Revisit last year's highlights with our Best of 2012 collection
Happy new year! As you have no doubt noticed, over the past few weeks, we've been publishing "Best of 2012" retrospectives from our writers and photographers as well as posts from guest contributors from the local music scene about their favorite local bands of 2012. In case you missed any of them, the complete list of Best of 2012 posts is collected below. Mixtape: Twelve Highlights from 2012 (Podcast #295) As a reminder, we also published this podcast mixtape examining twelve local highlights from 2012, as well as a seven hour playlist collecting over 100 Bay Area bands that released [...]
Best of 2012: Michael Leahy on The French Cassettes
XMAS! by French Cassettes The Bay Area band that consistently impressed me in 2012 with their live shows, that I found myself humming their sticky songs, was The French Cassettes. The French Cassettes cut their teeth in the Modesto music scene for a couple of years before settling in San Francisco last year and now has garnered the attention of well respected SF musicians, taste makers and bookers. The boys had a busy year -- they booked a successful guerrilla tour storming SXSW, peddled their 4 song Radley EP, seemingly played out a couple of times a month all over [...]
Best of 2012: A baptism by fire in Bay Area music
Photo courtesy of Pamela Garcia-Aguirre Despite amounting to nothing less than a watershed year in my life, 2012 feels like it went by in the blink of an eye. Joining The Bay Bridged in May, I was tossed headlong into the Bay Area music scene, everyday making multiple new musical discoveries and adding countless bands to my list of acts to cover. Writing about everything from psych-rock, garage rock, and "cloud rap" to indie-folk, country-punk, and Afro-Caribbean-influenced indie rock, I found myself immersed in a community of unending musical productivity, experimentation, and collaboration, and loving every minute of [...]
Mike G.'s Best of 2012
Well, 2012 was a pretty stellar year for music (both from the Bay Area and from the rest of the world), and I just want to call out a few of my local favorites from the year. I'm restricting myself because I'm not going to mention how Pussy Riot inspired the whole planet with their punk prayer protesting the repressive Russian regime, or how I literally did not stop playing Grimes' Visions for about 6 months after it came out. Nope, not even going to go there. Best Local Show by a Local Band My favorite local show of the [...]
Best of 2012: Paige K. Parsons' Favorite Photos from 2012
Editor's note: Our amazing photographer Paige K. Parsons picked this collection of favorite photos she took during 2012. Several of Paige's 2012 picks will be included in her first solo photography show, "Once In A Lifetime." The show runs from January 10 through February 13 at Keeble and Shuchat in Palo Alto, with a reception on January 19th. [nggallery id=best-of-2012-paige-parsons]
Best of 2012: Mai Le on The Mallard
The first time I saw The Mallard was at a fundraiser at The Lab in April of this year. I went because Thee Oh Sees were on deck to play and The Lab is only 8 minutes from my house. It was super busy at work, so getting away from the computer for an hour or two of live music was a luxury. The Mallard - Over and Under by Thee Oh Sees/ The Mallard When I saw The Mallard‘s instrument set-up I was excited that I made the effort to come out. See, I have this thing for drums [...]
Best of 2012: Mike Schulman on Terry Malts
My fave Bay Area band of 2012 would have to be Terry Malts, hands down. Full disclosure now -- I put out some of their records on my record label. Don't let that think dissuade you from taking my praise seriously though; I *hate*most of the bands on my label. Terry Malts encapsulate for me all that is great about noisy, poppy, punky music in 2012. They're conversant with a huge swathe of hardcore/punk/noise/pop but unlike a lot of bands don't seem at all weighed down by that knowledge. In fact, what continually slays me is how effortless they seem. [...]
Best of 2012: Matthew Hickey on TRAILS AND WAYS
2012 has been a pretty fantastic year for Bay Area music. In fact, it's pretty tough for me to zero in on a true favorite. Ty Segall's Twins & Slaughterhouse are both pretty phenomenal. Exray's Trust a Robot is a beloved release in my home. Fresh & Only's Long Slow Dance will also make my top albums list this year. Geographer's Myth is beautifully cinematic. Blackbird Blackbird is back with a great new album. James & Evander's Let's Go single got me grooving. And there have been countless debut singles by new up-and-coming Bay Area bands to be excited about. [...]
Best of 2012: Zack Frederick's Favorite Shows
1. Future Islands @ FYF Fest With the early evening sun casting a warm orange glow on the smallest FYF stage, I had a feeling we were in for something special from Future Islands. Little did I know that Future Islands would steal the festival, easily surpassing every other show I saw that weekend, and reaffirm (at least for myself) the reasons why I even go to live shows in the first place. In other words, Future Islands were fucking brilliant. As a vocalist, Sam Herring is free to pace about the stage and give the band’s emotional lyrics his [...]
Best of 2012: Matt Jones on Burnt Ones
PROTECTION CIRCLE b/w BLACK LEATHER OR FURS by Burnt Ones This is a tough one, as there's so many great bay area bands these days and I have time and love invested in quite a few of them, but I keep coming back to Burnt Ones...full disclosure, they're all friends of mine, Mark Tester and I work together at Pirates, and Castle Face is hoping to put out a Burnt Ones record in 2013...so it's a close knit recommendation here, but a worthwhile one. Though I had bought their record Black Teeth & Golden Tongues at Amoeba based on the [...]