We're in the last week or so of the NBA regular season, and awards ballots have been distributed to those who have a vote. That makes it as good a time as any to look over what I predicted before the season started and revise those picks to what my actual ballot would look like if I had one.

League MVP:
October: LeBron James, Heat
April: LeBron James, Heat
For much of the year this was a two-man race between LeBron and Kevin Durant, with names like Chris Paul, Tony Parker and Kobe Bryant occasionally entering the conversation as a dark horse. Then LeBron started playing literally the best, most efficient basketball anyone has ever played. This is a no-brainer, and if "voter fatigue" gives this award to Durant, it's time to strip every awards voter of their credentials and start over with people who actually watch the games.

Rookie of the Year:
October: Anthony Davis, Hornets
April: Damian Lillard, Trail Blazers
In my defense, I didn't think Anthony Davis would go down with a series of bumps and bruises over the first half of the season, and if he had been able to get into his rhythm earlier, this award may still be his. But that's not to overlook Damian Lillard, who has been so stellar on the offensive end that his status as a minus-defender isn't a problem worth trifling with...at least until Year Two.

Defensive Player of the Year:
October: Serge Ibaka, Thunder
April: Tim Duncan, Spurs
Hear me out; this isn't strictly homerism. Plenty of ink's been spilled on Tim Duncan's resurgent season, but has any 36-year-old ever anchored a top ten defense so effectively that teams full of 24-year-old dudes call plays that deliberately keep him from getting involved? Furthermore, has anyone who that describes also been third in the league in blocked shots while only recording 30 minutes a night? The degree of difficulty for what he's done puts a borderline campaign for a younger man over the top for me. We may not see what we're seeing from the Big Fundamental this year ever again.

Sixth Man of the Year:
October: Manu Ginobili, Spurs
April: J.R. Smith, Knicks
Like most blog-educated, new-wave NBA fans, advanced stats and efficiency mean a lot to me. And yet I can't shake the feeling that the Knicks wouldn't be sitting at second in the East -- or even close, really -- if not for the efforts of remorseless gunner and ultimate heat-check chucker Earl Joseph Smith III. If the raison d'être of sixth men is to provide scoring for units that, on bad teams, lack it, then J.R. has elevated sixth man to an art form with his 17.8 points per game -- a figure that's good for 19th in the league overall, forget among bench players. Kneel.

Most Improved Player:
October: N/A
April: Larry Sanders, Bucks 
I didn't predict this award before the season, partly because I forgot and partly because it's, by nature, unpredictable to determine who's going to make a leap without seeing a minute of meaningful gameplay. Credit Larry Sanders with making my end-of-year vote easy. In his third year, Sanders at times struggled with staying on the floor, but even in limited minutes made an incredible impact on the defensive end, leading the league in blocks while making a backcourt featuring Brandon Jennings and Monta Ellis infinitely less disastrous. His offensive game is starting to show some nuance as well, and perhaps someday he'll have an all-NBA appearance in him.

Coach of the Year:
October: Erik Spoelstra, Heat
April: Erik Spoelstra, Heat
This is as easy now as it was in October. In this day in age, with all the advanced tools available to teams, it's very, very hard to win in the NBA, no matter which players you employ. Spoelstra has made it look effortless. He cracked the code in a way that even brilliant basketball minds like Tom Thibodeau and Gregg Popovich haven't mastered. This award is Spo's to lose until further notice.

All-NBA:
October:
First Team:
Dwight Howard, Lakers
LeBron James, Heat
Kevin Durant, Thunder
Chris Paul, Clippers
Rajon Rondo, Celtics

Second Team:
Andrew Bynum, 76ers
Kevin Love, Timberwolves
Dirk Nowitzki, Mavericks
Manu Ginobili, Spurs
Russell Westbrook, Thunder

Third Team:
Roy Hibbert, Pacers
Carmelo Anthony, Knicks
LaMarcus Aldridge, Trail Blazers
Kobe Bryant, Lakers
Deron Williams, Nets

May:
First Team:
Joakim Noah, Bulls
LeBron James, Heat
Kevin Durant, Thunder
Chris Paul, Clippers
James Harden, Rockets

Second Team:
Brook Lopez, Nets
Tim Duncan, Spurs
Carmelo Anthony, Knicks
Kobe Bryant, Lakers
Tony Parker, Spurs

Third Team:
Marc Gasol, Grizzlies
Blake Griffin, Clippers
Paul George, Pacers
Dwyane Wade, Heat
Russell Westbrook, Thunder

Lots to unpack here. Changed all three of my center picks, for perhaps-obvious reasons. Dwight hasn't been Dwight, Bynum didn't play, and Hibbert took too long to round into form. I hate Joakim Noah, but he's been the reason the Bulls are even good this year, let alone borderline contenders. Lopez has overachieved on a team full of dudes who have done the opposite, and Marc Gasol is a basketball savant. These six forwards were easy choices. They've all added things to their games that weren't there last year, and all their teams are poised to make noise in the playoffs. The guard spots were pretty easy to award as well, especially with guys like Rajon Rondo and Derrick Rose out of the conversation. My October picks were garbage. Don't even look at them.

All-Rookie:
October:
Anthony Davis, Hornets
Jared Sullinger, Celtics
Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Bobcats
Bradley Beal, Wizards
Damian Lillard, Trail Blazers 

April:
Tyler Zeller, Cavaliers
Anthony Davis, Hornets
Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Bobcats
Bradley Beal, Wizards
Damian Lillard, Trail Blazers

I had to make Anthony Davis a power forward since he was listed that way all year and I was stupid in October. That opened up a spot for a center. That center is Tyler Zeller, who has started 49 of 71 games for the Cavs this year and just edges the injury-prone Jonas Valanciunas and Andre Drummond for my ballot. Does that make you uncomfortable? It should make you uncomfortable.

All-Defense:
October:
Dwight Howard, Lakers
Serge Ibaka, Thunder
LeBron James, Heat
Tony Allen, Grizzlies
Avery Bradley, Celtics

May:
Joakim Noah, Bulls
Tim Duncan, Spurs
LeBron James, Heat
Andre Iguodala, Nuggets
Mike Conley, Jr., Grizzlies

This season in a nutshell. Most everything was unpredictable, but LeBron persists. I feel real queasy about these guard spots, by the way. Could easily go another way and I wouldn't sweat it. Gasol is also right up there with Noah for the center spot.

So, I'm gonna stop talking about the NBA for fear of jinxing the Spurs, who are definitely going to win the title. Oh, fuck.

It's Valentine's Day, and while I'm not usually super comfortable with gushy oversharing on the web, I'm willing to break my own rule to pen an ode to someone I've been thinking about a lot over the past few days. Obviously, that special someone is Kawhi Leonard. (I love you very much, Rachael.)

Let's talk about what it means to be a longtime Spurs fan in 2013. I started following the team the same way I imagine many in my generation did. It was 1999, Jordan had retired, the Spurs had just won the title, little kids are front-runners, and voila, I'm a Spurs fan. I've followed them ever since, in the best of times and in the...OK, so the times have really only been good. And that's sort of a problem. We don't really know what it's like to struggle. Sure, I can talk your ear off about the five playoff exits that have followed our last championship and how each one was based on a different combination of bad luck and bullshit, but you should not hear me out. Tim Duncan has four rings, and I was a Spurs fan for all of them. I ask no pity, and none should I receive.

But the remarkable consistency of the Spurs built around a foundation of, for much of that time, the same three guys – Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and Tony Parker – has meant Spurs fans have settled into a kind of stasis. We haven't found a new savior of the franchise because we haven't needed one. Role players have come and gone, and we've loved them for their quirks (#LetBonnerShoot, indeed) and their unique skill sets that Gregg Popovich has so perfectly exploited, but if we're being honest, we haven't grown too attached to any of them. We aren't dangling trade bait over the side of the U.S.S. Alamo, but we also aren't going to feel too bad if a Fabricio Oberto here or a Roger Mason, Jr. there goes overboard.

Yet the rigors of time are setting in for Duncan and Ginobili, and with Parker's 31st birthday coming this playoffs, even his current MVP-caliber season is closer to the end of his career than its beginning. Whether the Spurs run out of gas in the conference finals again this year or push through to face the Heat in June doesn't hinge on the Big Three anymore. It hinges on Kawhi Leonard, a second-year swingman out of San Diego State. I'll admit it feels weird to say so with such confidence, but if you took me to Vegas right now to make that call, I'm betting on Kawhi.



That's a screen grab of the four most recent stories on 48minutesofhell.com, a popular Spurs blog and ESPN TrueHoop affiliate. You'll notice a certain name in all four headlines. Now, I'm not going to go through the entire 48MOH archive, but I will go out on a limb and assume it's the first time a name other than Duncan, Parker, Ginobili or Popovich has appeared in four headlines in a row. It's a somewhat arbitrary measure of his significance, but it still matters. It has as much to do with lucky timing as anything – Leonard had a breakout 26-point performance when the Big Three sat against Chicago, and he hit a game-winner in Cleveland when Gregg Popovich couldn't wait to get his team off the floor – but the ripples he made with past triumphs at Summer League and with unglamorous but flawless execution of tough defensive assignments are now on the national stage. He deserves the accolades he's gotten and more.

"I think he’s going to be a star. And as time goes on, he’ll be the face of the Spurs, I think."

When Gregg Popovich gave this quote two months after last year's playoffs, a lot of people wrote it off as typical media bravado. I'm sure at least five hundred players have been touted as the faces of their respective franchises in the last 25 years, and maybe 40 of those have actually become that. But anyone who knows Coach Pop knows what a straight shooter he is, and I was heartened by the quote. Leonard was a somewhat raw prospect, for sure; when he came to the Spurs, he didn't have a jump shot or any go-to moves, and his perimeter defense was the only thing earning him minutes. His growth since then has been incredible to witness.

His defense has never been a question. Like the beloved retired Spur Bruce Bowen before him, or Ron Artest in his prime, his defensive assignment tends to be the most dangerous wing on the opposing team. The likes of LeBron James and Kevin Durant still get their numbers on him, but he's never bullied, and he can make the wiliest of veterans look downright flustered with his ability to move his feet and wise-beyond-his-years intuition. What's scary for opponents is that now his offensive arsenal is catching up. He went from a liability on that end of the floor to a spot-up shooter to a player who can create his own shot in a year and a half. Even the most coachable players in the NBA can rarely claim a learning curve that quick.

En route to his career high of 26 points against Chicago on Monday, Leonard unleashed a bevy of moves that only hint at his tantalizing potential. He can hit the three-ball. He can split defenders on the fast break for a transition dunk. He can dribble twice along the baseline and create a short floater for himself. He can take a defender in iso from the top of the key and turn it into an easy layup. In Popovich's system, he doesn't get to do these things when Duncan, Ginobili and Parker are healthy, but seeing how incredibly capable he is of doing them is encouraging. It's easy to imagine that in five years he'll have the offensive range of George Gervin and the defensive tenacity of Bruce Bowen.

Oh, and then there was this:


You can't really coach a guy to have ice water in his veins. Kawhi was obviously born with it. When Twitter blew up after this shot, I nearly ordered a customized Kawhi Leonard jersey right then and there. I've never owned a Spurs jersey that wasn't of Tim Duncan or Tony Parker, but I'm guessing some night this season I'm going to have had one beer too many and throw down for a gray alternate embroidered with a stark number "2." I won't regret it in the morning, either.

Kawhi Leonard is the future of the San Antonio Spurs. He is a future all-star, he is why the Spurs will make the NBA Finals this year, and he is going to prevent a drop-off when Timmy and Manu retire in two or three years. He's the quintessential Spur — perfect for the system, infinitely coachable, reserved in demeanor, and way cooler to fans ten years ago (nice cornrows, Iverson). He's a question mark that transformed into an exclamation point. He's the future, and I can't wait to say I told you so.

 OK, I'll admit it: I get a little depressed whenever I come back to Indiana after a trip to a big city. I don't hate Indiana, especially not Bloomington, which is about as good as a Midwestern small town can get. It's just that nothing here can compare to the limitless entertainment, education, drinking and dining options in a truly great city.

I spent four days in Philadelphia and managed to hit (deep breath) Sly Fox Brewhouse and Eatery, Victory Brewing Company, The Prohibition Tap Room, the Union Transfer to see six incredible metal bands, David's Mai Lai Wah in Chinatown, Brauhaus Schmitz, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Wells Fargo Center for a Sixers game against my beloved Spurs, and Pho 75.

Then I flew back to Indiana and looked over my apartment balcony to see adjacent McDonald's, KFC, Taco Bell, Chili's and Arby's restaurants, across the street from a fucking shopping mall. So don't blame me for feeling a little low today.

I'll suck it up for long enough to get to the real point of this post, though. I ticked a new box on my must-try restaurant list yesterday when I ate a late breakfast at Pho 75. The bowl of delectably complex broth with rice noodles, thin-sliced raw eye round, beef tripe and all manner of vegetables went down smoothly with a condensed milk-addled iced coffee. More or less, the place lived up to the hype (and justified my seven-mile round trip walk to consume it).

This got me wanting to reflect on some of the other places I haven't been fortunate enough to eat at yet, but that every errant mention of somewhere online has me scurrying back to their menu, to reviews, and to Yelp odes. Here's the five that have occupied my mind the most, in alphabetical order:

I'm having trouble writing an intro that I feel sums up this year. Maybe it would say something about how I'm totally over superhero movies, or about how it was a great year for indie movies with little plot, but for some reason, this year seems to defy thesis statements. I'm still not fully convinced that 2012 was a great year for film — at least not for the studios — but here's the ten movies that resonated with me the most:

As the title of this blog post plainly states, I'm not a TV critic. I don't watch enough of it, I don't think hard enough about it, I filter it through a film critic's lens, and I'm often a member of the despicable "casual viewer" category — please don't ask me how many episodes of Pawn Stars I've seen.

But 2012 struck me as a particularly interesting year for television, so I don't feel too out of line writing about it. I definitely watched more (and better) TV than I typically do, and while some of my long-standing go-to shows went down the tubes, a few surprising newcomers made me excited about the medium again. Next year, when Breaking Bad, The Office, 30 Rock and, temporarily, Louie are off the air, I might have nothing to say. But for now, here's some thoughts!

My Favorite Seasons of 2012

I find it easier to measure TV in seasons rather than years, so for fall/spring programming, year-end list seasons is an excuse to write about some pretty old television. Here's the seasons that ended in 2012 that I loved most:

1. Girls (season one, HBO)

Like many people, I brought a lot of baggage to the pilot of Girls. I had liked Tiny Furniture, but I was worried that spending ten episodes' worth of time with privileged postgrads I'd be furious rather than amused. Well, I was neither. I was moved. Lena Dunham has captured what it feels like to be twentysomething and not totally sure what direction you're headed in. It's not a glorification of privilege – or an indictment – but something different altogether. It's a comedy, and when it's funny, it's hilarious. Mostly, though, it's just the most compelling treatise on being of this generation I've ever seen. I can't wait for season two.

2. Parks and Recreation (season four, NBC)

I'm still waiting for the ever-ebullient Parks and Rec to devolve into Sweetums-brand schmaltzy saccharine, but goddammit, I still like rooting for these people. I'm not sure what there is to say about this show that hasn't been said, but there's nowhere I'd rather spend 30 minutes a week than Pawnee, Indiana. Here's to Councilwoman Knope being just as much fun as Deputy Director Knope for the next four seasons.

3. Louie (season three, FX)

Louie dropping from my favorite show of 2011 to my third favorite show of 2012 isn't a knock on Louis C.K. It actually means he's trying even more things, and even when they fail – Manic Pixie Dream Parker Posey was a bad misstep that took up too much of the season for me to rank it any higher – they show that C.K. isn't interested in finding a comfort zone. The David Lynch arc ("Late Show Parts 2 and 3") was the best television I saw this year by far. It'll be a sad 2013 when this is on hiatus.

4. Breaking Bad (season five, AMC)

OK, let's just get this out of the way up front. Fuck you, Season Five Part 1 and Season Five Part 2 a full year later. This year had an eight-episode season. Next year will have an eight-episode season. There will be six seasons of Breaking Bad in all. That's settled. Now, was Season Five as good as the ever-escalating Seasons Three and Four? No, but it was close, and its commitment to going bigger than ever before and damn your suspension of disbelief was heartening. For every thrilling no-way-this-could-happen-but-awesome train heist there was a Scooby Doo reveal or a deus ex machina. I'll take the ratio as long as my pulse keeps racing every time I watch this show.

5. Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule (season two, Adult Swim)

As a diehard Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! fan, I was always fascinated but slightly repulsed by the possibility of an entire show about Dr. Steve Brule. Brule is a great character, but in the T&E universe, recurring characters tend to function more as Easter eggs than plot devices. Giving an entire show to one character scared me. Luckily, my trepidation was misplaced. Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim and John C. Reilly successfully develop a corner of their demented world into more than just a one-off joke, and season two's darkest moments are some of 2012's finest laughter-through-tears moments. For your health.

Notes:

I'm also fully caught up on 30 Rock and The Office, but neither of those are very good anymore. Both are bouncing back with their final seasons, though, so who knows...watch this space next year?

I've quit on both The League and Community, which have effectively made me forget why I liked them in the first place.

I'm not all the way caught up on Game of Thrones, but what I've seen of season two pales in comparison to season one, which honed its focus on the treachery going on Westeros without introducing an overwhelming cast of characters. Sorry, but creating TV that has to be watched with a notebook so you can keep track of who's who and why they're there isn't artful — it's not even fun.

Curb Your Enthusiasm didn't have a season this year, but it's the best comedy maybe ever. Come on, LD! Bring it back!

I am not caught up on The Walking Dead, Mad Men or Homeland. Don't really like the first two, and haven't seen any of Homeland.

What else should I be watching, friends? (Not Friends.)

I want to use this space to write about my year as it didn't relate to music, film, or TV. Those – along with sports – are the things I think about most often, but they're not all I love. So here's a few tidbits:

Best Restaurant Meal
I'd have to go with one of the two times I went to Kuma's Corner in Chicago in 2012, which were my third and fourth visits to the restaurant overall. It's simply the perfect aggressively flavored, unpretentious, filling American meal. My favorite new restaurant I tried was likely Philly's shrine to beer and sausage, Brauhaus Schmitz, and I'd be remiss if I didn't nod to my favorite new dish I tried, the Mexican/Korean fusion truck Chi'Lantro's kimchi fries in Austin, and my new obsession in Bloomington, the twice-a-week-minimum banh mi spot Rush Hour Station. I may not have dined with any celebrity chefs this year like I did in 2011, but I still ate damn well. (The best thing I made myself was probably a delicious shrimp dish that blurred the line between an ettoufee and a jambalaya. Damn, I need to make that again.)

Best New Beer
Best new beer to me would have been any of an array of Belgian-style dark and pale ales, whose discreet charms finally revealed themselves to me this year. Now, I'm obsessed. My favorites, perhaps ironically, are brewed by a Canadian brewery – Unibroue. My favorite beers newly brewed in 2012 were both double IPAs – Stone's 16th Anniversary Ale and Great Divide's 18th Anniversary Wood Aged Double IPA. I'm bored by most IPAs that just try to kick you with hops and give you something to suck down while you eat chicken wings, but these both had fascinating flavor profiles not usually found in their ilk. Oh, and they'll get you drunk fast.

Best Museum
Without a doubt my favorite museum visit this year was at Philadelphia's Mütter Museum. I went in buzzed from a couple of German beers from the abovementioned Brauhaus Schmitz and got my medical anomaly on. You won't really believe the collection of skulls, the self-mummified woman, the samples of Einstein's brain, the casts of Siamese twins, the jar-fetuses or the 20-foot-long colon until you see them. You might not even want to, but hey, I had fun.

Best Trip I Took
I traveled so much less than I would have liked to this year, but two trips in particular were terrific — going to Philadelphia and Atlantic City for Orion Music and More and going to Austin for SXSW Interactive. I'll remember both of those trips as long as I live.

Best Book I Read
Well, I finally, triumphantly made it through Absalom, Absalom! after valiantly trying and failing for several years, so that felt good. This was also the year I read Kitchen Confidential, which I always knew I would love but had been putting off confirming I would love. Well, guess what, I loved it. It makes perfect sense that Anthony Bourdain became the food celeb powerhouse that he did after that went to press.

Best Person I Met
Okay, so I technically met her last year (or maybe even earlier at a party, I don't know), but Rachael Stuart is pretty fucking rad. We're coming up on a one-year anniversary, which is something I've literally never been closer than eight months away from until now. Although Werner Herzog is a very close second.

Here's a place to stick some stuff that I didn't get the chance to talk about with my albums lists. I thought about writing about my ten favorite songs of the year, and then I thought about writing about my ten favorite songs that didn't appear on any of my ten favorite albums, and then I thought about writing about ten of my favorite single-only tracks, and then I thought fuck it, I consume music by the album, not by the song, and while songs can transcend the albums they come from and become a totally worthy unit of musical measurement, thinking about them outside of the album context is still too alien to me to really write about. Run-on sentences. Here's some lists that aren't about songs:

Favorite Albums of 2011 That Didn't Make My List in 2011 Because I'm An Idiot

We all have these every year. Either we didn't hear something in time or it didn't click in time, and 365 days later, we feel pretty dumb for not recognizing the greatness of certain albums all along. Here's five '11 LPs you shouldn't sleep on:

1. Cults - Cults 
Heard this in 2011, somehow didn't realize it's the perfect indie pop album. Maybe it took seeing Cults live to make it finally fully click, but their self-titled debut deserves all the accolade it has earned.
HEAR: "Bumper"
2. Touché Amoré - Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me
Another I heard but didn't fully appreciate in time to put it on a list. This is the best half hour of modern hardcore without Fucked Up or Converge's name on it.
HEAR: "The Great Repetition"
3. Ghost - Opus Eponymous
This technically came out in Europe in 2010, but most Americans didn't hear it until 2011, and I didn't hear it until 2012, so fuck it – listen to the occult rock album to end all occult rock albums. The underground nerds who say other bands are doing it better are doing it better are just mad that Ghost is doing it bigger. Hail Satan.
HEAR: "Elizabeth"
4. Mount Moriah - Mount Moriah
It's no wonder I didn't hear this in 2011; I don't listen to much country music. But this one really sticks with you. You're gonna read more about this record from me, as I've become a little obsessed with its guitarist, Jenks Miller.
HEAR: "Social Wedding Rings"
5. Jens Lekman - An Argument With Myself
This is only an EP, but that works in its favor since there's no room for the ever-prolific Jens to overstuff its run time with fluff. Five perfect Jens Lekman songs lined up back-to-back. Impossible to hate.
HEAR: "Waiting for Kirsten"

Favorite Live Sets of 2012

I've never understood when people recap the year in live music by talking about shows or festivals. It's all about the individual live set, unsullied by dull opening acts or long tear-down times. Because I find live music extremely personal and couldn't begin to describe what makes a great show feel great, here's my context-free top ten live sets of the year. Don't skip any of these acts if they make it to your neck of the woods.

1. Iron Maiden (Indianapolis, 7/19)
2. Titus Andronicus (Chicago, 11/25)
3. Aesop Rock (Indianapolis, 10/5)
4. Cults (Bloomington, 4/21)
5. Fucked Up (Atlantic City, 6/23)
6. Metallica (Atlantic City, 6/23)
7. St. Vincent (Indianapolis, 5/10)
8. The Men (Chicago, 7/15)
9. Japandroids (Chicago, 7/13)
10. Ghost (Atlantic City, 6/24)

Best Reissues

Wait for my full Invisible Oranges piece on reissues to see my expanded thoughts on the subject, but boy were there a lot of glossed up repackagings of old shit this year. A few of 'em were awesome, though! Like these five:

1. Sleep - Dopesmoker
2. Morbid Saint - Spectrum of Death
3. Witch Cross - Fit for Fight
4. Moss Icon - Complete Discography
5. Kylesa - From the Vaults, Vol. 1

Some minutiae:

Best Label: Relapse probably snuck past Profound Lore for me this year, but come on, these will always be #1 and #2 in some order.

MVP: Jenks Miller! Horseback, solo shit, Mount Moriah. Even if not all of his projects were released in 2012, he had my attention a lot of the year.

Runner-Up: John Dyer Baizley. Dude made one of the best albums of the year and barely got to play anything from it live before a bus accident nearly killed him, and then he wrote some of the most inspiring music writing I've ever read in his pledge on the Baroness blog that they'd come back even stronger. God bless ya, John.

Biggest Disappointments: Alcest and Dinosaur Jr., if only because both bands were coming off of masterpieces and put out pretty dull, paint-by-numbers releases. This is also the year I just didn't check out your record if you haven't been good in a decade. Too many (metal) acts think they get to be "legacy" just because they're old.

And, in recap, my top 10 albums of the year:

1. Pallbearer - Sorrow and Extinction
2. Pig Destroyer - Book Burner
3. Baroness - Yellow & Green
4. Aesop Rock - Skelethon
5. The Men - Open Your Heart
6. Titus Andronicus - Local Business
7. Japandroids - Celebration Rock
8. Jens Lekman - I Know What Love Isn't
9. Converge - All We Love We Leave Behind
10. Ash Borer - Cold of Ages

And my metal-and-hardcore-only ballot:

1. Pallbearer - Sorrow and Extinction
2. Pig Destroyer - Book Burner
3. Baroness - Yellow & Green
4. Converge - All We Love We Leave Behind
5. Ash Borer - Cold of Ages
6. Torche - Harmonicraft
7. Nachtmystium - Silencing Machine
8. Liberteer - Better to Die on Your Feet Than Live on Your Knees
9. Venomous Maximus - Beg Upon the Light
10. Dawnbringer - Into the Lair of the Sun God
11. Atriarch - Ritual of Passing
12. Christian Mistress - Possession
13. Accept - Stalingrad
14. Nile - At the Gate of Sethu
15. Denial of God - Death and the Beyond
16. Woods of Ypres - Woods 5: Grey Skies & Electric Light
17. Indesinence - Vessels of Light and Decay
18. My Dying Bride - A Map of All Our Failures
19. Horseback - Half Blood
20. Krallice - Years Past Matter

Okay, once I catch up on TV and movies, I'll do those year-end roundups. Probably looking at the day after Christmas for those. Cheers!

My top 10 this year was lighter on metal than any I've done yet. Blame my working at an indie distro or the creeping ubiquity of Pitchfork, but my list looked unlike any I've composed before. Luckily, two metal publications I contribute to – the excellent Jukebox: Metal and Invisible Oranges – asked for a metal-and-hardcore-only top 20, so if you're more inclined toward the heavy stuff, here's my list with all that wimpy crap taken out:

1. Pallbearer – Sorrow and Extinction (Profound Lore)
2. Pig Destroyer – Book Burner (Relapse)
3. Baroness – Yellow & Green (Relapse)
4. Converge – All We Love We Leave Behind (Epitaph)
5. Ash Borer – Cold of Ages (Profound Lore)
6. Torche – Harmonicraft (Volcom)
7. Nachtmystium – Silencing Machine (Century Media)
8. Liberteer – Better to Die on Your Feet Than Live on Your Knees (Relapse)
9. Venomous Maximus – Beg Upon the Light (Occulture)
10. Dawnbringer – Into the Lair of the Sun God (Profound Lore)
11. Atriarch – Ritual of Passing (Profound Lore)
12. Christian Mistress – Possession (Relapse)
13. Accept – Stalingrad (Nuclear Blast)
14. Nile – At the Gate of Sethu (Nuclear Blast)
15. Denial of God – Death and the Beyond (Hell’s Headbangers)
16. Woods of Ypres – Woods 5: Grey Skies & Electric Light (Earache)
17. Indesinence – Vessels of Light and Decay (Profound Lore)
18. My Dying Bride – A Map of All Our Failures (Peaceville)
19. Horseback – Half Blood (Relapse)
20. Krallice – Years Past Matter (self-released)

A few stray observations:

• Relapse and Profound Lore had five releases apiece, effectively making up half of my favorite metal of the year. No other label had more than two entries.
• In a year widely regarded as "off" for black metal, I still managed to squeeze seven records onto my list that were at least "blackened." Still, '13 promises to trump '12 pretty handily in that department with releases on deck for Cobalt, Watain, Vreid, and many more.
• All hail clean vocals! Nine of these 20 records are primarily sung rather than screamed, yelped, grunted, growled or any combination of those. I feel like I'm 13 and I haven't discovered At the Gates yet.
• The only death metal album on the list is Nile. Reminds me of 2009. Please, death metal bands, get your shit together.
• I need a new-music nap. I must have heard 500 2012 releases, and that's a conservative estimate. I'm just not ready for 2013 yet! (Even though I have an Excel document with 30 releases from the first few months that I'm excited for. Fuck me.)

It's that time of year, I guess. In the coming days, look for my top albums, top live performances, and top movie lists for 2012 for sure, and maybe even a few more personal curveballs. Enjoy.



I've been doing year-end music roundups since 2004, and the only other time a debut album topped my list was in 2008, when Fleet Foxes dropped their self-titled LP. So, yeah, I'll bet my last penny that Little Rock natives Pallbearer are going to be a force to be reckoned with in the metal world for plenty of time to come. Sorrow and Extinction didn't click with me right away, but ever since it did, I've hardly gone a day without listening to it — and that's saying something, considering it's comprised of five songs ranging from eight to twelve minutes.

Despite that potentially off-putting statistic, Sorrow and Extinction is among the rare modern metal albums that I would wholeheartedly recommend to people who are already interested in the genre and total neophytes who are afraid of metal and may or may not have referred to it at some point in their lives as "just noise" or "kinda dumb." Pallbearer makes expansive, baroque doom metal in a style that hasn't really been done before, even if Black Sabbath is the obvious point of reference.

There's three things you absolutely have to mention when you talk about Sorrow and Extinction and how it stands out in an ever-crowding field of doom metal releases. 1) The vocals, 2) the nylon-stringed acoustic guitars, and 3) the incomparable light-and-dark-all-at-once atmosphere. 

Brett Campbell's voice was probably described best by Pitchfork's Brandon Stosuy, who wrote that it's like "if a young Ozzy had the ability to transform into Geddy Lee." The operative word here is transform, as Campbell will move within a single line from a rumbling baritone to a soaring, full-bodied vocal that one might accuse of falsetto if it weren't so utterly implacable. The acoustic guitars sound like none have sounded in doom metal before. Typically, doom bands looking to show a tuneful side just strum minor chords on campfire guitars, but Pallbearer let each individual note breathe, sometimes with several seconds of silence on either side of it, with slowly vibrating nylon strings. It's a tactic they use on "Foreigner" and "An Offering of Grief," which not coincidentally are likely the two best songs on the record. 

The hardest thing to describe is the album's atmosphere, which I can honestly say I've never heard anything quite like. For 50 minutes, Pallbearer manage to be simultaneously crushing and uplifting, never building your soul up to just to bring it down, or dragging it through the mud so the highs will be higher, but somehow embodying both headspaces all at once. It's a lot to take in, and it's rare for a band even within a genre known for displaying emotions on one's (occasionally frilly) sleeve to be so affecting. The last verse of "An Offering of Grief" sums up the vibe best:

"In the shadows, I wander
A solitary man
Fearing not the hidden, but searching
In this harsh world of deception, I will stand up once more
And find within myself the strength to stumble again"

If Sorrow and Extinction is the end result, may Pallbearer forever stumble.

It's that time of year, I guess. In the coming days, look for my top albums, top live performances, and top movie lists for 2012 for sure, and maybe even a few more personal curveballs. Enjoy.


It's been five years since Phantom Limb, more than 10 since Prowler in the Yard, and Pig Destroyer is still the most important – and, by far, the best – grindcore band on the planet. Book Burner was a bit more of a grower, a somewhat slower-burning firecracker than the rest of the quartet's full-lengths, but once the spark reached the bottom of the fuse, the shrapnel was sure to stay in your brain for the rest of your worthless fucking life, human.

It's remarkable just how different this is from what we might have expected from PxDx following the riffy hook factory that was Phantom Limb. This is a tighter record in every way, though the album that housed "Cemetery Road" and "Deathtripper" could hardly have been called meandering. But this is a true back-to-basics assault, 30 short minutes of songs that might revolve entirely around one riff or one barked vocal from an increasingly unhinged J.R. Hayes. This is seriously into the whole brevity thing.

Hayes, per usual, steals the show, despite sharing space with the greatest short-form guitar player of all time in Scott Hull, an increasingly confident electronics guru in Blake Harrison, new octopus-armed drummer Adam Jarvis, and two unstoppable guest vocal spots by Agoraphobic Nosebleed/ex-Salome screamer Kat Katz. Hayes is too good at this – lyrics, vocals, presence – to be topped. Metal needs him. Hopefully next time his return won't come after such a long hiatus.