)
Kylie Minogue

This is an interesting little EP from someone not to be found heretofore in our library.  None of the material on it is new, it was released almost simultaneously with a full-length Greatest Hits set but contains none of that material in its original form, going instead with either stripped-down acoustic or live versions of five of Minogue's biggest radio hits.

We get the acoustic treatment, if included as bonus material to the full-length album or if singles were released form it  -- neither of which happened here. Playing out the string on a contract maybe?

Regardless, it's got some decent material on it. There's a slow-tempo jazzed version of Can't Get You Out of My Head (165) that goes beyond the standard acoustic strip down and throws in some keyboards and strings, clearly making it the standout track. At the other end of the spectrum, Kylie appeared to be channeling her inner Selena with the opening of Better than Today. Seriously, listen to the first ten seconds of this and tell us you don't expect the first words out of her mouth to be, "Bidi bidi bom bom".

Overall her voice gets pretty thin at the higher end of the register, particularly on the three live tracks. This is an intriguing EP for completionists but the casual or non-fan can pass it right by and pick up the full-length Greatest Hits album or realize that if this is the best, it's probably why he or she doesn't own any of the rest of her catalogue.



59. Kisses on the Bottom
Paul McCartney

Everyone has to do a standards album eventually, right?

Sir Paul waited about ten years too long.  His voice is just terrible.

This appeared to be the perfect vehicle for McCartney, smoothly crooning through the Great American Songbook (think No More Lonely Nights-type vocals), the perfect match of his melodic voice with Phil Ramone-produced composition.

What we get is very solid instrumentation, superb arrangements and great tempo overlaid by very weak vocals. Whether McCartney was just not comfortable with the material or if his voice really is that shot, the only song on which he sounded halfway decent was one of the two original tracks, My Valentine, (73).

It is incomprehensible to us that of the two remaining Beatles, Paul would have the lower-ranked album in any year. But, as you'll see in a few albums, there we have it.



58. After Hours
Glen Frey

Like we said, everyone has to do one of these eventually, right?

Frey neither destroys nor elevates any of these 14 songs but delivers an effortless vocal performance that holds its own with the best of them. With a stripped-down minimalism to the arrangements, he succeeds in creating a warm, intimate album of some of the most well-known numbers of all time. The result is the quintessential background album for a romantic dinner.

Despite the inclusion of one of our most-hated songs of all time in Route 66, the smoky seduction of The Look of Love and the rare gem Here's to Life more than compensate for that misstep of selection and, if we have to be honest, we find this recording of 66 to be amongst the most tolerable we've ever heard.

Frey declares this to be an homage to the music of his parents and is happy to have been able to record it before their passing. Mom and dad will be proud.

Our favorite track: For Sentimental Reasons.



57. Fanatic
Heart

There are a number of older artists whose music we have come to a late appreciation of. The music Bob Dylan, Robert Plant and Willie Nelson, among others, have put out over the last ten years has been some of their best and we thoroughly enjoy it. This is generally in line with most industry critics, who agree that their late-career stuff is more solid than what most folks are putting out at this place on the career arc. We don't really like their older stuff though though, which is of course what made them famous in the first place. It's an odd late-career "surgence", if you will, as we were never on board the original wave.

Heart of the late 1980's was the same way for us. We loved their eponymous LP, Bad Animals and Brigade but never really cared for their older material. Heart traditionalists would be agasp, we know, as clearly their late '80's stuff was a lot more polished and even poppy on occasion and these folks generally hated this period of the band's history. It's our preference for that period that drops this album to where it sits. Fans of their "classic" period will rate this much higher.

The traditionalists absolutely get their day here, in this lean 10-song collection which comes in at just under 40 minutes. This is vintage-sounding Heart, although in an odd move, the lead single, Walkin' Good, features...Sarah McLachlin? Yeah, we think it's weird too, but it works. Second single Fanatic rocks hard and is more indicative of the album as a whole, though our favorite track is Pennsylvania.



56. Under Fire
Green River Ordinance

We were turned onto these guys when we stumbled across their 2010 EP The Morning Passengers. It had a stripped down, Indie Rock/Texas Folk vibe to it and was a great little album.

This time the guys went for a bigger, more commercial sound and while we're sure it provided higher sales, it didn't necessarily make for a better record. They went from a band with a distinctive voice to sounding like Augustana  -- or in other words, like one indistinguishable from about a thousand other bands out there.

The album's high points come when they keep it simple, as on Love Laid Down, where they break out the banjo, and the absolutely stunning San Antone, (59). However, they come perilously close to Coldplay territory a couple of times, particularly on Heart of the Young, and that is never, ever a good thing, even if you are actually Coldplay.

We understand the need to generate sales and we hope this is just a temporary artistic detour for a very promising Ft. Worth band.



55. Ringo 2012
Ringo Starr

We were jonesing pretty hard for new music the week this came out. We had no iTunes pre orders delivered and were somewhat disappointed with the previous week's offerings so, in a moment of musical desperation, we bought this album. And you know what -- it wasn't half-bad.

It's Ringo -- the crazy uncle who's always good for a laugh. He's never going to offend; he'll keep the conversation going and will provide the comic relief at the post-funeral reception.

Ringo's not McCartney or Lennon and he knows it. So he doesn't try to be. He's musical Grisham. In today's music world, that honesty and self-awareness is refreshing.

Our favorite track: In Liverpool, (69).



54. It All Led to This
Scala & Kolacny Brothers

We first heard this Belgian choir when their song Our Last Fight (included on this album) was featured during season 3 of Sons of Anarchy. They are best-known for reimaging popular songs in choral form. The effect is pretty cool and the voices are always impeccable.

Where this album fails is in its song selection. It just happens that The Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Foo Fighters and Coldplay are amongst our least-favorite bands ever. The You Oughta Know remake is redundant, once Alanis Morissette released the acoustic Grammy performance of the song (which scared the shit out of every male viewer).

They put a nice spin on Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence but at several points on the album, the pianist misses notes. Seeing as how it was the only accompanying instrument, we don't see how these missteps could not have been easily edited out. In any event, the poor song selection made it impossible for us to ever really get into this record.



53. Sun
Cat Power

Chan Marshall took six years to make this album. During that time, she battled addiction, went through a gruesome breakup and obsessed over every single detail of the self-produced project -- at one point completely throwing everything out and starting over.

Interestingly though, instead of putting out an album in which she dumps all that shit all over us, she instead points the camera outward and offers a detailed take on the world she sees around her.

This album takes a few plays to grow on the listener, as it so differs from the depression-fueled introspection of everything else in her catalogue. The change is intriguing. While she walks the tightrope of overproduction (we hear the dreaded auto-tune on a couple of songs), this labor of love reveals something new to us with each play and with six more months' listening, would probably be a good 20 spots higher on this countdown.

Our favorite track: The past-repeats-itself/quit your bitching anthem, Ruin, (17).



52. Slipstream
Bonnie Raitt

By this point in her career, we'd like to see Bonnie Raitt record more material she writes herself. She's proven she can, with a Number One song (Nick of Time) and several other quality tunes sprinkled throughout her catalogue. On this album she only had one lyric credit (and is listed third, at that). While she uses some of her regular songwriters, she also throws in two Dylan covers and remakes Gerry Rafferty's Right Down the Line, with a reggae bent. Unfortunately, the conversion of "...woman, Right Down...", to "...Oooh Ba-by, Right Down..." is poorly executed and turns the song from a fresh update to a grating annoyance.

There are some high points, such as the splendid Not Cause I Wanted To (35) but we can't help but deduct for not writing any of the material herself.



51. Love is a Four Letter Word
Jason Mraz

We really got suckered into buying this album. We rarely buy singles, unless there is no album or if we know we're never going to buy the album because of the artist.

This was the case when we bought the song, "Lucky", which featured not one but two artists whose albums we'd never buy. Still, we really liked Jason Mraz's and (we can't believe we're actually tying this) Colbie Caillat's vocal arrangements and picked it up at the iTunes store.

Then the first single of this album, I Won't Give Up came out and we figured, what the hell.  Maybe dude has turned a corner and we can get into him. Then the second, The Freedom Song, was released, with proceeds going to Gulf Hurricane relief efforts.  Always being suckers for music-as-charity, we scooped it up. At that point, we figured we may as well just get the whole thing.

It's a little poppy for our tastes and the live version of The World As I See It actually made us throw up in our mouth a little bit it was so schmaltzy, but Mraz sprinkles in the occasional good lyric and generally avoids the singer-songwriter trap of an inflated sense of self-importance, with lyrics such as when he asks himself, "Are you begging for attention/Or do you love the one you've found?", on "5/6".

In the end, it's about what you'd expect from a Jason Mraz album and it didn't really change our view that the best thing about him is all the MILFs that show up for his concerts.

We really like cycling past the arena on those nights.

Our favorite track: You Fckn Did It*
*Included on the deluxe version of the album.



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