For our annual Year in Music issue, I asked local musicians, rappers, producers, and music writers to sound off on the year’s best songs, album releases, shows – pretty much anything they wanted, music-wise. For the next few days, I’ll be posting them up individually on the Noise blog. You can also check the full list here.
Grass Widow‘s Internal Logic was one of my favorite albums of the year. Post-punk at its finest with hypnotic layers of three-part harmonies, and cosmic lyrics. Really just a perfect package. When I spoke to bassist-vocalist Hannah Lew around the release of the album, she was filled with great songwriting and inspiration quotes, including this one: “Sometimes when I’m feeling down I’ll go online and check what NASA’s doing. I follow them on Twitter. It just, for some reason, makes me feel hopeful when there are things out there that people are doing that make me feel like an ant.”
I loved chatting with her, so I asked her for a top 10 list for the Year in Music issue. She was the first to reply, and sent back a list of all her favorites:
Hannah Lew, Grass Widow
Top 10 of 2012
1. Starting our own label HLR and releasing our own record (Internal Logic)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFJazD46uvA
2. Total Control‘s LP
3. Touring with the Raincoats and singing “Lola” with them every night
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QufDdHzWhgw
4. Getting obsessed with Silver Apples
5. Hollywood Nailz
6. Wymond Miles LP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h4tX-H0qUA
7. Scrapers (band)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWU3aPpvGdk
8. Sacred Paws (band)
9. Making eight music videos and losing my mind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXtWWT1fz8Q
10. Wet Hair’s LP