2012 has been a prolific year for music, with many new releases, some interesting new artists, reunions and astonishing live shows. But which albums can be considered the greatest marvels of 2012? The Toonari Post presents you its very own top-five list of albums on which you should have put your hands during this year.

5. Of Monsters and Men – My Head Is an Animal

The debut album of the indie-folk Icelandic band, it was first released in 2011 in Iceland, and only in 2012 in North America. The album debuted at number six on the U.S. Billboard 200. The extremely successful single ‘Little Talks,’ a catchy tune accompanied by dark and inspiring lyrics, reached the Top 20 in over five countries and positioned as No. 1 on the US Alternative Songs chart. Catchy choruses are a characteristic which pertains to the entire album, along with the contrast created by the male and female voices, and with the monumental sound generated by the accordance of the many instruments used on the tracks. The biggest strength is probably the union, given by sound and lyric, of joyful feelings with very dark ones. Great starting point for a band which seems to be very promising.

4. Tenacious D – Rize of The Fenix

This might be a hazard, but the American rock band delivered this year its best studio album. The originality of the band, which succeeded in developing a mature and smooth rock sound together with extremely ironic lyrics, has to be rewarded. The solid rock‘n’roll is helped by the presence of Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana) on drums, sustaining a series of ridiculous stories told through ironic lyrics and skits. This album is the demonstration that Tenacious D wants to play with everything but the music. Rock’n’roll, indeed, stays as serious as it can get. Rize of The Fenix is the perfect meeting point for two opposite attitudes, with Tenacious D presenting a sound that is completely mature, and an attitude that never matured instead.

3. The Black Keys – El Camino

The album was released in December 2011, but it surely has gained a lot of fame in 2012. Preceded by the single ‘Lonely Boy,’ which captured the attention of most with its catchy melody and amusing video, El Camino reserves many facets to be enjoyed by the listener. With this album The Black Keys have been able to maintain the enormous success gained with the previous studio album Brothers. El Camino is the fastest of the band’s albums, and the rock duo has demonstrated, through its live performances, to be able to keep up with the new tempo and the renovated energy. Drummer Patrick Carney told CBS Local “It [an album] is definitely gonna happen in 2013. It’s just a matter of how long it takes us to make the album and deciding when we want to get back on the road.” With this premises, the expectations are surely set high.

2. Mumford & Sons – Babel

After the success of 2009 Sigh No more, folk-rock band Mumford & Sons released their second studio album, Babel, last September. The fastest selling album of the year in both the UK and the US, Babel keeps up with the great professionalism that characterizes the British band. The band stayed faithful to its musical soul in this album, delivering a highly rocking folk reinvention. Babel, though, sounds angrier, bitterer in respect to Sigh no More. Not to be misinterpreted though, the main message coming from the album is love, the real and deepest meaning of it. Sounding like a crude look at the world, with the frustration won over by the hope created through love, Babel perfectly draws all these different moments of the soul. Excellent work overall, the track ‘Holland Road’ will take the listener into a musical journey hard to forget.

1. Jack White – Blunderbuss

The most awaited album of 2012. After the White Stripes split last year, the future of one of the most talented musicians currently in circulation, as Jack White is, was some sort of concern for most music lovers. In his album Blunderbuss, the Detroit musician experimented with less than expected by many; he mixed in a perfectly smooth and harmonic result different momentum of rock and blues, refreshing old sounds to perform in an innovative final outcome. The mood of the album is a dark one, with the lyrics letting perspire White’s inner demons, although never resulting heavy. ‘Blunderbuss,’ the song that gives the title to the album, is the pearl hidden in the record. A brilliant album, which succeeds to crown White as a solo artist.

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Frequency Festival, the yearly event that takes place in St. Poelten, Austria, started on August 15, with a roaring welcome day. The festival is organized by Skalar Entertainment GmbH. It is the gathering of music lovers from all around Europe who celebrate the many forms music can take. Eight stages and more than 100 acts are set to entertain the giant crowd participating in the event which will go on until Saturday, August 18.

The grand opening, among others, saw the performances of The Black Keys and The Killers at the Space Stage, the most “rocking” stage of the event.

The blues-rock duo from Ohio, composed of Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach, bedazzled their fans for about one hour. The daylight accompanied their performance, as well as the two musicians Gus Seyffert and John Wood, who are currently touring with the duo. When El Camino was released, Patrick Carney was said to be worried about future live performances, due to the faster drumming tempo of their newest work.

But he didn’t have to be; we greatly applaud Carney’s performance as he banged the drums to perfection yesterday, enriching the entire performance. The guitar played by Dan Auerbach also helped conquer a crowd that couldn’t help but rocking out to the rock-blues sounds of the duo.

The catchy ‘Lonely Boy’ did its job, setting the audience on fire, although the peak of the performance was probably ‘Little Black Submarines,’ a jewel of a song, masterfully executed by the band. Most of the songs were performed with the support of two live musicians playing bass, keyboards and an additional guitar, but Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach also reserved a couple of more private moments for themselves, addressing the audience on their own.

The talent that the two musicians from Ohio showed in their records was confirmed by their live performance, full of professionalism, passion, and great musical capabilities.

The Killers played afterwards as headliner, concluding the first of the four days of the festival. They took the stage and performed with flashy choreography worthy of their Las Vegas origins. Colorful lights and images passing by on a background of electronic mountains accompanied their entire performance, with the addition of a couple of fireworks moments.

The Killers played some of their most famous hits as well as some of their new material, entertaining the audience for about an hour and a half. A charming performance, which reached peaks of crowd appreciation with hits such as ‘Somebody Told Me’ and ‘Mr. Brightside.’ A clean and well-executed show by the pop-rock band made in Las Vegas.

Image Courtesy of  kate.gardiner

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Global Festival 2012 will take place on September 29 in New York’s Central Park at the same time of the United Nations’ General Assembly in New York. The festival will be headlined by the Foo Fighters, The Black Keys,  Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Band of Horses, and K’NAAN, who will join around 54,000 attendees.

The charity festival is “a catalytic event to end extreme poverty,” as stated on the show’s Facebook page. It is part of the Global Poverty Project, and the spirit behind the organization of the show has been expressed by the organizers, who wrote: “The fight for justice has never been easy. But human history has always been shaped by courageous actions and a vision of a better world.  As Global Citizens, we’ve put our hands up to stand against the greatest injustice of our time: extreme poverty.”

No tickets will be sold; they have to be earned. This is the “action” part. People (18+) will be able to participate to a lottery for the chance to win tickets for the event by completing some steps as explained on the Global Citizen’s website. After taking actions such as signing petitions, promoting awareness via social networks, making donations and so on, people can earn points that will open them to the doors to the lottery.

For the organization of the event, The Global Poverty Project is assisted by promoters Goldenvoice/AEG. The festival will be financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Sumner Redstone Charity Foundation, with the participation of international groups such as UNICEF.

Organizer, Hugh Evans, said the goal of the event is to have fans take 100,000 actions by September. This will then be used as leverage when asking the world’s leaders, who will be in town during the event, to make monetary commitments for reaching development goals.

According to Huff Post, The Black Key’s Patrick Carney said about the event: “The scale of things that they’re trying do just felt really cool, and we’re trying to get the ball rolling. Especially with everything that’s been going on for the last three years, I suppose, after the stock market crashed. There’s attention on the amount of people living below the poverty line and the disparity between the rich and the poor and everything that’s going on now … . It just felt like the right time to do something.”

Foo Fighters released a statement which read “We are very proud to be lending a hand to such a creative, important event and are looking forward to adding to the noise in the big park and helping the effort toward reducing the global shame of deep poverty.”

Image Courtesy of   s_bukley / Shutterstock.com

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In some respects, ‘Not Suitable for Children’ is too cool for school. The Australian movie is so indie that the Wikipedia article, so far, consists of one not particularly descriptive line. Unsurprisingly, this lack of notoriety has resulted in prospective audiences that are uniformly clad in skinny jeans, flannel shirts, oversized glasses and a mobile fog of “Rockstar” hairspray. In other words, ‘Not Suitable for Children’ could be used as the masthead film of the Hipster Generation.

Indeed, even the basic plot of the movie sounds like a pretentious mishmash of various hyper-realistic pseudocomedies starring Joseph Gordon Levitt, or some other underdeveloped manchild who looks good in a beanie. In this case, the role of intense woolen hat-wearer falls on the lean Ryan Kwanten of “True Blood” fame.

Jonah (no surname) is a single, directionless, twenty-something party animal who lives with his two best friends, Stevie (Sarah Snook) and Gus (Ryan Corr), in the house left to him by his recently deceased mother. Jonah’s primary form of income is derived through hosting massive house-parties fueled by incredible amounts of drugs and alcohol. It is during one of these ragers, that a lump is discovered on Jonah’s testicle. The diagnosis is testicular cancer, and, as an eventual consequence, post-operative sterility.

In view of this prognosis, Jonah sets his mind to conceiving a child before his operation occurs, a few weeks in the future. That’s right, ‘Not Suitable for Children’ is essentially an Australian amalgamation of the American independent comedies, ‘Friends with Kids’ and ’50/50′– favorites amongst the cool kids. And, if the storyline was not enough, the most damning proof of this movie’s Hipsterdom undoubtedly lies in the presence of not one, not two, but three,“The Black Keys” songs featured prominently on the ubertrendy soundtrack.

But regardless of how one might feel about black nail polish and skillfully shaped facial hair, it is impossible not to appreciate how young, fresh, raw, well-made, and yes— cool— ‘Not Suitable for Children’ is. The movie approaches its subject with a wry, fairly unstudied, uniquely Australian wit that’s largely missing from ‘Friends with Kids’ and oozes a charming vivacity that, to a great extent,’50/50′ lacks.

Essentially, ‘Not Suitable for Children’ is stripped of the slick Hollywood self-consciousness that tends to stifle some of the unadulterated honesty that directors of lofi films claim to seek. Comparisons between ‘Not Suitable for Children’ and Diablo Cody’s  2011 ‘Young Adult’ would not go astray.

To be sure, it is amazing that a movie with such a contrived premise— things progress along fairly familiar lines— manages to appear both completely natural and decidedly watchable, despite the odd, unnecessarily abrupt, but nonetheless expected, plot turn. This movie is not trying too hard.

At least part of the credit must go to an incredibly fresh-faced performance by Snook, who is infinitely approachable and breathtakingly vulnerable. Kwanten, too, very capably fulfills his role as the bewildered, blank-faced, Jonah.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the film, is that it is stylistically stunning. Under Peter Templeman’s direction, the streets of Sydney burst with life, and Jonah’s parties are brash and intoxicating. The camera work is frankly beautiful, and manages to provide visual interest without disrupting in the least the narrative flow of the movie itself (the very graphic sex scenes are particularly well-shot. No doubt a labor of love.) A mixture of pushy Winding Refn-like non-diegetic and diegetic music brings everything together. The whole package is neat but powerful.

It’s a bloody cool movie, mate.

Grade: 4/5

Image Courtesy of   Not Suitable For Children

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The Black Keys, composed of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, have been touring in promotion of their latest album, ‘El Camino,’ with great success in Europe and North America for months now, and they will go on with live shows until next fall. While on the road, the blues-rock duo from Akron, OH, has been accompanied by director Noah Abrams who is putting together a documentary on the phenomenal band.

According to the director himself, the documentary will revolve around the relationship between the two guys from Ohio who started their collaboration in 2001, and who have grown as musicians together ever since.

In an interview with SPIN magazine, Abrams defined some of the traits of his experience with the rock duo, and what to expect for the documentary. “A lot of music documentaries spend too much time trying to make people cool. I’m fortunate enough to know these guys pretty well and their relationship is pretty incredible and very funny,” said Abrams “They’re guys that grew up around the corner from each other. They worked and worked and worked and toured and toured and slept in a van and worked their asses off and now they’re selling out arenas.”

It is no secret that these two guys have worked hard to reach the position they are in today within the music scene. In 2010 they hit it big time with their album ‘Brothers,’ but rather than resting on their laurels, they kept on working on new material while touring. This inspired wild rhythms, but also the graceful creation of the album ‘El Camino.’ Through the record, Auerbach and Carney succeeded in canalizing their enormous talent into a mature and glorious work, which also seems to be an anthem for their lack of fear of exploration and innovation.

The astonishing result has been much appreciated by the wider audience: including fans, critics and other musicians. Recently, actor/musician Jack Black (Tenacious D), defined The Black Keys in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, as one of the last representatives of true rock ‘n’ roll, together with Jack White and the Foo Fighters.

The celebration of Auerbach and Carney’s hard-working attitude and success seems to be the moving force behind Abram’s documentary “I think it’s a testament to their talent and hard work,” Abrams said; he then added, “We’ve gotten some amazing footage so far. For as big as these guys are now, they’re still two guys from Akron. The comedy is usually endless with these two.” The director expressed his hopes for having the documentary completed for the 2013 film festival season, and he is hoping for a theatrical release.

If you want to catch the chance to see The Black Keys playing live, you will find the complete schedule for their tour here.

Image Courtesy of   The Black Keys

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The Black Keys, the American blues rock duo composed of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney released their seventh studio album “El Camino” on December 6. Danger Mouse and The Black Keys produced the album on Nonesuch Records.

These guys, who started their career in 2001, are the romantic incarnation of the rock band dream. They are friends, they traveled long distances together to play gigs where there was nobody to listen to them, and they kept playing sensible music, recording on analog tapes. During the years, they have developed their sound, experimenting with different aspects of indie rock from blues rock up to a more rock-and-roll oriented approach in the latest album “El Camino.”

The dream of great success came true in 2010 with the widely appreciated album “Brothers,” which had the hit singles “Tighten Up” and “Howlin’ for You.” Since then, they have gained a bigger audience and won several awards, including three Grammy Awards and an MTV Video Music Award.

The release of “El Camino” was preceded by the single “Lonely Boy”, an extremely catchy song adequately promoted by an equally catchy music video. Before the record’s release, fans also had the possibility to stream five of the new songs on the “El Camino” website.

The album is simply awesome. It forgets a bit about the soul and black approach of the previous records, although it is possible to retrieve it mainly in “Stop Stop.” It still plays a background role in the whole record, but it’s not the final goal of it. “El Camino” is faster than the previous band’s records, as had Auerback, singer and songwriter, declared before the release of the album. It reminds listeners of old sonorities pertaining to big bands of the past, such as The Clash. It oozes the feeling of good, old rock-and-roll, which has seemed to be finally coming back because of more than one band in the last year.

The catchy characteristic does not only pertain to “Lonely Boy.” The tracks come to the listener in a straightforward way. The maximum level of perfection in the album is probably reached by “Little Black Submarines,” which, according to Auerbach, was recorded in several versions. The one in the album starts like a heartbreaking ballad with only an acoustic guitar and a voice, and then ends in a powerful expression of pure and profound rock. It is a pleasant experience for the soul.

The Black Keys declared that the most interesting part of this release will be for them to play the songs live, mainly because the new tempo of the album forces Carney, the drummer of the duo, to play faster and harder than he ever has live. Surely band members are not the only ones looking forward to the live shows. They have already had to add dates to their European tour because of high requests, and they’ve announced a 2012 North American tour.

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