Pop Culture Resolutions and Anticipations for 2012: From Matthew Dear to Murakami to Mr. Show

Thanks to the Internet’s love affair with The List, turning over a new leaf into a new year has become, shall we say, blogally laborious. That said, I’ve yet to meet the pop culture freak or geek who would walk away from a chance to tally his or her bests or worsts in a public, numbered format. We’ve given you a few fond looks back at 2011 (Best Songs, Best Moments, Best Discovery … we’ve even had our own wildly would-be hit single mentioned in The Village Voice’s annual Pazz and Jop Poll), but it’s time to start looking forward, a month into this thing called 2012. Without further ado, check out our Pop Culture Resolutions, as well as three of the records we’re most looking forward to hearing in the new year (numbers 34, 54 and 55), both via The A.V. Club.

Beauty With Teeth: Gavin Castleton

Sorta cheating on this Beauty With Teeth thing, which was intended as a recurring exclusive feature on this site, but very few records better embody the out-of-favor idea that beauty in music, often maligned as the hallmark of generic appeal, can be a really, really good thing. Looping back to the missing subject of that last sentence: Gavin Castleton’s Won Over Frequency. The A.V. Club critics were recently asked to highlight the best music we’d respectively discovered in 2011, regardless of release date, and this 2010 LP was my pick.

Check it: About a third of the way down the page, over here.

A Few of Our Favorite Things, 2011: Black Lips, Stephen Colbert, Sensitive Bros, Ambient Beats…

The good people over at Friends of Friends Music, in keeping with their founding each-one-teach-one ethos, asked their friends, and friends of friends, to contribute some sort of top ten (ish) music-related list of favorites from the past year. My contribution is below, but visit the FoF site to read entries by folks like Shlohmo, Ernest Gonzales (Mexicans With Guns), Lushlife, Clive Tanaka, Low Limit, TAKE, Garth Trinidad, Shaun Koplow and Jeff Weiss.

Like most folks that’ll contribute to this project, I could do this all day. To limit a “best of” list to ten entries is the cruelest of tortures to a real music geek, but the tradition exists for a reason: namely, to ensure we all get back to work. This isn’t definitive. These are the first ten wonderful music-related things that popped into my head, but considering the breakneck evolutionary pace and exponential expansion of our chosen medium, it seems fitting to shoot from the hip.

1) Destroyer goes Kaputt: There’s absolutely nothing I don’t love immensely about this album. Am I the only one who had an unrealized, unrecognized need to meet the lovechild of Steely Dan and Sade? Aside from Destroyer’s Dan Bejar, perhaps, but at least I know I’m not totally alone.

2) The Black Lips destroy a ballroom: Mere hours after watching Jared Swilley pinwheel a guitar body into the forehead of a grateful fan at Lollapalooza, I found myself thrashing in a chic hotel ballroom to “Bad Kids” while being pelted with TP rolls and complimentary vodka drinks. \\m//  

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The Best Songs of 2011: Kurt Vile, Tune-Yards, Frank Ocean, Destroyer and many, many more

Click on Kurt. If you don’t have Spotify, you’ll be directed to download it. It’s kind of phenomenal (minus issues over fair payment for artists), so get it.

  • Is sad music always better music?
  • How many saxophones do you hear?
  • Is Beyoncé’s “Countdown” better than all 33?

 

The Best Christmas Music of All Time, Ever

The A.V. Club critics were asked to stow their cynicism in their stockings and come up with a list of holiday music we actually enjoy. Find me on page two.

Review: Italo Indies A Classic Education Release Roughed-Up Perfection on ‘Blazing’

Cool shit. Read about it. (via SPIN)

Behind the Scenes of L.A.’s Haunted Dance Fest with HARD Founder Gary Richards AKA Destructo

More behind-the-scenes business from last month’s HARD Haunted Mansion EDM festival in Los Angeles via SPIN. Further reading: yesterday’s post for the sexier stuff from HARD, and this lengthier feature on Electric Daisy Carnival (et al.) which digs into the cultural and financial capital that these events trade in.

Backstage at HARD with Skrillex, Fatboy Slim, Riff Raff, Soulwax, Rusko, Gaslamp Killer and More

Posting this nearly a month late because it’s taken that long to recover. HARD Haunted Mansion, Los Angeles’ premier Halloween (don’t-call-it-a) rave found yours truly crawling through the catacombs of the historic Shrine Auditorium with photographer Erik Voake on a quest for some truly exclusive content for SPIN. Diametrically opposed to the common sense of all involved, we were allowed into the artists’ dressing rooms to witness pre- and post-game rituals, most of which involved copious amounts of booze (duh). The article appears as a photo gallery on SPIN.com, so here it is indexed for easy access:

Baste Yr Turkey to This (#bastegod #thanksgiving)

Endless love to all friends of Phil Elverum. Happy Thanksgiving.

Breaking Out: Grouplove (+ Live SPIN Session)

I’m always the happiest when I can bring something local to the pages of SPIN. Though Grouplove’s constituent players are from all over the map, and they met on a small island in Greece, they call Los Angeles home and we’re happy to have ‘em. There’s an element of the blindly treacly in their songs, but just as beauty in music doesn’t equate to dullness, happy doesn’t always mean it sucks. Besides, there’s a decent amount of dark creeping through their stuff, so, you know, sharpen your sweet tooth or lay flat. Read the piece here, which includes footage of three songs performed at the SPIN offices. Gruesome video after the jump.

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