Best of 2012: Bryne’s Top 5 Albums

Nine songs, thirteen minutes, not one single idea recycled. This whole record is one gigantic, beautiful risk. No one is writing morose, awkward, tortured pop songs better than Barry Johnson at the moment. His words demand the listener’s attention and the musical twists and turns of these songs—whether it’s a drum machine, a piano, a shoddy acoustic guitar recording or a skatepunk cover of “Video Killed The Radio Star”—keep us on our toes better than anything this thrown together ever should.

This record kills me. It’s maybe the best balance of youthful exuberance and a weathered disposition I’ve heard all year. The lyrics, while plenty introspective, are never so dour that I’m left wondering why everything has to be such a giant bummer all the time. I love sad songs—we all do, whether we want to admit it or not—but it’s always nice to have a hook to hold onto when things go south.

The days of supernova female-fronted punk bands never really ended, they just sort of ebbed and flowed as the scene evolved. Is Mish Way this generation’s Kathleen Hanna? Her sharply revealing lyrics tackle warped beauty standards, drugs and bad decisions in a way that hasn’t been this awesomely brazen in a long, long time. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the band behind her follow suit, particularly guitarist Kenneth Williams, whose jagged riffs are never recycled, twisting and turning to fit the mood and delivery of Way’s lyrics and vocals.

Jesse Michaels isn’t as old as we think, but at 43 and two decades removed from the lightning in a bottle that was Operation Ivy, he’s arguably more pissed off and unrestrained than ever. There’s no other way to explain how, after an unremarkable EP, he’s fronting a ferocious hardcore band in Classics of Love that, while unabashedly throwback, sound more vitally important than any other group in the genre today. Who knew he had it in him?

We’d lost our way. Rock ‘n Roll was originally designed for catharsis, tailor-made to elicit the kind of uninhibited release no other genre of music can. Somewhere, it became less about escape and more about restraint and what could easily fit inside a concise, marketable box. The reason Celebration Rock hit so many different kinds of people so hard in 2012 is that it’s pure id, pure exuberance, but not an entirely canned, dumbed-down listening experience. That, or because it’s really loud and fun to sing along to.