Looking Forward To Go Back - Albums of 2011 (Part Two)

Continuing from last week, the following selection is the quintet of records whose luminescent brilliance rendered most records released last year a distinct second-best.

5. Tim Hecker - Dropped Pianos/Ravedeath, 1972

Is it cheating to include two records here? Nah. Ravedeath, 1972 and Dropped Pianos are of a piece with each other, the former created as a result of Hecker's manipulation of the sound of a pipe organ in an Icelandic church, the latter its spectral blueprint created in the studio on piano and computer prior to entering. Of the two, I prefer Dropped Pianos, mostly because it feels more direct, though Ravedeath is the one you could really get lost in. One of my favourite bands, Deftones, have a track called Digital Bath. This is what such a thing would actually sound like. Rubber duck not included.

4. Locrian - The Clearing

A shadowy unit operating across various media, including cassettes and even VHS, Locrian have become more streamlined in an operational sense, even if their music has continued to set them apart from most other avant-rock bands. 2010's J.G. Ballard-referencing The Crystal World was a haunting artifact that appeared to signal the crepuscular inevitability of the end times, and although The Clearing is an altogether more sober record, with a few more shards of light, it too has its fair share of nasty left turns - witness Chalk Point's descent into abrasive noise, a vicious counterpoint to its gentle, diffident opening segue.

3. Gnaw Their Tongues - Per Flagellum Sanguemque, Tenebras Veneramus

As with Locrian, Gnaw Their Tongues require serious effort on the part of the listener and fly in the face of any social music-sharing apps, such is his obdurate approach. Solemn readings of death-obsessed erotica and bizarre incantations can just about be made out from within a horrific attack on the ears, which sounds like a demon being let loose on an unsuspecting orchestra, or an industrial-strength play session in a BDSM rubber-room, depending on your preference. The combination of Grand guignol horror mixed with a sense of the cerebral and perverse is what ultimately keeps you listening, and guessing.

2. Friendly Fires - Pala

In case anyone thinks my music habits has turned me into the very worst of internet trolls, only coming out from under my bridge to chew on guileless livestock and Adele albums, let me state for the record that Pala is the most fun you can have with your pants up. It takes the ear-for-a-good-hook approach that set them on their winning ways for the first album, and running with it to see where it leads them. Pala doesn't put a foot wrong from the Afrobeat excursions of Pull Me Back To Earth to the brilliant 80's pop of Hurting, sounding not too dissimilar to something Alphabeat would make. Its peak is perhaps Hawaiian Air, a pop monster with a chorus the size of a planet that in a fairer world would have been this year's festival anthem. I'm already looking to their next audacious creative leap.

1. Enablers - Blown Realms and Stalled Explosions

In a year when the nursery rhyme simplicity of PJ Harvey (in itself, not a bad thing, see below) could gain plaudits and awards, it's nice to see a literary-minded group not afraid to challenge themselves and their listeners and put out some of their best work to date. Their modus operandi, penumbral neo-noirish vignettes, remained mostly intact (see opener Patton), but seemed to speak to vocalist and poet Pete Simonelli's personal experiences and relationships rather than discussing slightly-offhand ciphers. Added to Simonelli's searching lyrics was this record's ace-in-the-hole, the piercingly emotive soundscapes, the best of which brought me to the brink of tears, particularly on the album's highpoint Career-Minded Individual, a discussion of a wistful morning between two people with much left unsaid almost impossibly heightened by the backdrop that surrounds it, culminating in a wordless epiphany.

Honourable Mentions

Trap Them - Darker Handcraft
Tom Waits - Bad As Me
This Will Destroy You -Tunnel Blanket
The Weeknd - Echoes of Silence
Nicholas Jaar - Space Is Only Noise
Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica
James Blake - James Blake
Mastodon - The Hunter

Some quality albums that missed the cut for either being promising but not-quite-spectacular or hadn't bedded in properly when I was compiling. Such a fate was particularly true for Waits' Bad As Me, and if I was doing this list a month or two down the road, I would fully expect it to occupy a spot in the Top 5. For some aficionados, anything the man does is already sealed in at No. 0.

Dishonourable Mentions

Unfortunately, this year carried a sackful of disappointments from artists who'd previously not blotted their respective copybooks (for the most part) but took 2011 as a ripe opportunity to pour all the ink out, possibly while calling me rude names in an errant fashion and earning themselves a swift detention (and this laboured metaphor).

Chief among them were Fleet Foxes, for the limp-wristed Helplessness Blues, almost a parody of the strident, sonorous melodies that had informed their previous work. Despite being in many ways a Robin Pecknold solo album in all but name, it only served to underline his shortcomings as a songwriter in a dismal, rote fashion. Sadly, this was not the only record to put me in a strop.

Battles - Gloss Drop

If you want to hear how to follow up a record as giddy yet cerebral as Mirrored, then you'll be wanting a copy of former Battles member Tyondai Braxton's dizzyingly inventive Central Market. If, however, you want a laboured mess that takes a winning formula, and mangles it beyond recognition, then knock yourself out with Gloss Drop. John Stainier, how could you?

Bon Iver- Bon Iver

Justin Vernon's Bon Iver project looked a little shaky last year, and unfortunately his self-titled album mislaid what was undoubtedly the strongest element of For Emma, namely that God-like voice and buried it under a hodge-podge of vaguely 80's sounding arrangements that went absolutely fucking nowhere and took a considerable amount of my time doing so. I'd have been inclined to forgive him, except for his involvement in the similar-but-superior Gayngs. I will, say, however, that the songs form his self-titled release have been re-worked much better live so the blame may lie chiefly with the production.

Lil Wayne - Tha Carter IV

WTF happened? Tha Carter IV was the worst end to a quadrilogy since Alien: Resurrection.

PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

Something of a baffling success, Let England Shake pared down a great many aspects of Polly-Jean Harvey' music, but lost much of its lustre too. The deliberately simplistic lyrics made sense within the scope of what she set out to do, namely to convey the universal horrors of war, but coupled with its score, everything seemed incredibly slight and less than the sum of its parts. Although I found it difficult to get through, her last album, White Chalk, was growing on me again this year, so maybe I heard it at the wrong end of the cycle.

Song of 2011

Lana Del Ray - Video Games


*burn*

Actually, it was Once We All Agree by James Blake. The most affecting piece of music I heard all year, the opening track from the Enough Thunder mini-album was heart-breaking and left me reeling. Words can't do it justice, so if you haven't heard it, I implore you to do so now. If this is an indication of his future work, then I'll be in raptures when it hits. His dance work's pretty good too.