1. Nocturne / Wild Nothing

The Year of Wild Nothing.

Even the name is evocative.  A void, animated.  A great surging cloud of mystery, trepidation, and beauty.  Almost as if the name, the idea, the thought of this strange, moving abyss can enhance the actual music itself.  And then, somehow, it does.  So it goes with Wild Nothing's splendid second album, Nocturne.

Early morning drives when other headlights are still coming into focus.  The slanting light of the canyon sun diving into the west.  The late night considerations of where your life may go next.  All of this and more may be accentuated by this ineffable record.  A worthy soundtrack for every pause, every moment of self-aware solitude.  How many records can be so appropriate, rain, snow, or shine?  Dreamy enough, uptempo enough, open-ended enough for enjoyment and contemplation?

Truth is, Wild Nothing does it better than some of their influences.  And the "it" is the pretty melancholy of indie-pop nostalgia.  With influences from The Cure to the Smiths, from Echo and The Bunnymen to the Cocteau Twins, from Talk Talk to The Psychedelic Furs, countless bands have since tried to capture the forlorn loveliness emanating from a particular strain of UK guitar pop.  With Nocturne, Jack Tatum and his bandmates do not merely capture that essence, they enhance it.  In a year when the top five albums on The D Man's list could rightfully hold down the top spot, you will have to excuse this longtime Anglophile from selecting his favorite album of 2012 to stand supreme.  (And please ignore for a moment that Tatum hails from Blacksburg, Virginia).

The sepia-toned, synth-and-guitar pictures from Gemini and the Golden Haze EP have been developed here with even more fidelity, and the results are vibrant and transportive.  Lovelorn dreams echo throughout the record, a gorgeous sheen enveloping every guitar line, every sustained synth effect.  The vibe is effervescent, the feeling possible.

Tatum's lyrics are simple, impressionistic, merely a jumping off point for your own projections.  You can have me, you can have me all, he sings over and over again on the title track, making the invitation explicit.  I try to feel something for you / but that's all I can do / give my shadow to you, he admits on "Shadow."  In "Only Heather," Tatum sings, only Heather / can make me feel this way, and as listeners we just understand this bare truth, one we have felt before.  Without the music, these lines really mean nothing.  But with the music, they can mean anything we want.

Is this record the most complex, challenging, or epic record of the year?  Not by a long shot.  Is this music the highest degree of aesthetic difficulty?  Probably not.  Is it somewhat sleight, maybe too ethereal?  Perhaps.  But my final praise can be summed up this way: if The D Man had a band, our record would sound just like Nocturne.