Well here we are, another year come and gone. It was a shitty year for most things, but one thing that didn't disappoint was the music scene, which delivered several out-of-the-park albums, so I thought for our last show of the year we'd go through 2012 and have a platter of some of the best tracks, right here at Klen House. My love of Swans is old hat by now, their album Soundtracks for the Blind among my favorite, if not my absolute favorite, album of all time, but it bears repeating that this year's offering The Seer is mind-blowingly good, album of the year easily. Goat's "Goathead" is precisely what I imagined Jimi Hendrix sounded like when I was a kid before I actually heard his work. I was eventually disappointed by Jimi, but Goat fries like no other, one of the most cracked guitarlines I've heard in a long time. Cate le Bon reminds me a bit of a modern-day Nico, something that could easily fall into obnoxious hipster irrelevance but she skirts the line quite well, think Nico singing one of John Cale's better albums, Paris 1919 perhaps. Howlin' Rain's newest album has a serious Guns 'n Roses vibe for me, their later, pompously epic stuff like Use Your Illusion or Chinese Democracy, really it's the album Democracy should have been, gloriously huge and screaming toward the stratosphere. Keep freaky, listeners, and see you next year.
1. Swans - Avatar (from The Seer)
2. Goat - Goathead (from World Music)
3. Cate le Bon - Cyrk (from Cyrk)
4. Hexvessel - Woods to Conjure (from No Holier Temple)
5. Ergo Phizmiz - Ophelia (from Eleven Songs)
-Commercial: Vitalis-
6. Howlin' Rain - Phantom in the Valley (from The Russian Wilds)
7. Red River Dialect - Appleseed (from Allupontheway)
8. Matthew Dear - Earthforms (from Beams)
9. Gold Motel - Cold Shoulders (from Gold Motel)
10. Would You Be My Love - Ty Segall (from Twins)
Got two addendums today, a couple amazing songs that didn't make the show because they were too damn long. Up first is Epizootics! from the always incredible Scott Walker's new album Bish Bosch, which is most certainly on my top 10 list for this year...
And second is a mammoth slice of proggy goodness from Motorpsycho from their new album The Death-Defying Uniform. Prepare yourself for the void!
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