Guest Best Of: Donny Potter (Fire & The Wheel)

Y'all know that my Best Of 2012 is a ways away, but to keep you in the end of year mentality, I thought I'd ask a few musician friends for their picks for the best records of last year. I'm also nosy/curious, and just wanted to see what they'd choose. A person's record selections say a lot about who they are as a person, I believe... 

Next, let us pick the brain of Fire & The Wheel's guitar/keyboard virtuoso, Mister Donny Potter. 

Here's a list of 5 albums released in 2012 that I actually listened to and loved (in no particular order).

1. Fionna Apple - The Idler Wheel...
Beautifully creative off-kilter melodies and sparse roomy arrangements perfectly serve these songs about being a flawed human being, a theme I'm sure most of you can relate to.
 

2. Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan
Their most conventional album by far is still a relatively strange yet deeply rewarding exercise in deconstructing pop music and remaking it in their own distinct style.


3. Grizzly Bear - Shields
Another band drifting closer towards accessibility with great results, Grizzly Bear's songwriting has finally caught up with their ability to make subtly beautiful hypnotic sounds on this, their best record yet.

4. Japandroids - Celebration Rock
A very appropriately named album that makes you nostalgic for those nights where you made too many trips to the keg and then did something stupid your friends still make fun of you for.

5. Bob Dylan - Tempest
True, his voice these days sounds like Louie Armstrong with laryngitis but the greatest songwriter of all time shows that he's still got 'it' on his best album in at least 10 years.

mp3: Younger Us (Japandroids from Celebration Rock)