BEST OF 2011: Albums | Songs | EPs/Singles | Discoveries | Photos | Bootlegs
Let’s just dive right in, shall we? I wrote blurbs for everything. If you jump straight for No. 1 (SPOILER IT’S KAPUTT), I’ll understand, but you might enjoy some reading. Read the rest of this entry »
BEST OF 2011: Photos | Live Videos/Bootlegs | Discoveries/Heavy Rotation | EPs/Singles | Songs | Albums
The brightest spot of 2011′s music for me was that I could’ve happily watched handsomely crafted live videos and downloaded radio sessions and bootleg recordings all year and never reached for an actual record. It’s both a tribute to modern technology and a sign that we have a welcome surplus of quality videographers and engineers. Hopefully they keep it up. Here are six essentials. Read the rest of this entry »
BEST OF 2011: Songs | Albums (soon) | EPs/Singles | Discoveries/Heavy Rotation | Photos
A really good year! The first 40 or so are mega-jams and the latter 38 (Rawkblog loves you, baby) are still jams. I purposefully left out songs by Destroyer because I couldn’t decide, so consider Kaputt represented. You can play the entire page with the handy Ex.fm player in the bottom right corner, stream the playlist on Spotify and Rdio, and download everything after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
View all my best concert and portrait shots of 2011 over in our new giant-size gallery. Because we care!
If 2010 was the year of the EP, 2011 was the year of the… not EP. While 7″s and Bandcamp singles haven’t killed the album off just yet, there was no shortage of tasty bite-size release this year. Read the rest of this entry »
In the interests of sharing what I was listening to in between clicking “x” on Soundcloud pages and taking cranky notes, here are the pre-2011 albums I gave the most spins to (or discovered!) this year. All tremendous stuff and almost all of them are better than any 2011 albums.
Standard Fare – The Noyelle Beat (2010)
An album so great and life-affirming that I felt compelled to tweet about it nearly every time I put it on. (I suppose that’s damning with faint praise.) Turns out we’ve been doing emo wrong all these years — it took the Brits to nail it. If you’ve heard better guitar tones than the opening chords of “Love Doesn’t Just Stop,” I don’t want to know about it.
>> Listen on Spotify
The Softies - Winter Pageant (1997)
Decided after all these years that this is my favorite album ever, narrowly topping Elliott Smith’s Roman Candle. Unstoppably gorgeous and more rewarding than ever after literally hundreds of plays.
>> Listen on Spotify
Steely Dan – Aja (1977)
I’m not sure when all my friends decided it’d be a great idea to get into Aja by Steely Dan. But I couldn’t be happier that we did. The unironic Dan revival never quite peaked like the Hall and Oates one did, but that’s fine — Aja is for the discerning. Full disclosure: I sang “Peg” at vacation karaoke at the silliest bar on Catalina island and it was a top five moment of my year.
>> Listen on Spotify
Todd Rundgren – Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren (1971)
Why didn’t my dad tell me about this?
>> Listen on Spotify
Andrew Bird – Noble Beast (2009)
You can’t approach Noble Beast looking for hooks. It’s a feast of aesthetics, a record you have to absorb on a good stereo with a warm cat in your lap. I shrugged it off when it came out (thought the songwriting was too loose), but that was a mistake.
>> Buy from Fat Possum
Harvey Williams – Rebellion (1994) and California (1999)
I went through a period of genuine obsession for two or three weeks with these records. Sentimental, funny and occasionally quietly mean-spirited, a weirdly refreshing twee rarity. Rebellion is the slightly better of the two.
>> Listen on Spotify
Mighty Clouds – Mighty Clouds (2010)
Mighty Clouds is one of those records you put on when you don’t know what to put on and then you realize you’ve played it 20 times. Fred Thomas is a straight-up pop genius on par with Kevin Barnes, Miles Kurosky and whoever you’d like to pit him against. If you are the owner of a Girls record, you should probably buy 10 copies of this.
>> Listen on Spotify
Always – Thames Valley Leather Club and Other Stories (1988)
A straight-up lost classic from the New Wave era. Doesn’t really sound like anything else. Unhinged yet wonderfully tuneful. Thanks to the remarkable blog Bigger Splashes for pointing the way.
>> Listen on Spotify
Buddy – Alterations and Repairs (2007)
Lovely proto-Death Cab sadcore. Came out five years too late for anyone to notice. I found the band in someone’s SXSW 2011 write-up, despite the fact that no one else seemed to know they’d been there.
>> Listen on Spotify
Curren$y – Pilot Talk I and II (2010)
Nobody put out better rap albums than this in 2011. Why did we not spend the entire year talking about “Breakfast”?
>> Listen on Spotify
The Long Winters – Discography
I renewed my appreciation of the brilliantly lyric’d power-pop band this year in anticipation of their new album, which is currently hiding out in the indie witness protection program. Even their apparent filler songs are tiny slices of genius.
>> Listen on Spotify
(Photo: Andrew Bird by David Greenwald)
This year, for the first time, I decided to try to keep a running log of everything I listened to, if only so I could ctrl+f to remember if I hated some new band I was being emailed about for the third time. (Yup.) I listen to maybe 5% of what I get sent and there are plenty of bands I listened to who didn’t make it into these notes, which means there are too many bands. I thought it might be worthwhile, or at least amusing, to share the list of bands that didn’t make it onto Rawkblog this year for one reason or another. Most of these totally unedited notes/opinions are based on hearing 30 seconds or less of one song, so, uh, if it turns out any of these bands are good, I apologize. (In fact, some of them are!) Also, I apologize in advance to the letter “Z” and the phrase “Bland of Boreses.” Read the rest of this entry »
Real Estate / photo by David Greenwald
Here are the October-released albums I loved. All worth your time and money.
Real Estate – Days
Guitar chiming never sounded so good. (At least not this year.) | Album Review | “It’s Real” video | Buy
“It’s Real”: mp3
North Highlands – Wild One
Genuinely quirky Brooklyn chamber-folk act goes electric and hypnotic with its debut album. Come for the hooks, stay for the guitars. | Buy
Ryan Adams – Ashes & Fire
Not his most wildly poetic lyrics, perhaps, but the Alternative Country troubadour’s latest is an exquisitely emotional piece of work. He’s rarely been a better performer. | Live Review | All Posts | Buy
A Classic Education – Call It Blazing
At its best, the Italian band’s debut album is as propulsive and tuneful as the Shins’ early work. Even when they slow down, their usual toolbox — aquatic guitars, forlorn vocals, thoughtful drumming — gets the job done. | “Night Owl” Video | Buy
“Night Owl”: mp3
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