The Fashionably Late Top 50 of 2012: #1a - DIIV

When it comes to year-end lists, y'all know I don't mess around. I don't post my picks from the previous year for weeks after the next year has started. In 2012, there was a bounty of music that entered the world that made me deliriously happy to be blessed with the sense of sound. So I pondered, marinated, and contemplated for weeks. Music from 2012 has been digested for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And now, friends, it's time. Time to share with you what I consider the cream of quite a crop indeed. You might see things omitted here that you think should be on a Best Of list. This list isn't what I think you want to read. This list is what I feel about last year. If it's not here, I either didn't spend enough time with it or just didn't love it enough. A big thank you to all of the artists who created the music that I fell in love with last year.

WHO: DIIV

WHAT: Oshin

WHEN: June 2012

WHERE: Captured Tracks

WHY: It's quite rare that a record will so immediately grab me by the heart as quickly as did DIIV's Oshin. I was only about ten seconds into my first listen when I realized that resistance was futile. This was a record that would not be ignored. I was ever so taken with the ice cold chill, the beautiful noise (like a more romanticized, less fuzzy Beach Fossils), the simple hazy splendor of it all. Oshin is like an endless sonic dream, billowy and soft and sun-dappled, with darker shadows lurking tantalizingly just out of sight (but appearing more and more as the record spins along). With this impossibly pretty, perpetually summer music, DIIV has, for a brief moment, thawed my cold black heart. 

MY JAMS: "Past Lives" "Human" "Air Conditioning" "How Long Have You Known" "(Druun Pt. II)" "Follow" "Sometime" "Oshin (Subsume)" "Home"