Favorite Albums of 2011
The usual caveat applies: these are not the best albums of the year. I don’t know what the best albums of the year are, because I have a very hard time being objective about music. No, these are my favorites, the ones that hit a nerve for whatever reason, or that I listened to on repeat endlessly, critical reviews or lack thereof be damned. I sometimes try to write about why albums are my favorites but that well seems to have run pretty dry right now, so instead of explanations I’m writing short stream of consciousness-style impressions for each.
Additionally, I have twin ongoing playlists of favorite songs of 2011 in progress here on Spotify and here on last.fm that I’ll continue to add to over the next few days and/or until I feel they’re done, which is probably never.
1. EMA - Past Life Martyred Saints
Raw, immediate, and vital are the first three adjectives that spring to mind when I hear this album. At first EMA reminded me of early Hole or PJ Harvey; now she just reminds me of herself. Tales of small town ennui and dysfunction, psychic pain taken out on skin, still managing to be hopeful sometimes even though you feel like you’re losing your mind, all in a perfectly honest, no bullshit voice, all ring true. In one sense it’s captivating because I’ve been through it but there’s others out there like me, sure, and this album proves it.
2. tUnE-YaRdS - w h o k i l l
Merrill Garbus has my vote for lady musician role model. Her music is the perfect extension of herself: unique, uncompromising, important, and amazing. I saw tUnE-YaRdS live this year on the night people were saying the world was going to end. I went in expecting an apocalyptic dance party and went out feeling life-affirmed.
3. M83 - Hurry Up We’re Dreaming
Epic cinematic technicolor musical dreams.
4. Austra - Feel it Break
Katie Stelmanis’s operatic voice finds the perfect accompaniment, sounding over a pallet of synths and electronic blips. If these songs had colors, they’d be rich jewel tones glazed in frost. An album of immediate visceral thrills, instantly danceable, in constant rotation on car rides with friends or whenever I needed energy.
5. Wye Oak - Civilian
A powerful undercurrent, hidden depths. These songs quietly gather momentum as you listen to them, never seeming to hit any explicit highs or lows but still pulling you back in for more and more. One of the first albums I fell in love with this year, and still one of my favorites.
6. Laura Stevenson and the Cans - Sit Resist
I happened randomly upon this album near the end of the year and couldn’t understand why I hadn’t heard it’s praises being sung everywhere. Laura Stevenson’s delightfully quirky voice is so charming, her lyrics are so honest and heartfelt without being sappy, and the music is a perfect balance of extra instrumentation like accordion and glockenspiel with guitar, none of it overblown. Some albums I like for a brief period of time and then put away; they’re playing on a trend or whatever the current sound is, and if I listened to them a few years later they wouldn’t have the same impact. Sit Resist is the exact opposite: it has the makings of a true classic. I expect to return to it for years to come, and I hope other people discover it too, because it’s too good to go unnoticed.
7. Youth Lagoon - The Year of Hibernation
From my favorite shows of 2011 write-up: “Claustrophobic lyrics brimming with adolescent anxiety are rarely accompanied by music so tuneful and catchy” The Year of Hibernation is so remarkable because while anxiety is palpable everywhere in these songs, you can still nod your head to them.
8. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy
Strange Mercy finds Annie Clark at her most vulnerable and most weird. The title track is a rare instance when the perfect porcelain facade seems to slip, just for a moment, and it’s doubly fascinating taken alongside the prickly edges of her guitar work that hold the listener at bay, keeping an emotional distance.
9. Destroyer - Kaputt
If 2011 was the year of the saxophone, no one put it to better use than Dan Bejar. His lyrics are just as evocative and inscrutable as ever, now backed by music that transports them someplace entirely separate from anything he’s done before. Quasi-easy listening done right.
10. PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
The personal is the political, the political, personal. I like PJ Harvey best when she’s tackling sexual politics and shrieking, but this rumination on war is devastating in an entirely different way.
11. Eleanor Friedberger - Last Summer
Stream of consciousness summertime nostalgia and yearning in familiar locales.
12. Bon Iver - Bon Iver, Bon Iver
Out of the cabin and into the heartland. Quietly affecting.
13. Anna Calvi - Anna Calvi
Like if Jeff Buckley were reincarnated as a lady. A smoldering, passionate lady who can shred on guitar.
14. The Mountain Goats - All Eternals Deck
Less The Mountain Goats as John Darnielle and more The Mountain Goats as a band, greater than the sum of their parts. Yet another exemplary collection of songs from the endlessly prolific unit.
15. Zola Jesus - Conatus
Zola Jesus does epic bright just as well as epic dark.
16. The Antlers - Burst Apart
I knew I’d never love another Antlers album the way I love Hospice, with all of it’s intense personal emotional connections. And if this album were trying to be Hospice pt II, I probably would’ve been disappointed. Instead it goes off in a different direction, taking the hugeness of their live sound, expanding on it. The lyrics are still potent without the storyline, only they’re tauter, they say more with less.
17. Son Lux - We Are Rising
Recorded over the course of a mere month but sounds like it took much longer, and I mean that in a good way - this album is an intricately crafted collage of sound and rewards repeat listens.
18. Other Lives - Tamer Animals
There’s a wide range of sound here, ranging from the pastoral to nearly akin to Radiohead, all blending together to wrap you in a harmonic cocoon.
19. Widowspeak - Widowspeak
The dreamiest thing since Mazzy Star. Molly Hamilton’s lulling, lilting coo washes over you for the duration of this album, punctuated by spare, spiky guitars, before rising into a high keen in closer Ghost Boy.
20. Active Child - You Are All I See
This album is just sexy. Pat Rossi’s smooth, soulful voice over a crescendo of plucked harp strings sometimes dances close to cheeseball territory, but it’s unselfconscious and sincere, so it never truly gets silly.
Honorable Mention: Parenthetical Girls - Privilege pt III & IV: Mend & Make Do / Sympathy for Spastics
Clever lyrics of dysfunction, depression, and angst; sometimes you can even dance to them.
