
In 2011, it was a very good year.
Yours truly at For Those About to Rock listened to approximately 170 different albums this year. The frightening truth is what a small fraction of the records put into the world this year that really was.
But you're not here for that. You're here to see the list. Here is your fair warning that there could be inappropriate images or words in some of the songs to which I've linked. Counting down from 25 ...
25. The Black Keys, El Camino [Nonesuch]
Danger Mouse produces what feels like a sequel to 2010's Brothers and there's not a thing wrong with that.
Listen to: "Little Black Submarines"

24. The Roots, Undun [Def Jam]
Nearly 25 years down, Philadelphia's legendary hip hop band produces its first concept album.
Listen to: "Make My" featuring Big K.R.I.T.

23. Low, C'mon [Sub Pop]
Minnesota slowcore group uncorks a graceful, mellow gem (right).
Listen to: "$20"

22. Mikal Cronin, Mikal Cronin [Trouble in Mind]
Debut solo record from San Francisco garage rocker strives for slick pop grooves.
Listen to: "Apathy"

21. Thy Catafalque, Rengeteg [Season of Mist]
Hungarian metal group serves up a platter of proggy goodness.
Listen to: "Vashegyek"

20. CunninLynguists, Oneirology [APOS]
Hip hop trio from Kentucky keeps it funny, serious and tightly produced.
Listen to: "Murder (Act II)" featuring Big K.R.I.T.

19. Auktyon, Top [Geometry]
Dizzying mix of jazz, folk and rock from St. Petersburg, Russia.
Listen to: "Fire" 
18. BadBadNotGood, BBNG [Self-released]
Canadian jazz trio covers hip hop songs instrumentally, but even without context, this is a breezy record (right).
Listen to "Mass Appeal / Transmission"
17. St. Vincent, Strange Mercy [4AD]
Indie pop rocker Annie Clark works her way through depression with angst and sonic exploration.
Listen to: "Cruel"

16. The Weeknd, House of Balloons [Self-released]
R-rated R&B soundtrack to the morning after the craziest, naughtiest party you ever attended, straight outta Toronto.
Listen to: "Coming Down"
15. Wilco, The Whole Love [dBpm]
Chicago alternative rockers bounce back with a platter that feels like a career retrospective packed into one disc.
Listen to: "One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)"

14. Graveyard, Hisingen Blues [Nuclear Blast]
If you're still holding out for a Led Zeppelin reunion that's never going to happen, this Swedish hard rock album (right) with its Robert Plant deadringer singer is about as close as it's gonna get.
Listen to: "Ain't Fit to Live Here"

13. Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats,
Blood Lust [Svart]
A limited release, but a juicy slice of psychedelic doom rock from merry ol' England.
Listen to: "Curse in the Trees"
12. Bon Iver, Bon Iver, Bon Iver [Jagjaguwar]
The lyrics are nonsense, but Wisconsin's Justin Vernon brings in a whole band and manages to lose none of the mystique that made For Emma, Forever Ago so elegant, save for the cheese-fest closing cut, "Beth/Rest."
Listen to: "Holocene"

11. Other Lives, Tamer Animals [TBD]
The strings almost make this collapse under the weight of its own grandiosity, but this Oklahoma group has enough gravitas to pull it off.
Listen to: "Tamer Animals"

10. Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues [Sub Pop]
Making a record that approached the timeless, elegant baroque folk of this Seattle quintet's self-titled debut was going to be a challenge, but Helplessness comes close. Ethereal songs wind around simple constructions, and, yes, those glorious harmonies are back. They show a little more teeth — as much as Fleet Foxes are going to show — with numbers such as "Battery Kinzie" or "Grown Ocean," the latter of which opened shows this year. The title track, which sounds like two song ideas rammed together, yearns for a more simple life, putting in words what a Fleet Foxes song sounds like.
Listen to: "Helplessness Blues"

9. Mastodon, The Hunter [Reprise]
This Georgian metal group won For Those About to Rock's album of the year crown in 2009 with Crack the Skye, an album as sprawling in its concept as its composition. Smartly, instead of trying to top that, Mastodon strips things down to bare essentials — chugging, no frills metal, their first album that isn't a concept record since their debut, no songs over the six-minute mark. There are misfires — "Creature Lives" is the weakest track in the catalog — but there are so many blistering, driving cuts that many fans won't mind.
Listen to: "The Sparrow"

8. The Decemberists, The King is Dead [Capitol]
Portland's The Decemberists show off their folksy, countrified side and forget all about concept albums you need a map to navigate. And thank goodness. This may be one of their easier efforts. Singer Colin Meloy puts down his polysyllabic bag of tricks for the most part. It's a pastoral slice of Americana, but there's a joy and a fun that fast outpace anything we heard on The Hazards of Love, whose title came to sound more like a caution to would-be listeners. There's nothing remarkable here, but there's enough hooks to do some of their former seafaring anthems proud.
Listen to: "Calamity Song"


7.
Feist,
Metals [Arts & Crafts/Cherrytree/Polydor]
Metals aspires to a higher consciousness of songwriting when it would've been easy to make a hooky, hit-packed platter that appealed to the crowd she roped in with the unlikely success of "1234." That was no doubt due in part to Apple co-opting the tune for its iPad ads. Instead, with
Metals, she made a record seemingly devoid of hooks, but with still plenty of nuggets to mine. It's an imperfect record the male back up singers shouting "a commotion" in the song of the same name are particularly jarring but it's also a mature record. It gives up its treasures after examination, which, fun as they were, is something you can't say about her previous efforts.
Listen to: "Graveyard"

6.
James Blake,
James Blake [Universal Republic]
If 2011 is remembered as the year dubstep joined mainstream consciousness,
James Blake is going to be remembered as one of the first records to crossover. Hotly anticipated after successful EPs and singles, Blake's debut clocks in just over the 38-minute mark, but it feels expansive. There's a beauty in his digital simplicity. The trouble with this record is its two best songs "The Wilhelm Scream" and "Limit to Your Love" weren't written by Blake. "Wilhelm," in fact, is somewhere between a cover and a reinterpretation, taking his father's little-known "
Where to Turn" and reweaving it. "Limit to Your Love" is a Feist song and is easily the most welcoming. But there is promise for Blake in his own right. The lyrics to "I Never Learnt to Share" may comprise one sentence, but it never feels like it. It's a detached, moody record, but it shows promise for Blake and dubstep.
Listen to: "The Wilhelm Scream"

5.
tUnE-yArDs,
w h o k i l l [4AD]
What
is this album? Trying to pick a genre is nearly impossible. Nutmegger-come-Oakland resident Merrill Garbus creates a sonic bulletin board and tries to see what sticks loops, chanting, folk, punk, ukulele, Afro-beat, free jazz, percussion. It's a smorgasboard. The intrigue is what makes
w h o k i l l fascinating. Garbus loops drum beats while she wails, whoops and growls. "What's a boy to do if he'll never be a gangsta?" asks one song, an observation taken after watching teenagers in Oaktown. Nestled among all the drum-driven fury is "Wooly Wolly Gong," an ominous lullabye. That's how diverse
w h o k i l l is. Garbus is political and observational, at turns serious and fun. On an album which tries so many different things and executes them well, such variety in personality is expected.
Listen to: "Bizness"

4.
Matana Roberts,
Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens de couleur libres [Constellation]
From that honking sax intro on "Rise," Brooklyn-based avant-garde jazz saxophonist Matana Roberts tells listeners we're in for a challenge. The first of a planned 12-part series exploring her own African-American heritage, Roberts jumps back to the 1700s, touching on a freed slave who became wealthy enough to buy back and rescue her relatives on
Gens de couleur libres, which translates as "Free people of color." The music is always shifting, with sax, piano, bass, drums and more. There are spoken word moments, too, the most memorable of which is Roberts' chilling howls on "Pov Piti" and "I Am" to demonstrate the pain her ancestors endured. It's one of the most electrifying moments in music in 2011 and hearing it on a jazz record instead of a death metal album made it that much more memorable. Employing a 15-piece ensemble from Montreal, Canada, Roberts performed
Coin Coin live, which makes this accomplishment all the more remarkable.
Listen to: "Pov Piti"

3.
Beirut,
The Rip Tide [Pompeii]
I once heard Ben Folds give an interview in which he said that the more you try to write a song that ropes everybody in, the more you push people away. Zach Condon knows this principle.
The Rip Tide has no false modesty, combining his Balkan brass band influences with a flare for modern rock to produce a record that is as joyous to listen to as it is short.
The Rip Tide clocks in at at a tidy 33 minutes, which means not a second is wasted. "Goshen," a horn-fueled piano meditation, is followed by "Payne's Bay," which sways on a bed of strings. A synthesizer fuels "Santa Fe," a danceable track which might be the best thing Condon has written to date. It's not daring to be a big, ambitious record and that's what makes it such a joy to hear.
Listen to: "Santa Fe"

2.
Colin Stetson,
New History Warfare, Vol. 2: Judges [Constellation]
Definitely not for everyone, but a remarkable feat nonetheless. The third platter from Montreal-based avant-garde jazz saxophonist Colin Stetson is simply a masterwork. Setting up 24 microphones, Stetson aimed to imitate the sound of a live performance, placing them at different distances from himself throughout the studio as he performed and recorded. That's creative enough, but what makes this record a true accomplishment is that it must be heard to be disbelieved. Treat yourself to the clip below of the title track and keep one precious fact in mind with two minor exceptions, there are no overdubs on
Judges. Furthermore, Stetson is the only person playing on most tracks. That what you hear is the sound of one man accomplishing so much at once with one instrument is gobsmacking and worthy of curiosity and respect.
Listen to: "Judges"

1.
Laura Marling,
A Creature I Don't Know [Ribbon]
Emerging from the same London folk scene that birthed her ex-boyfriend's band, Mumford and Sons, Laura Marling shows a gift for songwriting even her former beau has not yet demonstrated. In fact, at the age of 21,
A Creature I Don't Know shows Marling lifting her game to heights some three times her age can't reach. There's heartbreak and references to ex-loves whispering throughout the record, but it seems to lack any soapy, TMZ-ish intrigue. There's elements of jazz, rock and folk bound together. It would be easy to dismiss
Creature as a cute coffeehouse singer/songwriter record. To be fair, I wouldn't be surprised to walk into a Starbucks and hear
Creature playing. But just when you're ready to write her off as some musical Lilith Fair love child, she unleashes "The Beast," an apt name for a track that swells from a whisper to a yell. Marling pulls no punches vocally, delivering it straight and letting the accompaniment flood and carry the current. It's a dark and brooding track that defies the age of its writer. Also, in a year when some of the best records peter out in the back half (Fleet Foxes, St. Vincent, Bon Iver),
Creature somehow gets stronger as the running time amasses. Near the end of the record comes "Sophia," a kiss off to a former flame. "Sophia" is the Greek word for wisdom and throughout
A Creature I Don't Know, that's what Marling demonstrates. With
Creature, she reveals herself as someone with exceptional grasp of her craft.
Listen to: "The Beast"