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My Favorite Albums of 2011

12. Shabazz Palaces - Black Up: Smokey, twisted hip hop that sounds like funkadelic Aquemini b-sides on PCP. In a genre notoriously devoid of meaningful experimentation, the Sub-Pop signed Shabazz are quietly becoming the rap equivalent of Animal Collective.

11. The Black Keys - El Camino: I like the Black Keys as a pop group a lot more than I like them as revivalist rockers. El Camino also features Danger Mouse’s strongest album-length work since the original Gnarls Barkley.

10. Radiohead - The King of Limbs: Less of an album and more of an exercise in proving that Jonny Greenwood and Phil Selway are such virtuosos that they can improve on any genre. Including the excellent b-sides and remix album as a part of the overall oeuvre, the relatively minor album becomes more of an “era” in Radiohead than anything else. 

9. Neon Indian - Era Extraña: Before the dawn of his seminal chillwave band, Alan Palomo had an equally competent electro band. With songwriting chops like his, what he chooses to dress up his music like is irrelevant.

8. Cut Copy - Zonoscope: An impeccable followup, Zonoscope initially seems unambitious but really opens up on repeated listens. They could’ve just released Sun God as 15-minute EP and that would’ve made it on this list too.

7. The Weekend - House of Baloons and Thursday: Abel Tesfaye’s voice is unfair to his contemporaries. While the plethora of televised singing competitions long for the next Mariah, Abel is quietly making the old notion of a powerful voice obsolete. 

6. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues: Fleet Foxes have never had a problem being taken seriously. With Helplessness Blues, they’ve gone up a rung on the ‘important band’ ladder and deservedly sit next to accomplished Starbucks contemporaries like Arcade Fire and The National. What makes them potentially more interesting is how they’ve managed to make meaningful music without straying far from their trademark sound. We should all be excited for their eventual ‘departure from how we normally sound’ record.

5. Araabmuzik - Electronic Dream: In the year where Afrojack/Guetta-style production completed its radio coup’d etat, rap producer Araabmuzik rendered that style obsolete by playing it completely straight. Araab samples shitty radio trance (like Kaskade), robs it of cheapness and plays it along an improvised MPC skitter that suggests that maybe a blow horn doesn’t need to tell us when to dance.

4. Toro Y Moi - Freaking Out EP: Be it Underneath the Pine or this immensely enjoyable EP, Toro y Moi’s 2011 output gloriously evolved into something equal parts funky and delicate.

3. M83 - Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming: Too much of a good thing can certainly make it a bitch to realize how good that thing actually is. Underneath the overbearing double-album length of the amazing Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming is a feast of lovingly-crafted, sonically transporting capital R rock music.

2. Jay Z and Kanye West - Watch the Throne: On the subject of too much, this soliloquy to excess is the year’s least surprising bit of awesome. WTT is a freight train of powerful rapping and memorable quips made absurdly ornate by our second dosage of Kanye’s Twisted Fantasy-honed production skills.

1. Destroyer - Kaputt: This was the first record released in 2011 that I got my hands on and it’s still my favorite. Dan Bejar shoehorns his trademark nasal verbosity into a luxurious 80’s production that sounds like it came from a planet where Lite-FM, listen-while-you-work music is the coolest shit around.

(also see: last year’s list)