2011's Best Albums (40-26)

Let's be honest: I just watched The Graduate and I feel pretty emotional. The Weeknd just delivered on his promise to complete a trilogy of records in 2011, which throws this whole list into disarray. It's too late to change anything, so we'll just go ahead as scheduled. The schedule, I suppose, calls for me to write from 1:30 a.m. until I black out. So:

Bonus Awards

Worst Album Title

> Echoes Of Silence - The Weeknd

Worst Timed Release

> Echoes Of Silence - The Weeknd

Best Michael Jackson Impression

> Echoes Of Silence - The Weeknd

Best Album To Listen To Alone After Watching The Graduate

> Echoes Of Silence - The Weeknd

... And now the fun continues on #METASWAG...

the Top 50 Albums of 2011

40 | XXX - Danny Brown

If Danny Brown and The Weeknd ever party together, the party might collapse in a black hole of excessive drinking, snorting, and sucking. XXX is vile music, but transcends its grossness for what it does. Brown works in the tradition of Bakhtin's carnivalesque, blurring the boundaries between artist and audience by focusing on universals: orifices, bodily fluids, laughter. One of my friends said it sounds like he's always clowning. That's the point.

39 | Aesthetica - Liturgy

I could've written about this when I wrote about Burzum or when (spoilers) I write about Krallice or Wolves In The Throne Room, but I'll just write about it now: 2011 was the year black metal got hip. I write about it here because Liturgy call themselves transcendental and have mass appeal. Does it matter that some people first read "kvlt" on Pitchfork? What Liturgy, and Aesthetica in particular, make clear is that pushing a genre to its limits will always matter.

38 | The ONE... COHESIVE - G-Side

G-Side's second mixtape remains one of my favorite records. This follow-up isn't exactly what I hoped for, but my expectations were probably unreasonably high for the Alabama duo. The Block Beataz continue to provide phenomenal production, elevating tracks like "Y U Mad" into truly haunting territory where they could've rung false. Beats like these demand presence, and luckily Clova and ST are up to snuff. Here is a slice of Southern goodness with global ambition.

37 | Father, Son, Holy Ghost - Girls

Girls' sophomore album bored me at first. Its influences sounded too apparent, its songwriting sounded too obvious, and its lyrics sounded too dumb. After a few months with it, I now cherish Christopher Owens' simple phrases and the songs' traditional structures. Father, Son, Holy Ghost reminds me of my favorite music from my childhood. It calls on the ghosts of classic rock to forge something that makes perfect sense right now. "Vomit" says it all.

36 | Far Side Virtual - James Ferraro

Who knew noise could sound like this? Oneohtrix Point Never's new record is getting a lot more love than James Ferraro's latest, and I guess for good reason. Far Side Virtual, though, is an impossibly complex construction that smuggles hundreds of recognizable samples into a beautiful quilt of retro-future sound. It's an album concerned with America's pop detritus and it sounds like something a coalition of rejected laptops would make to prove their worth.

35 | Dracula - Nurses

In a year where noise and twisted R&B have reigned supreme, we still need indie pop. Nurses make this argument pretty convincingly over the course of their third record, Dracula. The songs here shuffle along on simple and driving drum beats, percussive samples swirling around in the background, while fuzzy guitars and whined voices soar overhead. "So Sweet" sums up the essence of the album, which makes growing up sound equal parts fun and nerve racking.

34 | 1977 - Terius Nash

Frank Ocean and The Weeknd (rightfully) claimed the R&B spotlight this year. It's a shame, because The-Dream released a stellar mixtape as himself, Terius Nash. Every track on this album is straightforward to a fault. There's little poetry or nuance to distinguish this as important art. That's the art of it. The-Dream doesn't fuck around: this is personal, text message music that announces itself as such. "Wedding Crasher" is my drunk song because it told me so.

33 | As The Crow Flies - The Advisory Circle

This is a peculiar album. It sounds like it could successfully soundtrack a late 80s corporate video on maintaining a productive work environment. Whatever the inspiration, this is a collection of perky, plucky songs made with old keyboards. But As The Crow Flies isn't always motivational cheese. Introspective moments are sprinkled throughout, which earn its overarching goofiness. Based on a tragic Dickens short, closer "Lonely Signalman" might be the year's saddest song.

32 | As High As The Highest Heavens And From The Center To The Circumference Of The Earth - True Widow

The title is as absurdly long as the album is absurdly sluggish. It sounds melted like a batch of cookies pulled out of the oven just a little too soon, easy to digest but too hot to handle. This album was the soundtrack for most of my summer drives, accentuating the slow crawl on baking pavement in humid heat waves. When things seemed to be moving too quickly, True Widow could always return me to a livable pace.

31 | 4 - Beyoncé

Maybe more than any record this year, 4 knows variety is the spice of life. Queen B shows off her unbelievable versatility from start to finish, switching up her flow mid-track and drawing on her myriad influences to craft an always-engaging listen. If "Countdown" and "Party" confirm Bey can still get a party started, "1+1" and "I Was Here" remind she has a heart, and the lungs to prove it. This year, only 4 could power my heartbroken cries and my love-struck dancing.

30 | Smoke Ring For My Halo - Kurt Vile

Kurt Vile is tired. He makes classic rock 'n roll in the vein of Tonight's The Night, singing rundown Americana with bleary eyes. I wish you had seen his eyes while he performed "Ghost Town" earlier this year. They were distant and present at the same time, like he loved the music he was playing, but didn't particularly want to play it for us. Smoke Ring For My Halo is gripping, relatable, and, like the best work of singer-songwriters, personal and political.

29 | Return Of 4Eva - Big K.R.I.T.

K.R.I.T.'s charm lies in his grit. He isn't flashy; he doesn't have to be. His lyrics are layered and catchy and his production remains stellar. He once again mines the wealth of material found in the everyday of Southern life, in which he struggles without cutting corners. That's not to say R4 is without hooks - it's loaded. "Rotation" and "R4 Theme Song" bump. There's just something more to K.R.I.T. that doesn't lend itself to the radio: honesty. "The Vent" won't top charts, but it will cut deep.

28 | Strange Mercy - St. Vincent

I don't know why I never got around to Actor. I don't know why I didn't listen to Strange Mercy until a couple weeks ago. I'm head-over-heels in love with nearly every song on this album. "Surgeon" and the title track alone should put this album in the Top 25. Consider Strange Mercy's low ranking the cruelest injustice committed by this list. We can all agree it sounds amazing, that its songwriting is tight and its arrangements are meticulous. Her voice, etc. What have I done?

27 | Watch The Throne - Jay-Z & Kanye West

I'm supposed to write something about Occupy Wall Street and this record's hedonism, but I'd rather write about why I spent so much of this summer rehearsing Jay-Z's show-stopping verse on "Who Gon Stop Me".  I guess it's obvious either way: these are rap's two biggest stars putting on the victory lap celebration of a lifetime; they have no concern for the 99%. When they do, it's definitionally secondary to their own Midas touch. Who cares? Their gold still sounds golden.

26 | Diotima - Krallice

I've already written about the atmospheric noise of "The Clearing", with all its combative drums and towering guitar riffs. Diotima, at seven tracks and 70-minutes, is an expansive record that gives its songs room to breathe. To do so, Krallice take your own breath away and breathe out fire. Krallice is one of the best black metal bands going today, and what they've made here is nothing short of beautiful. Closer "Dust And Light" contains the year's best climax, an impossible maelstrom of noise.


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I can't stop.