Erik's Top Albums of 2011: 5-1

For those of you just tuning in, here's where we've been:


Honorable Mentions:

Danny Brown - XXX
Jamie xx & Gil Scott-Heron - We're New Here
Panda Bear - Tomboy
Ford & Lopatin - Channel Pressure
Havok - Time Is Up
PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
Big K.R.I.T. - Returnof4eva
The Mountain Goats - All Eternals Deck
Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
tUnE-yArDs - w h o k i l l


25. Thee Oh Sees - Castlemania + Carrion Crawler/The Dream
24. Real Estate - Days
23. Craft Spells - Idle Labor
22. Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes
21. Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo
20. OFF! - First Four EPs
19. Liturgy - Aesthetica 
18. Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Tune Grief
17. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Hysterical
16. Woods - Sun & Shade
15. Elzhi - Elmatic
14. The UV Race - Homo
13. Chelsea Wolfe - Ἀποκάλυψις
12. Hospital Ships - Lonely Twin
11. Kendrick Lamar - Section.80
10. Motel Beds - Sunfried Dreams
09. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Belong
08. The Vaccines - What Did You Expect from the Vaccines?
07. Beirut - The Rip Tide
06. Yuck - Yuck (Deluxe Edition)

And now we have the top 5:

05. Fucked Up - David Comes To Life

Let me preface this by saying, I totally understand why people don't like Fucked Up. Pink Eyes' voice is trying, especially for 78 minutes. But, I can't deny the fact that I'm endlessly impressed with the energy and ambition and execution of this thing. Look at a song like "Serve Me Right," buried at the end of the second act. Even though I'm over a half-hour into the album, I still find myself being excited and surprised by the choices they made in making this thing. A lot has been written about, oh, this is a "Hardcore Concept Album." To me, the fact that it's a hardcore album is ancillary. It's just a flat-out great guitar rock record that happens to have a guy screaming the life out of his lungs.

Fucked Up - A Little Death


 04. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

I just mentioned "choices" a few seconds ago. Strange Mercy is the perfect example of how odd sonic and production choices completely impact an album. I love this album because I don't know any other band who would think to do any of the stuff on it. People bringing up this album cite the guitar solo in "Cruel" as such an intense juxtaposition of Annie Clark's natural grace and the hideous nature of the music. But all of Strange Mercy is littered with these gross flourishes. "Dilettante" blasts with these nasty electronic hits, "Surgeon" has an incredibly alien-sounding guitar solo, etc, etc. The point is this, every time I listen to this album I find myself not only finding something new, but I find myself thinking about the choices that led to what I'm listening to.

St. Vincent - Dilettante

 03. Andrew Jackson Jihad - Knife Man

I'm a cynical asshole. I know it. I'm okay with it at this point. Tim talked about when listening to Lonely Twin, he felt personal connections to lots of lyrics. This is how I felt about Knife Man. Is this album especially innovative, or musically great? Nope. It's a standard folk-punk album. But the lyrics are so funny, and cynical, and dark, and brilliant. And every song (with the exception of "Backpack") has at least one line where I hear it and laugh as I nod my head. As soon as I listened to Knife Man, I started it over and listened to it again. It felt good to be obsessed with a new album.

"Zombies By The Cranberries By Andrew Jackson Jihad"
 


02. The War on Drugs - Slave Ambient

I still don't know if I'm 100% sure about my decision here. I am a huge fan of both Slave Ambient and Kaputt, but try and bear with me here. Slave Ambient is the best album in the context of all the albums made this year. I feel like every other album on my list was building towards this. It's as much Strange Mercy as it is Smoke Ring For My Halo. Everything those 23 albums did well: strong transitions, cultivating an aesthetic, songwriting, production risks, rhythm, etc. Slave Ambient did as well or better. Tim highlighted the three-track suite of "Your Love Is Calling My Name/The Animator/Come To The City," and he's right. In my opinion it's is the best ~13 minutes in music this year. Like I said, this is the best album of this year, in the context of this year.

The War on Drugs - Baby Missiles

01. Destroyer - Kaputt

Having said all that; every few years an album comes along that feels like it exists outside of the influence of the rest of music released that year. The last album I can think of that felt this way was Bitte Orca in 2009. Kaputt felt like Dan Bejar was functioning on completely different wavelength as everybody else. The musical influences are obscure and and the lyrical references even more obscure. It's lush, bizarre, pensive, and wholeheartedly unique. I can't really expand much on Tim's write-up of this. All I know is that every time I walk around New York City in the rain, and I see neon lights reflected off dirty curbside puddles, I think of this album, and the songs play over and over again in my mind.

Destroyer - Downtown


So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed this list. Check back soon for best of 2011 track mixes.


-e.