The 10 Best Albums of 2012 (So Far)

I still have no idea how to describe Open Your Heart, other than it sounds like the exuberant offspring of the Buzzcocks, Jesus Lizard, the Replacements, Sonic Youth, and about a thousand other bands from the 1970s and 1980s, but I do know that it's the perfect soundtrack to a messy punk-rock party.

Sharon Van Etten's expressive, vulnerable voice float above most of the spacious, airy songs on her sophomore release, Tramp, which was produced by the National's Aaron Dessner. But her words are refreshingly direct ("You’re the reason why I’ll move to the city/Or why I’ll need to leave”), and she sounds more confident than she did only two years earlier, on 2010's Epic, which could be described as Angst Presented by Xanax. It's a major step-up for one of indie rock's most talented up-and-comers.

Here's what I said when this album came out last month:

Here are but a few words that have been used to describe Fiona Apple’s first album in seven years: focused, refined, perfectly sequenced, exquisitely rendered, thrilling, emotionally ravaged glory, wonderfully jarring, and essential 2012 listening. I lied: those are all from a single review, from the Los Angeles Times. Idler Wheel has reduced critics to blubbering piles of adjectives and high praises, and with good reason: it’s a nearly perfect album. It’s riveting, raw, self-loathingly honest, daring, claustrophobic yet allows room for interpretation, violent...see, there I go.

And it's only gotten better with time. 2012's best comeback story?

Usually when a rapper talks about how "real" they are, I think they're anything but. If you were "real," you wouldn't care about your realness. Killer Mike is the exception to the rule. When he spits, "I don't make dance music, this is R.A.P/Opposite of the sucker sh*t they play on T.V," it's impossible to not take him seriously. Killer Mike raps with such a terrifyingly determined flow — with assistance from El-P's merciless production — that you wouldn't want to be the guy who calls him out. R.A.P. Music is Fear of a Black Planet for a new generation.

It's not fair. A 20-year-old, a 20-year-old from OHIO, shouldn't be able to create something as good as Attack on Memory. But Dylan Baldi, who is, yes, 20 years old, pulled off the near unthinkable by first hiring Steve Albini to engineer his third album, which you can tell from the first pound of the drums, and then ditching his lo-fi pop-punk past to make something more professional. It's no less urgent than his former one-take-and-let's-move-on songs, but that urgency is assisted by his heavy-hitting, hungry band, remarkable hooks, strained voice, and a goal of wanting to make something great. Mission accomplished. When you turn 21, Baldi, first beer's on me.