The 100 Best Albums of 2011

 #100 - Mirror Traffic by Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks

#99 - Handover by Skinny Puppy

 #98 - Sky Full Of Holes by Fountains Of Wayne

 #97 - Until Fear No Longer Defines Us by Ghost Brigade

 #96 - 1000 Mille by Cheveu

 #95 - Goodbye Bread by Ty Segall

 #94 - Sound Kapital by Handsome Furs

 #93 - Reports From The Threshold Of Death by Junius

  #92 - Everything by An Autumn For Crippled Children

 #91 - James Drake (mixtape) by Bombe & Mr. Caribbean

No love for mash-ups? Try saying that after you listen to this. And no, this is not the only time you will see James Blake and Drake on this countdown.

 #90 - Alchemic Heart by Vampillia

 #89 - Loud Planes Fly Low by The Rosebuds

"Come Visit Me" is one of the best songs of 2011.

 #88 - Atma by Yob

 #87 - New Album by Boris

 #86 - Crazy Clown Time by David Lynch

 #85 - Dr. Lecter by Action Bronson

 #84 - Wigry by Mimeo

  #83 - Aesthethica by Liturgy

 #82 - Days by Real Estate

 #81 - Please Stop Loving Me by Nicholas Szczepanik

 #80 - The Suicide Tree/A Rose From The Dead by Botanist

 #79 - nostalgia, ULTRA by Frank Ocean

 #78 - Wasting Light (vinyl) by Foo Fighters

 #77 - Redemption At The Puritan's Hand by Primordial

  #76 - Yuck by Yuck

 #75 - Last Summer by Eleanor Friedberger

 #74 - Skeleton Key by Excommunicated

 #73 - Where Distant Spirits Remain by Falloch

 #72 - Bellflower Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Jonathan Keevil

  #71 - The World.  The Flesh.  The Devil.  by In Solitude

 #70 - Parasignosis by Mitochondrion

This is the heaviest album I have ever heard. If anyone can top this, please let me know.

 #69 - Femme Fatale by Britney Spears

Britney Spears is in the microhouse. It's about time. "How I Roll" is the greatest song she has ever recorded.

 #68 - Grace For Drowning by Steven Wilson

Now I know why Opeth is so great. Well, one of the reasons anyway.

 #67 - Green Naugahyde by Primus

 #66 - Orphan by Gridlink

Jon Chang never disappoints.

 #65 - Absolute II by Oneida

 #64 - Wit's End by Cass Comb

 #63 - Ravedeath 1972 by Tim Hecker

 #62 - Some Kind Of Trouble by James Blunt

  #61 - Parallax by Atlas Sound

 #60 - Entity by Origin

 #59 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming by M83

"Midnight City" is one of the best tracks of the year.

 #58 - Mine Is Yours by Cold War Kids

I just cannot resist "Skip The Charades." It is one of the best tracks of the year.

 #57 - All Guts, No Glory by Exhumed

 #56 - Let England Shake by PJ Harvey

 #55 - Badlands by Dirty Beaches

 #54 - Chaos Of Forms by Revocation

 #53 - Cults by Cults

 #52 - Dirge by Wormrot

 #51 - The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo OST by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross

 #50 - The King Is Dead by The Decemberists

2009's proggy, sludge-metal-infused opera, The Hazards of Love saw Decemberists completing their trilogy of increasingly obstinate concept albums that began with 2005's Picaresque and, my personal favorite album of 2006, The Crane Wife. Perhaps it was Hazard's brick wall in terms of the band's future evolution, or maybe it was because they were finally called out on their mispronunciation of "blackguard. Whatever the reason, The King Is Dead is such a welcome change of pace. Simple, pure, and unencumbered - a perfect swan song before the band's hiatus. Peter Buck's sore-thumb jingle-jangle might have been the only thing preventing it from being the country album of the year.

 #49 - Hell On Heels by Pistol Annies

Speaking of the best country album of the year...Miranda Lambert's side-project Pistol Annies is so much better than it has any right to, even eclipsing her fourth album as solo artist, Four The Record, also released this year. Where that album was too busy chasing 2009 masterpiece Revolution's near perfect balance of truth and commercialism, Hell On Heels is all sui generis. It certainly has its share of girl-power country anthems, but it is the album's quieter, more contemplative moments like the John Prine-esque "Beige," about a disgraced bride, and "Lemon Drop," that make Hell On Heels a singular artistic achievement, marrying acute observations about its characters with undeniable melodies.

 #48 - Antonionian by Antonionian

I would love to say that I'd have given this album the exact same amount of attention, and spins, if it were called Spielbergian, but let's face it, since I can count the number of friends I have on one hand who even know what L'Avventura is, darn right I'm gonna listen up. Calling the project Antonionian gives a pointed direction for my thoughts while adrift in the soundscapes, and it helps open up a world I would much rather spend 45 minutes in than what a soundtrack to the hustle and bustle of a morning commute would afford me. If this album gets one person to watch Red Desert, then it is worth its weight in gold.

 #47 - Take Care by Drake

It's true that you either love Drake or you hate him, and I would bet there are many who would join me in admitting they've actually felt both, even through his short career. For those who find his particular brand of solipsism to be a black hole of turgidity and self-fulfilling prophecy...you are absolutely correct. But then, doesn't the fact that he is able to have a particular BRAND of solipsism in the world of rap music say something positive about him. Take Care relieves some of the burden that Thank Me Later had to bear, no longer feeling the need to announce himself allows for a more organic atmosphere, where spartan arrangements actually manage to turn his lazy delivery into something approaching ennui. Here it feels as if the A-list guest stars are actually contributing to something besides climbing the charts.

 #46 - W H O K I L L by tUnE-yArDs

Typing that gave me a headache. Merrill Garbus is the type of artist who makes it very easy to extract negative connotations from the act of calling her fans hipsters, and it only becomes magnified when you realize that she IS tUnE-yArDs. But it's about the music, right? What I look for in albums, year after year, is something that I have never heard before; and that is in abundance on her second album. Opening with "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, how come I cannot see my future within your arms," Garbus raises the stakes of Bird-Brains significantly, crafting a very relevant album that resonates just as often as it astounds. You really need to hear this.

 #45 - Electronic Dream by AraabMuzik

You are now listening to AraabMuzik. A friend of mine once said that he doesn't listen to rap music because he cannot tell the difference between good rap and bad rap. Clearly, it's just a matter of exposing yourself to it often enough for a series of criteria to emerge. Admittedly, some genres, like techno, don't exactly make that doing that very easy. But clocking in at a lean 35 minutes, hip-hop producer and MPC drum machine enthusiast AraabMuzik has crafted a perfectly sequenced, highly addictive soundtrack to a night on the town. My criteria: when the aural wallpaper becomes more interesting than what is going on inside the room.

 #44 - Devil's Music by Teddybears

Oh Sweden. You gave us black metal, Robyn, and now Teddybears. Performing in giant teddy bear masks, I'm sure it's quite a sight to behold. Listening to the music, you might think Damon Albarn was behind one of those bear heads, since, like Gorillaz, they not only hide their identities, but enlist hip-hop artists to give a voice to their musical composite of varying genres. But unlike Gorillaz, Teddybears know how to keep it fresh for an entire album.

 #43 - Looping State Of Mind by The Field

If you asked me to pick the single greatest 8 1/2 minutes of sound on this entire countdown, I would say "Is This Power" without hesitation. Put on a pair of good headphones and turn off all the lights and behold what Axel Wilner can do with a single loop of recorded sound. Vinyl is probably the way to go, as this is some of the warmest electronic music I have ever heard, and Wilner gives each of these seven tracks so much room to breathe that you can feel everything. The album is a bit more than I can handle in an entire sitting, but then maybe if I hadn't listened to the first track four times before moving onto the next I would think differently.

 #42 - Towards The Megalith by Disma

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to be walled up in a crypt, surrounded by rot and slowly deprived of oxygen? No? Feel free to move on to the next album. Creating something that is a master exemplar of its genre is no better than trying to break new ground, and Towards The Megalith is such a definitive death metal recording. Impeccably produced, the lingering echo on the drums and vocals of tracks like "Vault Of Membros" make it seem like Disma are actually recording in a crypt like the one featured on the amazing cover art, and the constantly changing tempos and twisting riffs seek out every inch of suffocating confinement like creeping ivy. If you are new to death metal this is a perfect place to start. Profound Lore is one of the best metal labels around, and it is no surprise to see Disma's debut finding a home there.

  #41 - Cat's Eyes by Cat's Eyes
I can't imagine this experiment going anywhere from here. Familiarity with The Horrors helps, but this is even better than their peak Primary Colours, and easily trumps Skying, their limp 2011 effort. Cat's Eyes is timeless, embracing modesty at every turn, and completely avoiding pretension. The beauty of Cat's Eyes is in how wonderfully the two play off each other, the gothic croon of Badawan gives texture and depth to Zeffira's 60's doo-wop, and in perfect counterpoint, she streamlines his more Peter Murphyesque moments.

 #40 - The Great Mass by Septicflesh

Symphonic death metal is extremely hard to do well enough to land on a best albums list. Soft to loud, and minimal to epic, has been done to death. What makes this so special? From Greece, by way of Sweden, The Great Mass never treats its orchestra as a gimmick, but gives it a much deserved amount of space to develop its own textures. The "symphony" is one-half of the genre, but all too often it is just window dressing. Right off the bat, The Great Mass establishes its Great Ness with a call-and-answer approach, occasionally overlapping melodies perfectly, as if they were extensions of each other, a motif echoed in the trade-off between the two amazing lead vocalists, one clean and one harsh.

 #39 - Roads To Judah by Deafheaven

The musical genre most successful in evolving, and pushing the boundaries of its potential, in 2011, was black metal. Call it post-black metal if you must, but Roads To Judah is nearly unclassifiable as it draws from nearly every musical movement of the last twenty years to construct it's captivating, wholly original sonic journey. "Violet" begins rather lo-fi with a tape loop and field recordings, and then turns into a sort of calculating, post-rock, epic Explosions In The Sky song, and then around the five minute mark black metal screams and Burzum-style arpeggiation provide the much needed release. Through the rest of the track, and remaining three on the album, Deafheaven weave in and out of these varying styles effortlessly, creating one of the more memorable albums of last year.

 #38 - House Of Balloons by The Weeknd

Remember Eamon from the early 2000's, The "I Don't Want You Back" one-hit-wonder who elevated a frank, and rather obscene, lyrical kiss-off to an ex-girlfriend into a singular artistic statement? House Of Balloons, the first of three mixtapes, released for free in 2011, by prolific 21-year-old Canadian Abel Tesfaye, is similarly provocative in the acute way it approaches its subject matter, the dreaded morning after. Clearly influenced by Prince (try listening to "The Morning" without thinking of "Purple Rain", and more recently The Dream, The Weeknd ups the ante on modern day hip-hip-flavored R & B by infusing his music with samples, and occasionally dissonant electronica, that go far in constructing an actual conscience. House Of Balloons is that rare R & B album adventurous enough to explore the human condition; it is full of, dare I say, thinking man's sex anthems.

 #37 - Opus Eponymous by Ghost

2011 saw a number of metal bands, like Portrait, In Solitude, and The Devil's Blood (whose remarkable album The Thousandfold Epicentre will be released in the U.S. next week), revisiting the 80's hey-day of hard rock/heavy metal, admittedly when things were much simpler, more effortless, and completely unencumbered by the overproduction and gimmickry that hampers many of their 21st century peers. Opus Eponymous didn't seem like much when I heard it for the first time over a year ago. But I kept going back to it, and over repeated listens, its wonderful melodies persisted. This is a brisk, near flawless time capsule, a revelation, and much needed breath of familiarity for the occasionally tiresome metal universe. Call them Alice Cooper wannabes if you want - I really could care less what they paint on themselves - in a time when even Alice Cooper is a pale imitation of Alice Cooper, it all has to come back to the music, and I do that with Opus Eponymous, over and over again.

  #36 - Bad As Me by Tom Waits
Here's another 13 troubadour ditties, sung from the last bar stool in the speakeasy. Tom Waits's 17th album, and first in 7 years, plays like no time has passed at all since Real Gone. I used this album's release as an excuse to listen to all 17 albums in chronological order, and while Rain Dogs persists as my favorite, there is not a single album that wants for great moments. On Bad As Me, with the wealth of American musical history at his disposal, the gravel-voiced crooner alternates between leading the charge of the barroom riot, and spitting nostalgia over some of the most gorgeous melodies of his career.

 #35 - Velociraptor! by Kasabian

Inexplicably ignored when it was released, Velociraptor! is Kasabian's most vital, energetic release since "Club Foot" nearly ten years ago. Here the British space rockers have created a seamless barrage of electro-bangers akin to Primal Scream, but much better to dance to, due to the never ending, relentless hooks present from start to finish. Velociraptor! does not let up, which says a lot about an album in this genre, where usually you would find a track like "Club Foot," and then nothing but filler. This is the album fellow British rockers Jet wish they could make.

 #34 - Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes

If you listen to only one of the songs I have posted throughout this countdown, it should be "Helplessness Blues." It is not only the year's greatest song, but it is also the year's greatest sentiment. This is the kind of song that can shape a person, and simply make you want to be a better one. I hesitate to describe the song's specifics, my words insufficient to overcome the inclination of people, in an election year, to politicize everything. It will suffice to say Robin Pecknold starts with a passing thought we have all had at one time, and then cuts right through to the nerve, the bone of humanity, creating one of the most persuasive arguments for community I have ever heard on record. At the heart of it all, a romance, undeserved and refused until the establishment of a sense of identity, nearly impossible so long as each day brings new ways to divide us. I love this song. I wish everyone could.

 #33 - The Clearing by Locrian

More often than not music is an art form that is experienced passively, and certainly the only one for which consistent passive listening is not only understood, but in most cases expected. The Clearing demands constant attention. I have listened to it six times now and have had a completely new experience each time. There is simply nothing like it. Experimental by design, the finished product is in a whole other league than the sum of its parts. Imagine Einsturzende Neubauten and Godspeed You! Black Emperor making a record together, and...well, that would take care of one of the parts. I suppose I would call it metal, due to the fact that it's movements tend to revolve around blast beats, and other similarly metallic elements. But by no means should it dissuade you from listening. The Clearing is yet another of the many examples from 2011 of the potential of black metal.

 #32 - Watch The Throne by Jay-Z and Kanye West

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was not only the best album of 2010, but also a contender for greatest album of all time. Call it Kanye West's Pet Sounds; it's influence will be felt as long as music is being made. Naturally, Watch The Throne does not hold a candle, but honestly, that dude just bought himself years of good will. Wisely, following so close on the heels of that masterpiece, Yeezy doesn't even try to top it, but instead just have a good time. West and Jay-Z spend forty-five minutes doing whatever they want, throwing all manner of nonconformity at the wall and seeing what sticks, but mostly just boasting. Two years ago I would have said the two rappers were in a race to outdo each other, but now, since West just topped Jay-Z's career highlight The Blueprint, it's clear he is the mad genius at the control panel. This album is so much fun.

 #31 - Mammal by Altar Of Plagues

Irish black metal band's second album, Mammal, explores death and the emptiness it leaves behind. Existential and fatalistic, occasionally terrifying, and thoroughly bleak and punishing, Mammal's four tracks expand and contract like the beating heart of the album's namesake, while the lyrics search in vain for some kind of meaning beyond the mere biological.

 #30 - The Book Of Mormon (Original Cast Recording) by Various Artists

I will never forget an interview I saw with Trey Parker once, where he said that as soon as you label one thing offensive, suddenly everything becomes offensive. Truer words have rarely been spoken. For all the outrage this 2011 Tony Award winner for best musical caused among the Mormon community, it is actually quite harmless. Riotously funny, and full of the most consistently catchy as, um...heck, songs I have ever heard in a musical, if people could put aside their religious arrogance they just might have a good laugh. After the songs Parker and Matt stone wrote for the South Park film, I am not surprised at all by the quality of music on display here. But after this, those two either need to convert or move on.

 #29 - The Inside Room by 40 Watt Sun

I have listened to this album over five times now and I have to be honest, I cannot tell any of its five tracks from the others. Ordinarily that would be a bad thing, but on The Inside Room it plays like five parts of a whole. With probably the fullest sound of any album on this countdown it is a front to back wall of sludgy guitars, with chords just hanging there, echoing and droning, and overlapping each other, nearly drowning lead singer Patrick Stewart's lamentations on the love he feels but cannot make tangible. In fact there is so much sound on this record, so heavy it is with emotion and the physical weight of its guitars, it is no small wonder how the melodies manage to persist, a testament to their beauty. The melodies might not change much from track to track, but the overall experience never grows tiresome. It's a record of remarkable passion and focus.

 #28 - The People's Key by Bright Eyes

I was lucky enough to catch Bright Eyes live in support of The People's Key, which, according to Conor Oberst, is their final album before retirement. Strange for me to say, but I think it is for the best. Fifteen years ago a coworker handed over to me every Cure album she owned on vinyl, with the qualifying remark "I just can't listen to this stuff anymore." Incomprehensible at the time, it wasn't until the live performance of "Take It Easy (Love Nothing)," where I was constantly whipped in the face by the hair of a sixteen-year-old boy as he was flailing his head and singing along, that I finally understood. And although The People's Key is a much more mature recording, requiring the kind of wisdom that comes only with age to fully grasp the album's subtext of the arbitrary nature of beliefs held most sacred, that fact didn't stop him from singing to the heavens during "JeJune Stars." It's not Bright Eyes' best album, but it's a worthy finish to a unique voice who has remarkably documented on record his entire maturation as a songwriter, from bedroom recordings as a teenager, to now.

 #27 - Black Up by Shabazz Palaces

The "where are they now?" award for 2011 has to go to Shabazz Palaces. If the voice on this record sounds familiar, it's because back in the nineties it was "cool like dat." No less ponderous, and engaging, here Butterfly ditches the lounge act, focusing instead on pushing the boundaries of experimentation in hip hop music, and because of that you certainly won't hear this on the radio...all the better.

 #26 - Path Of Totality by Tombs

Maynard, I am so over you and your band. Along with Mastodon and Opeth, Brooklyn band Tombs has put the final nail in your coffin as go-to progressive metal act. It's time for everyone to dig a little deeper, as must be done occasionally, to find real progressive metal. And Path Of Totality will not stop rewarding my efforts. Imagine Movement-era New Order, or Faith-era Cure, only with a crushing barrage of metallic sound. Hopefully my Tool friends (sic) will take note. But be patient with it. It doesn't announce itself right away with the first listen. I've listened to it many times already and am only beginning to really hear it.

 #25 - Smoke Ring For My Halo by Kurt Vile

If you are not familiar with Kurt Vile, this is the perfect album to become so, as it wields a strong focus on melody, instead of the fog of psychedelic post-rock instrumentation of his first album. On Smoke Ring For My Halo he finds the perfect music to accompany his vocals, whether on the blues-rock tinged, prototypical Vile song "Puppet To The Man," or the Gilmour-era Pink Floyd psychedelic acoustic haze of guitars and country twang of "Society Is My Friend," Smoke Rings ironic masterpiece, and Vile's career highlight. At its heart, the album is defiantly unpretentious, a true breakthrough.

 #24 - Goblin by Tyler, The Creator

It's impossible to not see similarities between Tyler, The Creator and Eminem, in how they both seem to use records as therapy sessions, and more specifically, between Goblin and Em's 2009 Relapse, in the interlude conversations between the artist and a doctor/conscience-type character, the direct address warnings to the audience, the absentee father issues, the dissing of critics, the murder fantasies aimed at other celebrities, and more obviously, the demented shock value at the center of it all. The divide comes when you compare Dr. Dre's stainless steel, overproduced commercial beats to Tyler's lo-fi, organic, rawness, and, for those paying attention, the fact that Tyler wants to stab Bruno Mars in the esophagus, and Eminem wanted to use him as a guest on 2011's EP Bad Meets Evil. It's clearly Tyler's time, and with Goblin he has created a nihilistic masterwork, sick with talent at every turn of a phrase. Using his newfound fame to expand upon issues introduced in his first record Bastard, there is no way he is going to be able to keep this up. I have no idea if Goblin is the peak, but with "horrorcore," such as it is, you get in and do it right, and then get out. How many Gravediggaz albums have there been again?

 #23 - The Hunter by Mastodon

Mike Elizondo is the last name I would have suggested in the pre-production stages of Mastodon's game-changer, The Hunter. Only when you see how much of a game-changer it is does it make sense. 2009's prog-metal master class Crack The Skye admittedly took their evolution as far as it could go. Basically one long song broken up into 8-15 minute movements, at times Crack The Skye's complexities, near constant rhythm changes and tricky time signatures, challenged even the most hardcore, active listener, and to this day I cannot listen to it any other way than from start to finish. The Hunter barely has a song over four minutes, has crisp, bright production, and I rarely listen to its tracks in sequential order. Seems contrary to what I would normally look for in an album, but Mastodon is so in control of their sound, at the peak of their chemistry, playing off each other with a newfound energy that is nothing if not contagious. Lyrically Mastodon hasn't changed much, the fifteen tracks that make up The Hunter are still as nonsensical as ever, with titles such as "Curl Of The Burl," "Bedazzled Fingernails," "Blasteroid," and "Stargasm," but they also have the greatest replay ability of any song over their entire career.

 #22 - Replica by Oneohtrix Point Never

Replica has made me a fan of Oneohtrix Point Never, the brainchild of Daniel Lopatin. Where previous releases were a little one-note in terms of droning synthisizers, Replica's synths are not content to simply exist, but instead, build a soundscape composed of sounds from television commercials, that completely engulfs the listener. Occasionally my thoughts turned to Giorgio Moroder, and various 80's movie soundtracks that were influenced by him, and that's when I realized what Oneohtrix Point Never is playing with here is the cold comfort that can come from warm familiarity of certain synth textures. By recontextualizing them he forces us to see and feel things in a completely new way.

 #21 - Space Is Only Noise by Nicolas Jaar

Narrated field recordings at a playground, a pretentious French monologue recited by the lakeshore, which I have not yet had the inclination to extracurricularly explore, dissonant piano textures, and the sounds of a man clicking his throat. And that is just the first track...called "Etre." There are fourteen of these bad boys. I'm not even going to begin to pretend I understand fully what is happening on this record, but that doesn't make it any less amazing. If it is hard to find a musical precedent for what Jaar does on this album, perhaps film would be a better place to look, where juxtapositions in space and time, and in this case, space and noise, are used to create new meaning. Jaar is definitely in the same zone as Oneohtrix Point Never, but Space Is Only Noise is much less focused on music to achieve similar results. By the time manipulated female vocals, and the rain stick, and the spanish guitar, and Roger Water-style vocals make an appearance, and the whole thing begins to sound like a dubstep version of Pink Floyd's The Final Cut, I had already been sold.

 #20 - Eleven Fingers by Circle Of Ouroborus

This album is only available on vinyl, so that means if you find a mp3 version somewhere you are just going to have to deal with the sound of the needle dragging through the grooves, an incessant crackling that people like me insist give albums like this a warmer feel, as if the music is being created right in front of you. Well it kinda is. I wish more bands would do that. I would rarely listen to this album on my morning commute anyway. If Ogre from Skinny Puppy took over for Ian Curtis as lead singer of Joy Division after he died, and if the band was from sweden, that might approximate the sound of Circle Of Ouroborus. Black metalish post-punk, mellowed by brooding, minor-key synths give this record its timeless feel.

 #19 - 777: Sect(s) & 777: The Desanctification by Blut Aus Nord

2011 saw the release of the first two parts of a 777 trilogy, by French avant-garde, black metal pioneers Blut Aus Nord, which translates to English as "Blood From The North." Tracks are not titled, but instead called "Epitomes," numbered I-VI in The Sects, and numbered VII-XIII in The Desanctification. "Epitome" means "an abstract," in the literary sense. Hopefully Cosmosophy, the third and final part to be released sometime in 2012, will be a worth conclusion, and help make these three albums the greatest trilogy in the history of recorded music. OK, so I can't really name many others, but still...this epic work, combining subtle growling vocals, with a propulsive French black metal sound, is unlike anything I've ever heard.

 #18 - Ache For The Distance by Atlas Moth

I love it when bands suddenly completely come into their own, transcending their previous releases with something truly groundbreaking and original. Until now, metal band Atlas Moth has been content to stride the fence, churning out status quo metal, competent enough, but nothing very memorable. But with Ache For The Distance, which has album artwork I could not post here, they have become a force to be reckoned with. Alternating clean vocals and growling vocals, adding an occasional horn section, and indulging their jazz influences, Atlas Moth have made a collection of nine songs with come probably as close as anyone could ever come to making a mainstream, black metal record. Not to say they have sold out, but instead have managed to marry both innovation and focus with very catch melodies, and have created something that can stand up for countless repeated listens.

 #17 - David Comes To Life by Fucked Up

If Green Day can do it, twice, why can't Fucked Up? This might just be the first hardcore rock opera, and by hardcore I don't mean serious. You might think that nearly an hour and a half of unintelligible screaming would get boring, but it doesn't, and that is perhaps the biggest accomplishment of this album. The music here is a complete transformation from their previous album, The Chemistry Of Life. The storyline of the album is fairly inscrutable and somewhat self-reflexive, relying on metafictional plot devices, but their is never a loss for sense of direction musically, it feels like one singular piece of work, with a definite beginning, middle and end, even though you cannot be entirely certain what those landmarks are. I've never been a big fan of hardcore at all, probably because it requires something like this for it to distinguish itself. This album appearing as high as it does on the countdown, shows just what a revelation it is.

  #16 - Kaputt by Destroyer
In compiling this countdown I began to notice a recurring motif of albums that hearken back to the seventies or eighties. Perhaps I long for a simpler time, or perhaps I lament the death of radio. Whatever the reason, for each artist it ends up fitting perfectly, like a second skin. Indie rock mainstay Dan Bejar's Destroyer project has always had pop-rock leanings, but this is the first time, on his ninth album, that he has touched on something this universal. The synth and brass textures on this album may recall Steely Dan, or Todd Rundgren, and a lesser act might have played up the more ironic potential there, but Destroyer plays it completely straight, and winds up creating some of the most timeless music of 2011.

 #15 - Surtur Rising by Amon Amarth

I can't claim to be a connoisseur of viking metal, most of what I have heard borrows too much from power metal, reluctant to venture into uncharted territory unlike those ancestral beings from which the genre takes its name. And if that's your game, then you better at least be playing at the top of it. Amon Amarth's eighth album might be just more of the same, but this time it is delivered with a bravado that might suggest the new stake they are claiming is that they are the best game in town. Surtur Rising blows out of your speakers with hook after relentlessly entertaining hook, packing more explosive fun into ten tracks than most bands do over their entire careers. Anyone looking for an entry point into modern metal, this is one album I would definitely suggest.

#14 - Diamond Mine by King Creosote & Jon Hopkins

Folk music, ambient electronica and found sounds are three genres that are, respectively, a dime a dozen, hard to take seriously, and completely ignored. Diamond Mine takes these three styles and marries them seamlessly, as if their existence depended on the harmonies they create together. What King Creosote and Jon Hopkins achieve here with their appropriately titled album, makes the task of trolling though dozens of crappy albums throughout the year more than worth it. Nominated for the Mercury Prize, and crowning NPR's list of the best albums of 2011, a finer example from last year of timelessness and austerity culled from the most disparate of forms simply does not exist.

 #13 - Strange Mercy by St. Vincent

Actor, St. Vincent's 2009 artistic breakthrough, rounded out my top fifty for that year. Announcing the arrival of a major new voice in independent music, Annie Clark, former member of The Polyphonic Spree, Actor's baroque, chamber sensibilities were a revelation. Even though it occasionally overplayed it's hand, it pointed to the great album yet to come...this one, her third album, Strange Mercy, where Clark's voice, vision and instrumentation have fully matured. Like a cross between The Dirty Projectors and Tune-Yards, but slightly more pop-oriented. With this album Clark takes St. Vincent on a great leap forward, from museum curiosity, something to easily categorize and box-up when you are done with it, to full-on interactive installation. The only question is, where does she go next?

 #12 - Destroyed by Moby

In 2009 Moby released his self-recorded career zenith, Wait For Me, and I named it the best album of that year. Allow me to put things into perspective. Those who had written Moby off after 1999's Play became fodder for advertising executives, bringing commercial licensing from a single musical source to near obscene levels, and leaving him so artistically bankrupt all he could do was record 2002's 18, could certainly count me among their company. 2005's Hotel found Moby scraping the bottom of the barrel, and then something remarkable happened, something akin to a career renaissance. 2008's Last Night saw Moby returning to his club roots and abandoning any radio aspirations in pursuit of a dubious concept album about a night on the town. It got my attention. But it never prepared me for the devastating beauty of Wait For Me, without a doubt, the dictionary definition of artistic rebirth. Moby's personal recalculation of his coordinates on the map of life, and by extension, the world's position within the universe, resonates on a personal and individual level with anyone who has ever taken a midnight stroll to clear their minds only to find them more clouded. "JLTF" is one of the greatest songs anyone has ever recorded, and it, along with every song on the album, manages to retain Moby's singular sound. Wait, this is supposed to be about Destroyed. I could say more of the same, but that would not be fair to Wait For Me. Destroyed shows a slight ebb in Moby's connection to his muse, and considering this album is as high as it is, I guess I'm still talking about Wait For Me. Forget about the Moby you used to know. Listen to "Go" and Everything Is Wrong, burn everything else he has ever recorded, and then listen to Wait For Me and Destroyed, they are in a whole other league than listening to him rap with Gwen Stefani about the West Side.

 #11 - Wounded Rhymes by Lykke Li

Wounded Rhymes is a huge improvement over Swedish artist Lykke Li's 2008 debut, Youth Novels. Where that one was more concerned with mood and tone, sacrificing individuality among tracks, one of the hallmarks of a great record, Wounded Rhymes is a tour de force of songwriting, where each song is given its own unique attention, and are all beautifully sequenced, parts of a whole. At times the album sounds like a Phil Spector girl group covering The Knife, enveloping the listener in a wall of sound while still maintaining Li's experimental, electronic roots. "Sadness Is A Blessing" is not only the album highlight, but one of the best tracks of the whole year, and deserved much more attention. It is an oddly comforting song, and a perfect cross-section of the entire album - sweeping, emotional, intellectual, and most importantly, groovy.

 #10 - An Empty Bliss Beyond This World by The Caretaker

British experimental musician James Leyland Kirby records as The Caretaker, a name borrowed from The Shining after being inspired by the ballroom scene in the Stanley Kubrick film. An Empty Bliss Beyond This World is a staggering, monumental achievement, a work of art first and music second. It is a collection of old ballroom ditties such as your grandparents, or great-grandparents might have grown up with. Kirby takes them and manipulates them in variety of ways, like playing with the left and right channel, adding distressed tape loops and vinyl scratches that one might hear at the beginning of a hundred year-old record that was found buried underground, dropping the sound altogether, adding echo effects and vocal murmuring, and even repeating the same songs and making them virtually unrecognizable. The track titles guide you through what is going on here, with tracks like "I Feel As If I Might Be Vanishing," and "Tiny Gradiations Of Loss" allowing the listener to feel what it might be like to claw back through the wreckage of what is left of the mind after time and age have ravaged it, to find that moment of simplicity, that moment of absolute beauty and purity, that moment that everyone wishes they could just get back to. The album was inspired by the notion that music can help Alzheimer's patients to remember things. I tell you that, but it's all here; the feelings that arise just knowing that fact are nowhere near the level Kirby mines with this album. Cutting songs off abruptly, repeating them, allowing them to drift out and into clarity; An Empty Bliss Beyond This World is as close as an album has ever come to being the definitive mode with which to tell a particular story. This concept had to be an musical album. No other art form could even come close.

  #09 - XXX by Danny Brown
The best rap album of the year. The title XXX refers to not only the very raw, explicit lyrical themes of the album, but also Danny Brown's age, something I guess that he has in common with Adele. But unlike Adele, who titles her albums with her age to show where she is at, Brown wants only to show us where he's been. Full of harrowing tales of sex and drugs and death, the usual rap cliches, the wonder here, as is usually the case with the best modern rap music from Eminem to Jay-Z, is in the delivery. And Danny Brown delivers. The man is loud, obnoxious, audacious, holds absolutely nothing back, and is out of his freakin' mind. XXX's nihilism and mastery and love of language reminds me of Tyler, The Creator, but instead of responding to life by saying "who cares," he says "been there," and then spits those experiences out with the energy and venom of ten rappers. The most remarkable thing about XXX is that Danny Brown is completely believable, and credibility is paramount in rap music. Danny Brown knows you think you've heard it all, but listening to this album, he knows you haven't heard this one yet.

 #08 - 17th St. by Hammers Of Misfortune

"The Grain" is the best metal song of the year. Recalling Queensryche in their prime, with lyrics lamenting the "progress" of modern society, delivered with John Corbett's anguished, alienated croon, accompanied by driving 90's guitar riffs, and epic orchestrations where musical phrases are seamlessly passed from one instrument to another, braced by steely production, "The Grain" might have felt at home on Empire. The best music of 2011 seemed to look backwards in time, and Hammers Of Misfortune are no different, drawing from 70's classic and 80's glam rock in the creation of their magnum opus, 17th Street, a reluctant opera about the resentment towards the increasing distance technology and industrialization is leading us from the simpler past, simmering and brooding beneath the surface of our 21st century resignation. A perfect example would be that songs like this are no longer found on the radio.

 #07 - Father, Son, Holy Ghost by Girls

The indie-pop album of the year, but that doesn't even begin to describe this. For their second album, Christopher Owens fleshes out his band to a full five piece, and the difference is staggering. As the title of their first album, Album, suggests, the growth of the band not only in size but also in lyrical and musical content, is reflected in the rather ambitious title of this one. Simple jangle-pop melodies are textured with bursts of heavy, stoner, psychedelic, acid, and nineties modern rock. Sometimes drowning in a wall of sound, sometimes dominating it with his stark confessionals, and sometimes playing it completely straightforward and earnest acoustically, or with a blues riff, Father, Son, Holy Ghost is a much needed dose of originality in a genre where it is much too easy to play it safe. Lyrically, this is not the most uplifting of albums, with song titles like "Vomit," and lines like "I've been messing with so many girls/Who could give a damn about who I am/They don't like my boney body/They don't like my dirty hair/Or the stuff that I say/Or the stuff that I'm on" on "Honey Bunny," but Christopher Owens sings with such veracity, so confident about his lack of confidence (think Conor Oberst with better music), that the ballads, such as they are, benefit greatly from the physical weight of the more existential yearnings found over most of the album. I really don't think this is their peak, which means soon Girls might actually top this countdown; there's not a doubt in my mind after the caliber of this record.

 #06 - Celestial Lineage by Wolves In The Throne Room

I've been singing the praises of black metal as the musical genre of the year throughout this countdown, and Celestial Lineage is the genre's piece de resistance of 2011. One of the greatest, and most unique characteristics of black metal is how rooted in geography much of it is. Few artists can capture the feel of a specific environment or place, strip it down to its very essence, find the muse concealed in the ether, like some of the artists found working in metal. Clearly I'm not talking about Toby Keith singing about a bar. Have you ever seen William Friedkin's The Guardian? Where the babysitter physically transforms into a tree at the end? In a metaphysical sense that is how transportive music like this is, and Wolves In The Throne Room have just created the textbook album on the idea. Listening to Celestial Lineage is akin to being in the middle of a thick, dense, ancient forest, a whole other world, replete with its own mythos, sentient beings, religions, and demons. Of course, you cannot know what is being said without a lyric sheet, but the sensation is only heightened by that obscurity. The second track, "Permanent Changes In Consciousness," demanding a vinyl listening experience, with its faint tribal drumming, crackling fire, chants of meditation or allegiance that offer a mere hint of melody, and sounds of a knife being sharpened, that culminate in a horn announcing an arrival, or a new beginning, while the wind blows, all recorded with alarmingly precise clarity, leads into "Subterranean Initiation." And it's we that are being initiated. Are we the sacrifices or the guests of honor. What darkness awaits inside the faintly illuminated outline of the cave up ahead? Or is it our salvation?

 #05 - James Blake by James Blake
I've always believed dubstep's element would forever be relegated to swanky lounges, and flavor-of-the-month restaurants fated to continuously change owners, where it could blend into the background of any type of conversation. This is the album that changed that perception. Borrowing from the genre, mostly for his basslines, James Blake's debut album is a veritable deconstruction of music, using dubstep as a common link among the songs. Completely original in vision, and execution, James Blake is an album for people who love silence. His voice becomes just another instrument, all of which are manipulated, and lyrics, brief as they are, sometimes get repeated for dramatic effect. Blake allows his sounds to linger, while the listener gets to fill in the spaces. There is almost nothing to the Feist cover "Limit To Your Love," but the enormous weight of the silences in between the repeated musical phrase and title lyric speak volumes. This is not an album you can just put on in the background. Incredibly quiet at times, it absolutely demands headphones, ironically so you can hear the silence.

 #04 - Bon Iver by Bon Iver

Bon Iver is one of the greatest examples of an artist using success to improve his sound, rather than just duplicate it or water it down. Fleet Foxes used their sophmore blank check to focus on a few songs, Justin Vernon used it to create a whole masterpiece. There is a lot more to listen to on Bon Iver; it is a complete redefinition of what the band was on For Emma, Forever Ago. A challenging listen, under-produced and densely meditative, while I have learned to love it greatly, I always thought it could've benefited from more instrumentation. Bon Iver delivers that in abundance, as many more and different instruments are used to great effect. "Holocene" is pretty much the most beautiful song of the year, indisputable for even the most hardened heart. The acoustic guitar accompaniment to Vernon's haunting, self-reflective lyrics is perfection, and though it does stick out as the album's frontloaded centerpiece, there are countless innovations to be discovered throughout the entire forty minutes. In 2010 I dubbed The National's High Violet an album to wallow in, Bon Iver is 2011's.

 #03 - 50 Words For Snow by Kate Bush

Kate Bush returns with her second album in eighteen years, and probably the strangest. If the cover art, depicting in relief, a woman and snowman embracing and kissing doesn't convince you that this album is serious about its preoccupation with snow, perhaps the first track, "Snowflake," that begins "I was born in a cloud," and which actually features Bush's son Bertie singing in alto AS the snowflake, will do the trick. Other songs feature dense narratives about ghosts, the yeti, lovers separated by time a la the film The Lake House, and even a strange sexual encounter with an actual snowman. As counterpoint to the narratives, the songs themselves take their time developing, and all but two of them cross the eight minute mark. This is the album Tori Amos could only record in her dreams, but Bush, not plagued by grandiosity and overproduction keeps things remarkably restrained, which gives the stories their own gravity, and lets the subtle repetition, and increasing complexities of the songs as they progress, get under the listener's skin. The best album of the last quarter of 2011, while the rest of the world was reveling in traditional Christmas music, Kate Bush was transporting me into her own winter storm, that quiet and tranquil moment where everything is still except for the falling snow. It would be merely an exercise to listen to this anytime other than wintertime, and this perfect expression by one of the most respected and brilliant recording artists of our time will forever haunt my Christmas music rotations.

 #02 - 4 by Beyonce

Lest you call me a music snob. I can't believe it either. Most mainstream albums have a couple of great songs surrounded by filler to just pad out their running times. When someone comes along and does it right, I'm inclined to appreciate it a whole lot more, like a perfectly made genre film. Recording sixty songs, and then culling them down to twelve, if nothing else, 4 represents the outcome of a veritable sh-- ton of work. Whether she is revisiting 1970's R & B and soul or incorporating marching band rhythms, hip-hop, jazz, or rock and roll, or sampling Major Lazer, Beyonce makes every single song on this album pop. "Countdown" is the greatest song she has ever recorded, switching tempos through its alternating four sections, she sings as if her life depended on it. She has never sounded more confident and in control, showing off as much of an ear for music as she has a voice for it. Both retro and the future wrapped in one album, the virtuosity on display is so rare, the album is much better than it ever needed to be, and that it comes in the form of a Beyonce album was the most unexpected pleasure of the year. For the longest time I thought it would be number one, but...

 #01 - Heritage by Opeth
If some of the predominantly recurring themes of 2011 were transformation and revisiting the past, no other album typified those than Opeth's tenth, and arguably greatest album. Perhaps the most divisive album of the year, Opeth turned the metal community on its head by abandoning their trademark growling vocals, and pretty much every superficial sense of what heavy metal should sound like. Losing fans, but also gaining many; my support for them has grown tenfold after hearing Heritage. Many albums have to grow on me, and require repeated listens. I knew after the first spin that Heritage would top this countdown. If you are familiar with their work, Heritage truly is a shocker, but I argue that it is a natural progression for them, the album that each of the nine previous have been pointing towards. Story goes lead singer Mikael Akerfeldt was interested in making a solo album, steeped in the singer/songwriter vein made popular in the seventies. But in the end he decided the material would be better served as an Opeth album. Heritage came out in September, and is the perfect accompaniment to the burnished skies and orange glow of mid-autumn. Melodies change on a dime, guitar riffs come and go out of nowhere, nothing on this record stays the same for very long. Before you know it each song is gone, like the wind that sweeps the leaves out from under your feet during a brisk autumn stroll. Mikael Akerfeldt reveals a terrific, beautiful voice, that quite frankly I am surprised has survived the decades of growling, and his compositions, echoing the seventies, make him out to be what I can only call some sort of schizophrenic Todd Rundgren. "The Devil's Orchard" is the second best metal song of the year, "I Feel The Dark" twists and turns through constant changes, "Nepenthe" is just nuts, beginning with soft guitar and delicate drumming and vocals that recall James Taylor, and then devolving into freeform lounge jazz, Les Claypoolesque basslines and bursts of electric guitar, and then coming back to the way it all began. And "Slither," dedicated to Ronnie James Dio, is back-to-basics metal (with keyboards of course) that remarkably feels right at home among everything else. I have no idea what is in store for the band next, but Heritage is a band in absolute control of their sound, and in touch with their muse, unafraid of progression, even if it means disappointing a large fan base; honestly, I can't think of anything more metal than that.