The Spider Hill

The best albums of 2011

These are my favourite records of 2011 – have a listen to some of them in this mix I made:

15. Battles – Gloss Drop

Woo, Battles went even more RHYTHMIC than before. I can live without the Gary Numan song, but the rest of it is a confusing FEAST OF RHYTHMS. 

14. Tim Hecker – Ravedeath, 1972

It’s really tough to make a drone record interesting. Ben Frost manages it by adding sheets of distortion and aggression under his tunes. Tim Hecker keeps it beautiful, adding filters that make this sound like underwater music, little metallic details that swim around the edges of the stereo field, and long, glowing chords in the vein of Stars of the Lid. All rather moving.

13. Fucked Up – David Comes To Life

Mmm yeah, it’s a concept double album by a hardcore band, as every review was obliged to tell you up front, as if trying to put you off. But this stuff is completely euphoric and uplifting, even getting away with quite a few guitar lines that might have sounded a bit cheesy in less expert hands. This is a great, great record that I reckon will be looked back on as a classic. 

12. William Elliott Whitmore – Field Songs

William Elliott Whitmore must be a little bit narked at the amount of attention Josh T. Pearson’s got this year, ‘cos their two records aren’t a million miles apart, and I reckon I prefer this one. He’s the same age as me, but has a whisky-warmed husk of a voice that lights up these songs, all of which sound like they could’ve been recorded in the 1910s or something. There’s plenty in the lyrical content about the value of doing a good, honest day’s work as a cure for life’s ills, but somehow manages to sound convincing with it. Bonus point – contains lovely field recordings of rural life that he recorded himself.

11. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake

Anyone who doesn’t have this in their albums of the year list is totally LYING. It’s an amazing record, and there are 40,000 reviews out there that do it more justice than I can, so go and read one of them. 

10. Drums Off Chaos & Jens-Uwe Beyer

The first recorded document by the newest project from Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit, along with Kompakt chap Jens-Uwe Beyer. The results are as you may expect – multiple layers of groovy (in a good way, not a horrible funk way) drumming over pretty electronica, expanded over the course of just four, umm, pieces (I suppose you’d call them). To be honest, I’d buy a record of Jaki Liebezeit’s drumming over a backdrop of fart sounds, but thankfully this is much, much better, like the Boredoms if they were trying to tug at your heartstrings. 

9. A Winged Victory For The Sullen – s/t

Adam Wiltzie from Stars of the Lid and Mr Plonky Pianos Dustin O’Halloran get together for a new band. Guess what it sounds like? If your guess was ‘warm, soothing drones interspersed with euphonious melodies on piano and strings’, reward yourself with a copy of this record. It’s absolutely lovely, and is guaranteed to add a gravity and tint of warming sadness to any journey on which it accompanies you, even the 0731 to London Paddington. 

8. King’s Daughters & Songs – If Not Then When

People from Rachel’s and Shipping News form a band together! Band explores the previously-untrodden ground between gloomy murder ballads and post-rock guitar explorations. There are a couple of fillers on here to be honest, but the tracks that work really work, suddenly taking a dark folk tale and going off at a tangent to do some tricksy guitars for a few minutes. It’s not the same as Espers, but there’s a similar vibe in places, which you don’t come across very often. 

7. Collections of Colonies of Bees – Lawn

Collections of Colonies of Bees are the best instrumental guitar band currently playing. There, I said it. ‘Flocks’ was an extraordinary album, and this just builds on it, absolutely bursting with imagination and detail. If my band was a tenth as good as this I’d be happy. 

6. Wild Flag – s/t

Seem to have been quite a few ‘supergroups’ on the list this year. This one’s two of Sleater-Kinney plus Mary Timony from Autoclave – riot grrl-tastic! It’s got the energy and get-up-and-go of prime S-K, only with the added depth of lots of keyboards and some different, very interesting songwriting. I still went nuts for ‘Romance’ and ‘Racehorse’ though, which basically do sound like Sleater-Kinney with synths. 

5. The Field – Looping State of Mind

What a great record this is! It’s like Matt Elliott playing with Jeff Mills or something – building almost everything around loops, it layers up and up, dynamically spot on. Really perfectly done, I think it’s been my most-played record at the end of the year. But then I like loops a lot. 

4. Warm Digits – Keep Warm With The Warm Digits

Pure krautrock from, erm, Newcastle. This record couldn’t wear its influences more on its sleeve than it does – even song titles like ‘Trans Pennine Express’ and ‘Keep Warm With The Warm Digits’ make things abundantly clear. It’s great though – stuffed with Neu! Beats, Kraftwerk synth leads and Cluster-type analogue swirls. 

3. Tom Waits – Bad As Me

It’s a new Tom Waits album. It’s probably the best things since Mule Variations as far as I’m concerned. He’s still pushing himself, playing in different styles without ever sounding like pastiche, and painting yet another cast of winning characters and scenes. 

2. Seefeel – s/t

I never got into Seefeel first time round, mostly because I was listening to Machine Head and being an emo teenager in the mid-90s, but what a treat to pick this up. It’s the same formula of dubby basslines, dreamy vocals and crackly electronics updated for 2011, and works best as a full record, giving you time to lose yourself in what’s more an hour of top-class atmospherics than a distinct set of individual tunes. 

1. The Antlers – Burst Apart

If there’s one band I fell hard for in 2011, it was (as for many others I’m sure) The Antlers. In lesser hands, what they do here could easily become some trendy-sounding crap, but they handle everything just perfectly. The songs are enormously affecting, the lyrics are terrific, they don’t sound like anyone else, and there’s some seriously interesting sounds and details in there too. Pretty much perfect. 

Posted on: 24th December 2011 - 8 notesReblog