The ADM Top 10 2012
The most acclaimed albums of the year: you can't argue with mathematics
Now everyone's had their fun with the Best Albums of 2012
roundups, it's time to take stock of the cold hard facts of what
really were the most critically-acclaimed albums over the past 12
months.
The Any Decent Music top 10 of 2012 is the most reliable guide
to what earned the most extensive overall praise from reviewers.
It's not skewed by idiosyncratic judgments or personal prejudice -
it's the widest survey of worldwide critical opinion around, and
you can't argue with mathematics.
The majority of the albums in our top 20 were reviewed by
between 30 and 50 of our sources from the UK, US, Canada, Australia
and Ireland, and the formula we apply to arrive at the ADM rating
takes the number of reviews into account. (We also exclude any
albums with fewer than 10 reviews.) We've listed them here with an
extract from one selected review which best sums up the general
reaction to the album.
NB: The ratings in our database are to two decimal places although
we display them to one decimal place. So, for example, Fiona
Apple's album has achieved a higher rating than the other two
albums on 8.5.
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8.9
Frank Ocean
Channel Orange
Channel Orange is so arrestingly smooth that all of its
unusually shaped pieces fit together as a seamless whole.
AV Club
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8.5
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
It's a melancholic album that's so personal and revealing you'll
almost feel like an emotional voyeur for listening to it.
Rave Magazine
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8.5
Kendrick Lamar
good Kid, m.A.A.d city
A powerful, significant, thrilling and astonishing affair.
The Irish Times
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8.5
Tame Impala
Lonerism
An array of songs and sound production to surpass their
impressive 2010 debut.
The Line Of Best Fit
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8.4
Burial
Kindred
Never before has his music possessed this much majesty, this
much command, this much power.
Pitchfork
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8.4
Death Grips
The Money Store
An incredible, precedent-resetting manifesto.
BBC
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8.3
Swans
The Seer
Everything we could have hoped for - it is Swans, standing
proudly and unabashedly at the top of their game after nearly
thirty years.
Sputnik Music
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8.2
Chromatics
Kill For Love
The scope of Kill For Love is one that words can't adequately
capture, but the imagination it fires can.
music OMH
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8.2
El-P
Cancer For Cure
A labyrinthine and ultramodern take on hip-hop that will
likely age like a Cabernet.
Beats Per Minute
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8.2
Can
The Lost Tapes
Not a minute comes off as extraneous. This is a wonderful
collection of music from a legendary group and is an essential for
any fan
Under The Radar
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And the next 10
- 8.2 Liars XIXIW
- 8.2 Flying Lotus Until The Quiet
Comes
- 8.2 Bill Fay Life Is People
- 8.1 The Men Open Your Heart
- 8.1 Staff Benda Bilili Bouger Le
Monde
- 8.1 High On Fire De Vermis
Mysteriis
- 8.1 Andy Stott Luxury Problems
- 8.1 Anaïs Mitchell Young Man In
America
- 8.1 Killer Mike R.A.P. Music
- 8.1 John Talabot fIN
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While the ADM report, set alongside our poll of polls rankings,
confirms the pre-eminence of Frank Ocean's Channel Orange and
underlines the critical success of several other names - Tame
Impala, Kendrick Lamar, Fiona Apple, Swans, Chromatics - there are
some interesting variations.
The Grimes album, Visions, at No.3 in the end-of-year lists, could
justifiably claim to be the most successful "alternative" album of
the year behind the unquestioned urban and rock albums of the year.
However it is nowhere to be seen in the ADM report rankings, having
gained a relatively moderate 7.6 rating on its release. Only a
handful of critics awarded Visions more than an 8/10, and it also
attracted a smattering of 5s and 6s.
On the other hand, a couple of albums which figure prominently in
the ADM report would appear to have fallen away in the critical
thinking come the end of the year.
When El-P's Cancer For Cure was released in May, a good few
reviewers agreed with The Skinny's view that it would come to be
seen as one of the best pieces of hip-hop of the early 21st
century. However it did not feature anywhere in the end-of-year top
50.
Likewise Can's The Lost Tapes, a three-hour, 30-track overview of
the band's unreleased material, which was hailed in the summer as a
highly-important release from a significant group and garlanded
with a host of 10/10 and 9/10 ratings only to disappear almost
completely from reviewers' minds six months later. This could of
course be attributed to critics focusing on 2012's new musical
output when it comes to choosing albums of the year.
The other high-profile variance between the two lists is easily
explained: Burial's Kindred was a hugely-praised 30-minute
three-track release which some reviewers regarded as a mini album,
others as an EP, and almost all excluded from their albums of the
year lists presumably on the basis of its format.
It's also interesting to note that the albums from the two most
recognised UK "breakthrough" bands, Alt J and Django Django,
received what could be termed as guarded welcomes on their release.
At 7.4 and 7.6 respectably, they achieved respectable ratings that
would not suggest their strong performances in the end-of-year
reckoning.