Welcome to WVAU’s third annual Top 10 countdown! Every year, WVAU DJs vote on their favorite albums and songs of the previous 12 months. Some make the list – and we write about them in our Top 10s. Some don’t – and we write about them too, in our eccentric and exquisite Overlooked Albums feature. We’re very proud of these features, of the fine writing that our DJs have contributed, and we’re proud that we’re running this feature for the right reasons.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, the internet around this time of year teems with features that vomit 2012’S TOP 200 BEST OF ALBUMS SLIDESHOW INFOGRAPHIC RESPONSIVE DESIGN SPONSORED BY BUSHMILLS HEY CLICK HERE INTERNET TRAFFIC HI all over your screen. That’s not our intention here – as a college radio station lucky enough to have a large DJ population comprised of followers of virtually every genre, this countdown tries to give some insight into both the popular consensus and the varied tastes of WVAU.

A big THANK YOU goes out to all the DJs who voted; the writers who contributed to this feature; and you, the reader, who may belong to one of the two former categories but also may not, and it’s pretty rad that you’re with us right now. WVAU.org will be running this feature for the next 10 days, so check back on the site or follow the countdown on Facebook or Twitter.

So without further ado…..

#10 Album:
Wild Nothing – Nocturne

Jack Tatum, the man behind Wild Nothing, shows that the two years separating his debut, Gemini, and Nocturne were worth the wait. Wild Nothing’s second full-length mixes detached vocals, synths, and guitar melodies to exude a distinctive ’80s feel.
Nocturne as a whole is a more cohesive work than the recorded-at home Gemini, maintaining a consistent, more developed sound that allows for the same easy listening as its predecessor. The strongest part of Nocturne isn‰’t the guitar riffs or the syncopated drum sounds prevalent on Gemini but instead the variety that it provides from the hypnotizing “Paradise‰” to the upbeat “Through the Grass.‰” Tatum‰’s writing is noticeably different this time around as well. As Tatum mentions in an interview with ComplexMusic, Nocturne is different from Gemini in that he “wanted to think about how the songs were going to be written and how they might be translated later.‰” Tatum exemplifies his own personal maturity as he sings the lovey-dovey lyrics in “Only Heather.‰Û

The album maintains the “dreamy‰” sound that the band is known for, but demonstrates musical maturity with its trance-like rhythms paired with sporadic pop.

By Hyunjin Park

#10 Song: Pile – “Prom Song”

Drummers much better than myself have compared Kris Kuss‰’ concise, yet expressive drumming to Led Zeppelin‰’s Jon Bonham. His combination of floor tom thuds, snare cracks and cymbal punctuation works alongside Rick Maguire‰’s clawing chords and misaligned arpeggios to build a leering tension. Maguire sings of a strangely universal prom-induced misanthropy, a perfect subject for the mood. Everything synergizes and coaxes a climax from the song that rivals third wave post-rock‰’s finest. The difference is that Explosions in the Sky takes ten minutes to do so, while Pile needs but five.

The physicality of this segment blows me away every time I listen. It‰’s violently cathartic, chaotic, calculated, coarse and still genuinely beautiful. This is more than a guitar solo; emotion flows through each instrument simultaneously as they thrash about in perfect harmony, making the segment infinitely expansive, yet so immediate. I try to catch my breath the entire time, but when I finally do so, I want nothing more than to lose it all over again.

By Cameron Stewart