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"