Honourable mentions (the albums that didn't make it into my "big list" but are worth a listen) are Tuneyards' w h o k i l l , Feist's Metals, TV on the Radio's Nine Types of Light, Laurie Levine's Six Winters, Beyonce's 4, SBTRKT's SBTRKT and Radiohead's King of Limbs.
This year's Twilight soundtrack was unimpressive, Lady Gaga's Born This Way flew under my radar and Bruno Mars annoyed me more than Justin Bieber. Adele made some good songs (I'm not a fan) and Amy Winehouse passed on (I did cry. I was - and still am - a huge Wino fan, and Back to Black got me through the most tumultuous breakup of my life). Cesaria Evora - 'the Barefoot Diva' - also passed on, saddening my musical heart even more. Florence + the Machine sucked, but then again I'm biased against their OTT pretentiousness. I still haven't caught on to Kate Bush's 50 Words for Snow :( and I didn't like Tori Amos' Night of Hunters. M83's Hurry Up, We're Dreaming was a disjointed collection of really good songs while the Horrors' Skying was a disappointing follow-up to Primary Colours.
Shout out for my favourite songs of the year: You'll Be Mine by the Pierces (like Fleetwood Mac gone indie-pop), Welcome to the Jungle by the Throne (aka Jigga and Ye), Sure Thing by Miguel (this dude should be an R&B star) and Hlokoloza (yeah right).
On with it. These are my 10 favourite albums of 2011.
10. Zola Jesus Conatus
On her second full-length album, Nika Roza Danilova showcases Zola Jesus' strengths: a spectacular voice and brilliant, atmospheric production. The sound on Conatus is a lot “lighter” yet it’s still broody. It’s dreamier, her voice is not as dramatic, it’s a bit more subdued and it works perfectly with this album. The Valusia EP was the bridge the led her from the Stridulum EP to Conatus. This album can be appreciated by a wider section of people, methinks, not just those who like the sound of impending doom.
Highlights: Hikikomori, Shivers, Collapse
09. Theophilus London Timez Are Weird These Days
Theophilus is part of this wave of cool black kids who are eschewing musical conventions and doing whatever the fuck they want. Highly experimental, talented, smart and stylish - how can you not love him? I like the fact that his name sounds like Thelonious Monk. Aside from that, his music is pretty good. Nothing groundbreaking - but who said it has to be?
Highlights: Why Even Try, Last Name London
08. Lykke Li Wounded Rhymes
Li's second album sounds nothing like her first. While Youth Novels played out like Scandinavian R&B-pop a la Jenny Wilson (just with more oomph), Wounded Rhymes is, like the title suggests, darker. It could have been the soundtrack to a female revenge tale such as And the Bride Wore Black, Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! and even Kill Bill. It just has that kind of energy. As Li said to Pitchfork, it's about "pussy power". Indeed.
Highlights: I Follow Rivers, Get Some, Jerome, Sadness is a Blessing
07. Tom Waits Bad As Me
When I found out that my musical sugardaddy was releasing his first album of original material since 2006, I, of course, was incredibly excited. Bad as Me - Tom Waits' 17th studio album - is not Franks Wild Years or Bone Machine, but it's pretty good. It's everything you've come to expect from Tom Waits without sounding dated or played out. Really, the man started releasing albums in the early 70s, he's 62, yet he doesn't come across as a boring old man. Read my full review of the album here.
Highlights: Raised Right Man, Hell Broke Luce, Face to the Highway
06. The Weeknd House of Balloons/ Thursday/ Echoes of Silence
I've decided all three Weeknd mixtapes will collectively inhabit the sixth spot. Reason being, I love certain songs on each album but not all or most of them. Now, each mixtape works beautifully as a unit, like an art film, but I just do not have the patience to listen to them all, I like to pick and choose tracks. So because of my short attention span, Abel Tesfaye is not higher up on this list. I love his experimentalism, his ever-changing voice (Bilal-style) and his atmospherics. They impress me.
Highlights: House of Balloons - Glass Table Girls, The Morning, Lonely Star, D.D., Outside
05. Little Dragon Ritual Union
This one grew on me. I think it's the best thing the band has done so far (it's only their third album). Themes of heartbreak, surrealism, materialism, infidelity and emptiness resonate throughout this stunner of an album. Not once does it feel like the band is trying too hard or taking themselves far too seriously. It's all so effortless. A gem. Click here for my full review of the album.
Highlights: Brush the Heat, Shuffle a Dream, Summertearz
04. The Roots Undun
The band's thirteenth album was apparently inspired by Sufjan Stevens (yuck) and they even sample him a bit. We'll ignore that. Undun is a concept album that doesn't quite give itself away as such (it's not Coheed and Cambria, thank goodness). It takes us through the life of a drug dealer named Redford Stevens - from his arrogant facade to the thoughts that haunt him when he's alone. It's a stunner. Check out my full review of the album.
Highlights: Make My, Tip the Scale, Stomp, The Otherside
03. Bon Iver Bon Iver
The album is experimental and sonically has a lot going on – in a good way. It’s dark, it’s beautiful, it’s heartbreaking, even a little angry in parts – it’s like Vernon has ripped open his chest to let us see his beating, bloodied heart instead of letting us read his journal after a breakup (the oh so whiny, little cool cafe soundtrack that was For Emma, Forever Ago). It’s some sort of evolution and damn it is beautiful. Read my full review here.
Highlights: Perth, Holocene, Hinnom TX., Calgary
02. St Vincent Strange Mercy
Theophilus is part of this wave of cool black kids who are eschewing musical conventions and doing whatever the fuck they want. Highly experimental, talented, smart and stylish - how can you not love him? I like the fact that his name sounds like Thelonious Monk. Aside from that, his music is pretty good. Nothing groundbreaking - but who said it has to be?
Highlights: Why Even Try, Last Name London
08. Lykke Li Wounded Rhymes
Li's second album sounds nothing like her first. While Youth Novels played out like Scandinavian R&B-pop a la Jenny Wilson (just with more oomph), Wounded Rhymes is, like the title suggests, darker. It could have been the soundtrack to a female revenge tale such as And the Bride Wore Black, Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! and even Kill Bill. It just has that kind of energy. As Li said to Pitchfork, it's about "pussy power". Indeed.
Highlights: I Follow Rivers, Get Some, Jerome, Sadness is a Blessing
07. Tom Waits Bad As Me
When I found out that my musical sugardaddy was releasing his first album of original material since 2006, I, of course, was incredibly excited. Bad as Me - Tom Waits' 17th studio album - is not Franks Wild Years or Bone Machine, but it's pretty good. It's everything you've come to expect from Tom Waits without sounding dated or played out. Really, the man started releasing albums in the early 70s, he's 62, yet he doesn't come across as a boring old man. Read my full review of the album here.
Highlights: Raised Right Man, Hell Broke Luce, Face to the Highway
06. The Weeknd House of Balloons/ Thursday/ Echoes of Silence
I've decided all three Weeknd mixtapes will collectively inhabit the sixth spot. Reason being, I love certain songs on each album but not all or most of them. Now, each mixtape works beautifully as a unit, like an art film, but I just do not have the patience to listen to them all, I like to pick and choose tracks. So because of my short attention span, Abel Tesfaye is not higher up on this list. I love his experimentalism, his ever-changing voice (Bilal-style) and his atmospherics. They impress me.
Highlights: House of Balloons - Glass Table Girls, The Morning, Lonely Star, D.D., Outside
05. Little Dragon Ritual Union
This one grew on me. I think it's the best thing the band has done so far (it's only their third album). Themes of heartbreak, surrealism, materialism, infidelity and emptiness resonate throughout this stunner of an album. Not once does it feel like the band is trying too hard or taking themselves far too seriously. It's all so effortless. A gem. Click here for my full review of the album.
Highlights: Brush the Heat, Shuffle a Dream, Summertearz
04. The Roots Undun
The band's thirteenth album was apparently inspired by Sufjan Stevens (yuck) and they even sample him a bit. We'll ignore that. Undun is a concept album that doesn't quite give itself away as such (it's not Coheed and Cambria, thank goodness). It takes us through the life of a drug dealer named Redford Stevens - from his arrogant facade to the thoughts that haunt him when he's alone. It's a stunner. Check out my full review of the album.
Highlights: Make My, Tip the Scale, Stomp, The Otherside
03. Bon Iver Bon Iver
The album is experimental and sonically has a lot going on – in a good way. It’s dark, it’s beautiful, it’s heartbreaking, even a little angry in parts – it’s like Vernon has ripped open his chest to let us see his beating, bloodied heart instead of letting us read his journal after a breakup (the oh so whiny, little cool cafe soundtrack that was For Emma, Forever Ago). It’s some sort of evolution and damn it is beautiful. Read my full review here.
Highlights: Perth, Holocene, Hinnom TX., Calgary
02. St Vincent Strange Mercy
Annie Clark's third album seems to be about emotional cabin fever. It’s manic but you would never guess that from its surface. The sound is stunning, as gentle as it is abrasive, as are her lyrics. Let's not forget that she has a stunning voice. It seems like Ms Clark is kicking sand in the eyes of all the conventions she’s known. It’s an album of maturity as much as it is an album of rebellion. And can I just say that I love it when she sings "If I ever meet that dirty policeman who roughed you up... I don't know what" on the title track?
Highlights: Surgeon, Strange Mercy, Cheerleader, Dilettante
01. PJ Harvey Let England Shake
PJ Harvey is one of those artists who have calmed down over the years (sound-wise), with stunning rather than embarrassing results. Think Joy Division, for instance. When they were still called Warsaw, they were just another punk band in 1970s England trying to rip off the Sex Pistols. Then when Martin Hannett came into the picture, shit changed and they unwittingly created a new subgenre of rock (post-punk).
Difference is, PJ Harvey was good even when she was a maniacal young woman singing about chopping off her man's legs, giving him good sex and sharing him with other girls. As the years went by, she got bluesier and more timeless, more experimental, eschewing the guitar entirely in favour of the piano for White Chalk.
On her last album - A Woman, A Man Walked By, her second collaboration with John Parish - she had her moments of madness, but by then we'd all accepted that the Dry/ Rid of Me-era PJ Harvey was largely dead and buried.
While Let England Shake (which earned Harvey her second Mercury Prize) carries on in the tradition of White Chalk in its fairly subdued sound, lyrically it's not as introspective. The album is about war - the sight of it, the smell of it, the taste of it, the feel of it. It's folk with balls. It's spine-tingling in parts, unnerving in others. Damn PJ Harvey!
Highlights: All & Everyone, On Battleship Hill, Written on the Forehead, The Glorious Land
What we're looking forward to in 2012: new albums from The Knife, Cat Power, Portishead (although let's be honest, we'll be waiting till 2023), Kanye West (My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 2.0? No? Okay), Radiohead in South Africa (we can only dream)...
01. PJ Harvey Let England Shake
PJ Harvey is one of those artists who have calmed down over the years (sound-wise), with stunning rather than embarrassing results. Think Joy Division, for instance. When they were still called Warsaw, they were just another punk band in 1970s England trying to rip off the Sex Pistols. Then when Martin Hannett came into the picture, shit changed and they unwittingly created a new subgenre of rock (post-punk).
Difference is, PJ Harvey was good even when she was a maniacal young woman singing about chopping off her man's legs, giving him good sex and sharing him with other girls. As the years went by, she got bluesier and more timeless, more experimental, eschewing the guitar entirely in favour of the piano for White Chalk.
On her last album - A Woman, A Man Walked By, her second collaboration with John Parish - she had her moments of madness, but by then we'd all accepted that the Dry/ Rid of Me-era PJ Harvey was largely dead and buried.
While Let England Shake (which earned Harvey her second Mercury Prize) carries on in the tradition of White Chalk in its fairly subdued sound, lyrically it's not as introspective. The album is about war - the sight of it, the smell of it, the taste of it, the feel of it. It's folk with balls. It's spine-tingling in parts, unnerving in others. Damn PJ Harvey!
Highlights: All & Everyone, On Battleship Hill, Written on the Forehead, The Glorious Land
What we're looking forward to in 2012: new albums from The Knife, Cat Power, Portishead (although let's be honest, we'll be waiting till 2023), Kanye West (My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 2.0? No? Okay), Radiohead in South Africa (we can only dream)...
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