My Top 10 Albums of 2011
It’ll be a clean, succinct top 10 this year. Just The Ten Of Us. Right, then.
10.The Strokes — Angles
I seem to recall a friend of mine saying this album was awful. Maybe it was a disappointment, but awful? No, that didn’t seem right. Angles is actually pretty good. Maybe we all expect too much of the Strokes, but don’t forget that First Impressions of Earth was no great shakes. This is better. “Machu Picchu,” “Under Cover of Darkness,” “Taken For a Fool,” “Gratisfaction” … I wouldn’t kick any of those tunes out of my ears. I’d say half of this album holds its own against Room on Fire. Maybe that’s not everything we’ve ever wanted, but what else can we ask for at this point?
9. Okkervil River — I Am Very Far
Speaking of holding a band up against prior expectations, I Am Very Far doesn’t grab me like, oh, just about every other Okkervil River album. It’s hard to put a finger on why, exactly. Maybe the emphasis on making the sound bigger doesn’t give any time for rest — the coherence of the album actually takes away from the smaller, affecting moments found on past works. That’s just a theory. Maybe the songs just aren’t quite as good this time around.
8. Wilco — The Whole Love
Kind of a provisional ranking here, because I feel I haven’t spent enough time with The Whole Love yet. But I really like what Wilco has done here — this is more of a push back to the sound and experimentation of the group’s peak era. “I Might” is the band’s best song in ages.
7. They Might Be Giants — Join Us
The Johns haven’t lost it, have they? I’m starting to wonder if they’re just ingeniously designed song-making automatons, never slowing down, never growing old, writing unforgettable melodies all the while. In some cases, the band that created “Boat of Car” is getting even weirder … listen to “Cloisonné.” But I suppose one wouldn’t expect any less from two guys who have continued to push themselves in every and any direction for the better part of three decades.
6. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks — Mirror Traffic
Good to see Malkmus didn’t follow Real Emotional Trash down the jammy rabbit hole. (Oh, you’ve never met the jammy rabbit? He loves carrot-based clothing and his guitar solos never end.) Mirror Traffic is more vintage Malkmus — sly melodies, full of Malkmus lines: “For history is not a phase/a doughnut glaze/will rot your teeth/and leave you crazed.” “I have no idea when we crystallized into talking bookends.” “We’re unevolving, have you heard of us?/Virtual unvirtuous/A game of faro, can’t you see?/Bastardized biology.” And so on and so forth. I suppose I should mention something about how Beck produced the album. Well, I don’t see how it could have hurt.
5. My Morning Jacket — Circuital
First off, at the top, I’m going to have to address this again. I know I’ve written about it before, and I talk about it too often. I don’t want to do this, but I read too much stuff this year that forced my hand. So, once more, with feeling: Evil Urges is, at the very least, the band’s second-best album. And maybe the best. So stop letting “Highly Suspicious” mess your entire perception of MMJ’s strongest overall collection of songs. I will argue this for as long as necessary.
Anyway, where were we? Ah, yes, Circuital. There’s a lot of groove going on here. “Holdin’ On to Black Metal” is one of the coolest things I heard all year. Then you have “Wonderful (The Way I Feel),” which is such a quintessential Jim James song — he brings that gorgeous warmth to the slower tracks. I feel like he could write a few classic songs like this every year. It seems effortless. To me, most of Circuital feels like a natural expansion of the MMJ sound, and I wouldn’t mind if the group pushed it even further next time around.
4. TV on the Radio — Nine Types of Light
It seems I always end up thinking the newest TV on the Radio album is the band’s best. But this time, I mean it. I swear. More of a grower than anything the group has done before, TVOTR brings a confident, assured sound to Nine Types of Light. And I find myself going back to it more than any other TVOTR album in the past. It came on quietly, but it’s the group’s strongest set of songs.
3. tUnE-yArDs — w h o k i l l
Who is this? That was my first thought when I heard “Bizness.” Man? Woman? Otherworldly being? Merrill Garbus is a woman, but her voice is from another realm. And so is this album. Garbus layers sounds and loops — anything goes, really — and creates something unique. Which, I realize, is similar to what I wrote about Sufjan Stevens’ masterpiece The Age of Adz. But although neither discriminates when it comes to merging noise and melody, Garbus and Stevens go about their work in different ways. Garbus doesn’t mind jarring and shaking you a bit more — one gets the sense that, often, she’s going for just that. And her voice is so reckless, it’s glorious. Take-no-prisoners, pull-no-punches vocals.
The only thing I don’t like about the album or the artist are the crazy spellings. I suppose you could say its reflective of her sound or ethos or whatever, but c’mon now.
2. Let’s Wrestle — Nursing Home
There will always be a place in my heart for brilliant British pop-punk/post-punk. And if it comes with some humor, even better. Let’s Wrestle carry on that tradition proudly.
Many seemed to enjoy the group’s debut full-length, In the Court of the Wrestling Let’s. But few people seemed to pay attention to Nursing Home. (It doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, for crying out loud.) Maybe they thought Let’s Wrestle was an amusing one-trick pony. Maybe it was the too-clever King Crimson reference.
Well, whatever the case, you folks are missing out, because this trio has gotten even better. Wesley Patrick Gonzalez’s songwriting is stronger, the Steve Albini production is stellar (of course), and Let’s Wrestle is just as funny as before. But, lest you be concerned that Let’s is too immature (one song is titled “Bad Mammaries”), be assured that the guys are in on the jokes. Gonzalez wrote the second great “Suburbs” song in the last two years. But where Win Butler and Arcade Fire looked to the suburbs with bittersweet nostalgia and found those times didn’t always lead to an ideal future, Let’s Wrestle is younger. These guys love the suburbs, and they’ll miss it, and they’re not afraid to admit it:
“In the suburbs,everything will be all right/In the suburbs, friends will come over each night/In the suburbs, I’ll have dinner with my mother, then play computer games all night/All I’ll ever worry about is feeling out of sight/’Cause I feel so safe here.” But they’re also worried about when school ends, ” ‘Cause that’s when I’ll have to move from here.” It doesn’t have the scope and vision of the Arcade Fire song, sure, but it’s just as honest. Maybe even more so.
If nothing else, enjoying Nursing Home lets me know that I’m not too old yet. Because when you’re too old, sometimes, it’s hard to know.
1. Fleet Foxes — Helplessness Blues
This is what you want a second album to be. Fleet Foxes’ full-length debut was very good, with some amazing high points. But spots of the album did drag just a bit. Not the case here. The sound is larger and completely assured. Rather than just a talented band carving a niche for itself, on Helplessness Blues, Fleet Foxes sound like a group fully aware of its many powers.
The opener, “Montezuma,” grabs you from the outset. Shimmering and wonderous, I believed almost immediately that it was the band’s best song. But it has major competition on this album alone. “Battery Kinzie,” the title track, “Lorelai,” “The Shrine/An Argument” are all worthy foes.
Fleet Foxes have earned comparisons to Simon and Garfunkel and Crosby, Stills and Nash, among other classic bands. There are times when I sense a bit of slower prog-rock influences creeping into their work, as well. But all of these comparisons — which can be scattershot — only convince me the band has its own sound now. Its own instant-classic sound. Maybe we couldn’t all hear that before, but it’s been solidified with Helplessness Blues. And the lyrics are a thing of beauty. From the majestic title track:
“I was raised up believing I was somehow unique, like a snowflake, distinct among snowflakes, distinct in each way you’d conceive. And now after some thinking, I’d say I’d rather be a functioning cog in some great machinery, serving something beyond me. But I don’t, I don’t know what that will be. I’ll get back to you someday, soon you’ll see.”