Best of 2012, part 3

It is now New Year's Eve and time to complete the top 10 of 2012. Here is the upper half of that list.

5. American Hollow: Last Dream Before Dawn
(Album: Screaming into the Void)

We continue our American tour with American Hollow, a group from Salt Lake City that formed only four years ago and released their debut album Whisper Campaign in 2010. The prog metal album sounded more than just a little monotonous to me, but this year's new EP Screaming into the Void contains much more varied styles and moods. The second track of the EP, Last Dream Before Dawn even reminds me of Blackfield's best, most melodic output. The song cannot be found in YouTube, but here are links to both Spotify and, for those who don't use that service, also to the group's web page:



American Hollow - Last Dream Before Dawn (web page link)

4. Echolyn: Locust to Bethlehem
(Album: Echolyn)

Our American tour concludes in Pennsylvania, at Echolyn headquarters. Their excellent, self-titled new album was released in June and contains several highlights, one of which is this beautiful song. At its beginning, the guitar and drums give the listener a nice set of false expectations. What begins sounding like a mellow blues rock track, builds up to a memorable art rock piece with big sounds and even string arrangements to boot. Unfortunately, I cannot find the entire track anywhere to link here, but there is a 90-second sample in iTunes (link to Finnish iTunes below, change to your home country if you live elsewhere) and under it, there is also a short YouTube snippet from the recording session of the song's string sequences.

90-second sample in iTunes



3. Muse: Save Me
(Album: The 2nd Law)

One of the year's most pleasant surprises was the British art rock band Muse, whose latest album The 2nd Law contained a couple of truly exceptional highlights. The real pinnacle is Save Me, which achieves perfection in the melody-driven guitar rock/pop genre. It is the highest ranking, shall we say regular piece of music on the list before we ascend to new heights. The best two tracks are Art with a capital A, music that will hopefully be remembered for decades to come. This is not to say the Muse's achievement isn't absolutely  great as well, its greatness is just slightly different.



2. Sigur Rós: Valtari
(Album: Valtari)

The Icelandic art rock group Sigur Rós is the only artist to appear twice in the top 10. Their new album's title track is a lengthy ambient instrumental that contains immense power. Rarely has a composition so perfectly reflected the cover of the album it is taken from. The desolate, somehow arctic looking seascape tinged in filthy green and slightly out of focus is the kind of an image that the cold sounding, yet unbelievably beautiful melody brings to mind. Most of its running time, Valtari just runs rings around itself - not attempting to go anywhere, but enjoying its staying power instead. Valtari is one of those rare recordings in popular music that elevates from mere entertainment to an artistic work of the highest calibre.



1. Storm Corrosion: Drag Ropes
(Album: Storm Corrosion)

Anticipating a heavy prog metal album and then hearing this as its opening track was one of those all too infrequent moments that are the artistic equivalent of being hit on the head with a large wooden board. When hearing it, I was under the mistaken impression that Steven Wilson's creativity had not been peaking recently, which made hearing this unbelievable masterpiece all the more surprising. Wish I were surprised like this more often. The 9 minute, 47 second song is very close to my 10-minute maximum limit and represents a musical style that is really difficult to pin down. And just look at this beautiful video that has been made to support the song and its message. Incredible. Year's best in every way.



Like I wrote in the first part of this story, my favourite long (over 10-minute) song or composition of 2012 is Speaking in Lampblack by Echolyn. Let's embed it below as well, for comparison, as it happens to be available in YouTube. Paradoxically, at 10 minutes and 45 seconds it is only 58 seconds longer than Drag Ropes, yet gets classified as a longer work due to the 10-minute limit having been crossed. Check out both, and you will have listened to 20 minutes of very best music released this year.



It should be fairly obvious, based on these lists, that my favourite artists this year have been 1. Echolyn, 2. Storm Corrosion, and 3. Sigur Rós. I would have to place Echolyn to number one spot, because the level of greatness is most consistent on their album. Storm Corrosion and Sigur Rós are very close to each other in this respect.

There is now also a Spotify playlist available containing as many of the listed songs as possible. Not everything listed here is available in Spotify, so I cannot call it "Best of 2012", let's simply call it "2012 Highlights". It will also contain some songs and compositions that did not quite make it to the list, but which to my mind are also very good and worth a listen.