Pre-Gaming for the 2011 Albums Awards Show

There's an article floating around the internet based on a study that found that you (yes, you) are likely to stop liking a band once your friends start liking it. And this made me wonder if I'm the only person who still actually listens to the music part of music and not the cultural and commercial associations that go along with the people who make music. In other words, I fear that people no longer listen to how the music sounds, but instead listen to what it sounds like.

The albums recognized in the next three posts were selected for their merit in the first field: how they sound. They are not evaluated based on what they sound like, how significant they are, or who listens or doesn't listen to them. This is identity-free music. This... is... THE OZONE SHACK!!!

Compared to 2010, musically, 2011 can certainly be described as an improvement. Last year, albums that shouldn't have been featured were, and this year I had to leave out albums I think should be featured. We're at a weird place in music right now. We're in the doldrums of the hipster hegemony, where it's considered an asset to have a singer who sounds like an even more obnoxious version of Thom Yorke. In the last five years, hi-hop, for the most part, has ceased to be fun or bad-ass, and is sliding into the territory of bubblegum pop, although there are notable exceptions. Metal is gravitating towards the extremes of screaming and power ballads. And people seem to think that DIY means "it's ok to not know how to play your instruments, at all." And we have dubstep.

But the beat goes on and in the midst of this confusing epoch (or just a completely normal watershed era) there are still great records being made, by people who can still sing and who still use real instruments, or have figured out how to use electronic instruments to their artistic potential. This is a celebration of the really good ones.

Honorable Mentions for the Technically Inelligible


An EP is not an album. So sadly, these two don't get on the list. But if they were eligible, I would expect them to be top 11. If they were combined into a full length LP, then... well, I can't even begin to speculate.

Dispatch - Dispatch EP

They're back! They're back!!! This EP condenses most of what you loved about Dispatch into six new tracks by the newly reunited free-wheeling, genre-defying jam band. And while it sounds like they haven't skipped a beat since Who Are We Living For, this is a Dispatch that draws from its members' development as musicians during their time apart. "Broken American" might as well be off a State Radio album, and "Turn This Ship Around" echoes Re-Pete's solo effort from last year. But Dispatch is made by its synergy, and this EP couldn't be made by any other combination of three people.

Cynic - Carbon Based Anatomy

Technical Death Metal with a jazz-fusion influenced rhythm section and interspersed with ambient soundscapes? It can't be done!!! Cynic has created a sound as engaging as it is unique, combining screaming with a syncopated 16th-note bass line. Weather Report meets Opeth? Maybe... maybe.

Unrecognized Albums Worth Mentioning (And Honorably So)

(In No Particular Order)

Robbie Robertson - How to Become Clairvoyant

Explosions in the Sky - Take Care, Take Care, Take Care

Groundation - A Gathering of the Elders

Rise Against - Endgame

Dream Theater - A Dramatic Turn of Events

The Dodos - No Color

Eddie Vedder - Ukulele Songs

Within Temptation - Unforgiving

The Decemberists - The King is Dead

Mowgwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

British Sea Power - Valhalla Dance Hall

The Black Keys - El Camino
The Gourds - Old Mad Joy
Oki Dub Ainu Band - Himalaya Dub

Biggest Disappointment: Incubus - If Not Now, When?

I know this album had the impossible task of following up 2006's Light Grenades, but still, it took you five years to make this?

Albums on the Bubble

These could have made it but didn't. They at least deserve to be recognized with a blurb. They are arranged in ascending order by their ranking. (gets better as you go down)

Five O'Clock Heroes - Different Times

Maybe not as upbeat or raw as their previous efforts, but still a fun album full of good riffin'.

Cage the Elephant - Thank You, Happy Birthday

Music that makes you want to maniacally shuffle around while swinging your fists, and it doesn't matter if they hit any bystanders!

Adele - 21

Young British woman who sounds like large black woman gets heart broken, writes song, makes millions happy.

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

Maybe it should have charted higher? I don't know. I can tell you it's a good album, but not one where they do anything new.

Cold War Kids - Mine is Yours
The thing that makes this album, and what really makes this bands sound, is really the texture that they have. Thick, mid-register piano and heavy on the toms.

Chadwick Stokes - Simmerkane II
Dispatch member and State Radio frontman makes an album loosely based on his time riding the rails around America.

My Morning Jacket - Circuital

The band's most nuanced album to date. There are some gems (Holdin On Black to Metal, Outta My System, Wonderful, and the seven minute title track) but it's a little hurt by its lack of consistency.

Matthew Good - Lights of Endangered Species

Thick horn beds and impassioned vocals about places nobody really wants to go, emotionally or geographically.

The Horrible Crowes - Elsie

Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon kicks off his side project with a slightly more soulful and less punky album than his main act. He keeps his knack for writing songs undercut with the sort of desperate love that can only come out of Jersey.

Scale the Summit - The Collective

This is the third album by the instrumental prog-metal group, which features an eight string guitar and a six string bass. They also have a song about whales. Any prog metal group that writes songs about whales is awesome in my book. And these guys are some of the best.

Social Distortion - Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes

Mike Ness continues to sing about confronting the world and failing, but on this album, he takes time to sing about being a lonely trucker and a 1930s gangster.

Tinariwen - Tassili

This band has an interesting story. The cliffnotes are that the members met while living in a refugee camp in Northern Mali, and now they're exporting their music, which sounds like ragged delta blues sung in a language related to Arabic, to the world. This is the most mellow and contemplative of their albums, not nearly as raucous as Ammoukasol or Ama Iman, and since their female vocalists do not appear on this record, the register is almost uniformly low.

Feist - Metals
Canadian singer with distinct voice makes eclectic music that your obnoxious, smelly neighbor loves, and that you secretly love deep down inside.

Miracles of Moder Science - Dog Year

Can you make a rock band with a bass, chello, violin, and mandolin? Can Princeton grads produce anything cool? This album answers all your of questions with "YES!"

Foo Fighters - Wasting Light
Dave Grohl is still alive and kicking, still possessing the algorithm for the perfect hook, and the Foo Fighters can still rock out as hard as they ever did.

Rob Crow - He Thinks He's People

An artist I didn't know about, and who, based on a gut feeling, I didn't think could produce a good album, does, and one that was considered as an outside, outside shot to make the top 11. Deceptively complex at points, good music for thinking about things of moderate amounts of importance.

Beirut - The Riptide

Three minute pop chord progressions with a Balkan horn section and drums is pretty harmless, as guilty pleasures go. The second track, "Santa Fe" may be Zach Condon's best creation to date.

Jay-Z & Kanye West - Watch the Throne

This is the most sci-fi album to ever come out of mainstream rap. "We formed a new religion / no sins as long as there's permission," on the opening track, sets the stage for an album about rebuilding the world in an ethical and spiritual void. Nietzsche would be proud.

The Strokes - Angles

In my opinion, this album is everything that This is It? should have been. Nuff said.

Paul Simon - So Beautiful or So What

Unlike most crusty old rockers, Paul Simon can still make an album that sounds new and relevant in his... advanced age. And he's still drawing inspiration from music from around the world. It's about being old, and making meaning in your life as you age, but it still has a universal appeal to a young asshole whippersnapper like myself.

Album Cover of the Year

Abigail Washburn - City of Refuge

This album also gets an honorable mention, (in the strata, it's somewhere near Watch the Throne) but it gets its own recognition for having the best artwork. Furthermore, it's a female artist's solo album, but it doesn't actually have a picture of the artist on the cover, which is incredibly refreshing. And it's complicated. The album itself is another excellent piece of work by the empress of the banjo. Rich bluegrass harmonies and a good dose of banjo pickin are interspersed with themes of searching for spirituality in a confusing and bereft world.