I’m not a great blogger that is for sure. The start of the year witnessed my streak of blog posts and reviews, until summer came and my time and resources went elsewhere. Now, at this year’s end I am back to give you my input of 2011 in music:

2011 was a fruitful year, although this year lacked a definitive “best” album (like last year’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy) it featured numerous quality releases. The list I’m writing for you here was limited to just ten, leading me to leave several albums I found great off of this list. Trends that began in past years continued, specifically the small-imprint trend, growing in quality and quantity. The exodus from bedroom to studio has continued from bands in the independent music scene, few artists are releasing anything that sounds like it came from modest production efforts. Listen to the production in albums like Bon Iver or Father, Son, Holy Ghost, they’re deep, round, and spacious. Yet on another hand, artists are still borrowing sounds of the past and re-appropriating them as their own, although now in ways that blur the past and the present. An example would be John Maus’ release; We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves, this album sounds natively 80s, but, is it really? Despite synthesizers turned all the way up, nothing in the 80s could be related without argument. Better yet is Daniel Lopatin’s Oneohtrix Point Never project, in his latest album, Replica, he samples 1980-90s daytime/late-night television commercials (which sounds like) straight from VHS. The final result is a creation that romanticizes one’s feeling of nostalgia.

Here are my top albums of 2011…

*Best of 2011*

10) Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost [True Panther Sounds]
09) Drake – Take Care [Cash Money]
08) Shabazz Palaces – Black Up [Sub Pop]
07) Bon Iver – Bon Iver [Jagjaguwar/4AD]
06) Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact [4AD]
05) Atlas Sound – Parallax [4AD]
04) Destroyer – Kaputt [Merge]
03) Future Islands – On the Water [Thrill Jockey]
02) Oneohtrix Point Never – Replica [Software/Mexican Summer]
01) John Maus – We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves [Ribbon Music]

Here is a list of my twenty favorite songs from 2011. These are listed in alphabetical order.

A Winged Victory for the Sullen – Steep Hills of Vicodin Tears
Atlas Sound – Te Amo
Cass McCombs – County Line
Death Grips – Guillotine
Destroyer – Blue Eyes
DJ Diamond – Horns
Drake – Doing It Wrong
Ford & Lopatin – Too Much MIDI (Please Forgive Me)
Gang Gang Dance – Glass Jar
Girls – Alex
Jay-Z / Kanye West – Otis
John Maus – Hey Moon
Kids on a Crime Spree – Trumpets of Death
Lana Del Rey – Born To Die
Laura Marling – Sophia
Nicki Minaj – Super Bass
Oneohtrix Point Never – Up
Thee Oh Sees – The Dream
Tom Waits – Bad as Luce
2 Chainz – Spend It (Remix) (Feat. T.I.)

The album opener “Glass Jar” is enough in itself to create an EP. This 11-minute epic starts slowly, perhaps like a space shuttle with its engine firing, then near the 5-minute mark it blasts through the atmosphere to not return. Arpeggioed keys augment an emphatic bass bump, which has been used to a strong effect at their live performances, is first heard here on one of their studio albums. The tone that is set from this first track does not let up throughout the rest of the album. Although there are intermittently and exquisitely placed interludes, any track with a written title (essentially, I do not want to take aback the interludes) has areas to explore, to dance to, or to just let wash over you in the sun or under the stars. Perhaps the latter is befitting for Eye Contact.

Liz Bougatsos’ voice sounds better than ever on this album as well. Her gentle coos from Saint Dymphna are still here but on other tracks it’s distorted in ways we haven’t heard. “Chinese High” is a song that sounds like Kate Bush and it features guitarist Tim Koh, from Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti. His reverberated guitar, plus Bougatsos’ childlike voice, and a pop-song structure allows it to be the most accessible track. “MindKilla” follows “Chinese High” and it is more dance floor-ready than even “Glass Jar.” It has enough 808s, synths, bass beats, horns and alarms, a fucking lullaby, and exasperations. To elaborate more on these two songs, on the LP version of the album these tracks are the only two on side 2 (of 3). They play just like a single would, let’s say that “Chinese High” would be the A-side and “MindKilla” as its B-side. These two tracks aren’t just standout tracks on this album; they are standout tracks for this year.

The album’s final side starts with the second interlude, “∞∞,” this brings the listener down from the serotonin-overloaded “MindKilla.” It is perfectly placed because “Romance Layers” has the laid-back duet of Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor and Liz Bougatsos exchanging melodies amidst keyboard chimes and electric guitars. Later is “∞∞∞” which forebodes the album finale. Gurgling water, the refrain of “I’m so high/Can’t seem to find my way” plus the raising tempo of a tribal drum beat leads to “Thru and Thru.” An Arabian melody that is segmented with a voice sample yell, followed by a tribal percussion beat that leads into, for a lack of me not knowing what to call it, a muezzin’s call.

Eye Contact is an extraterrestrial re-imagination of genres and influences we didn’t know could be re-appropriated in such a manner. Although their previous albums were certainly weird, Eye Contact remains accessible, but not enough to steer away fans from Saint Dymphna or God’s Money.

(Reviewer’s Score 4.2/5)

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A new track from the latest album of Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All’s Tyler, The Creator. Said album will be titled Goblin, due 5/10 on XL Recordings.

This is a track from John Maus’ forthcoming album titled We Must Become The Pitiless Censors of Ourselves set to be released on 6/28 on Ribbon Music. This reverb-overloaded synthscape track owes a lot of its sound to Ariel Pink, which is not a bad thing at all.

Might as well listen to “Quantum Leap” while you’re here, this song comes from the same album. I assume it is named after the roller coaster, “Quantum Loop,” that used to be at the Seabreeze Amusement Park in Rochester, NY.

Tomboy was recorded in a basement in Benfica, Portugal. In that respect one can understand the, let’s call it, dimmed-colors present here, at least compared to Person Pitch. The tracks “Drone,” “Slow Motion,” or the ambient “Scheherazade” exhibit ghostly vocals and other elements that evoke cool feelings. But, the entire album can’t be classified thusly. “Surfer’s Hymn” is the best example of a track that sounds the most like “old” Panda Bear, this track also sounds much better on the album than the single-version that released a few weeks before. The single-version of this track had a pitch-shifted vocal that I thought ruined everything. And, “Surfer’s Hymn” does sound contrived at the start, but Noah Lennox (who is Panda Bear) pulls it together into a cohesive, single-worthy (which it is) track.

The production here is commendable. Tomboy was originally planned to have been mixed by Animal Collective members Avey Tare and Deakin, but instead it was mixed by Spaceman 3 member Sonic Boom. The news that this album changed mixing personnel came late in this album’s gestation period, two of the album’s singles had already been released when this was said to be. Did this decision create the hushed-euphoric elements? I can’t say, but I will say that it didn’t harm this album any. Panda Bear has previously credited Beach Boys, and to be specific, Brian Wilson, as a source of inspiration for the music he creates. Several tracks on this album have beautiful harmonies, specifically the album-standout “Last Night at the Jetty,” which has a Beach Boys-style songwriting structure. Panda Bear is able to use his voice as an additional element in the music. Well, of course, but what I mean is that he uses it not unlike the way a guitar or percussion would be used. Specifically in “Last Night at the Jetty” during the breakdown of the repetitious “I know I know I know know I know I know I,” that speeds up the pace of the song. He does this again to great effect with that track’s b-side, “Drone.” Although, Panda Bear doesn’t do this to the same level of success that was displayed in Person Pitch. On that album, “Bros” and “Good Girl/Carrots” used avant-garde songwriting and production styles to alter pop music paradigms; unfortunately nothing on this album displays that kind of creative ingenuity. But, let’s not discredit the music on Tomboy, this album is superb. Another production element that owes a great deal to the themes in this album is the intonation of Panda Bear’s voice. His voice possesses an organ-like quality that makes the album feel otherworldly. The majority of the album is sung in the same intonation which keeps this sentiment present throughout.

Panda Bear noted in interviews that Tomboy would be guitar and rhythm-driven. The latter is correct, but only a few tracks use rhythm-guitar, one being the eponymous “Tomboy” track which is the album’s first high-point. Although the track is generally sparse, Panda Bear creates a great sense of depth with a minimal amount of ingredients. “Alsatian Darn” is noteworthy as well for its use of acoustic guitar and its handclaps, proving to potentially be the album’s most accessible track. Panda Bear could have instead said that the album does have a higher amount of singing than other Animal Collective albums, even on the ambient-style tracks.

As mentioned earlier, Animal Collective, and specifically here Panda Bear, continue to create abstract representations of pop music, but nothing on this album shouts “Eureka!” like Person Pitch had done. Tomboy is paced thoughtfully and showcases how music is often a production of the environment in which it was created; here it was a basement in the sun-washed city of Lisbon, Portugal. Last year, Avey Tare released his first solo album, Down There, as he was going through a divorce. That album was subdued and emotional, and despite its brevity, could be considered as the better release of these two records. Thankfully, sometimes the sun does shine through the reverb and the haze in Tomboy, and it’s OK if you go out to bathe in it.

(Reviewer’s Score: 3.8/5)

I have been very skeptical of this “indie-R&B” trend that has surfaced as of late. Among The Weeknd are its contemporaries in the likes of James Blake and How To Dress Well, and I have written those both off as over-hyped. But The Weeknd is less like them and more like Junior Boys or Fever Ray, especially in the ability to create dark, cold, and affecting tracks, and it is in that respect why I find The Weeknd more favorable. Another part of The Weeknd’s appeal is the mystery surrounding the origins of these eclectic and hollow, drugged-out tracks. I originally thought what perked my interest were the “indie-friendly” samples that are re-appropriated, Beach House’s “Gila” on “Loft Music” or the Siouxie and the Banshees cover of “Happy House” which is re-titled as this mixtape’s title track. But, that wasn’t it either; House of Balloons is simply brilliant, despite how much this release bleeds cross-over appeal.

The subject material of this mixtape is dark and narcissistic. Maybe we’re entering a post-My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy pop music landscape, but House of Balloons has lyrics like “I’m living for the present/And the future don’t exist” followed by “What you doing in the bathroom? /It’s OK, we can do it in the living room/Only girls we fuck with seem to have twenty different pills in ‘em.” All of it takes place in the envisioned world we would see in a Chanel or Gucci commercial, a world that thrives off of materialism and a world one would strive to reach at others’ cost. Although once you’re there you find that have nothing left but the beautiful girl who is leaving you for the next man.

The lyrics aren’t the only factor that creates these feelings, the music does it too. During the tracks “The Party & The After Party” and “The Morning” you can nearly see the skyscrapers outside the studio’s window. Further along in the mixtape, near the end of “Coming Down” the listener is left with a vocal loop of (what seems to be) a woman crying and the refrain of “Pick up your phone/I always want you when I’m coming down.” And then even later is the mixtape’s lowest and deepest crash which is the end of “Loft Music” that has everything stretched-out with feelings of melancholy. The production throughout is high-quality with subtle elements picked up at exactly the right spot and then left to drift away. The singer’s voice is in pitch with the myriad elements carved into these icy tracks. Each instrument is purposeful, be it the strum of bass, tap of a key, or the drop of a beat.

This self-released, free mixtape is certainly worth your time, especially if you’re into R&B or if you’re just getting into dubstep. The download is linked right here. As long as The Weeknd is able to keep creative freedom with future releases, as this project will undoubtedly be linked with a major-label in the future, this R&B meets underground dubstep trend will be fruitful. The production quality here is tight already and it will (or at least, should) only get better with more money behind it.

(Reviewer’s Score: 4.1/5)

The King of Limbs is an album that sounds like a band just beginning to explore new territory, although ultimately it does retread steps taken in previous albums. It is more in-tune with Amnesiac or perhaps Kid A, but that doesn’t mean that great music isn’t to be heard here.

The album opens with “Bloom” and “Morning Mr. Magpie” and each sound chaotic, with the sense stemming from Jonny Greenwood’s quick electric guitar plucks and Phil Selway’s snare taps. On an early listen of the album I wrote them both off as sounding too similar, but with repeat-listens I was able to hear the exploratory electronic rhythms that set each track apart.

The third track of the album is “Little by Little” and it is probably the album’s best track. It continues with the chaotic soundscape from the preceding tracks, but an acoustic guitar is brought in during the track’s chorus. As this track is written more like a pop song I feel that it can resonant more with the listener, instead of washing over them like “Bloom.” Thom Yorke’s famous falsetto and his ever-cryptic lyrics comment on the hardships associated with monotonous everyday life. “Obligations/Complications/Routines and schedules/A job that’s killing you.” “Feral” is the track that follows and it is the album’s only instrumental, which is actually uncommon for Radiohead. This is the track that has the band exploring new sounds, particularly UK dubstep as it has a huge sense of space, bass, and a vocal loop of Thom Yorke’s voice that picks up tempo to give the track an idea of urgency.

The second half of the album (or so I am to assume, since I don’t have a physical copy of this recording yet) starts with the most poppy song of the album, “Lotus Flower.” Before The King of Limbs was released this song was released as (essentially) its single, with a music video. The video has Thom Yorke dancing around and singing, reminiscent of an R&B music video, and in actuality, it sounds like an R&B song. With Yorke’s ever-present falsetto, ear-perking hooks, and handclaps, the track sounds radio-ready. The chaos of the first five tracks is left behind during the rest of the album. “Codex” and “Give Up The Ghost” are percussion-less and full of space, with keys, strings, brass, and chirping birds. The latter is an album highlight, most importantly for its songwriting. The repetition of the lyrics “In your arms” offers emotion to an album that has an otherwise critical and cold outlook on today’s societal norms.

The King of Limbs could become Radiohead’s divisive album simply because of the hype that was generated when this album was announced. Many found In Rainbows to be Radiohead’s best (although I will counter that notion) so the hype surrounding its release was justified, to an extent. The album does not sound like In Rainbows but it does explore new territory with limited success. If one wanted a continuation of their rock sound from In Rainbows, the album may disappoint.

Another important aspect of this album that hasn’t been mentioned is how it will be released. Initially as a digital download, The King of Limbs will be later released as a newspaper titled “The Universal Sigh” (a lyric taken from “Bloom”). I can’t comment on this newspaper (as I had previously mentioned, this is a review of the digital download), but it contains art and poetry. However, I will comment that this album, and how it is released as a newspaper, continues with Radiohead’s trend of commenting on how music, or any other form of art, is represented as a tangible item and how the item can be distributed. The music industry (or lack thereof a music industry) must adapt to the changes that have occurred in reference to society’s ideas of how music is received by an audience. Fortunately for us, we have a creative group of musicians pioneering this change.

(Reviewer’s Score: 3.9/5)