#20. Atlas Sound - Parallax
From what I can gather, releasing seven great albums in just four years, then casually posting four discs worth of stuff on his blog that he just found lying around, is something Bradford Cox has to do just to feel. With this latest effort, the line between his solo work as Atlas Sound and that with a full band as Deerhunter is even less defined, but his greatest strength still lies in his canny differentiation between which incarnation should have each of the seemingly endless stream of songs coming from his giant brain.
'Mona Lisa', for example, would have sounded jarringly light and sweet on Halcyon Digest, but here it works perfectly as an experiment with pop vocals and structure, a breezy centerpiece for an otherwise uneasy album. 'Te Amo' explores similar territory to 'He Would Have Laughed', but is both looser and more focused. Coming up in 2012: Cox somehow cures a disease using music.
#19. Shabazz Palaces – Black Up
In 2011, hip-hop was all about the fresh-faced kids who smoked weed and talked about their feelings (or about murdering homosexuals, or whatever): OFWGKTA, A$AP Rocky, Kendrick Lamar, Big KRIT, Curren$y etc. etc. But what was also intriguing was the trend for older artists, either established, albeit in a very low key way (DJ Quik) or not so much (Danny Brown, Action Bronson) who still put out fresh, exciting material in abundance despite being a little longer in the tooth. So, naturally, it stands to reason that the best, most forward-thinking hip-hop album of 2011 would come from Ishmael Butler of Digable Planets, who were active between 1993 and 199fucking4. He's more or less 40.
What sets Black Up so fiercely apart from the competition is just how original it sounds. There's nothing out there like this at the moment. Whereas most beats come at you from the club, the street or a hazy sofa, most of Black Up sounds like it's being broadcast from the inside of a Terminator. Alongside this lurching, pitch-dark soundscape, Butler snarls, laments and introspects, like Mos Def in an isolation chamber.
#18. Los Campesinos! - Hello Sadness
We've all learned to fear the break-up album; in fact, I was so worried about this one that I'd didn't even realize I liked it until my 3rd or 4th listen. Avoiding the pitfalls of indulgence (well, 'Every Defeat a Divorce' aside) and aimlessness, Hello Sadness is their most lean, focused set of songs to date, cutting down on the sprawl of Romance is Boring and laying on the hooks; lead single 'By Your Hand' is as pop as indie rock gets.
A million miles away from the pretty much zero fidelity recording of Hold On Now, Youngster.., Hello Sadness instead comes off like an obsessive studio project; most notably, Gareth's vocals have never sounded better. On To 'Tundra', he sounds like a heartbroken Kele Okereke, and during the smouldering slow build of 'Baby, I Got the Death Rattle' he recalls Let Love In-era Nick Cave. But this is still unmistakably a Los Campesinos! record, and succeeds so utterly because it feels like another stage in their continuing evolution. Give them a few years and they'll be everyone else's favourite band too.
#17. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
No-one had the first fucking clue what to do with Fleet Foxes' eponymous debut. It sounded like nothing on earth before it, so we threw a few half-hearted 'like a folkier Band of Horses' comparisons at it, and everyone liked it, so we all stuck it at the top of our end of year lists, because it felt like the done thing.
Here's the thing. Helplessness Blues is the proof, if any were needed, that the element of surprise counts for everything, because it's a better album but no-one likes it as much.
Whereas Fleet Foxes sounded as if the Wild Man of the Mountains had emerged from decades of isolation and dropped off his mixtape, Helplessness Blues sees him invite himself into your house and reel off all his neuroses while his house band raise merry hell in your kitchen. So, we get more variety in the sound, more experimentation, and lyrics that actually ask questions - loads of them. It sees Robin Pecknold rise from simply the most dominant of the vocalists to a bona fide front man, and it'll be exciting to see how he goes about answering all these questions.
#16. Frank Ocean - Nostalgia, Ultra
After watching his OFWGKTA cohorts become indie megastars by releasing their mixtapes for free on their blog, Frank finally snapped and put out his own much softer, much better mixtape for free and with zero promotion; a direct bird-flip to Def Jam, who'd signed him in 2009 and proceeded to do absolutely nothing with him. An overwhelming wave of critical acclaim later, and now he works with Beyonce, Nas and Kanye West. Tidy.
It's a good job it worked out this way, because nostalgia, ULTRA's sensibilities lie a world away from Def Jam's sheen. These are intimate songs in a domestic setting, with Ocean singing about vinyl collections, getting too high to fuck, squabbling over who chooses the car stereo tunes. He leads in with the heart but acknowledges that there are other organs at play, plays it cool then threatens to drive his car into the ocean. It's as contradictory as all music this open and honest should be.
