BY BROCK LANDERS
Here we are, halfway through 2011, which has been an amazingly strong year for new music. Two thirds of my top ten could claim the number one spot in other years and my top four picks are pretty much a four way tie. I had to do a lot of internal wrangling to put them in countdown order.
With these lists I like to try to discern overall artistic trends or themes. This year what I like to call the “slow burn” seems very much in evidence. Albums that don’t immediately reveal themselves to you upon first listen. Their depth and complexity make them more rewarding the more time you spend with them. You hear something new every time you listen.
Also this shows that, despite having had it’s obituary written many times over the last few years, the album is very much alive and well. With ipod shuffling and personal playlists, many decried the album irrelevant. However, artists in 2011 seem to have re-embraced the album as a unified artistic statement. Most of the albums listed are tailored and crafted to work best as a whole. Take a song out of its element and it just doesn’t have the same impact. It’s diminished, like only reading a random chapter out of a novel. It may be enjoyable on it’s own, but you know you aren’t getting the full story.
So here are my picks for the best music of 2011 – so far.
10. Death Cab For Cutie – Codes And Keys – Death Cab have stated that the musical touchstone for this album was Brian Eno. While there is nothing quite as adventurous and innovative as Eno’s best work, the expanded use of keyboards for tone, mood and texture is a move forward toward something different, while still retaining enough of the familiar to not throw off longtime fans.
9. Paul Simon – So Beautiful Or So What – Some would dismiss Simon as Starbucks background music, but that would be a mistake. So Beautiful… is Simon’s most vital work since Graceland in ’86. He’s revisited the African rhythms from that album and married them with brilliant observations about life, death and the meaning of it all, which is only appropriate and fitting for someone celebrating their 70th birthday this year.
8. Okkervil River – I Am Very Far – Is a move towards a more primal and laid bare sound after the meticulously crafted story songs of their last two albums. There is a raw rock & roll classicism in evidence while still retaining the lyrical and songwriting heft that the band has developed.
7. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues – Fleet Foxes second album totally obliterates any notion of a sophomore slump. Where as they sometime wore their influences on their sleeve with their debut, this is the sound of a band fully coming into their own. Helplessness Blues is about figuring out what it means to be an adult and the fact that this searching and questioning coincides so beautifully with their defining themselves musically only serves to benefit us as listeners.
6. Mountain Goats – All Eternals Deck – John Darnielle is unarguably the best lyricist in music today. Each song is so brilliantly evocative in turns of phrase and characters that this could be regarded as a musical short story collection. Yet, as much I love these songs, that is what keeps me from rating this higher. The songs work too well individually and are so independent of one another in tone and spirit that, for me, it makes for a choppy and inconsistent listen as whole.
5. Telekinesis – 12 Desperate Straight Lines – Is one of the great break up albums in recent memory, made all the greater by the tension created in the juxtaposition of the bands upbeat power-pop sound with the desperate longing, insecurity and recriminations of the lyrics, which go through the various stages of a relationship unraveling.
4. Sufjan Stevens – The Age Of Adz – This is a bit of a cheat, since it technically came out in late December 2010, but since I’ve been listening to it in 2011 I’m including on my list. This album is the very definition of “slow burn”, there is so much going on that it takes at least a dozen listens for it to start to sink in and it becomes more enthralling with each listen. It is Steven’s most diverse album musically and has an angry edge that rocks, which isn’t something you can normally say about Sufjan, as brilliant as he’s been in the past.
3. TV On The Radio – Nine Types Of Light – TV On The Radio have been categorized by some as the “American Radiohead”, and like Radiohead they have never repeated themselves. Nine Types Of Light is no exception, marrying a fearless sonic experimentalism with an authentic sense of funk and soul that Thom Yorke and co. will never be able to achieve.
2. Radiohead – The King Of Limbs – As much as I have tried to dismiss this as lesser Radiohead, I can’t stop listening to it, and the more I hear the richer the tapestry becomes. It’s a puzzle that confounds, frustrates yet ultimately satisfies when the pieces fall into place. It is deceptively dense and layered and those layers only become evident the more time you spend with the record. Recently seeing the band perform the songs live at Glastonbury via Youtube has added yet another dimension to The King Of Limbs. I will probably be listening to these songs and hearing new things for years to come, a sure sign of a classic.
1. The Decemberists – The King Is Dead – After going deeper and deeper into concept mode for their last couple of albums, culminating in the 2009 rock opera The Hazard’s Of Love, The Decemberists have pulled back to the basics and in the process produced the best set of songs of their illustrious career. All their musical hallmarks are here – the American and British folk song structures, the 80’s classic alternative influence (some have called this the best R.E.M. album in 25 years), and Colin Meloy’s witty, hyper-literate lyrics. These elements are fused into a set of songs that are instantly accessible yet deepen with repeated listens. Each and every one is a classic that sounds effortless in its ingenuity.
