Best Music of 2011, Pt. 2: Albums #5-1

#5
Let England Shake
PJ Harvey

The autoharp is not an instrument one associates with the ravages of war and the modern age. Yet, in the hands of Polly Jean Harvey, its distinctive, droning strum forms the core of her most compelling album in virtually a decade. Veering away from her usual onslaught of personal confession and squirm-educing intensity, Harvey elects to focus on her home country and its place in the greater international community. Let England Shake is profoundly visceral, both musically and lyrically, with blood, bones and gutter slime oozing out of each song. This is not a portrait of the Kinks' village green or Britpop's cool Britannia. Polly Jean's England is proud but filled with regret, exhaustion and horror. Hearing such a vision come from Harvey's evocative, strained voice only cements Let England Shake as one of the most fascinating and rewarding releases of the year.

Listen to: "The Words that Maketh Murder", "In the Dark Places", "Bitter Branches"

#4
The King of Limbs
Radiohead

Let's not waste time: Radiohead are my favorite band. This has been true for close to eight years, without exception. Part of me wants to catapult The King of Limbs to the very top of this list, simply on principle. However, as brilliant as it is, this is not the album I enjoyed the most this year. Let's not take that as mark against Radiohead, however, and more as a point in favor of the three artists coming next. There's no question that The King of Limbs challenged the Radiohead fan base, but nothing the band does should really surprise us anymore. Perhaps we all wanted In Rainbows, Part 2. That's too bad. Instead we got a briskly paced, absurdly dense exploration of rhythm and song form, fueled by two drum kits and nimble, dubby bass work. Thom Yorke's voice is as majestic as ever, while his lyrics are still wonderfully opaque. In The King of Limbs, I hear a band retreating once again from the public eye and releasing the music they want to play. This kind of process always has and always will create disappointed fans, but I certainly can't count myself among their ranks. The King of Limbs is original, innovative, haunting and emotional. In short, all the things I look for from a good Radiohead album. Well played, gentlemen.

Listen to: "Bloom", "Lotus Flower", "Codex"

#3
House of Balloons
The Weeknd

Upon first hearing House of Balloons, I filed it away, dismissing it as an interesting-but-disposable piece of alternative R&B. It wasn't until I started re-visiting the year's most acclaimed releases that I realized what a grievous mistake I'd made. In short, House of Balloons is the kind of album that seems tailor-made for my musical sensibilities. Icy, emotional distance? Check. Lapses into intensity and aggression? Yup. Subject matter that reveals the complications of modern world? Well, maybe not in the same way as Radiohead, but it's all still there. Abel Tesfaye (aka the Weeknd) has shown us a terrifying vision of the rap/R&B party taken to one extreme, logical confusion. The drinks, the drugs, the parties and the naked women are still there, but the fun has been sucked out of the whole situation. This is one dark album, where the sex feels predatory and emotionless, while the drugs give just enough energy to keep going but not enough to leave. Set to minimal, crisp keyboards and dry loops, House of Balloons is the ultimate anti-party album, a stark photo negative of contemporary music.

Listen to: "House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls", "Wicked Games", "Coming Down"

#2
Strange Mercy
St. Vincent

My experience of music in 2011 was defined by voices. From Thom Yorke's passionate wailing to Justin Vernon's distorted croon, the tone and timbre of vocals strongly influenced my listening habits. Three in particular stood out, though. Two of those you'll read about next, but the third was St. Vincent's Annie Clark, indie-rock's best angst-and-guitar-fueled-dynamo-disguised-as-waifishly-adorable-young-woman. With the release of Strange Mercy, her third album, Clark has finally found significant critical success and with good reason. Virtually nothing I heard this year can match the emotional honesty and nuance she displays over these eleven songs. Her masterful control over her voice lets each song unfold as an emotional odyssey, ebbing and flowing from regret, to anger, to sadness, to smirking joy and even full-blown celebration. Oh, and she also tears her guitar apart, in a way utterly unlike her traditional (read: male) contemporaries. This is violent, artsy, beautiful music, far removed from anything else you'll hear this year. Annie Clark, marry me.

Listen to: "Chloe in the Afternoon", "Surgeon", "Strange Mercy"

#1
Smother
Wild Beasts

In calling Smother my favorite album of the year, I'm being more honest with myself than I ever have been with these Best Of lists. As much as I'd like to deny it, I'm prone to picking albums I feel are undeniable "important" over albums I truly listened to non-stop, all year long out pure enjoyment. That stops now. I do not think that Smother is the greatest album released in 2011. I can even pick out a few of its major flaws. However, it is, without question, the album I enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) the most from this past year. Why, you ask? Put simply, it's one of the most romantic things I've heard in recent memory. "But wait, Simon," you say, "didn't you just say you liked emotionally distant, icy, pretentious music earlier?" Well, yes, of course I love that kind of stuff. No argument. But I also love music that confronts relationships, romance and yes, "love" (in its many forms) from unusual angles and Smother does just that. We're talking about a truly sexy indie rock album, something of the rarest order. These ten songs are immersed in the joy, thrill, danger and all-around wonderfulness of attraction. Not the cozy, hand-holdy type. The type where lyrics like "I would lie anywhere with you, any old bed of nails would do" are sung with a knowing wink. Wild Beasts are graced with two vocally stunning singers in Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming, with Smother finally giving them a chance to play off each other rather than giving them separate songs. Their voices intertwine and flirt around each other, mimicking the subject matter in the lyrics. And the lyrics! Good god, the beautiful lyrics, which are totally in love with the sound and shape of words, rather than the most literal meaning. "I wait until you're woozy, I'll lie low until you're lame." Just say it out loud. Do it. Isn't that alliteration just wonderful?!

Ok. Deep breaths. Calm. Peace. This, more than anything else, is my rationale for Smother topping this list. It sure isn't for everyone, especially those without a particularly patience for male falsetto. But it's an album that reduces me to stammering enthusiasm and broken sentences. It's an album of fun, of seduction, of sex, of danger, of pain (both good and bad), of intimacy and trust. Of romance, in other words. While contemporary radio tries to capture these qualities in sappy ballads and lewd innuendos, this unassuming English band has crafted an album that effortless showcases them all with grace, wit and overwhelming charm. Smother has stolen, beaten and abused my heart. I couldn't be happier about it.

Listen to: "Lion's Share", "Bed of Nails", "Reach a Bit Further"

Best Music of 2011, Pt. 1: Albums #10-6

After much delay, I'm finally writing up my favorite albums of this past year. Once again, I've chosen to keep things a Top 10, to preserve the importance and weight of the albums that are featured. I listened to over 100 releases this year, so the following list represents my very favorite ten percent. Now, on to the list, before anything else distracts me from writing for another two months...

#10
Badlands
Dirty Beaches

Badlands was seemingly lost in the mad shuffle of year-end lists and critical praise-hurling this year, but perhaps that's appropriate. Over an agonizingly brisk twenty-six minutes, Alex Hungtai, the Canadian-Vietnamese musician behind the Dirty Beaches name, has crafted eight songs that feel like they're sinking through time. They twang and shuffle like 1950s rock n' roll, but they're obscured by hazy production, abrasive noise and vocal performances that sound like they were recorded through eighteen layers of gauze. Badlands sounds like an abandoned jukebox sitting in some dust-blown diner, playing forgotten old singles until they start to sound pretty damn ominous. Mid-70s art-rock heroes Suicide are an obvious reference point (just compare "Ghost Rider" to anything on the album), but there's something much more nostalgic and eerie about Hungtai's sonic experiments. They don't scare or thrill you directly. They just go 'round and 'round, twisting themselves into your mind until you feel like you've been hearing them for forty years.

Listen to: "Speedway King", "A Hundred Highways", "Black Nylon"

#9
Ravedeath, 1972
Tim Hecker

As I grappled with constructing a soundtrack for a play I directed this summer, a show about men who work white-collar jobs until their very souls freeze, few pieces of music felt as fitting as the work of Tim Hecker. Yet another experimental Canadian musician with a flair for the ominous, Ravedeath, 1972 fights hard to escape the "ambient" label Hecker's music is usually saddled with. These songs are too majestic and emotional to be treated so passively. There's an intensity to Ravedeath that drags your attention to the music, built around oscillating electronics and immense washes of distorted organ. It's a beautiful album, but beautiful in the way that a glacier is beautiful. Danger is lurking and the unprepared might just get frozen solid.

Listen to: "The Piano Drop", "In the Fog", "Analog Paralysis, 1978"

#8
Kaputt
Destroyer

Evidently, it was a good year for nostalgic Canadians, as Destroyer's Dan Bejar delivered one of the best albums of his career with Kaputt. Looking to the 1980s for inspiration is nothing new, but the slickly produced confines of adult contemporary radio is rarely a hip reference point. Yet, in Bejar's hands, horn sections and swathes of woozy synths are reborn as dynamic, cerebral, addictive pop. Fans drawn into Bejar's orbit through his work with the New Pornographers might not be as pleased, but Kaputt showcases Bejar's unique and immensely enjoyable talent. The lyrics are snappy and packing enough subtle wit to knock out a 1980s Steely Dan radio playlist, while the music captures a lovely balance of urban cool and mystery. In year rife with good, mellow music, Kaputt offers one of the strongest sedate joys.

Listen to: "Chinatown", "Savage Night at the Opera", "Downtown"

#7
The English Riviera
Metronomy

There's something just not right about Metronomy songs. Under the benevolent dictatorship of Joe Mount, the band has produced a lovely collection of guitar pop songs... but even a casual listen reveals the unsettling, unfinished chord progressions and flat, robotic vocal delivery. Some could call this music "soulless," but the disconnect between the "she-loves-me"-style lyrics and the music is ultimately quite compelling. The tension between the rhythm instruments is kept as taut as possible, with every snare hit and hi-hat tap falling with mechanical precision. There's a knowing upending of conventional music tropes going on here and the result is collection of pop songs that capture the unease and complications of relationships better than any "soulful" radio hit ever could.

Listen to: "Everything Goes My Way", "The Look," "The Bay"

#6
Bon Iver, Bon Iver
Bon Iver

I didn't want to like this album. I really didn't. As Justin Vernon's musical stock has risen to impossible heights following his debut album, I've been resistant to his brand of intensely earnest, emotional songwriting. Sure, there's something romantic about a guy retreating to a cabin in Wisconsin to write songs about his breakup, but c'mon. That's just a bit too cliche for me. So along comes his second album, recorded with a full backing band and the blessings of Kanye West. I tried to hate this album, I really did. But the truth is that I simply can't. The weary grace of Vernon's music is irresistible. The man commits to honesty with a vengeance, allowing us to hear every crack in his vulnerable voice and every subtle inflection in the instrumentation. There's enough of an innovative streak to keep things interesting, with vocal effects and keyboard fills warping the straightforward delivery and enhancing the mournful atmosphere. Even when the album starts sounding like Lionel Richie towards the end (I'm not kidding here), Vernon's earnestness sells it. That trait should be a weakness, but in these hands, it becomes one of the most powerful musical statements of the year. In my book, this album deserves all the praise it has received.

Listen to: "Holocene", "Wash.", "Calgary"