Most years, I would call my bottom five albums of the year the "Worst" albums of the year, but this year I would rather call them the "Five Most Disappointing Albums of 2012". The albums below are all from artists whose work I usually admire, but in this case, I feel that they've lost their way with their releases from this year.
Strangely and randomly, the leaders of four of these projects were named "Ben". I'm not sure what that means -- but weren't there other "Bens" who were either disappointed or were disappointing in 2012. Ben Roethlisberger, Ben Affleck, Ben Stein, Ben Sheets...?
Without further ado -- here are my "Five Most Disappointing Albums of 2012" (in order of least to most disappointing):
5. Silversun Pickups - Neck of the Woods - (Dangerbird)
The one Brian on the list. An album filled with mid-tempo snorers that become more tedious as the album drones on. It just feels rather lazy after the rather ambitious Swoon (2009). The pressure will be on SP with their next release.
4. Ben Kweller - Go Fly A Kite - (The Noise Company)
Unique origami packaging and songbook guitar tabs included with the album couldn't save this jumbled mess for Kweller. While there are some rather pleasing efforts like opening rocker 'Mean To Me', the Beatle-esque 'Gossip' and 'I Miss You', the album is dragged down by tepid pop songs like 'Full Circle' and the extremely annoying 'Jealous Girl' (complete with a chorus refrain lifted from Rick Springfield).
3. Benjamin Gibbard - Former Lives - (Barsuk)
Former Lives is a perfectly listenable record made up of songs that Gibbard wrote over the course of the past decade or so. The problem here is that one song is more cloying than the next. Gibbard's main project, Death Cab for Cutie, released the experimental Codes and Keys in 2011 to mixed reviews. I found it to be rather underrated and certainly worth a second look. Former Lives, however, feels like a collection of Death Cab rejects. Possibly even songs that Ben wrote and felt no need to present to the rest of his Death Cab mates. The stretch in this album beginning with 'Lily' running through 'A Hard One to Know' simply floats along as nothing more than background music you might use while paying your bills. Nothing distracts, nothing stands out -- which is a deadly combination in an already ADD world.
2. Band of Horses - Mirage Rock - (Columbia)
This one probably hurts me the most. At one time, Ben Bridwell led his Band of Horses into opening slots for My Morning Jacket and Pearl Jam, using a wall of guitars and a big room full of reverb. The jump to the big leagues of a major label after their Sub Pop swan-song Cease to Begin, has found BoH cleaning up their act and becoming nearly a Bridwell solo project. Even more so than Wilco is now a Tweedy project. The results are a rather bland mesh of Americana, more suited to the strip-malls than the bar in the shady part of town. Things start off nicely enough with 'Knock, Knock' (a song that sadly grew on me after listening to the rest of this record) and 'How To Live', but quickly find their way into Fogelberg schmaltz on 'Slow Hands of Time'. Things bottom out with 'Dumpster World' which begins a bit like America's 'Horse With No Name' until it thunders into a highly embarrassing and completely out of place chorus before ending back on the 'Horse'. The back half of the album is filled with rather forgettable songs in the same vein, with a brief respite for three minutes with the catchy 'Feud', perhaps the best song you'll find in this Bridwell vortex.
1. Ben Folds Five - The Sound of The Life of The Mind - (ImaVeePee Records / Sony)
When you read the intro about the 'Bens', you had to know we were eventually going to wind up here. Things start off rather promising with the trio emphatically announcing their return with a huge Foldsian crash opening to 'Erase Me', but it quickly dissolves (along with your hopes that this record has even the faintest chance to recall the days of Whatever & Ever Amen, the trio's high-water mark). Throughout the course of the ten tracks here, you wait and you wait for that huge instrumental moment where they challenge themselves to better the breakdown in 'One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces' or the natural swing of 'Selfless, Cold and Composed' -- but it never arrives. More than anything, this simply comes off as three people who used to make music together that moved on with their lives long ago. This is one reunion that was probably about six or seven years too late.
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