Best of 2011: Favorite Albums of the Year
BEST OF 2011: Albums | Songs | EPs/Singles | Discoveries | Photos | Bootlegs
Let's just dive right in, shall we? I wrote blurbs for everything. If you jump straight for No. 1 (SPOILER IT'S KAPUTT), I'll understand, but you might enjoy some reading.
35. Dream Diary – You Are the Beat
The upbeat twee group was one of the only true discoveries I made at SXSW, though like the Pains of Pure at Heart's static debut, the unchanging sheen of this record makes the weaker songs slip into (albeit catchy) sameness.
REVIEW | ALL POSTS | "El Lissitzky": MP3
34. Pepper Rabbit - Red Velvet Snowball
The L.A. psych-pop purveyors built on Beauregard's first steps with a record of lush but lo-fi production and anxious, intense lyricism.
LIVE VIDEO | ALL POSTS | "The Annexation of Puerto Rico": MP3
33. Widowspeak - Widowspeak
The only Captured Tracks record I heard all year that wasn't straight from 1987. Not a bad thing, given the band's iron grasp on modern tumbleweed gloom.
REVIEW | "Hard Times": MP3
32. R.E.M. – Collapse Into Now
R.E.M.'s final record happens to be a very good one, a pony with, thankfully, more tricks than the quick 'n' easy Accelerate. Songs such as "Uberlin" and "Mine Smell Like Honey" stand right in line with their legendary catalog; if you're going to go out, this is how it's done.
31. Chelsea Wolfe – Apokalypsis
Bleak, gothic, scorched-earth, fearsome: this isn't the sort of record that usually makes its way onto Rawkblog, but Chelsea Wolfe's latest is delivered with such textural complexity and emotional directness that the rest hardly matters.
TRACK REVIEW | "Mer": MP3
30. Sondre Lerche - s/t
Few singers offer melodies as effortless as our SXSW headliner, Sondre Lerche, a trait that makes his self-titled album easy to let slip by. But doing so would mean missing the subtle production twists that accompany his fine songwriting this time around, including the magnificent guitar/drum collapse that knocks down "Domino."
VIDEO | ALL POSTS | "Domino": MP3
29. A Classic Education - Call It Blazing
Call It Blazing picks up right where the Shins left off with "Kissing the Lipless" with a collection of sizzling guitar pop bathing in cool-kid reverb. The 200-horsepower pedal-shove of "Gone to Sea" makes for an absolute scorcher (look for it on last year's best songs list), but the melancholy shuffle of "Place a Bet on You" and "Terrible Day" are fine looks, too. If James Mercer ever wants me to like him again, he should consider writing more songs as good as "I Lost Time."
VIDEO | "Gone To Sea": MP3
28. Little Scream - The Golden Record
The Golden Record glimmers brighter live, out of the reverb and backed by Laurel Sprengelmeyer's Arcade Fire-sized band (they were practically falling off stage at our SXSW party). But with the lightning bolt of a perfect song ("The Heron and the Fox") and as the thunderous announcement of a new artist, it's a set that'd make Thor proud.
PORTRAITS | ALL POSTS | "The Heron and the Fox": MP3
27. Devon Williams - Euphoria
"A recent discovery, and a record that's likely to sneak up the list with a few more spins. Slumberland and Captured Tracks hit a real stride this year with their late '80s/early '90s synth-pop revivalism: after years of knocking around L.A., Williams has finally hit his, too." - Me, a week ago, when this album was at No. 33. Don't Rip Van Winkle this one.
"Your Sympathy": MP3
26. Ryan Adams - Ashes & Fire
After seeing him four times, it was hard for any album compete with Live Ryan this year. Ashes & Fire is a craftsman's record, all polish and care, but when his rawer feelings shine through on tracks such as "Chains of Love," his music feels as urgent and charismatic as ever.
ALL POSTS (LOTS)
25. SBTRKT - SBTRKT
The electro effort was a late-in-the-year but worthy discovery for me, mostly for the guest vocals of U.K. singer Sampha -- a musician whose velvet throat makes James Blake look like a lifetime smoker rolling over in his hospital bed to finish hacking up that lung. And James Blake is a really good singer!
"Wildfire": MP3
24. Eleanor Friedberger - Last Summer
More than just a Fiery Furnaces pop record, the female Friedberger's solo debut offered a grieving, gorgeous portrait of a lost season in New York City. You can't make art like this in Instagram.
LIVE | "Roosevelt Island": MP3
23. Idaho - You Were a Dick
The slowcore act's lengthy catalog hadn't quite clambered over Low or Smog to wave for my attention until this record, a dry, cinematic folk collection that sounds as fine on headphones as it does accompanied by a fair-trade latte and a broken heart. Pick it up when you trade in that Bon Iver vinyl.
"You Were a Dick": MP3
22. Big Troubles - Romantic Comedy
As noted above, thanks to Slumberland and Captured Tracks, 2011 was an aging C86er's dream. Romantic Comedy brought the jangle with early '90s verve and their iconic label's signature sweetness.
LIVE | "Make It Worse": MP3
21. Wilco - The Whole Love
If loving dad-rock is wrong, I don't want to be right. In all seriousness, though, The Whole Love is best enjoyed as music for musicians: as the product of Wilco's longest single-lineup tenure yet, it sounds like six silver-smooth wheels turning in a Swiss watch. In the band's recent context, it doesn't quite hit "Impossible Germany" or "One Wing" levels of spectacle, but there's no moment of its 56 minutes that will stop you from smiling, either.
VIDEO
BEST OF 2011: Albums | Songs | EPs/Singles | Discoveries | Photos | Bootlegs
20. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy
No album offered a better side this year than St. Vincent's Strange Mercy. Its first four songs are the best the musician has ever done, an intricate weave of molten guitar work and spider-web synthesizers pierced by her dagger of a voice. Then it drives of a cliff, or at least beyond this writer's tastes. If Clark can sustain the first half's brilliance over a full LP, she could be the finest working artist we have; as is, Strange Mercy's close enough.
REVIEW | "Cruel": MP3
19. Jill Andrews - The Mirror
The former Everybodyfields singer's proper debut is what you'd expect: gentle, lovely alt-country that knows when to pick up the tempo. Her voice is as stark and blue as a Midwestern sky, and as equally ready to cloud over with sudden storms.
REVIEW | "Blue Sky": MP3
18. Toro Y Moi - Underneath the Pine
Chaz Bundick's too much the cipher, too seemingly pleased to be here to betray the artistic demons that haunt colleagues such as Bradford Cox; whether he has a record like Parallax seething inside him, it's hard to know. But Underneath the Pine (and the spastic Freaking Out EP) reveals a musician intent on making progress, as equipped to translate '70s pop and folk (see "How I Know," perhaps the best Rundgren tribute since Jon Brion's "Meaningless") to the Spotify era as he is a voracious seeker of electronic groove. He feels like he's on the verge. In the meantime, I'm not going anywhere.
REVIEW | "How I Know": MP3
17. Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know
This list feels littered with imperfect records, but I'd rather have the mountainous highs of Marling's third release than 12 tracks of oatmeal competence (No offense to oatmeal, I'm probably eating some right now). A Creature I Don't Know leans too far into obscure mythology and bleak English trad-balladry to make this fulfill its rich Laurel Canyon potential, but when she arrives at the stunning Joni-esque gallop of "I Was Just a Card," just try to keep up.
LIVE REVIEW
16. Puro Instinct - Headbangers in Ecstasy
Headbangers is indeed an ecstatic record, a 45-minute swirl that feels like forever in the best way. (The best way is drugs.) If the band oddly lost some of its luster in the hyper-competitive buzz rat race in recent months, that doesn't dim the twinkling psychedelia of "California Shakedown" or "Stilyagi."
"Lost at Sea": MP3
15. Craft Spells - Idle Labor
It took the Captured Tracks approval stamp to get me through the early spins, but Idle Labor's plug-and-play melodies and bedroom '80s vibes were well worth the effort. It's dorky like John Cusack in Better Off Dead and just as lovelorn.
LIVE | "You Should Close the Door": MP3
14. Cymbals Eat Guitars - Lenses Alien
In a digital-dominated year when "guitar" almost sounds like a dirty word, Cymbals Eat Guitars have strapped on their axes and soldiered on. Lenses Alien touches on the ferocious influence of At the Drive-In alongside Elliott Smith and Modest Mouse even as it showcases the evolution of their own impressive sensibilities. Rock 'n' roll, you should know by now, will never die.
INTERVIEW | "Definite Darkness": MP3
13. Geotic - Mend
Mend may be a throwaway freebie from a musician who wouldn't even put his proper name on it, but Baths' Will Wiesenfeld's decaying guitar loop daydream is the most beautiful album I've heard all year.
REVIEW | "Find Your Peace": MP3
12. Wild Beasts - Smother
Few bands seemed as sure of themselves this year as Wild Beasts, whose Smother feels as heavy and inexorable as a battle cruiser. To their credit, the band used its considerable prowess (and the powerful interplay of its dual frontmen) to finally make the sexy record Thom Yorke promised us almost a decade ago.
LIVE | REVIEW
11. Atlas Sound - Parallax
I think Bradford Cox always saves his best stuff for Atlas Sound, where it can live and breathe outside the padded walls of Deerhunter's critical observation chamber. Under any name, his brilliance is undoubtable. Parallax is an ode to broken connections delivered in the universal language; what could be more artful than that?
REVIEW | "Te Amo": MP3
<< 35-21 | 10-1 >> | Full List
BEST OF 2011: Albums | Songs | EPs/Singles | Discoveries | Photos | Bootlegs
10. Beyonce - 4
There were more artistically consistent efforts this year, albums that charted higher, divas whose GIFs earned more reblogs. But no one belted as boldly as Beyonce Knowles this year. With 4, she offered a collection with more hooks-per-inch than a mountain climbing convention. At its virtuosic apex rests "Countdown," a track spread like the endless platter of a Vegas buffet; the sharp, simple "Love on Top" proves all she needs is a song. Production-wise, it's still astounding to hear her dip so easily into post-blog house pop on "Party" or into James Blake ambient on "I Miss You." When she declares "This beat is crazy" on "Run the World (Girls)," it might be the first time in pop history that that's actually been true. Bey runs the world. We're all just tweeting in it.
Existential Angst in Beyonce's 4
9. Bill Callahan - Apocalypse
Like a bottle of wine or a pair of particularly beat-up work boots, Bill Callahan keeps getting better with age. For all its connotations of fire and brimstone, Apocalypse is a peaceful, funny record, mourning a personal loss in one moment and winking at David Letterman the next. Along with his recent classics A River Ain't Too Much To Love and Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, it reveals an artist who has whittled a decade-plus career down to his very best qualities. Let's hope we get a few more Callahan records before the end of the world.
CONCERT PHOTOS
8. Radiohead - The King of Limbs
The King of Limbs may be minor Radiohead, sure, but why must every record stomp with dinosaur feet? Like Kid A and Amnesiac before it, The King of Limbs is not an album that will do your work for you -- but on the other side lies an endless horizon and unparalleled wonder. Patience, grasshopper.
Review | All Posts | "Give Up The Ghost": MP3
7. North Highlands - Wild One
Wild One offers an idiosyncratic, hypnotic take on folk-pop: singer Brenda Malvini has a way of repeating lyrics like a mission or a mantra, wringing melodic and emotional possibilities out of a slender palette. It has a way of deepening the feelings in songs such as "Bruce": by the fourth time she reaches for "When it gets warm / I'll be better to you," the cold's clinging to your bones. It helps that the band performs with National-esque crispness, but Malvini's vocals -- as humbly pretty as they are boldly affected -- make this one to remember.
"Benefits" Video | "Bruce": MP3
6. Seeker Lover Keeper - s/t
Seeker Lover Keeper's debut album doesn't drop stateside until next year, but the agony of going one moment longer without the Australian trio's harmonies in your life would be worth any plane ticket. (Or 10-second Google search.) Sally Seltmann (ex-New Buffalo, "1234" co-writer, solo charmer), Holly Throsby and Sarah Blasko have made one of the most effective supergroup albums ever, a collection that goes from strength to soft-strummed strength. While it spans gentle electro-pop, rough-edged rock and plaintive folk from three separate songwriters, it all sounds as seamless as the Chicago bubble -- and once their vocals join in another spirited chorus, far more revelatory.
Review | "Even Though I'm a Woman": MP3
5. Twin Sister - In Heaven
If you wanted a sequel to "Lady Daydream," my favorite track on Twin Sister's tktkkt EP, In Heaven delivered. (Apparently, most people did not want a sequel to "Lady Daydream.") The album nods to the Talking Heads ("Bad Street") and, uh, anime soundtracks ("Kimmi in a Rice Field") while maintaining the band's own jubilant weirdness: I don't know who inspired the wonderfully silly movie-star ode "Gene Ciampi," but it's better that way. If "Saturday Sunday" plays like a synth-pop big sister to Rebecca Black's "Friday," it's cause for celebration. Heaven can wait, at least until I get tired of this record.
Review | "Stop": MP3
4. Minks - By The Hedge
Captured Tracks' most ambitious band is also its most purposefully obscure: it throws double-vision anthem "Out of Tune" -- the only 2011 song that literally sounds like a sun-warped '80s tape, holler at you later, Altered Zones -- at you a mere three minutes in and drops a guitar instrumental two tracks later. But the experimental moments bristle with purpose, not indulgence, and when the band reveals its pop aspirations on "Funeral Song," "Ophelia" or goth-duet-of-the-year "Cemetery Rain" -- well, holy shit. Robert Smith hasn't sounded this revelatory in, oh, ever?
Review | Live Photos | "Cemetery Rain": MP3
3. Real Estate - Days
Real Estate's Days is a plain, simple record, a piece of work that -- like Hemingway or Sriracha sauce -- either agrees with you or doesn't. If you can't hear it calling your name from the treehouse behind your childhood home, that's a shame. As for the rest of us, well, it's been real.
Review | Concert Photos | All Posts | "It's Real": MP3
2. ARMS - Summer Skills
What more can I say about this album? That as the indie rock of the last 15 years ceases to matter, that ARMS insist on sounding better, trying harder, playing sharper and feeling deeper than anybody else? That I've been waiting to hear this record since the band played these songs on a 40-degree afternoon outside an Austin coffee shop over a year ago? That I want to curl up inside of the title track and live there forever? Because that'd all be true. Too many songs these days, indie and otherwise, sound like they weren't begging to be made, that they weren't burning holes through busted hearts and agile fingers. They sound like dollar signs. Summer Skills sounds like home.
Review | All Posts | "Dog Days": MP3
1. Destroyer - Kaputt
At time when indie-fan consensus seems more predictable than ever, Kaputt has fallen astoundingly low on most of this year's best-of lists. (Credit where it's due.) I'm not sure why. Did the promos, which landed in my inbox well over a year ago, arrive too early? Was Dan Bejar's clever commentary on the HOT SAX revival simply over the heads of the M83 set? Dozens of listens later, it doesn't matter. Kaputt is a Destroyer masterpiece (one among many), as clever a winking career suicide as it is an earnest, on-trend tribute to the cocaine-chasing death of the disco era. He wrote a song for America; who knew? Hopefully, uh, everyone.
Review | Video: "Kaputt" | All Posts | "Chinatown": MP3
Honorable mentions:
Raleigh - New Times in Black and White
Fell in love with the band's chilly chamber-rock production. Still waiting to feel the same way about the songs.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. – It’s a Corporate World
Too much EP recycling to really list this on its own, but still the bearer of a handful of inventive, charming tracks.
Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring for my Halo
I think I'd like this a lot more if I smoked a lot of pot.
Seapony – Go With Me
This band has a better record in them, especially if they dump the trendy production style in favor of a more classic twee sound, but Go With Me gathers plenty of fine songwriting. The underrated volley to Tennis' sloppy garage lob.
Shugo Tokumaru – Port Entropy
No 2011 album sounded as fun to make as this one. Tokumaru handles both exuberance and grief with equal aplomb.
Alessi's Ark - Time Travel
Folk that's adorable in a way Zooey Deschanel would kill for.
Hannah Peel – The Broken Wave
This is a completely gorgeous slice of songwriter-pop and I'm not sure why I latched onto Seeker Lover Keeper over this collection. Not enough attention span, I expect.
International Waters – 1994
The Austin indie-pop act's proper debut is remarkably dreamy -- so much so that the songs are hard to keep track of. Still, strong melodies and nicely liquid production.
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1. Destroyer - Kaputt
2. ARMS - Summer Skills
3. Real Estate - Days
4. Minks – By The Hedge
5. Twin Sister - In Heaven
6. Seeker Lover Keeper – s/t
7. North Highlands - Wild One
8. Radiohead – The King of Limbs
9. Bill Callahan – Apocalypse
10. Beyonce - 4
11. Atlas Sound - Parallax
12. Wild Beasts
13. Geotic – Mend
14. Cymbals Eat Guitars - Lenses Alien
15. Craft Spells – Idle Labor
16. Puro Instinct – Headbangers in Ecstacy
17. Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know
18. Toro Y Moi – Underneath the Pine
19. Jill Andrews – The Mirror
20. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy
21. Wilco - The Whole Love
22. Big Troubles - Romantic Comedy
23. Idaho - You Were A Dick
24. Eleanor Friedberger – Last Summer
25. SBTRKT - SBTRKT
26. Ryan Adams - Ashes & Fire
27. Devon Williams - Euphoria
28. Little Scream – The Golden Record
29. A Classic Education - Call It Blazing
30. Sondre Lerche – s/t
31. Chelsea Wolfe – Apokalypsis
32. R.E.M. – Collapse Into Now
33. Widowspeak - s/t
34. Pepper Rabbit - Red Velvet Snowball
35. Dream Diary – You Are the Beat