And here I am, ready and willing to divulge my opinions on some of the best music to have seen release over the last twelve months. It’s a time of reflection for many, and though I’d like to think there is some unintentional emotional continuity with regards to my specific choices here (be they personal, topical or fanciful), all I can honestly say is that the music featured in this article (bar one horrid exemption) is rather brilliant. But enough lollygagging, here are my annual virtual bestowments for 2011:
Alternative Album Of The Year
Cat’s Eyes by Cat’s Eyes
Classically-trained Canadian-Italian soprano hooks up (musically and literally) with frontman of The UK’s Next Genuinely Great Rock Band, only to deliver a beauteous collection of alt-surfer-rock, sad-eyed orchestral pop and ominous psychedelic bombast. Endorsed by the Vatican and snubbed of a Mercury Prize nomination (now how many times can you write that about an album?), its charms are as plaintively soothing as they are deliciously disturbing.
Dance Album Of The Year
Knee Deep by WhoMadeWho
Their first release under the über-cool Kompakt banner, the Danish disco triumvirate delivered a mini-marvel of glitchily-tripped-out Eurodance after coasting around with previously agreeable-yet-unremarkable results, almost sounding like they believe they can be genuinely great. A shame then that it remains otherwise undiscovered by most, as beat pummeling this pleasantly, unadulteratedly euphoric is something to be celebrated.
Electronic Album Of The Year
Replica by Oneohtrix Point Never
New York-based alternative electronica musician’s sixth solo album in four years, using old-school synthesizers and otherworldly samples to create a perfect would-be score to the best existential, martial arts-heavy, sci-fi anime epic that Stanley Kubrick didn’t get round to making. A sublime enmeshing of ambient electronica and tsunamic drone, it’s a fine evocation of what both sub-genres have still got to offer to the pantheon of electronic music.
Folk Album Of The Year
Bon Iver, Bon Iver by Bon Iver
Cumbersome title aside, singer-songwriter-producer Justin Vernon opens up the emotional sonic realms found on his icily-remote debut solo release from 2008 with inspirational results, creating an album that traverses an immense emotional spectrum as well as a sumptuously-varied palette of genres without raising itself higher than that of a wizened, noble whisper. Fragile-yet-strong, intimate-yet-soul-stirringly epic, it’s amazing that the Grammys even noticed it, but thankfully they did.
Hip Hop/Rap Album Of The Year
Take Care by Drake
Rap music’s most endearingly-reluctant superstar (not in a pretentious way obviously, he just happens to be that sexily charismatic) fully delivers after the minor disappointment of his debut LP last year with a mighty-fine album of soul-hop-pop trading in self-effacing rhymes, admirably emotional contemplation and production/arrangement wares from the recent spate of introspective R&B/pop upstarts (alongside main producer Noah “40” Shebib, you have flourishes from the likes of Jamie xx and The Weeknd too). It’d all be for nought though if it weren’t for the mercurial wordsmith at its centre.
Pop Album Of The Year
Voyage by The Sound Of Arrows
Swedish synthpop duo earmarked as the natural successors to Pet Shop Boys make a debut album of utmostly joyous self-discovery and it goes largely ignored by the general public. Whilst everyone somewhat-justly fell in love with M83‘s double-album opus this year, Messrs Gullstrand and Storm created an album that similarly evoked wide-eyed wonder and giddily dreamy awe, but let you rather unreservedly dance to it like an album about such things undoubtedly should.
R&B Album Of The Year
Thursday by The Weeknd
Though the first instalment of this prodigious talent’s 2011 mixtape trilogy is the most critically revered (and also because I hadn’t actually listened to the third effort Echoes Of Silence until after I first announced my nominations), I reserve my right to laud this second album-because-come-on-that’s-what-it-really-is on the grounds of its being more sprawling, uncompromising and violently traumatic than its predecessor. We’re so very lucky to have three of these to savour anyhoo, right?
Rock Album Of The Year
Skying by The Horrors
And we’re back to The UK’s Next Genuinely Great Rock Band with their third album, which presents an even more psychedlic evolution of the 80s-style alt-rock of their second game-changer LP Primary Colours. Nimbly traversing the fine line between honourable homage and timeless rock-pop grandeur whilst still sounding gorgeously fresh, this is their “We Have Arrived” moment of artistic revelation, following through on the promises made earlier and triumphantly surging ahead.
Single Of The Year
“Video Games” by Lana Del Rey
Lana Del Rey or Lizzie Grant? Faded-glamourous alt-pop mastermind or cynically-minded cash-in musician? Without sounding too much like a fence-sitting shill, what does it matter? Much like the aforementioned Cat’s Eyes’ work, it’s a modern throwback to the gorgeous Hollywood torch anthems that its worldliest dames were singing decades ago, an anthem of all-consuming, passive-aggressive love that renders any and every listener starstruck in their tracks.
Video Of The Year
“Song Of Los” by Apparat / Directed by Saman Keshavarz
There are videos that turn shit songs into great ones and rather good ones into excellent ones, but rarely does it occur when a video enhances a song already so excellently fraught with emotion and resonance. But director Keshavarz does that rather amazingly here, using Apparat’s hyper-electro-ballad as a soundtrack to a short life that takes in all of the joy and horror that existence can give any single person. On top of all that, it contains the most heartbreaking use of emoticons this side of Moon.
Collaboration Of The Year
“My Cloud” by Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx
I can be called up on this being considered a genuine collaboration on account of it, along with the entirety of its parent album We’re New Here, being a remix from The xx‘s frontman with minimal involvement from its key progenitor, though he contractually takes a co-headline credit. That being said, it was more-than canny of Scott-Heron to tap Jamie Smith in the first place, turning this b-side from the Godfather Of Rap’s last album of his lifetime into a prettily-percolating, soulful triumph. R.I.P. Gil. :,(
Best Bit-In-A-Song Of The Year
The “You Wan’ A Key-Change? I’ll Give Your Four!!” finale on “Love On Top” by Beyoncé (1:43-3:07)
Despite, Knowles’ 4 LP not catching the world on fire quite like it should have done, this proteanly-giddy midtempo ballad has finally been dragging some attention back towards it. An infectiously joyous R&B/pop juggernaut reminiscent of the early Mariah years, its reputation as a future-wedding-reception-floor-filler is cemented by the almost-demented vocal powerhouse finale; there’s been no other more impressive moment for a singer in pop this year as when Knowles ascends those octaves in effortless bounds, trust.
Best Live Act Of The Year
Anna Calvi
Diminutive in stature and music-press profile she may have been at the start of 2011, but Ms Calvi rode the enormous hype propagated by her epmonymous debut album incredibly well, thanks in no small part to bewitching performances that constituted a lengthy European tour. I was able to catch her third of four London dates this year and can honestly say that you haven’t heard this girl do herself justice unless she’s strumming that guitar and wailing like a lovelorn banshee right in front of you.
“Where Have You Been All My Life” Award
The Weeknd
To think, this time last year most people didn’t even know who or what Abel Tesfaye’s alt-R&B project was; twelve months later (alongside the production hands of established hitmaker Doc McKinney and fellow upstart Illangelo), he’s delivered three whole albums for our delectation. His beautifully frank odes to debauched nights out of drinking, taking drugs, screwing strippers and cataclismyc heartbreak are now an essential part of any wannabe-cool-dude’s Best Of 2011 playlist. To quote Kanye himself: Could he get much higher?
Producer Of The Year
Justin Vernon
Whether the songs therein are beautiful on their own or not, the main reason for Bon Iver, Bon Iver‘s success this year was down to the hard work done by its progenitor on the album’s production. Working with more foreign elements and players than his previous tome, Vernon’s smarts as a producer brought all the disparate elements (acoustic folk, sunset-coated Americana, glitchy electronica, electro-pop synths) together to create a beautifully yearning whole.
“Get On With It Already!” Award
Burial
Though post-dubstep pioneer Will Bevan did well to actually release some new material via his Street Halo EP earlier this year, given that it’s been four years since his last album, the blisteringly wonderful breakout success Untrue, it’s a case of too-little-too-late. And seeing as he’s been plying his dusty wares on various other projects of late in collaboration with the likes of Four Tet, Thom Yorke, Breakage, Jamie Woon and Massive Attack, there really isn’t even a smidgeon of an excuse against it.
Villain Of The Year
Jessie J
It’s not that I don’t like pop stars who clearly think they are at the centre of everything that we know to be absolutely magnificent in our world; it’s that I don’t wish to be reminded of it every five seconds with a melismic klaxon of a human voice that trades in ear-splitting volume and snotty brattishness for earnest emotion and profound experience whilst singing ballads filled with enough platitudes to make even the least-sincere self-help guru cringe. How the rest of the world has fallen for it is genuinely beyond me!
Heroes Of The Year
Foo Fighters
America’s leading rock ‘n’ roll band became champions to their gay fans earlier this year when they responded to a picket of their arena concert in Kansas City by the batshit-crazy Christian sect Westboro Baptist Church by performing a song concerning the joys of gay sex entitled Man Muffins at the pious morons as they drove past on an eighteen-wheeler. An impromptu gesture for tolerance, it had more power and resonance then at least one so-called empowerment anthem released in 2011.
Debut Album Of The Year
House Of Balloons by The Weeknd
Seeing as he’s given us three albums this year, it only seems fair I acknowledge Tesfaye three(?) times in my end-of-year blog, but what else is there left to say? Well, with regards to House, the album that single-handedly put him on the musicworld map, there is the fact that for a debut album, its statement of intent with regards to its creator’s sound is so sublime, vicious and ultimately beautiful, that it’ll stay with you for months to come after your first listen.
Group Album Of The Year
Eye Contact by Gang Gang Dance
There are so many intoxicating facets to Gang Gang Dance’s sound that one has trouble trying to come up with what to label them as, other than the ever-sheltering, pigeonholing umbrella of “Electronic” music. Do they make dance music, synth-driven drone, alt-electronic world pop, swoonsome avant-R&B or indie-electro gone pulsatingly, gorgeously mad? Or do they synthesize all of this into a wonderful concoction? Ahh bollocks, let’s just call them Fucking Awesome, and have done with it.
Solo Male Album Of The Year
Looping State Of Mind by The Field
It’s more-than-something of an immeasurably sweet irony that Swedish DJ Axel Willner has been able to create some of the very, very best dance music of recent years purely via the old adage of looping, especially seeing as his brand of finite twiddling is so peerlessly excellent, he feels no need to deviate too much away from with it. Taking isolated moments of pop excellence and spinning them into sonic opuses all of his own is his gift to the world. I wonder if he takes requests?
Solo Female Album Of The Year
Biophilia by Björk
Björk’s latest LP prompted as many genuinely intrigued reactions as she did typical eye-rolling from those too stuck in the mud to want to bite. And though the iPad-app-based multimedia aspect provided a fascinating enough PR launch for this particular work (which ironically enough knotted its lyrical themes more than ever to her love of nature), the spine-tingling mix of cutting-edge electronica, robust melodies and especially that iconic voice of hers remained just as beguiling as it always has.
And then there was The Album Of The Year…
—
Which will be revealed in a short while along with my Top 50 Albums Of 2011… You didn’t think I’d give everything away now, did you?
😉
Until then… xxxo
dibdersbooth 