It's that time of year again, when I like to sit for hours with my headphones on and review all the awesome music that's been released in the last 12 months and decide which albums are my favorite. If you're like me and like to see where you compare to the rest of the indie music-obsessor crowd, then I suggest you head over to Pitchfork and complete the 2011 Pitchfork Readers Poll. In the meantime, here are my top 10:
10. Yuck - Yuck
This pick stems from my total nostalgia over 90's fuzz-pop music. While I'm a huge fan of the grunge scene from this wonderful decade, bands like Pavement, Guided By Voices, and Dinosaur Jr. are the ones that truly won my heart. Yuck somehow manages to channel this vibe without being bland and unoriginal. This album is catchy, melodic, kind of twee, and totally caught up in the whole coming-of-age motif. I'm particularly partial to the tracks "The Wall" and "Georgia".
I was only an occasional fan of Panda Bear, who makes chilled-out electro-pop. Tomboy to me sounds like the Beach Boys had sex with Animal Collective and then raised their love child by making it listen to the Velvet Underground at all hours of the day. My favorite tracks, like "Surfer's Hymn" channel this "dude-let's-just-chill-on-my-couch-and-have-our-minds-blown" vibe. This album was great for a pre-summer jam, and tracks like "Last Night At The Jetty" go great thrown in with any reggae-jam playlist.
Let me preface this by saying that the first time I heard "Abducted" I was really stoned. I probably said something like, "Holy shit this is really good." Then I heard "Go Outside". Then I heard "You Know What I Mean". At this point, I wasn't saying anything. I had absolutely no idea that something this catchy could ever be written. The latter is my favorite track on the album, but the entire thing is poppy as fuck. Theirs is a one-of-a-kind sound, and I'm really excited to see them in January.
7. Thundercat - The Golden Age of Apocalypse
Thundercat (Stephen Bruner), who worked with Flying Lotus, put out this clusterfuck in September, and I still don't know what the hell this whole thing is about. But as far as clusterfucks go, this one is utterly brilliant. The album is experimental, crossing jazz fusion with techno and Afro-pop. The track "Daylight" is saturated with synths and smooth vocal harmonies, and foreshadows the rest of the album, which is textured and layered beyond all belief. Tracks like "Walkin'" remind me of Toro Y Moi's 80's pop flow. Now that would be one hell of a collab.
6. Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost
Girls are fantastic. The gender of human, yes, but the band...YES. Their first record, the annoyingly-titled Album, was a nice work of 60's-inspired pop, and was one of my favorite albums of 2009. Their second record, Broken Dreams Club, was a mini-album of equal quality, and began to take the band's sound in a new direction. Father, Son, Holy Ghost defines where that direction is. Still poppy as all hell, as album opener "Honey Bunny" exhibits, but now with more substance. The vocals smoothen out, and the band uses their nods to past influences to their fullest, displaying color and sharp songwriting. My favorite track? "Vomit" - especially the fuzzy guitar solo, vintage organ, and choral arrangement.
5. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy
I'm going to sound a little pretentious here, but I listened to St. Vincent before Strange Mercy was released. In fact, even before her breakout sophomore album Actor. I was a big listener of her debut record, Marry Me, way back in 2009. She's got a great sound, totally fresh, but grounded in fantastic songwriting. The track "Cruel" is one of the catchiest things ever to grace my eardrums. Obviously, "Surgeon" is a great track as well, but my favorite is "Strange Mercy", which is so melodic it's almost lullaby-like.
4. Toro Y Moi - Underneath the Pine
Toro Y Moi's Chaz Bundick is one of the best-looking men I've ever seen, no homo. His music is just as handsome. One of the pioneers of the "chillwave" genre, Bundick creates electro-pop that makes you want to get down. "New Beat" is catchy and dancey, and I had a lot of fun getting down to it when I saw Toro Y Moi live. The whole album is warm and groovy, with tracks like "Still Sound" funking it up. This is impressive stuff, and again, catchy as all hell. Dance your ass off.
3. Washed Out - Within and Without
When this record came out in July, I knew there was only one way to do it justice. I bought it on vinyl, popped it on my record player, and it's been a regular on my turntable since then. I was a fan of Washed Out's Life of Leisure EP, but didn't listen to it regularly. Within and Without opened my eyes to chillwave, with tracks like "Amor Fati" leading the way. The dreamy, steamy sound of this record is an amazing listen front-to-back. "Soft" is an incredible listen, as is "Far Away". This record is really something else.
Bon Iver's songwriting has always impressed me. Debut For Emma, Forever Ago was heartbreaking and personal. After all, he did record it alone in the woods. Comparatively, Bon Iver is much more complex, with sounds building out of nothing and then crashing to a dramatic end. Album opener "Perth" is incredible, and only continues from there. Justin Vernon' earthy harmonies are hypnotic, and make the lyrics something other-worldly. "Holocene" is one of the most breathtaking performances on the album, which climaxes with "Calgary".
Vernon adresses a state of mind on this album; a state of confusion, trying to escape, to put words to a place in time. The more you listen to these tracks the more surreal they become, and the more you find yourself becoming attached to them. These songs are rich and layered, and the album demands to be listened to in its entirety: to do otherwise would be doing it an injustice to its flawless structure. Of my top 10, this album is the best contender for runner-up. It truly stands out, and if it weren't for a certain English producer, Bon Iver would stand atop this list.
My favorite album of 2011 - James Blake's self-titled debut record. The position of best album (in my opinion) was a difficult choice. 2011 has been full of records that harken back to the music of old. Whether it be 90's indie rock throwback, 60's pop laced with surfer sounds, or chilled-out 80's electro-pop, the music of the last year has been sampling and borrowing sounds from all over the place. However, what makes new music truly great (again, in my opinion) is it's ability to stand against everything else that's being created, and throw the rules out the window. To stand the test of time, great music reinvents sound and wordplay into something that no one has ever heard before.
Enter James Blake. A dubstep producer with a effects-heavy obsession and an ear for the soft touch of a piano, Blake crafted one of the most stunning bodies of music that I've ever heard. The album opener, "Unluck", tells what's to come - quick, syncopated rhythms, smartly auto-tuned vocals, and spine-tingling harmonies. "Wilhelms Scream", my favorite track on the first half of the record, opens with the lyrics "I don't know about my dreams/I don't know my dreaming anymore/All that I know is that I'm falling, falling, falling, falling/Might as well fall". More progressive harmonies and a slow-building synth sound, the track crescendos with a gentle wave of sound that numbs the soul.
"I Never Learnt To Share" is stunning in the way that the previous track is stunning: introspective, building, and bass-heavy. The dissonant chords shouldn't work, yet they beautifully magnify the impending sound-gasm that is the final minute. This album is best listened to through high-end headphones with lots of bass. "Lindesfarne" is a two-part melodic lullaby, which ends the first half slowly and with grace.
The second half picks up with the brilliant "Limit To Your Love", which starts off with a slow piano intro before breaking into a wobbling bass refrain that sounds like your head exploding when listened to live. Eventually the track expands the vocals with dark harmonies and subtle drum instrumentation. Again, brilliant. "Give Me My Month" is a short, beautiful piano tune that highlights Blake's mastering of a great chord progression. "To Care (Like You)" takes Blake's vocals to a new level, slightly unsettling in the artificially-high register. The lyrics are brief and soulful, and the glitchy vocal sample and drum loop make the track a highlight on the record.
"Why Don't You Call Me" is another short, piano-driven tune, but with a production style that sounds like a bad record skipping. "I Mind" fills out the piano motif with more spacey synths and a mamba-like drum loop. This sets up the incredible "Measurements", which starts with synths and contains a subtle bass melody, but is mostly an a cappella track with multiple harmonies of Blake's voice. He plays with his vocal style here, and creates a smart, melodic finale to the album.
The difference in quality between the albums on this list is nil - they are all fantastic in their own right. Deciding which ones were meant to be higher up on the list than others was like deciding in what order I should eat a handful of the same-colored Skittles. A weird analogy, I know, but in all seriousness this list contains some of the best music of the year. Unfortunately, this list contains only ten records, and there are many more excellent albums that have been released this year.
Just to be fair, I complied a brief list of my Honorable Mentions:
The Field - Looping State of Mind
WU LYF - Go Tell Fire To The Mountain
Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo
Smith Westerns - Dye It Blonde
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