And so here we are, my annual list of what I think are the 50 best albums of the year that is coming to a close, in this case 2011.
For this year’s big reveal, it is all here at once. Rather than draw it on posting and rambling on about one album a day, I’m tipping a nod to my days writing for Stranded In Stereo. I give you the whole list, with some detailed insight on my Top 10.
But before the list, I guess it would make sense to mention those few albums that were good, or alright, or just didn’t make the cut but for some reason I feel like noting their existence this year.
THE 2011 HONORABLE MENTION OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT
CANT - Dreams Come True - Terrible
Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost - True Panther
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Mirror Traffic - Matador
Megafaun - Megafaun - Hometapes
Portugal. The Man - In The Mountain In The Cloud - Atlantic
And then, there were the more important 50…
THE 11TH ANNUAL “TOP 50 ALBUMS OF THE YEAR” 2011 EDITION
50. Thrice - Major/Minor - Vagrant
49. The Horrors - Skying - XL
48. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Fat Possum
47. Papercuts - The Fading Parade - Sub Pop
46. Craft Spells - Idle Labor - Captured Tracks
45. Boston Spaceships - Let It Beard - GBV Inc.
44. Lifeguards - Waving At The Astronauts - Ernest Jenning
43. Title Tracks - In Blank - Ernest Jenning
42. Sondre Lerche - Sondre Lerche - Yep Roc
41. Yuck - Yuck - Fat Possum
40. Tom Vek - Leisure Seizure - Downtown
39. Luke Temple - Don’t Act Like You Don’t Care - Western Vinyl
38. The Roots - Undun - Def Jam
37. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues - Sub Pop
36. Eleanor Friedberger - Last Summer - Merge
35. Metronomy - The English Riviera - Because Music
34. Wu Lyf - Got Tell Fire To The Mountain - LYF
33. Washed Out - Within And Without - Sub Pop
32. Wilco - The Whole Love - dBPM
31. Destroyer - Kaputt - Merge
30. Peter Bjorn & John - Gimme Some - Startime/Columbia
29. Cut Copy - Zonoscope - Modular
28. Iceage - New Brigade - Dais/What’s Your Rupture?
27. Telekinesis - 12 Desperate Straight Lines - Merge
26. Neon Indian - Era Extrana - Static Tongues
25. The Black Keys - El Camino - Nonesuch
24. R.E.M. - Collapse Into Now - Warner Bros.
23. John Maus - We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves - Ribbon Music
22. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy - 4AD
21. Jay-Z & Kanye West - Watch The Throne - Def Jam
20. Future Islands - On The Water - Thrill Jockey
19. The Rapture - In The Grace Of Your Love - DFA
18. Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo - Matador
17. Radiohead - The King Of Limbs - TBD/Ticker Tape
16. Toro Y Moi - Underneath The Pine - Carpark
15. The Antlers - Burst Apart - Frenchkiss
14. Atlas Sound - Parallax - 4AD
13. Cymbals Eat Guitars - Lenses Alien - Barsuk
12. Times New Viking - Dancer Equired - Merge
11. Caveman - Coco Beware - Magic Man!
As for the Top 10 …
10. Chad VanGaalen - Diaper Island - Sub Pop
With the absence of the band Women, what with them taking that indefinite hiatus after beating each other on stage and what not, who was to take the Canadian pie and replace them? Well, what about their label head and producer? I mean, his songs sound cold and harrowing, a man in a large empty space letting the reverb act as an instrument. Songs like “Do Not Fear” and “Replace Me” are all jingle-jangle guitar pop, yet have a menacing sound brewing beneath. Or maybe that is the furnace is the background humming? Juxtapose those songs with a whistle-tinged ballad (“Sara”), your typical someone can’t commit waltz (“No Panic/No Heat”) and a ukulele(?) driven finale (“Shave My Pussy”) that has one of my favorite lyrics of the year (no, it isn’t sexual, or is the embarrassment of a worn out credit card in the check out line a euphemism for something I don’t know…) and the void of the band I mentioned in the first sentence has been filled.
09. TV On The Radio - Nine Types Of Light - Interscope
On first listen to this Brooklyn collective’s fourth album, you might be thrown off. At least, I was, by the sequencing that is. “Second Song” is a great opener, but going right in to the down-tempo and moody paces that are abound in “Keep Your Heart” and the soulful “You”? What do they think they are doing? Making their best album yet? Absolutely! It’s an album that has what has come to be that “classic” TVOTR sound, all funk and flash (“No Future Shock”), or a lean toward the more straightforward (“Will Do.”) It’s one of the year’s most brooding albums to come out, building and building from its beginnings, to finally overstimulating itself. By the time you reach the final track, lead single “Caffeinated Consciousness”, you aren’t asking yourself so much about the sequencing anymore, but more of just keeping the whole thing on repeat. It’s an album that works as one to get ready to, or one to end the night with. An album that works at any time.
08. Wild Flag - Wild Flag - Merge
I was never in to Sleater-Kinney that much until I joined in with everyone else expressing my for The Woods. Sure I’m guilty of wanting to listen to that album more at first because of Dave Fridmann’s classic in the red production style, but underneath the fuzz and the grit was a batch of stomping yet catchy anthems. So when word came of this supergroup’s debut, I was still cautious but quickly whisked away from that. Nothing but catchy singles (“Romance”) to the barn burning jam of the year (“Racehorse”), it was one of those albums you put on and you don’t want to skip one song. You want to take in every member’s trademark they bring to the table, from Carrie’s shredding, to Mary’s gentle coo, to Janet’s bashing on the skins. Hearing it all together is half the fun, being taken back to the nostalgic 90s through these girls was better than any other band who attempted it this year for sure.
07. Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Part Two - Capitol
And speaking of a “90s revival”, these guys never need to worry about that label. Ad Rock, Mike D and MCA are revolutionaries. They could make an album once a decade, and it would still sound fresher - wait, this album does sound fresher than most the records included on this list. They take every genre of music they have touched on previously: the lo-fi punk of their youth (“Lee Majors Come Again”), their ability to make a huge universally loved single (“Make Some Noise”), to the short packets that punch (“Funky Donkey”) tying together the package like a bow as it would. The production is challenging, with many of the vocals covered in reverb near the point of obscurity. But what is clear is that when their next comes out in 10 years from now, maybe sooner, it’ll still be fresh and original, like they weren’t even off doing something else.
06. Foo Fighters - Wasting Light - RCA
After the meandering Echos and Silence and.. whatever it’s called, they threw out all the bells and whistles (that means pianos and strings) and left behind the big budget production. The Foo Fighters, they went home, to Dave’s that is. They set up shop in his garage, got some guy named Butch, and committed to tape (literally, no pro tools, all 2” reels), 11 of their best songs of all-time. From the raucous screams of vocals and guitar in “Bridges Burning”, to the three guitar romp that is all over “Rope” and the classic “Arlandria”, and the metal styling of “White Limo”, the post-grunge boys prevail. They hit on all the spots of the early days, while touching on “These Days” to make sure that there’s still a hit that their more current fans can “Walk” down the street to. I often wonder if this might be the end for them, or at least, what their next album might be like. I hope for more of this and less of the past, then again the past is what makes them good …
05. Gardens & Villa - Gardens & Villa - Secretly Canadian
From the strike of the keys the open up “Black Hills”, you might think you’re gonna get a synth-pop album. By the exotic flute flourishes of “Orange Blossom” you might think it’s yacht rock. “Spacetime” equals funk space jam, “Thorn Castles” straight up pop magic. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what makes this debut album the best debut album of the year, and hell, even kind of hard to classify. But that’s the best part of it; they men that make up G&V (not GBV, I know it’s tricky) seem to hop around and aren’t defined by anything yet, still honing that sound of theirs that is unique and all its own in 2011. Who knows what their spectacular follow up will bring, maybe they’ll run with one genre, maybe they wont, the possibilities as they say are endless.
04. Real Estate - Days - Domino
With REM gracefully bowing out this year, one has to wonder if Real Estate will be taking their place in the indie/college/modern rock universe. In a mere one album move, they’ve already gone from Murmur to Document: the hazy July sounds of their self-titled debut have given way for the crisp and brisk Days, the best record to be released this fall. The Peter Buck jingle-jangle is everywhere, on their should be hits “It’s Real” and “Green Aisles”. Even one of the best song’s from my list last year, “Out Of Tune”, makes an appearance, tying the whole experience together. Where they succeed that REM never did (maybe they never even tried?) is the extended jam with album closer “All The Same”, a simple song that goes on for 7 minutes and never tires out the listener, or at least me, I mean I tend to like long meandering songs, don’t you?
03. Bon Iver - Bon Iver, Bon Iver -Jagjaguwar
I wish I could say something new and different that no one has said about this album, but I can’t seem to come up with anything. Insert Justin left the cabin the woods remark here, put down his guitar for a bit to grab some schlocky 80s keys (epic ender “Beth/Rest”). Oh, I have something I think - the production! At first, to me it was so flat how Vernon’s vocals were. It was as if they were smooth and silky, yet right on top of the speakers in the mix, not so fluttery and high. Sure, he hits his trademark falsetto (“Minnesota, WI” - note how most titles bare relation to actual/not actual locations, check) but he also hits these deep, bellowing notes at times (oh, “Minnesota, WI” again). There’s “Holocene” (see last post) and of course the bombastic, what the fuck are we about to implore opener in “Perth”. The man has set out to do what so few have - he has made a sophomore album that is not one bit slump.
02. The War On Drugs - Slave Ambient - Secretly Canadian
I’ll never forget the first time I heard Wagonwheel Blues. I was in my old office, and it was on, and it caught the full attention of my ears right away by sounding like nothing I had ever heard before, sounding like something I had always wanted to hear in an album and never had. Adam Granduciel doesn’t fail to keep that up with his band’s second LP. Their sound is so dense, layers and layers and layers of days stacked one atop the next. Sonically they play the game of Full Moon Fever and Born In The USA with their keyboards and drum machines firing against guitar solos that go on for days.
Ambient is like a soundtrack to that cross country trip you always wanted to take with a close friend. Acting as windy long stretches of highway in the desert, epic numbers like “Your Love Is Calling My Name” and “Come To The City” are connected by the by-ways and cornfield short cuts like “The Animator” and “Come For It”. Like on Blues, Granduciel uses these interludes and segues as reprisals of memories and discussions on said road trip, playing back the sounds of what you already saw as they slowly fade away only to be replaced by the new memories that are about to be made and had. Other numbers, like fantastic opener “Best Night” and “I Was There” showcase a rootsier side only hinted at previously, but help lay the roadwork for the long nights and days one has driving from coast to coast.
01. The Rosebuds - Loud Planes Fly Low - Merge
As a phrase, “loud planes fly low” is direct: it is a statement of fact. As the title of the fifth album from two of my favorite people on this entire planet, Loud Planes Fly Low is metaphor: it’s the conversations you don’t want to have, the words you don’t want to hear. It’s a tale of heartbreak and how to move forward from it. It is the tale of Kelly and Ivan Rosebud, two people who started a band called The Rosebuds as a honeymoon the week after their wedding, and their decision to address the fact that their love for one another is no more. And although that connection, that bond, is no longer in tact, they still lovers of music, lovers as friends, using these 10 songs to tell one another how they feel, and in the end, make amends to start down another path.
The somber mood is throughout, from the cautious build of opener “Go Ahead” to the pleas of comfort no matter the circumstances on “Come Visit Me”, to the confusion of “Without A Focus”. If “Focus” is one of the more sobering moments of the album (it is) then it’s liquid courage is found in “A Story”. Through sea sick melody and a narrowing drum solo that must appear before one blacks out, this song is the drunk dial at 3AM, the moment where one finally grows the nerve to tell one how they truly feel.
And in the morning, there is mourning and a stark realization found in the downright heartbreaking “Cover Ears”. With its familiar melody and the most honest and straightforward lyrics, “Ears” is the final plea, but also the end of the affair. It all builds to a bombastic chorus, with its direct cries of a lover assuring them they are thought of, and questioning who will be the one to comfort them if they are to up and leave. It is where the album’s title comes from, that one should cover ears, for loud planes they do fly low. The phrases, no matter how harsh and deafening they may be, are not what one wants to hear.
The album ends on “Worthwhile”, another simple acoustic moment. Envision it as a prologue, weeks, maybe even months down the road. Ivan, alone with his guitar, still wishing they had done everything right, even trying to remind Kelly of the past with a box of stuff to open on a lonely Christmas Day. You would think of this as sad, but it’s not; “Worthwhile” is a man realizing that he still has her, although not in the same capacity, and with those final, near upbeat notes of the keyboard after the strings finish one more time, you’ve come to realize that he’s gonna make do, and that’s worth it all.
