2012: The Year in Random Thoughts & Obsessions

Forget those Best Of / Top 20 / Hot Lists, here’s my year’s worth of musings:

The best music snap of the year (above). Comes from a Berlin disco. Found on the Twitter page of Stana Katic, who’s one-half of the TV show, Castle, which my family can tell you I’m senselessly, annoyingly addicted to. It’s Moonlighting with Canadians! It’s awesome. And, yes, this does make me realize that the internet is high school. Now, if someone would just remake Remington Steele…

My Fleet Foxes fixation continues unabated. Old stuff, new stuff, it doesn’t matter. It’s like I’ve become oddly attracted to Crosby or Stills or Nash (which one’s which?). In one of my favorite movies of the year, “Your Sister’s Sister”, Emily Blunt and Mark Duplass name drop the Foxes. I was so excited, I squealed on the inside and thought about them for the rest of the movie.

Fiona Apple is a bonafide torch singer, and if you cross her she will light that torch and stick it up your sorry a**! Unstable, brilliant, painfully vivid, awesome. ‘Hot Knife’ is just crazy good. Makes me dream of Alvin Ailey dancers in motion across a shiny black stage.

With his upswept ‘do, baby skin and wife beaters, Justin Bieber’s lesbian-chic androgyny is strangely fascinating.

If Cat Power battled Feist, who would win the chance to drop kick Lana Del Rey’s ass?

On iTunes, what’s the difference between Alternative and Indie?

The most wonderful Angry White Man is back! I’m so glad to see you, Bob Mould!

Frank Ocean – meandering, unfinished, falsetto doodles… yawn. What am I missing here???

Since everyone – Fun, The Belle Brigade, Best Coast – seems to be channeling Fleetwood Mac these days, it was inevitable. A Fleetwood Mac reunion tour 2013! Yes! Worship at the sky high heels of Stevie. We’re getting the band back together!

Lumineers? Decemberists? Lumineers? Decemberists? Can’t tell the difference. Like ’em both.

Green Day appearing on the Twilight: Breaking Dawn OST surely is the final nail in their coffin, n’est pas? Now go away until some kind of reunion in 2018.

Singles I enjoyed this year, even though some of them are old:

‘I Know What I Am’ by Band of Skulls

‘Solitude is Bliss’ by Tame Impala

‘Pumped Up Kicks’ by Foster the People

‘Mykonos’ by Fleet Foxes, xxxxx, call me 😉

‘Satan’ by Beast

‘Nightlight’ by Little Dragon

‘UMI Says’ by Mos Def

‘Gangnam Style’ by Psy (come on, it is irresistible)

Favorite albums 2012:

Jack White’s Blunderbuss

Fiona Apple’s Idler Wheel…

The Black Keys’ El Camino (technically released at end of 2011 but hey)

Texans of the Year:

San Saba County

Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears – follow Joe on Twitter, he tweets entire Cowboys’ games. Hilarious!

So call me mainstream, I’m still not tired of Adele and I keep the new Taylor Swift on even after I’ve dropped off EO and YO at swim training.

Rihanna just bugs me. They say she does it her way but I’m seeing no self respect.

When I dip a toe in to dance music I enjoy Morgan Page and the gloomy glam of The Presets, who are so deliciously Depeche Mode, it hurts in a sweet, angsty way.

The guy I’m digging & rediscovering at the moment: Willie Nelson. He sounds fantastic on “Live & Kickin”. Makes me homesick.

In this digital day and age is it really necessary to deny Hong Kong Spotify and Pandora? There is a border between us and the Communists, but I can’t do anything about the pirates.

So many folk-pop, California mellow, girl-boy duos – Tennis, Best Coast, Teen Dream – so little time. Or interest.

Rufus Wainwright’s “Out of the Game” doesn’t hit the highs of “Release The Stars” but I’ll take it all the same.

Mumford & Sons = The Pogues x Coldplay – Elvis Costello with even more points deducted because Jake Gyllenhaal joined you guys on tour.

Saint Etienne are either celebrating pure pop like Kylie or subverting the genre in some kind of Pet Shop-Blondie mash-up. This kind of thing works really well in the UK. Too fey for the US I’m afraid.

I want to write like a Radiohead song: compact, intense, perfect.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from therockmom x