Peruse the full madness of my 2011 listmaking below.
Hello, Internet people! In the first two weeks of 2012, I rolled out my 60 favorite albums and 60 favorite songs of 2011. (My original goal was 50, but there were too many things that were just too painful to leave off, so 60 it is.) If lists are a thing that you like, check these bad boys out.
60 Favorite Albums of 2011 :: #60-41 :: #40-21 :: #20-1
As usual, I’ve burnt myself out on this year-end-list-mania, so I’m not going to say much here. I’ll just leave you with 13 great music videos released this year (all for very good songs that mostly didn’t make my list), alphabetically by artist, and a couple of other great tidbits.
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Beyoncé — “Countdown”
Big Sean [ft. Nicki Minaj] — “Dance (A$$) Remix”
Fleet Foxes — “The Shrine/An Argument”
Jay-Z & Kanye West — “Otis”
King Krule (formerly Zoo Kid) — “Out Getting Ribs”
Lil Wayne [ft. Cory Gunz] — “6 Foot 7 Foot”
Lykke Li — “Sadness Is A Blessing”
Mister Heavenly — “Bronx Sniper”
Mr. Muthafuckin eXquire [ft. Despot, Danny Brown, Das Racist & El-P] — “Huzzah (Remix)”
Rihanna — “We Found Love”
St. Vincent — “Cruel”
Tyler, the Creator — “Yonkers”
Ty Segall — “Goodbye Bread”
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Honorary Songs of the Year
In general, 2011 was the year I grew weary of the incessant, repetitive, unending cycle of viral videos. But the depths of dear Youtube also produced these two absolute beauties:
Chris Brown – “Look At Me Now” (Polka Version)
Rebecca Black – “Friday” (Hell Version)
Looking at these 20 songs, I notice that only three of them are under four minutes long, and many stretch out well beyond the 5-minute mark. I think this says something about what I generally look for in songs: a sort of journey that sucks you in and, taking unexpected turns, deposits you somewhere different than where you started. But I believe it’s also indicative of where my head was at in 2011, and what a lot of music released over the course of the year sounded like.
In any case, I hope you enjoy the list, and as with #s 60-21, I’ve embedded the songs in each post, so you can stream them as you go.
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20 :: Jai Paul
“BTSTU”
from BTSTU [single]
One of 2011’s most sonically unique tracks, this one-off from British newcomer Jai Paul (it’s the only thing we’ve got from him so far) seems like it couldn’t get any better — and then those saxophones at the end fade in.
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19 :: Destroyer
“Kaputt”
from Kaputt
Kaputt‘s title track and mission statement begins with a few seconds of instrumental doodling before the drums call things to order, and the song launches headlong into the lush, romantic mystery that this album doles out so expertly. Its six minutes are immersive, beautiful, strange, and expertly assembled.
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18 :: Big K.R.I.T.
“The Vent”
from Return of 4eva
Ably demonstrating throughout Return of 4eva that he can craft vintage Southern rap bangers in his sleep, Big K.R.I.T. turns his eye elsewhere at the close of the mixtape. “The Vent,” the result of this shift in tone, is a tuneful, spare, thoughtful, and downright heartbreaking ballad, the second half of which K.R.I.T. spends singing in a surprisingly great croon. Given the success it’s had, maybe we’ll get some more songs like this in the future.
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17 :: James Blake
“The Wilhelm Scream”
from James Blake
In this overhaul of a forgotten song by his father James Litherland, Blake treats the repeated lyrical mantra (“I don’t know about my dreams,” etc) like a looped sample, keeping his delivery the same but changing the effects on the vocal and the shape of the song surrounding it. The result is the striking impression that he’s falling down a tunnel as he sings, giving added umph to the lyrics’ constant “falling, falling, falling.”
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16 :: Lana Del Rey
“Video Games”
from Video Games b/w Blue Jeans 7″
There’s no way I’m going to delve into the debate surrounding 2011’s most controversial artist in this space — but I will say that the way it played out was very indicative of the nature of the current internet music conversation. Now, when I listen to “Video Games,” I do my best to forget all the bullshit, and try to remember how wonderfully morose it sounded when I first listened to it back in the summer.
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15 :: Young Jeezy [ft. Jay-Z & André 3000]
“I Do”
from TM 103: Hustlaz Ambition
Backed by one of the greatest beats of the year (from unknown producer M16), Jeezy and Hov go in with some “married to the game” double talk before 3K swoops in and steals the show with a verse bursting with his trademark aww-shucks charisma.
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14 :: Bon Iver
“Beth/Rest”
from Bon Iver
When Bon Iver was released, people called this song a bold appropriate of off-limits 80s sounds (i.e. Bruce Hornsby), but the truth is that the album version sounds downright conservative once you’ve heard how Bon Iver played it on their summer/fall tour. That live version is a whole order of magnitude higher on the cheese scale, but the explosive gated snares and massive guitar theatrics made it all the more transcendent. More than any other song on Bon Iver, “Beth/Rest” proves that Justin Vernon is unafraid to follow his muse wherever it may lead him, and that he’ll usually find something majestic at the end of that path.
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13 :: Lil Wayne [ft. Cory Gunz]
“6 Foot 7 Foot”
from Tha Carter IV
It was a nice moment of hope we had there, when “6 Foot 7 Foot” was released and it seemed like Tha Carter IV could mark the return of the old, insane, genius Wayne, inhaling the world around him and spitting it back out, scrambled, onto the track. That wasn’t the case, but we still have this treasure trove of quotable one-liners, enhanced by Cory Gunz’ almost-but-not-quite-show-stealing verse and a bonkers beat from Bangladesh (the producer behind “A Milli”).
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12 :: Girls
“Forgiveness”
from Father, Son, Holy Ghost
This slowly unfolding centerpiece to Girls’ sophomore LP is relatively straightforward, from a lyrical perspective, but it may be the most patient and magnificent track Chris Owens has penned thus far. After five minutes of meditation on the nature of forgiveness, the band kicks things into full gear, and the year’s most cathartic guitar solo expresses more than words ever could.
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11 :: Yuck
“Georgia”
from Yuck
The ingredients are simple: a killer guitar riff, muffled drums, loads of fuzz, simple lyrics, and boatloads of youthful exuberance. Throw in some harmonies, get quieter and louder at the right moments, and you’ve nearly got yourself a pop song for the ages. What makes a simple song like this as good as “Georgia” is that intangible x-factor that Yuck have in spades.
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10 :: Elzhi [ft. Royce da 5’9″ & Stokley Williams]
“Life’s A Bitch”
from Elmatic
In this particular remake of an Illmatic classic, Royce da 5’9″ plays AZ to El’s Nas, both delivering razor-sharp, Detroit-centric verses. But the real star here is that immortal beat, which takes on a whole new life in the capable hands of funk band Will Sessions. They start with a faithful recreation of the original, but when El and Royce finish their verses, it spins off into unforeseen directions, with a jazzy, muted trumpet solo and a smooth-as-silk R&B outro. No song in 2011 was better suited for a drive on an oppressive summer day.
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09 :: Fleet Foxes
“Helplessness Blues”
from Helplessness Blues
The title track to Fleet Foxes’ sophomore LP begins with Robin Pecknold singing some of his sharpest lyrics to date over a strummy folk jam-out. That unique-snowflake talk in the first verse casts the narrator very much as a 21st-century 20-something, but the sentiment behind the song — confusion about which of life’s many paths to follow — is timeless. The song’s sound truly enters that timeless realm in the second half, where it slows down and opens up to accompany Pecknold’s pastoral orchard dream.
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08 :: The Weeknd [ft. Drake]
“The Zone”
from Thursday
Abel Tesfaye delivers one of his finest vocal performances over one of production team Illangelo and Doc McKinney’s most marvelous, sultry beats. Then, out of nowhere (the original .zip file of Thursday posted on The Weeknd’s website didn’t include a “ft. Drake” in this song’s title), Drake shows up and drops one of his best verses in a year filled with great Drake verses. It’s the perfect meeting point of these two artists’ kindred sensibilities.
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07 :: Braids
“Plath Heart”
from Native Speaker
On this lead single for Native Speaker, Raphaelle Standall-Preston displays her vocal talent (and her unusual lyrical sensibility) with some lyrics about childbirth — not a common topic in indie rock. And the band does that interlocking-rhythmic-gears thing better than anywhere else on the album, with motorik synths, pinging guitar, drums, bass, and vocals all juxtaposing each other while still fitting together perfectly.
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06 :: Phantogram
“Don’t Move”
from Nightlife EP
On their 2010 debut Eyelid Movies, Phantogram showed they could build songs with many layers but still retain an aura of restraint and alluring mystery, with stellar tracks like “When I’m Small,” “Mouthful of Diamonds,” and “Bloody Palms.” They take this approach to the next level on “Don’t Move,” the best song of their career, which ends with a 45-second climax that builds synths, drum loops, layered vocals, and guitar into a glorious pileup.
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05 :: Radiohead
“Separator”
from The King of Limbs
The King of Limbs’ standout comes at its closing. “Separator” is a strange song at first glance, with Thom Yorke singing a melody — gorgeous even by his high standards — over a minimal bed of bass and drums. When that wonderful, spindly guitar line enters halfway through, things begin to get a little more dreamy, to match Yorke’s dream-obsessed lyrics. It only gets more spacious from there, and by the end of the song, you practically feel like you’re floating.
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04 :: Youth Lagoon
“July”
from The Year of Hibernation
“July” starts inauspiciously enough, with Trevor Powers singing about watching 4th of July fireworks from a friend’s roof over a soft keyboard hum. But as things begin to pick up, it becomes clear that there’s heartbreak at the song’s core, and the louder and more anthemic the song gets, the faster and more overwhelmingly the story seems to rush forward, out of childhood’s innocence and boredom into the confusion of adulthood. Powers mourns the loss of that innocence as he howls a soaring chorus that arrives at the song’s climax.
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03 :: Cut Copy
“Need You Now”
from Zonoscope
Seeing Cut Copy live this past summer, I realized that they are true masters of (among other things) knowing exactly when to release those “big moments” that lie at the very heart of dance music, and which many musicians spend entire careers trying to pursue. “Need You Now,” the perfect album opener, is one of those big moments after another: one long, perfectly-executed buildup that finally reaches one of the year’s highest musical peaks.
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02 :: BOAT
“Forever In Armitron”
from Dress Like Your Idols
“Forever In Armitron” is an aggressively normal song. Where the #1 song on this list does its best to reshape reality in its own image, twisting it over upon itself into some impossible Escherian pretzel, “Armitron” sounds like hundreds, even thousands of other songs already in existence. Not only that, but its lyrics concern themselves with some of life’s more mundane moments. But it’s everyday guitar pop done to absolute perfection. I played and replayed this song this year and still wished I could hear it more often.
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01 :: Braids
“Lemonade”
from Native Speaker
Down the rabbit hole we go.
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Well, I got lazy and this is coming along later than I promised earlier. But I needed a breather after posting my favorite albums list, and perhaps you did too. In any case, here’s this, with the top 20 to come tomorrow. Maybe this’ll make a good playlist for your Monday workday.
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60 :: Zomby [ft. Panda Bear]
“Things Fall Apart”
from Dedication
Hip-hop-inspired post-dubsteppery over which Noah Lennox does that thing that he does so well.
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59 :: Azari & III
“Into the Night”
from Azari & III
These Montrealers crib liberally from disco and MJ on this killer opening cut from their solid self-titled debut.
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58 :: Zammuto
“Yay”
from Zammuto [forthcoming]
The Books frontman Nick Zammuto kicked off his solo career with this slice of infectious weirdness.
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57 :: Elbow
“The Birds”
from Build A Rocket, Boys!
Elbow plays build-a-song and Guy Garvey soars over their orchestral creations with his heavenly voice.
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56 :: Cults
“Abducted”
from Cults
I reluctantly had to slash Cults’ debut from my list, but “Abducted” is too irresistible.
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55 :: Nicolas Jaar
“Don’t Break My Love”
from Don’t Break My Love EP
Nicolas Jaar’s greatest standalone song appeared not on his album but on a late-in-the-year EP that cemented his status as one of 2011’s brightest new flames.
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54 :: Houses
“Soak It Up”
from All Night
The splendid, simmering centerpiece from Houses’ lovely debut.
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53 :: Cold Cave
“The Great Pan Is Dead”
from Cherish the Light Years
Maximalist new-wave-goth-pop. Brace yourself.
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52 :: The Roots [ft. Big K.R.I.T.]
“Make My”
from undun
Black Thought and K.R.I.T. deliver exquisitely depressive verses about the will to death on the first single from The Roots’ solid undun. Meanwhile, ?uest constructs one of those vintage-sounding jams that he’s only getting better at putting together.
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51 :: tUnE-YaRdS
“Powa”
from w h o k i l l
The finest showcase on w h o k i l l for Merrill Garbus’ insane pipes and songwriting steez.
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50 :: The Joy Formidable
“A Heavy Abacus”
from The Big Roar
An unabashedly huge cut from The Joy Formidable’s debut. They may not be playing stadiums yet, but their music makes it clear that they’re stadium-bound.
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49 :: Junior Boys
“Itchy Fingers”
from It’s All True
This jittery, off-kilter dance track gets It’s All True going with a bang.
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48 :: Frank Ocean
“Novacane”
from Nostalgia, Ultra.
Frank Ocean’s signature track got him onto mainstream radio without even seeing an official release. How very 2011.
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47 :: Yuck
“Stutter”
from Yuck
It’s nearly impossible to choose favorites from Yuck’s debut, but “Stutter”‘s flawless construction and wonderfully downbeat mood earned it a place on this list.
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46 :: Katy B
“Power On Me”
from Katy On A Mission
“Power On Me” would work as a great dance cut even without Katy B’s vocal, but her spot-on performance (the closest thing to a Robyn track that 2011 delivered to me) takes it to the next level.
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45 :: The Go! Team
“Yosemite Theme”
from Rolling Blackouts
Remember the dream house you designed as a kid? The one with the water slide from your bedroom down into the pool? This is the music that’s playing there all the time.
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44 :: Neon Indian
“Polish Girl”
from Era Extraña
Alan Palomo’s more polished sound coalesced into this slice of perfect pop longing on his sophomore album.
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43 :: Battles [ft. Matias Aguayo]
“Ice Cream”
from Gloss Drop
Not what I expected from Battles, but I like the new flavor.
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42 :: Rihanna [ft. Calvin Harris]
“We Found Love”
from Talk That Talk
This needs no explanation.
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41 :: Washed Out
“Eyes Be Closed”
from Within and Without
It was sad to exclude Washed Out’s debut LP from my top albums list, but build-up and release in the back half of “Eyes Be Closed” is one of my favorite 60-second passages of music from this year.
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40 :: M83
“Midnight City”
from Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
The biggest song from one of the year’s biggest albums.
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39 :: Middle Brother
“Theater”
from Middle Brother
If you peeped my 2009 and 2010 lists, you know I love Delta Spirit, so I can’t deny this track sporting an impassioned — dare I say Lennonesque? — vocal performance from Delta Spirit frontman Matt Vazquez.
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38 :: Kendrick Lamar
“HiiiPoWeR”
from Section.80
This closing track from Kendrick Lamar’s debut boasts a fresh J. Cole beat and some of this new talent’s best verses.
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37 :: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
“Heart In Your Heartbreak”
from Belong
These Montrealers crib liberally from disco and MJ on this killer opening cut from their solid self-titled debut.
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36 :: xxxy
“Ordinary Things”
from You Always Start It/Ordinary Things 7″
Skittering, fluttering post-dubstep.
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35 :: Wye Oak
“Civilian”
from Civilian
I never clicked with Wye Oak’s third album, but its title track sums up everything I love about the group.
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34 :: DJ Khaled [ft. Drake, Rick Ross & Lil Wayne]
“I’m On One”
from We The Best Forever
The mystery of what the point of DJ Khaled is remains unsolved, but if he continues to facilitate tracks like this posse cut (on which hip-hop’s newest and greatest fraternity kill a Noah “40” Shebib/T-Minus beat), you won’t hear me speaking ill of him.
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33 :: Wilco
“Whole Love”
from The Whole Love
“Art of Almost” and “One Sunday Morning” were the real attention-grabbing boundary-pushers on The Whole Love, but on the sorta-title track, they hit that perfect-Wilco-song sweet spot.
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32 :: Joker [ft. Jessie Ware]
“The Vision (Let Me Breathe)”
from The Vision
Alas, The Vision wasn’t the Joker album I was hoping for, but its title track is a solid gold jam.
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31 :: Yuck
“Get Away”
from Yuck
More Yuck, doing what they do best.
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30 :: Active Child
“Hanging On”
from Yuck
The perfect calling card for Active Child’s alluring, otherworldly style, “Hanging On” shows his ability to balance texture and atmosphere with strong pop instincts.
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29 :: The Middle East
“Dan’s Silverleaf”
from I Want That You Are Always Happy
This lively cut from The Middle East’s otherwise bleak album surges to life with this gorgeous, uptempo cut.
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28 :: Gang Gang Dance
“Glass Jar”
from Eye Contact
“I can hear everything. It’s everything time.”
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27 :: Jay-Z & Kanye West
“Niggas In Paris”
from Watch the Throne
I knew the Jay/Ye hybrid would be capable of many things, but I did not expect dumbass meme rap like “Niggas In Paris” to be one of them. And yet here we are, and it has taken over the world. I think the reasons are obvious. It makes me want to jump up and down and yell the lyrics and throw things.
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26 :: Vetiver
“Can’t You Tell”
from The Errant Charm
Subliminal music. A summer breeze bottled into a song.
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25 :: Beyoncé
“1+1”
from 4
A vocal performance for the history books.
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24 :: Rostam
“Wood”
from Wood [single]
This debut solo single from Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij shows that he’s capable of crafting a sort of hybridized sample-pop quite different from VW’s work. Check out what I wrote about “Wood” here.
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23 :: Todd Terje
“Ragysh”
from Ragysh EP
SPACE DISCO!
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22 :: Cut Copy
“Sun God”
from Zonoscope
Cut Copy’s unstoppable closing cut from Zonoscope begins with a lengthy and excellent disco pop jams and then continues its journey into the 15-minute range with a spectacular, mathematically executed techno breakdown.
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21 :: Pusha T [ft. Rick Ross & Ab-Liva]
“I Still Wanna”
from Fear of God II: Let Us Pray
Pusha, Ross, and Re-Up Gang member Ab-Liva go to town all over one of the hardest beats of the year.
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Here’s the final leg of this journey. I’d love to tell you my opinion of any album that didn’t make the list in the comment section if you ask.
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20 :: Mastodon | The Hunter
I dabbled in metal this year, and from what I could tell it was an excellent year for the genre, with a number of envelope-pushing releases getting crossover praise from the music crit establishment. But the only metal album I returned to with any frequency was the poppiest one of all. The Hunter is also the most pop-oriented release to date from these Atlanta indie metal vets, but charting at #10 on Billboard (whatever the hell that means anymore) didn’t mean sacrificing one ounce of their insane chops.
>>>Key track: “Stargasm”
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19 :: St. Vincent | Strange Mercy
Annie Clark seems to do her best to play up her porcelain doll appearance, perhaps because that makes it all the more revelatory when her songs burst forth with tectonic ripples of distortion and weirdness, battling it out with her beautiful voice. There’s nary a weak track on Strange Mercy, but the run of songs that makes up the first half is downright breathtaking, showcasing her nontraditional pop instincts and her fantastic ear for composition at their very best.
>>>Key track: “Cruel”
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18 :: Elzhi | Elmatic
The cojones on this guy, right? To remake Illmatic (Illmatic!) with a live funk band — let alone a funk band that looks like a bunch of middle-class dudes picked from the crowd at a Tigers game — and think that your verses won’t shrivel in comparison with Nas’s? Well, maybe that’s how it would appear if Detroit native and Slum Village alumni Elzhi were a more hubristic rapper. (Take your pick, that covers pretty much all other rappers.) But he released this mixtape quietly with few claims of greatness and, hey, it ended up being great. Listen for the skilled and faithful reproductions of those immortal DJ Premier, Pete Rock, and Large Professor beats, or listen to hear a guy who should be way more famous slice and dice his way all over a classic. Either way, listen close, because Elmatic has a lot to love.
>>>Key track: “Life’s A Bitch (ft. Royce da 5’9″ & Stokley Williams)”
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17 :: James Blake | James Blake
You know, for all the uproar about dubstep this year (SHUT UP, PEOPLE), for the mountains of praise James Blake received on the strength of just a few EPs in 2010, and for the central role he plays in the conversation about the present and future of pop music, this is a pretty understated album. If it was more blustery and, let’s say, statement-y, wouldn’t it be higher on my list? Or perhaps it’d be a letdown like Joker’s The Vision and wouldn’t be on here at all. The middle road was the right road for James Blake, but don’t let its politeness trick you into ignoring its painstaking construction, its compelling replayability, or its subtlety.
>>>Key track: “The Wilhelm Scream”
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16 :: The War On Drugs | Slave Ambient
Slave Ambient is the sound of one of the best current up-and-coming bands finally making good on their tremendous potential. I quite liked Wagonwheel Blues but on this Philly group’s sophomore album, they build fortresses out of monolithic synth drones and layered guitar riffs and launch cannonball drums out from the ramparts. At the peak stands Adam Granduciel, undermining (and yet somehow enforcing) the grandiosity of it all with his apathetic drawl. Read my review here.
>>>Key track: “Come To The City”
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15 :: Colin Stetson | New History Warfare, Vol. 2: Judges
Touring Band Member All-Star of the Decade and experimental baritone saxaphonist Colin Stetson opens his second album with some foghorn-like blasts from his massive instrument. It’s a visceral sound that conjures visceral emotion, like a warhorn signaling the start of a battle. When you’re listening to Judges for the first time, don’t expect those visceral emotions to stop. As the climax of “The Stars In His Head” arrives, it feels like that herd of judgment-horses from the cover is bearing down and will trample you. I could talk your ear off about the fascinating methods Stetson employed to record this album, but what really matters is that gutpunch feeling I’m left with every time Judges ends.
>>>Key track: “The Stars In His Head (Dark Lights Remix)”
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14 :: Wilco | The Whole Love
Ah, the burden of expectations. Wilco has been my favorite band for some years now and, as such, it’s extremely difficult for me to properly evaluate their albums – for a while I thought The Whole Love would land in my top 5, for sure. Let’s back up a bit: following the diminishing returns of Sky Blue Sky and Wilco (The Album), my expectations of their future releases were not exactly high (though my love for all things Wilco is unwavering). But as I listened to the pre-release stream of The Whole Love that the band offered on Labor Day, explosive opener “Art of Almost” and great single “I Might” were followed by track after track of consistent Wilco goodness. Since the fall, my initial excitement over “the best new Wilco album since A Ghost Is Born!” has faded, but the strength of this LP remains, and it’s proof that Tweedy & co. haven’t run out of tricks.
>>>Key track: “Art of Almost”
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13 :: M83 | Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming [my version]
I recently posted about my resequenced version of M83’s expansive fifth LP, and while I have yet to hear anyone else’s opinion of my hack job, I have to say it did the trick for me. Where previously I felt disconnected or even annoyed when listening to Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming front-to-back, cutting some of the less-developed tracks and half of the pleasant-but-flow-breaking instrumental interludes allowed me to zero in on this album’s many strengths, which you must be familiar with if you read about music at all this year. Moments of pure, excess-based catharsis on par with Spiritualized in their prime occur frighteningly often. When people look back on what was happening in music in 2011, this album will be right there, as epic as ever.
>>>Key track: “Midnight City”
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12 :: Big K.R.I.T. | Return of 4eva
Third Coast champion Justin Scott aka Big K.R.I.T. aka King Remembered In Time constantly dwells on crowns and nobility, but his warmhearted charisma and humility easily outshine this obsession, even when he’s boasting. Plus, who’s to say he’s not destined for a Southern rap crown of his own, considering the level of popularity he’s reached without releasing an official album. All over this masterful second mixtape, he shows his talent, if not as a rapper, than as an incredibly gifted producer, and even more importantly, as a deep thinker who can smuggle his philosophy into pop music. But oh, that production. Vintage Southern rap bangers jostle each other for room for close to an hour, and just before they might get tiresome, he transitions to a reflective, quieter closing suite, peaking with the exquisitely somber ballad “The Vent.” Then, for kicks, he ends the whole thing with a Luda and Bun B-assisted”Country Shit” remix, just to remind us where it all started.
>>>Key track: “Dreamin”
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11 :: Real Estate | Days
Music to listen to while you: drive around your hometown, pine for a fling that never was, read some initials carved in a tree, drink a Budweiser in a koozie by a pool filled with leaves, bike past your high school, sit on top of a hill, buy ice cream from the ice cream van, cook hot dogs in the backyard. Real Estate play what it sounds like inside our heads on a weary Sunday, spinning unremarkable but universal experiences into sonic gold. Not the shiny, precious metal gold; more like the color of the fading light in late afternoon in September. Read my review here.
>>>Key track: “It’s Real”
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10 :: Feist | Metals
I wasn’t relying on Leslie Feist’s third LP to be anything more than pleasant, but damn! How do people not realize this is her best album? Her voice, guitar playing, and songwriting skills have only gotten stronger, and over the course of Metals she gives us a near-flawless collection of tunes that are mature and complex but still utterly popworthy– from the lurching march of “A Commotion” to the pastoral bliss of “The Circle Married The Line” to the swirling vertigo of “Anti-Pioneer.”
>>>Key track: “The Circle Married The Line”
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09 :: Cut Copy | Zonoscope
Zonoscope was one of the first albums I heard in 2011. My brother was visiting me at school and my ears perked up when he pressed play on “Need You Now” and I heard those opening bars from across the room. I listened to the album most incessantly in January and February, but it stuck with me all year, providing the soundtrack for dance parties (both during college and post-), road trips, a strange late night in a McDonalds parking lot, walks home in the sweltering D.C. summer, lonesome drives in the fall in New England, 3am subway rides in New York in December. Its globe-spanning psychedelic dance party from the future sounds just as pristine alone, on headphones, as it does on shitty blown-out speakers in a beer-soaked room with your friends. The masses didn’t raise it up onto a pedestal like they did In Ghost Colours, but it was a big part of my life in the strange and uneven year of 2011 and I don’t expect that to change any time soon.
>>>Key track: “Need You Now”
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08 :: Fleet Foxes | Helplessness Blues
Better than any other band I’ve yet discovered, Fleet Foxes capture that feeling of being overwhelmed by the beauty and confusion of being alive. You can hear it in the hymn-to-nature title track from the Sun Giant EP, which introduced them to the world. You can hear it in those wordless howls at the beginning of “Ragged Wood,” from their self-titled debut. And you can hear it all over their sophomore LP, and though things are a little twistier and more baroque this time around, that same gratitude for the gift of life always shines through. Quoth “Bedouin Dress”: “Just to be at Innisfree again.” On “The Shrine/An Argument”: “Apples in the summer, all cold and sweet / every day a’passin complete.” And “Grown Ocean”: “I will see you someday when I’ve woken / I’ll be so happy just to have spoken.” Their complex arrangements and impassioned delivery perfectly match the sentiment of these lyrics, and as long as they keep creating that feeling on record, I’m hooked.
>>>Key track: “Helplessness Blues”
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07 :: The Weeknd | House of Balloons / Thursday / Echoes of Silence
I’m cheating, I know. But it seemed to ridiculous to put each piece of The Weeknd’s 2011 mixtape trilogy on here separately, and they all deserve a place on this list, right? Even Echoes of Silence, released just two weeks ago, makes an incontrovertible case for its place as a pivotal part of the Weeknd saga, one of the most fascinating, tradition-busting, genre-bending, revolutionary music stories of the past year. Abel Tesfaye and his production team began shrouded in smoky mystery, like the black and white photo that adorns the cover of House of Balloons. And, like its cover, Thursday (my personal favorite), saw them blooming into full color, taking Tesfaye’s tales of debauchery on a psychedelic genre exploration. Echoes of Silence adds the final nine tracks to this 27-song cycle, cementing The Weeknd’s place on the forefront of R&B, even though they haven’t appeared on TV, played a concert, or sold an album.
>>>Key tracks: “The Morning” / “The Zone (ft. Drake)” / “XO/The Host”
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06 :: Destroyer | Kaputt
Bon Iver may be the consensus critical pick of the year, but in my eyes, no one got as much love this year from critics, musicians, and everyday music fans as Dan Bejar. He deserves every single note of praise, as Kaputt, his unexpected masterwork, is a sumptuous, unique, immersive listening experience. Dense without being difficult and nostalgic without being ironic (two extraordinary feats in today’s indie landscape), Kaputt sees the elusive Bejar guiding us through some of the most romantic and tuneful songs 2011 had to offer. Read my review here.
>>>Key track: “Kaputt”
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05 :: Yuck | Yuck [Deluxe Edition]
As if the 12-track, 49-minute Yuck didn’t offer enough instant-classic favorites, this youthful British four-piece had to add the stellar six-track B-Sides EP to the pile. Re-released together as the Deluxe Edition, these two records signal the entrance of one of 2011’s brightest new talents. Their sound may be 90s-nostalgia-inducing, but songs like “Get Away,” “Rubber,” “Georgia,” “Operation,” “Milkshake,” and “Stutter” are of such high quality that they can be enjoyed on a level completely separate from nostalgia and genre-referencing. Daniel Blumberg clearly has enough of a preternatural feel for how to put together a song that you could adorn his creations with tropes from any genre and they’d be great. They’d be forgiven for slowing down their pace in 2012, but you won’t see me asking them to do so.
>>>Key track: “Get Away”
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04 :: Drake | Take Care
I scoffed when people claimed that Drake was a game-changing rapper in 2009. I think I was rightly skeptical, because he hadn’t proved himself at that point. When I surprised myself by loving Thank Me Later, I let some of that skepticism fall away. Now that Take Care (which I would call the most “zeitgeist-y” release of the year) has been out for a couple of months, it seems silly to argue that Drake is anything but a game-changing pop star. Leading rap’s current charge through R&B, dance music, and ambient while relating some of the most true-to-life moments of humanity (just listen to him rapping about growing up with his aunt in “Look What You’ve Done”) to be found on a release in any genre this year, Aubrey Drake Graham has entered the upper echelon of the most complex and immortal pop figures alive today.
>>>Key track: “Marvins Room”
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03 :: Bon Iver | Bon Iver
Justin Vernon is obsessed with place names, and it’s fun to think of the real title of this album — Bon Iver, Bon Iver — as a town called Bon Iver in the state of Bon Iver. The album’s lyrics have almost no literal meaning, so devices like this are helpful — it’s why critics focused so much on the place-named track titles and a few key phrases (“I was not magnificent;” “Third and Lake is where we learned to celebrate”) in their interpretations of Bon Iver. But it’s the music here that counts, and Bon Iver is, from a compositional standpoint, leaps and bounds beyond Vernon’s already-incredible debut, For Emma, Forever Ago. It’s a classically-minded song cycle that exists outside of any musical trend of the past five years and legitimately sounds like nothing else I’ve ever heard. So it’s no surprise that it followed in the footsteps of Merriweather Post Pavilion and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy as the most critically titanic release of the year.
>>>Key track: “Holocene”
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02 :: Girls | Father, Son, Holy Ghost
As Girls, Chris Owens and Chet “JR” White seem to define “song” differently than the majority of their indie contemporaries. Just look on either side of them on this list: Bon Iver and Braids look at songs as little capsules in which to experiment with texture, timbre, atmosphere, mood, intensity, rhythm, etc. But Girls subscribe to some more traditional definition, the one people like Lennon and McCartney and Neil Young and Randy Newman and Van Morrison and other immortal songsmiths had (and have) in mind when they created (and create) music. Some confluence of lyrical resonance and the mysterious tricks that the right chord progression can play on the emotional centers of our brains.
The degree of perfection to which Owens achieves that confluence places him on a ladder ascending towards those all-time greats. It helps that Owens, White, and their band are expert tour guides of rock music’s touchstones, and that the sounds they make could not have been recorded, mixed, and mastered more perfectly than they are on Father, Son, Holy Ghost. I don’t have any particularly evocative adjectives for the music to be found on Girls’ sophomore album — just that it contains the best collection of songs, you know, song songs, released this year.
>>>Key track: “Vomit”
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01 :: Braids | Native Speaker
Where to begin with this incomparable debut from Montreal’s Braids? Last year I had Kanye at #1, and this album could not be more different. Where My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy projected itself out into the world in 50-foot-high neon letters, and was received with universal love, Native Speaker folds in on itself, questions only begetting more questions. Its reception consisted of going completely unnoticed by almost everyone, except for a few people like me, who found some deep personal connection with it, and fell head over heels in love with it, and well as head over heels into it, like Alice down the rabbit hole.
Maybe it was that I listened to Native Speaker almost daily while writing my thesis, but its songs sound to me like the sound of my brain working. It has a mechanical quality — with Austin Tufts’ drums, Raphaelle Standell-Preseton’s vocals and guitar, Katie Lee’s synths, and Taylor Smith’s bass interlocking perfectly like the gears of a clock — but it sounds organic as well. It’s both propulsive and dreamy, both mathematical and flexible, both earth-shaking and pensive. Comparisons to a huge variety of other groups — Animal Collective, Cocteau Twins, Mogwai, Gang Gang Dance, Spacemen 3, Battles, Mew — all ring true but fail to define why I love, love, love this album. As I mentioned in the intro to this list, this appreciation is deeply subjective, and I don’t feel more “sophisticated” for hearing something in this album that other people don’t. It’s absolutely worth a listen, but I have no idea whether anybody will feel the same way about it as I do. I do know that Native Speaker soundtracked the firing of my neurons in 2011, and became an irreplaceable part of my brain in the process.
>>>Key track: “Lemonade”
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The links below will become live when I publish their posts.
Happy 2012, Internet people! I’m sure it will be a year with an even more astounding amount of great music than 2011. For now, I’m here to remind you that I’ll be rolling out my 60 favorite albums and 60 favorite songs of 2011 over the course of this week. (My original goal was 50, but there were too many things that were just too painful to leave off, so 60 it is.) If lists are a thing that you like, check out the schedule below, and come back tomorrow to see the first chunk of my favorite albums list.
Tuesday: 60 Favorite Albums of 2011: #60-41
Wednesday: 60 Favorite Albums of 2011: #40-21
Thursday: 60 Favorite Albums of 2011: #20-1
Friday: 60 Favorite Songs of 2011: #60-21
Saturday: 60 Favorite Songs of 2011: #20-1
Sunday: Some great music videos, closing thoughts, and other miscellany.
And on we go. Be forewarned that the artwork for album #29 is less than SFW.
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40 :: The Field | Looping State of Mind
Almost exactly four years ago I listened to From Here We Go Sublime for the first time and felt my idea of what music could do expand a not insignificant amount. Yesterday and Today is an underrated album but attempted no conceptual feat so ambitious as the ascension toward sublimity. So it was with great delight that I discovered that this third LP marks Axel Willner’s return to conceptual brilliance. These seven expansive offerings are more sonically diverse than Sublime, but they all focus on loops and the mighty, hypnosis-inducing power of repetition.
>>>Key track: “Looping State of Mind”
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39 :: Megafaun | Megafaun
In which some very nice men with beards and broken-in voices let many of their more experimental tendencies slide away, write some new songs but sing them like they’re hundreds of years old, record them in a wooden room, and please a whole lot of people like me who secretly have very simplistic taste in music.
>>>Key track: “Everything”
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38 :: Frank Ocean | Nostalgia, Ultra
So, the most acclaimed and successful work released under the OFWGKTA guise is the album that’s the least representative of their aesthetic as a whole? Funny how that works. Rising star Ocean packed his free debut with highly replayable silky jams and, against all odds, convinced legions of hipsters that there is plenty to enjoy about “Hotel California.”
>>>Key track: “Novacane”
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37 :: Paul Simon | So Beautiful or So What
Ways To Remain Relevant: Possess a voice that sounds as young as ever while being 70 years old. (!!!) Remind people that you’re one of the only people alive that can sing about beauty, death, faith and doubt without being ham-fisted. Write melodies that would make The Grinch’s heart grow three sizes. And keep experimenting with new styles and textures, no matter what.
>>>Key track: “So Beautiful or So What”
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36 :: Jamie Woon | Mirrorwriting
It’s been well over 5 years since FutureSex/LoveSounds, and it’s time to start looking for Timberlake replacements. Other than those deathly smooth vocals, JT and JW don’t actually sound much alike, but Mirrorwriting is the best cutting-edge, progressively-minded R&B we’ve gotten lately. Call it a FS/LS for the dubstep era.
>>>Key track: “Lady Luck”
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35 :: Iron & Wine | Kiss Each Other Clean
Sam Beam spent three albums and a handful of EPs building the Iron & Wine sound up from a 4-track basement whisper into The Shepherd’s Dog’s pan-global sound party. So where to turn next? Into forgotten (like, really forgotten) 70s-radio sounds and used record bins. But no matter the sonic decorations, his delicate songwriting touch and near-perfect voice will always shine through.
>>>Key track: “Half Moon”
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34 :: Nicolas Jaar | Space Is Only Noise
If you only glance at the cover of Nicolas Jaar’s debut quickly, it looks like that baby stroller is sitting on the surface of the moon. It’s a great analogy for his unclassifiable music, which takes snippets of blues and funk and maroons them in a desolate lunar landscape of downtempo minimal electronica.
>>>Key track: “Keep Me There”
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33 :: Saigon | The Greatest Story Never Told
Overly elaborate backstories can be a burden on a musician, but ones as powerful as this one just can’t be ignored. Visit Wikipedia and read up on it. What’s more, origin myth hype will never overshadow a release as strong as Saigon’s debut, which plays like an epic autobiography composed of his endless, dexterous rhymes over a prime selection of Just Blaze beats.
>>>Key track: “Come On Baby (ft. Jay-Z)”
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32 :: Junior Boys | It’s All True
Geeky-sexy. That’s the contradiction at the heart of this deeply engrossing album by two scruffy Canadian dudes. It’s slinky, warm “dance music” that sounds buttoned-up and seductive at the same time.
>>>Key track: “Itchy Fingers”
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31 :: Radiohead | The King of Limbs
It may be Radiohead’s smallest, least friendly, knottiest, most elusive album ever, but it’s still a goddamn Radiohead album. These guys pretty much figured out music on In Rainbows, so it was time to shake things up a bit. If its slightness is your only complaint, bundle it up with the great singles they released this year, like “Supercollider” and “The Daily Mail” and you’re golden. Read my review here.
>>>Key track: “Lotus Flower”
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30 :: DJ Quik | The Book of David
Quik doesn’t sound like most rappers from this year, or even this decade. There’s something almost nerdy about his off-kilter taunts and straightforward delivery. It’s wonderful how he sells it, though — with the help of his beats, in which that same nerdiness manifests in timeless funk- and soul-infused joints that sound like they’re from no era of hip-hop in particular.
>>>Key track: “Hydromatic”
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29 :: Handsome Furs | Sound Kapital
On their third and best LP (by leaps and bounds), husband-and-wife duo Alexei Perry and Dan Boeckner craft raw, gloriously garish keyboard-core that bursts at the seams with human compassion. Springsteen with synthesizers.
>>>Key track: “Repatriated”
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28 :: Bill Callahan | Apocalypse
In which our protagonist with the somber baritone twists and turns in the clutches of personal demons, musical tradition, and forces larger than himself, and, on the masterful “One Fine Morning,” comes out the other side with some kind of peace.
>>>Key track: “Riding for the Feeling”
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27 :: Holy Ghost! | Holy Ghost!
May I present to you the heir apparent to the DFA throne and our best bet to carry the live-band-dance-party torch in the wake of LCD Soundsystem. (Sorry, Juan MacLean.) “Jam For Jerry” is no “Someone Great,” but give them a couple more LPs and they could be doing that emotional-resonance thing as well as The God Murphy Himself.
>>>Key track: “Some Children (ft. Michael McDonald)”
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26 :: Julianna Barwick | The Magic Place
On 2011’s best and most original ambient release, the heavenly-voiced Barwick seemingly went to the world’s most resonant cathedral, cloned herself 100 times, and tried to replicate the sound of rays of sunlight breaking momentarily through a cloud bank. Remember the wonderful “Boy 1904” from Riceboy Sleeps, that song that used the recording of the last known castrato? Well, it turns out that the next-best person to deliver to us the music of angels is still alive, and she’s just getting started.
>>>Key track: “White Flag”
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25 :: Fucked Up | David Comes to Life
Trying to sort through the insanely convoluted mythology surrounding this album would give anyone a headache. Sitting down, shutting the fuck up, and listening to this 79-minute tribute to the eternal power of guitar and drums will also give you a headache, but a headache of the best kind. The kind Damien “Pink Eyes” Abraham gets from smashing bottles against his head on stage. Mr. Abraham casually discusses leaving the group, but Fucked Up just wouldn’t be the same without him muscling his way through their triple-pronged guitar assault like a bull in a china shop.
>>>Key track: “Queen of Hearts”
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24 :: Kate Bush | 50 Words For Snow
If you’ve been trying to track down the year’s best song about having sex with a snowman, look no further. As bold as it is to pen a (relatively) straight-faced song on such a subject, the real triumph is that this song and all of its potentially-ridiculous fellows (characters include a yeti, a snowflake, and a ghost girl looking for her lost dog) sound lush, empathetic and elemental, not stupid. For chrissakes, the title track does nothing but count down said 50 words (many of them made-up), and I still get goosebumps when the male guest vocalist exhales #50: “Snow.”
>>>Key track: “Snowflake”
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23 :: Action Bronson | Dr. Lecter
Pure cartoon villainy, just like the cover. It was hard to read about NYC newcomer Action Bronson this year without seeing Ghostface Killah mentioned in the same breath, but other than the timbre of their voices, the similarity doesn’t run deep. Where Ghost leans forward with bug-eyed intensity, Bronsolino steps back and smirks, delivering the best verses about food, weed, and good living to be found in 2011, over an impeccable collection of beats from virtual unknown Tommy Mas.
>>>Key track: “Larry Csonka”
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22 :: Kurt Vile | Smoke Ring For My Halo
The perennially road-weary Vile took things down a notch here from previous LP Childish Prodigy and discovered that, guess what, everything’s just as fucked up whether you’re howling or mumbling. Almost no one sounded as beaten-down as this guy in 2011, and yet almost no one else on this list experienced the same surge of popularity.
>>>Key track: “Runner Ups”
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21 :: tUnE-YaRdS | w h o k i l l
The typographically-challenged Merrill Garbus experienced one of 2011’s biggest success stories. BiRd-BrAiNs, her very good but too-weird-to-crossover debut, turned out to be the perfect lead-in to the ambitious and widely beloved w h o k i l l, which has catapulted her to the position of one of indie’s biggest rising stars. Like Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca, it is a worldly album that seems to exist at that magical, elusive, perfect crossroads between experimentation and pop.
>>>Key track: “Bizness”
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Sorry for the delay on this post! I messed up on the publish dates for all of these Best Of posts when I scheduled them. (Shouts to Ian for noticing my mistake and notifying me.) Accordingly, I’ll shift everything by a day, with the whole shebang running Tuesday through Sunday.
On this list: I tried to trim it down to 50 albums, I really did. But I just couldn’t bear to leave off a number of releases that I legitimately love. I listened to more music than ever this year (tired of hearing that yet?) because, like every year, a musical universe that already seemed to be infinite in 2010 continued to expand in 2011. (Hey, just like the actual universe!) There seemed to be shockingly little critical consensus on year-end lists, which is a good thing but it can feel very overwhelming if you’re someone who attempts to maintain an “edge” on what’s going on in music.
So, because of that, I think I have a satisfyingly diverse list here, but I still find myself wishing the same things I have the past two years: I wish there were more women on this list. I wish there was more hip-hop on this list. I wish there was more ambient and experimental music on this list. I wish there was more cutting-edge dance music on this list. (Though dance music historically thrives on singles more than on albums.) As my musical journey continues in 2012, I’ll keep trying to branch out, not only across current genre pools, but into the past as well — which almost definitely means sacrificing some of the new-music-listening I did this year.
Until then, here are my 60 favorite albums of the year. More so than ever, these are “favorite” and not “best” or “top” — I thought a great deal about the deep subjectivity of music evaluation this year, in part because of the album that lands at my #1 spot, so this list is anything but objective. Just a list of splendid music to check out if it sounds up your alley from my descriptions. The “key tracks” are my guess at a good starting place. Sometimes they’re my favorite on the album, sometimes they’re the most representative of the album as a whole, and sometimes they’re what you could call the album’s “signature” song. All of them are keepers. No Youtube links because you can do that shit yourself.
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60 :: Akron/Family | Akron/Family II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT
If it weren’t for the pre-release stunts – the album’s nonsensical title, muddled origin story (something about recording in a shack on an active volcano), and the fake noise leak with gibberish track names – I might not have detected the permeating weirdness lurking beneath Akron/Family II‘s three-part harmonies and other flat-out beautiful folk-stuff. But it’s that marriage of the pretty and the weird that makes Akron/Family’s releases worth returning to.
>>>Key track: “Silly Bears”
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59 :: Future Islands | On The Water
I never tire of hearing Sam Herring growl his way around Will Cashion’s bass and Gerrit Welmers’ keyboard arrangements with that singular, gremlin-like voice, especially as On the Water finds the group constructing the most nuanced, mature, and unforcedly tuneful songs of their career.
>>>Key track: “Balance”
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58 :: A Winged Victory For The Sullen | A Winged Victory For The Sullen
Adam Wiltzie (a.k.a. one half of ambient drone godheads Stars of the Lid) teamed up with pianist and composer Dustin O’Halloran to deliver this fine album of sweeping, stately, classical-infused ambient.
>>>Key track: “Steep Hills of Vicodin Tears”
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57 :: Youth Lagoon | The Year of Hibernation
On first listen, I could practically hear the detractors lining up to shit on Trevor Powers’ debut – on the castrato vocals, the overpowering bedroom intimacy and the little-kid simplicity of the arrangements. But open up to it and it’s those same qualities that make The Year of Hibernation great.
>>>Key track: “July”
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56 :: Ryan Adams | Ashes & Fire
Just in time, Mr. Adams shook off the blistering Cardinals release pace, the pizza-adorned EPs, the fake metal nonsense, and the inevitable career fatigue to deliver his most consistent album of straight-up songwriter material in years. Expertly recorded with Glyn Johns’ vintage-sounding touch, Ashes & Fire is some of the year’s best musical comfort food.
>>>Key track: “Dirty Rain”
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55 :: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah | Hysterical
In which one of 2005’s coolest bands makes a defiantly traditional, markedly uncool record filled with the sort of meat-and-potatoes indie rock no one is making right now and gets roundly dismissed by pretty much everyone that matters. I gave Hysterical some patience and another spin or two and Alec Ounsworth’s drunken nursery rhymes (as well as CYHSY’s focus on songcraft rather than atmosphere) got under my skin in a big way.
>>>Key track: “Same Mistake”
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54 :: Oneohtrix Point Never | Replica
Sound-worlds build and unfold themselves with engrossing musical complexity on Replica, which scans like a digital update of Eno’s Ambient 4: On Land for the Age of the Sample.
>>>Key track: “Replica”
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53 :: The Pains of Being Pure At Heart | Belong
Hard to turn down a fresh pot of 90s Blend (grunge guitars, new wave rhythms, roller-rink synths, radio-ready choruses) when POBPAH whip it up with this level of ambition and clarity.
>>>Key track: “Heart In Your Heartbreak”
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52 :: Tiger & Woods | Through the Green
The ultra-taut, sample-based disco jams on Through the Green are so irresistible that I’ll have to forgive Tiger & Woods their stupid name and the fact that they picked the wrong giant cat for their album cover. Try not to dance, I quintuple-leopard dare you.
>>>Key track: “Gin Nation”
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51 :: Active Child | You Are All I See
Slotting Pat Grossi in with other “PBR&B” white boys trying and failing to get their groove on (cough, How To Dress Well) is missing the point. (It doesn’t help that he invited HTDW’s Tom Krell onto the single.) Such a classification belies this album’s real magic: that otherworldly atmosphere that arises from looped harp, huge synths, and Grossi’s theatrical falsetto.
>>>Key track: “Hanging On”
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50 :: Peter Bjorn and John | Gimme Some
The haters are right, those bongos on “Dig A Little Deeper” do reek of a Carnival cruise conga line. But there’s some wonderfully classic pop quality (a Swedish specialty) to those melodies that Peter Morén sings, and that jolt of garage-y energy they injected into this LP shuffled things up just enough. Read my review here.
>>>Key track: “May Seem Macabre”
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49 :: Mogwai | Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will
Goodbye Mogwai Young Team, hello…Mogwai Middle-Aged Team? Gone are the “Fear Satan” days where a cloud of deafening distortion could be lurking a few bars up ahead. They aimed to recapture that danger on The Hawk Is Howling and it wasn’t a good look, like an older dude trying to rock young dude clothes. So they risked being cheesy and ended up with a crazy-listenable album of soaring, melodic post-rock.
>>>Key track: “How To Be A Werewolf”
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48 :: Abigail Washburn | City of Refuge
To create these dusty, windswept tunes, banjo queen Washburn surrounded her dexterous plucking and gorgeous, breathy vocals with male harmonies and lush arrangements. What resulted is arguably the best straight-up folk release of the year.
>>>Key track: “Bring Me My Queen”
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47 :: Nicholas Szczepanik | Please Stop Loving Me
Over the course of a single, 48-minute track, this ambient newcomer bends and twists his drone into all kinds of beautiful and engrossing shapes before locking into a single chord (lasting the final 10 or 15 minutes) that’ll leave you breathless.
>>>Key track: The only one.
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46 :: Africa Hitech | 93 Million Miles
What the hell is this album? Most of these tracks would leave dancefloors with raised eyebrows, and they refuse to be slotted into any of the extremely narrow categories for electronic music that are currently in circulation. Let’s just call it something like the lovechild of bass music and math rock and let our ears do the rest.
>>>Key track: “Light the Way”
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45 :: White Denim | D
It takes some special sauce to get the hipster blogosphere to embrace a release this unabashedly classic-rockin. The rapidly ascending career arc of this Austin four-piece peaks with D. And the ingredients of that special sauce are catchy songwriting, razor-sharp arrangements, and some of the most insane chops you’ll hear outside of a jam band festival.
>>>Key track: “Anvil Everything”
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44 :: G-Side | iSLAND
The third release by this prolific and delightfully unusual Huntsville, Alabama duo sounds like the work of a group with quite a well-formed identity. They embrace many of the best qualities of Southern rap while following their idiosyncratic vision into uncharted territory.
>>>Key track: “Cinematic”
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43 :: The Middle East | I Want That You Are Always Happy
Who would’ve thought an Australian band named The Middle East would make one of the finest Americana albums of the year? These up-and-comers wind their way through a sprawling and largely desolate collection of tunes and almost never hit a bum note.
>>>Key track: “Dan’s Silverleaf”
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42 :: Beyoncé | 4
The fourth (and best) LP by Queen B does, as some have pointed out, feel more like a collection of singles than an album proper. But lo what a collection of singles it is. My favorite keeps changing (“Let’s Start Over” right now), but taken together it’s the most thrilling pure pop made in 2011.
>>>Key track: “Countdown”
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41 :: Beirut | The Rip Tide
The Rip Tide, or, How Zach Condon Saved Beirut From Becoming Tiresome. Stripping his craft down to its essence, shedding some of its frillier European affects, and releasing his most concise album yet, Condon reminds us why we love him: because dude’s got a golden voice and he can write a damn solid pop tune. I’d argue this is his best LP to date.
>>>Key track: “Santa Fe”
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All seven of you regular Ashtray Says readers will be excited to hear that I’m gearing up to do a Best of 2011 Extravaganza, which will consist of a Top 50 Albums list, a Top 50 Songs list, and probably some other miscellaneous stuff, and will go up over the course of the first week of January, starting Jan 2. More info on that to come. To tide you over until then, here’s something I’ve been working on the past few days: my re-sequenced version of M83’s blockbuster album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, which was released in October and has been tearing shit up netwide on Best of 2011 lists.
Why do this? Well, I’m a huge M83 fan, and I love most of the songs on Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, but I think the album is slightly bloated and terribly sequenced. As Tom Breihan put it in his premature but astute evaluation for Stereogum, the track order doesn’t seem intently thought-out, and you can listen to the album on shuffle without really noticing a change. I’d take that a step further, and say that the positioning of some of the tracks actively detracted from my enjoyment of them; there’s a lot of different sounds on this album, and sometimes they butt up against each other at odd angles. So I decided to indulge my nerdiest instincts and create a version that cut some of the tracks and put the remaining ones in a more coherent order.
Basically, I don’t think the original double-album format works. The two discs have the same general structure, in terms of how the mood changes throughout the disc, and the relatively brief length of each half made it feel, to me, like the tracks were moving from one mood to another too quickly. Obviously I’m in the minority on this, as many many people have been enjoying the hell out of this album for the past few months, but I couldn’t help but feel I would enjoy Hurry Up more if I put the tracks in an order that better allowed their incredible quality to shine.
So what I ended up doing after a couple of “drafts” was (without realizing it) preserving the original foundation of Disc 1, plugging in the key tracks from Disc 2 where they seemed to fit. “This Bright Flash” and “My Tears Are Becoming A Sea,” both fine songs on their own, got cut because they are essentially less-developed retreads of “New Map” and “Outro,” respectively. The instrumental interludes from Disc 2 — “Another Wave From You,” “Fountains,” and “Klaus I Love You” — are also perfectly pleasant but felt inessential to the whole. (The similar interludes from Disc 1 got to stay because of the way they bleed together with their adjacent tracks.) Finally, Disc 2’s “Splendor,” which I consider the weakest song on the album and sort of a pace-killer, got chucked.
If you want to make a playlist and listen to my resequenced version of the album for yourself, the tracklist is below. I got super duper nerdy and spliced a fragment of “Klaus I Love You” into the end of “Soon, My Friend” so that it would flow more naturally into “Outro,” so if you’re REALLY into this thing, you can right-click download my edited version from the link below. Otherwise, just putting the tracks into a playlist will give you pretty much the same experience.
1:: Intro (ft. Zola Jesus)
2:: Midnight City
3:: New Map
4:: Reunion
5:: Where The Boats Go
6:: Steve McQueen
7:: Year One, One UFO
8:: Echoes of Mine
9:: Wait
10:: Raconte-Moi Une Histoire
11:: Train To Pluton
12:: Claudia Lewis
13:: OK Pal
14:: When Will You Come Home?
15:: Soon, My Friend
16:: Outro
As you may have noticed, things have been quiet here for the past month. My previous post notes that I was in Ireland for two weeks (maybe I’ll post a couple of my favorite pics from that trip on here once I finally get them online), and I’ve also taken over as music editor for the Donnybrook Writing Academy, the wonderful blog for which, as you’ll know if you follow The Ashtray Says, I started writing album reviews at the beginning of the year. So I’ve kept busy learning the ins and outs of Donnybrook, and as that will probably be the primary outlet of my music-blogging energies in the future, I’m not really sure what The Ashtray Says is going to be/how often it will be updated from now on. I’m sure you’re all heartbroken. Not that it’s ever been a very consistent blog, and I guess it’ll remain what it’s been — an outlet for my writing about things, music primarily, that doesn’t have anywhere else to go. Without a doubt, I’ll continue my tradition of doing some completely excessive year-end lists, so check back about a month from now for all that.
My real reason for writing this post: to encourage you to listen to a song that, one day after its release, has become one of my favorite (if not my flat-out favorite) hip-hop tracks of the year. It’s off Young Jeezy’s endlessly delayed fourth studio album Thug Motivation 103: Hustlerz Ambition, due out December 20 on Def Jam, whose superpower as a label seems to be delaying things, endlessly.
Well, “I Do” is a song too strong to be detained by the villainous Dr. Def Jam and his insidious Song Dungeon. A version of the song consisting of 3K’s verse leaked sometime in 2010, and I came across it when it was posted on Kanye’s blog in the midst of Summer 2010’s G.O.O.D. Fridays onslaught. (It was the best of times…) I was smitten, and unaware of the song’s origins, mostly wondering why it was only two minutes long, for god’s sake! Later, a snippet with Jeezy’s hook also leaked, but not until yesterday did the full version surface — complete with Jeezy’s verse and, BONUS, a killer verse from Hov (in which he displays more charisma than anywhere on Watch the Throne!) — when it was played on Funkmaster Flex’s excellent but obnoxiously-tagged Hot 97 radio show. Soon after, a high-quality, non-tagged version appeared, and I now feel I can die a happy man.
I’d go so far as to call the track the second coming of UGK & Outkast’s untouchable “Int’l Players Anthem.” Over a soulful and exuberantly joyous beat (this one by unknown producer M16), the emcees continue the grand tradition of appearing to rap earnestly about fidelity and commitment (“I choose you,” “I do,” etc.) while remaining their usual incorrigible selves. YJ mostly describes the things he’s gonna do to ya when he gets you out this club and into his bed, just barely squeaking in some stuff about loyalty at the end. Jay-Z continues his epic troll of the entire human race by extending the narrative that kicked off with the parallel success “99 Problems” and “Crazy In Love” — you know, the one where Beyoncé floods the charts with devastatingly awesome pop songs about love and Jay-Z slyly places “A Bitch” at #100 on his List of Problems. Or, as here, appears to be talking about marrying the Queen of Earth but is actually cryptically rapping about being “married to the game,” be that the rap game or, you know, the crack one.
Of course, 3 Stacks is different: here as on “Int’l Players Anthem,” his verse eschews rappers-refusing-to-be-sentimental territory and delivers a verse to make your heart melt. Only rather than kicking things off, he’s the anchor leg. As if you needed another reason to stick around — despite my aforementioned cynicism about Jeezy’s and Hov’s true intentions, the song’s bursting warmth and effervescence makes it easy to pretend they really are rapping about true love and marital fidelity, making this both a multi-layered piece of hip-hop deftness and one of the feel-good anthems of the year. Just some grown ass men rapping about a grown ass subject.
Young Jeezy, Jay-Z & André 3000 – “I Do”
[audio https://theashtraysays.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/young-jeezy-e28093-i-do-f-jay-z-andre-3000-2dope.mp3]
crusty ol me in a crusty ol pic
the ashtray says 
