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(All week we’re counting down the top 50 albums of 2012. )

10. Dirty Projectors, Swing Lo Magellan

Beloved and respected for their irreverent approach to pop music, Dirty Projectors broke out even further this year on Swing Lo Magellan, following up on the relative mainstream success of 2009’s Bitte Orca.  Touring, producing short films, and putting out an album that just happens to contain two or three of the year’s best songs is all in a day’s work for Dave Longstreth and Company, who demonstrate not just how far they’ve come, but how much further they’ll yet go on this unique and listenable album. -TH

9. Tame Impala, Lonerism

Our #1 Psychedelic album of 2012 has been universally lauded by critics and fans, and so it’s hard to come up with anything to say about it that hasn’t already been said.  I could praise the pop genius that shines through on nearly every track.  I could champion the marvelous production by master Dave Fridmann which somehow makes the record sound as if it was simultaneously recorded in 1967 and 2012.  I could gush over the mysterious way that Tame Impala frontman Kevin Parker makes music that is both comfortingly retro and daringly experimental.  Or I could just tell you to listen to Lonerism.  I’m going to choose that last one.  -LVL

8. Flying Lotus, Until the Quiet Comes

After the density of 2010’s landmark with a capital “L” Cosmogramma (and the excellent EP Pattern & Grid World), Steven Ellison had no choice but to scale back. Nobody told him to create an album so beautifully jazz-influenced and concentrated on the human dream, an album that he describes as for a child floating above the world, seeing everything happen below. Ellison uses culturally recognizable voices as sample instruments more and better than ever on Until the Quiet Comes, from the falsetto of Thom Yorke to the neo-soul of Erykah Badu. The melancholic blippy bliss of “Putty Boy Strut” is the most danceable moment on an otherwise down-tempo album that’s best suited for the moments before the listener’s actual descent into a dream world, one in which he or she too ascends above the rest. -JM

7. Sharon Van Etten, Tramp

Different from her previous illustrated covers, the cover of Sharon Van Etten’s third full-length is a stark and natural black and white photograph. Confident to show the world her true self, Tramp is SVE at her most brutal and musical. With her obsessively self-aware sadness always on the forefront, Tramp would be a challenging record to finish if it weren’t so bittersweet and alive. One of the finest songwriters and performers of her generation, Sharon Van Etten is the best answer to anyone sexist enough to disagree that chicks rock. But, really? -PTL

6. Grizzly Bear, Shields

Like the consummate pros they are at this point, Grizzly Bear released in September what would undoubtedly serve as the soundtrack to everyone’s fall and winter of 2012. Strewn with bright, shining brass, smoldering bass notes and a whirlwind of strings, Shields is a gorgeous record awash in doubt, seeking solace in the unknowable.  To Grizzly Bear’s credit, there are only a handful of bands that are able to elevate the weightiness they tackle here with such a light, deft hand.  This is a record best listened to alone, at night, or any time the wind is rattling your windows. -TH

5. Cloud Nothings, Attack on Memory

At 25, I’m just now realizing that life hasn’t changed much since high school. Not sure if that will change as I enter the next phase of adulthood, but at least Attack on Memory lets me acknowledge (and bask) in my angst. Perfect thrash guitars over a humongous Steve Albini produced rhythm section conjure rollercoaster feelings of both yesterday and today. Ironically, it’s nearly impossible to divorce the power of Attack on Memory from the memories themselves. Then again, that’s probably the point. -PTL

4. Ty Segall, Slaughterhouse/Twins

This is how stars are born. Ty Segall is one of the most promising artists in rock and roll since the garage boom of the early-Aughts, which gave us The Strokes and The White Stripes, among many others. Like those bands, Segall commands a presence, be it on these two fantastically schizophrenic records, on a Los Angeles soundstage or at The Empty Bottle. Unlike those bands, Segall and friends do it on their own, without the support of a major label and a somewhat functioning music industry, all for the love of huge guitars and midnight freak-outs. These records are the only entry of the top five that you can play for your father, granted your father has ever blasted Zeppelin’s “The Ocean” on repeat. Here’s a hint: he has. -PTL

3. Kendrick Lamar, Good Kid: M.A.A.D City

There was a time when stars were simply born. Some A&R guy in a dank club caught sight on your act one night and boom!, your face and your records were everywhere.  Now, thanks to the myth-making machine that is the internet, stars emerge more gradually, and when they do, they tend to emerge fully grown.    Kendrick Lamar’s star began rising last year with Section.80, an iTunes-only studio LP that, while uneven, hinted at the genius to come.  He then went from prospect to sure-thing on Drake’s Take Care, where his performance of “Buried Alive Interlude” placed him as the rightful heir to Andre 3000.  Then, after a promising early 2012 in which he delivered the verse of the year on Schoolboy Q’s “Blessed” and provided us with the excellent one-off “Cartoons and Cereal,” Kendrick dropped his masterpiece.  Containing virtually every style of rap music in circulation today, Good Kid: M.A.A.D City is as comprehensive as it is contagiously catchy.  Blending Native Tongues feelgoodery with Dre-era P-funk, Kendrick takes us through a virtual hip-hop hall-of-fame, one where all the plaques are of him.   Good Kid: M.A.A.D City is nothing short of a summation of where hip-hop has been and where it is today. Let’s hope that wherever it’s going, Kendrick Lamar is going with it.  -LVL

2. Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do

For Fiona Apple’s first album in seven years, it not only stacks up to her previous releases, but may even surpass them. After more orchestrated works,  The Idler Wheel is comparatively minimal in instrumentation, complimented by her manic and tortured vocals. While overall a brutally honest album, she exposes her wit as much as her heart, with clever lyricism intertwined with her unconventional song structures. -AH

1. Frank Ocean, channel ORANGE

How smooth is Frank Ocean? He’s so smooth that one year after dropping anostensibly heterosexual panty-dropper of a mixtape (Nostalgia, ULTRA) he declared that his first true love was a man.  He’s so smooth that his guest verse on the Jay-Z/Kanye West song “No Church in the Wild” is the featured slice on the trailer for the forthcoming Hollywood version of The Great Gatsby. He’s so smooth that he’s written songs for Beyonce and Bieber, so smooth that when honey-voiced heartthrob John Mayer appears on his major label debut channel ORANGE, he doesn’t even sing. He’s so smooth that on his song “Forrest Gump,” he sings from the point of view of Jenny –and it’s not cheesy.  If Ocean were an ocean, he’d be the Pacific Ocean, his protean voice and whipped cream slow jams the epitome of calm and tranquility. And if the hallmark of celebrity culture is its shallowness, Ocean’s rise from obscurity to GQ Man of the Year speaks to his depth. -KLM

The Final List:

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