2012′s Overlooked Albums

It's easy to get lost in In Limbo, the promising debut from Brooklyn's TEEN. Led by Kristina "Teeny" Lieberson (with her sisters Lizzie and Katherine and friend Jane Herships), the band mixes reverbed girl-group harmonies with jangly guitars and woozy, psychedelic synths. Highlights are the album opener "Better," where Teeny defiantly asserts, "I'll do it better than anybody else, ha!" and the soothing title track, with each of the women cooing a... different layer of vocals over wavering guitars. – Laura Leebove

Seriously though, you guys: What's going on in Australia? Between Royal Headache, Total Control, Eddy Current Suppression Ring and Woollen Kits, it's as if all of Down Under is rising up to stage a new international pop overthrow. Add to that list Milk Teddy, whose latest full-length, Zingers, is a sparkling slice of jangle-pop that sprinkles the best bits of the Paisley Underground with just enough angel dust to make the colors... start to run. Gently-bobbing melodies get tangled in glistening guitars like kites in telephone lines, making for one of the year's most subtle – and subtly infectious – records. – J. Edward Keyes

Although its miasmic sense of anxiety suggested otherwise, Playin' Me was one of the heartbreak albums of the year, the seductive rush of "Come Into My Room" splintering into the unease of "Trying" and finally the devastation of "Is it Gone." This intensely soulful debut from the former queen of UK funky was as understated as it was unsettling, mixing slow-mo melodies with passages of beatless ambience to create a heady, hallucinatory... sound. It was probably unrealistic to expect such an low-key record to cross over in the Olympics year – even if it did include a cover of Coldplay's "Trouble" – but as a soundtrack to London in 2012, it suited the destabilized mood perfectly. – Amber Cowan

You'd be forgiven for thinking San Francisco songwriter Jessica Pratt's debut was some lost chestnut from the early '70s. Stark, soft and beautiful, it combines the mystery of Vashti Bunyan with the angelic wonder of Judee Sill, Pratt's gentle coo drifting over gentle guitar like a leaf down a river. Typically, music this spare and willowy can drift quickly toward the soporific. Pratt's, though, retains its sense of the strange and fantastic,... like it's being transmitted from the middle of an enchanted wood. – J. Edward Keyes

The name of Los Campesinos!'s new album, Hello Sadness, comes from a line in its title track: Frontman Gareth (all the bandmembers have adopted the surname Campesinos!) sings, "Goodbye, courage/ Hello, sadness, again," which kicks off a raucous party of Arcade Fire-level bombast, with a searing violin intertwined with a guitar solo over "ooh oooohs." In that song's chorus they all sing, "This dripping from my broken heart is never running dry."... It's a perfect example of what this group from Cardiff, Wales, does best: pair self-deprecating verses over chaotic explosions of guitars, horns, strings and glockenspiel. Their songs are accounts of lust, heartbreak and awkward romantic encounters, and Sadness – the group's first effort in almost two years – is on par with their best work. The chorus of "Life is a Long Time" laments, "You know it starts pretty rough and ends up even worse." But it's hard to imagine things getting worse when the album begins with Gareth hooking up with a girl who vomits on his rental tux before they make it back to her house ("By Your Hand"). Few bands could make such an incident sound so far from sad. – Laura Leebove

Manchester black metal quartet Winterfylleth combines folk and post-metal leanings with a streak of romantic nationalism and a fixation on early Anglo-Saxon history and poetry. The lyrics on their third album The Threnody of Triumph delve into Medieval traditions related to death and the afterlife. It's probably just as well that they're unintelligible though. All the real poetry is in their lovely, harsh music. Sometimes it sounds like sort of netherborn melodic... hardcore. At other times a wisp of Celtic fiddle or some deep, droning vocals underscores the folk and experimental inspirations. Wolves in the Throne Room comparisons are appropriate, but Winterfylleth deserves credit for following their own woodsy muse. – Beverly Bryan

Hurray for the Riff Raff continue to be one of our most beloved eMusic Selects alums, and their third album Look Out Mama is a reminder of why the New Orleans outfit caught our attention in the first place. Where singer/songwriter Alynda Lee Segarra's earlier releases were largely a solo act, this is a full-band affair: "Born to Win (Part One)" has a big group chorus alongside a harmonica, "Little Black Star"... is a hand-clapping gospel tune, and "Lake of Fire" is ramshackle rockabilly, complete with plenty of "shoo-wop shoo-wahs." Less acoustic strumming, more Southern twang. – Laura Leebove

Okay, so we know that this album was first released in 2011, but as that was on vinyl only and the digital release was this year, we decided to sneak it into our list – we'll take any excuse to shout about this band. Uncle Acid are a Black Sabbath-inspired “coven of freaks” (according to their label) whose second album, Blood Lust, is about a drug-crazed sadist who goes on a witch-killing... spree only to meet his own doom at the withered hand of Satan. The music sounds like Electric Wizard covering Queens of the Stone Age, with melodies that, Beatles-like, seem to inspire mass hysteria. Vinyl copies of this album sell for £700 and scratchy YouTube recordings have notched up hundreds of thousands of hits. However Uncle Acid do it — and we suspect it involves dusty books, candles and incantations of the Lord's Prayer backwards — it's impossible to resist their awesome rocking power. – Amber Cowan

We could say that French duo Lio and Marie Liminana recall all that is great about the classic sound of their country's '60s pop heyday, but that almost feels like it's selling them short. It's true: in their songs you can hear both the smoky seduction of prime Francois Hardy and the grizzled Gitanes-huffing of Serge Gainsbourg, but the Liminanas only use that music as a base. "AF3458" has the same stone-faced... chug as the best moments of Neu! or Can, and "Hospital Boogie" tie-dyes country twang until it's a swirl of colors not appearing in nature. Crystal Anis raises gooseflesh; it's as gently provocative as the tip of a feather on the back of your neck. – J. Edward Keyes

Movement is a fascinating and at times deeply disturbing album, in which Holly Herndon pulls apart sounds on a cellular level, taking forensic delight in how they can inflict acute discomfort. Her musical path began in Berlin clubs and ended with a composition degree, and Movement braids these two twisting paths into an unprizable know of conflicting impulses. Her music is a mesmerizing negotiation between propulsion and stasis. Half the time, it's... tugging coyly at your body; the other half, it's cruelly teasing your mind. Often, it's doing both. – Jayson Greene

It makes sense if you know the name Daptone Records before you know the label's artists Рthere, the retro-R&B aesthetic comes first. There are exceptions, though, and along with Sharon Jones and Antibalas, the Thomas Brenneck-led Menahan Street Band is a big one. It's telling that Menahan's second album inaugurates a new sub-label, Dunham Рclearly, these lush, full arrangements recall classic Philly soul far more than they do the James... Brown-style funk Daptone made its name on. Though Brenneck, along with everyone else in the lineup, has a hand in multiple other Daptone affiliates, the two albums with him as leader rank among the camp's most consistently rich. And just because you can hear Philly in the mix doesn't mean The Crossing is anywhere near disco. In fact, the album's second half veers into blues (the slide guitar that keynotes "Seven Is the Wind") and spaghetti western atmosphere ("Bullet for the Bagman"). Throughout, the tunes are juicy, the grooves forthright and irresistible, the instrumental d̩cor lively. Sure it's retro. But that's not nearly all it is. РMichaelangelo Matos

Few things in indie rock make me reach for my revolver quite as quickly as the neo-beardy-roots-rock-choogle-catastrophe that's been foisted on all of us over the course of the last five years or so. So an outfit called Happy Jawbone Family Band pretty much automatically has me eyeing the exit. Here's the thing, though: That name is a huge canard. No one's holding hands or quoting Skynyrd or soloing for 20 minutes... here. Instead, there's clattering kindergarten instruments, three-sheets-to-the wind vocals, cassette-recorder quality production and a brass section that sounds like it's on loan from the "Pink Elephants on Parade" sequence in Dumbo. Fortunately, all of these gently-worn elements are put in service of genuinely cheery melodies. Anyone who misses the ramshackle, simultaneously ruined and ornate quality of vintage Elephant 6, Happy Jawbone Family Band are here to help you remember. – J. Edward Keyes