2011 has also been a heavy year for my record collection. If you follow my tumblr, you’ve seen a lot of new records come in and get a spin. For reasons of state, I can’t say precisely how many I acquired this year but I’m happy with the results. Lots of new and classic music at my fingertips. In fact, I own nine of this year’s top ten albums on vinyl and the tenth is simply not available on lp (yet!?)

Let’s jump in with a quick and dirty chunk of the list (#22-#11) then we’ll spend a little more time on the top ten. Why 22? Why not? If you don’t like it, you can start your own damned blog (which you probably have done in the time it’s taken me to update mine this year.)

22. Jovontaes – Things Are Different Here (Hello Sunshine)
Psychedelic, guitar-driven, kraut-flavored, space rock

21. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop)
A strong follow-up record that distills the best of folk rock seasoned with stunning vocals.

20. Danger Mouse & Daniel Luppi – Rome (Parlophone/EMI)
Danger Mouse goes to Italy and captures Ennio Morriconi in a bottle.

19. Eternal Tapestry & Sun Araw – Night Gallery (Thrill Jockey)
Live, improvised, psychedelic dreaminess.

18. Woodsman – Rare Forms (101 Distribution)
Trippy “songs” in short, inspired bursts. See also: their Mystic Places EP from this Nov.

17. Bright Eyes – The People’s Key (Saddle Creek)
Great collection of songs that over burdened with bizarre narration…

16. White Denim – D (Downtown Records)
This is the kind of record that guitar-driven jam bands wish they could make.

15. Tinariwen – Tassili (Anti)
North African guitar trances… Another awesome record from these guys.

14. Bon Iver – Bon Iver (Jagjaguwar)
An expanded band and enriched sound. Beautiful, honest, and dreamy.

13. Radiohead – King Of Limbs (Ticker Tape Ltd.)
Not the best Radiohead effort yet still a great album.

12. Moon Duo – Mazes (Sacred Bones)
A side project from Ripley Johnson (Wooden Shjips) geared to blow minds.

11. Real Estate – Days (Domino)
Dreamy pop songs with a wistful nostalgic sadness.

10. The War On Drugs – Slave Ambient (Secretly Canadian)

These guys fall into a fairly slim niche that blends Americana and shoegaze. Somewhere between Dylan or The Byrds and Spiritualized is where these guys can be found on Slave Ambient. Creative lyrics, hooks, and electrified ambient passages blend smoothly for a mesmerizing and compelling listen.

Click here to view the embedded video.

09. White Fence – Is Growing Faith (Woodsist)

A side-project of Tim Presley (Darker My Love) that oozes with sixties, psychedelic, garage pop ala The Kinks and Barrett’s Pink Floyd. These is a lot to love here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

08. Ducktails – III: Arcade Dynamics (Woodsist)

Real Estate guitarist, Matthew Mondanile, is a one-man psych-pop machine. Catchy melodic hooks bubble away underneath one of the more nonchalant vocal performances I’ve heard in a while. I have spent a lot of quality time with this record in 2011…

Click here to view the embedded video.

07. The Roots – Undun (Def Jam)

This late entry (released Dec. 6, after I started compiling this list) shot immediately to my attention and hasn’t let go. Just because The Roots are in a narrow category of live bands playing hip hop doesn’t lessen the fact that they are the best at what they do. Undun is a concept record following, in reverse, the rise and undoing of a young man whose life ends too soon on the street.

Click here to view the embedded video.

06. The Decemberists – The King Is Dead (Capitol)

I’ll admit it, I am a sucker for this band. What’s not to like? Great musicianship + great songwriting = great band. With this album, the prog leanings are swept aside and the British folk & sailor’s ballads are swept aside in favor of a more American tasting folk music. Not just because of the Peter Buck guest appearance, this record may well be the missing key to revealing R.E.M.’s oft unnoticed Americana/folk music tendencies. There’s an infectious nature to these songs about gardening, summer days, war, and cataclysm that is undeniable.

Click here to view the embedded video.

05. Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring For My Halo (Matador)

This one blew me away. Bitterly wry, honest, songwriting with guitars washing over the listener. It makes perfect sense that Vile was co-founder of The War On Drugs but he’s writing from a darker space. A space worth visiting from time to time.

Click here to view the embedded video.

04. Woods – Sun And Shade (Woodsist)

For five years now, Woods has put out an album a year. Sadly, I just caught on to these guys this year and man, I’m glad I did. Sun And Shade builds on the psychedelic folk tunes of the earlier records, mixes in a little kraut-rock, and stretches out a bit for good measure. This, while preserving their knack for memorable hooks makes for a terrific album that has pulled me back time and again.

Click here to view the embedded video.

03. Megafaun – Megafaun (Hometapes)

The day this was made available for pre-order, I was giddy and ordered it immediately. Am I a silly fan-boy? Maybe. But it’s worth it. These three guys have crafted a beautiful album of amazing songs that hang together beautifully. Listen to the Beatles-esque, joyous beauty that is “Second Friend” (what harmonies!) and compare to the delicate sorrow of “Kill The Horns”. On previous records, Megafaun might break into passages of off-kilter freak-out but now, that sort of thing is fully integrated into their sound and ready when they need it. A wild, creative, spirit permeates the songs. The mixes are a bit more complex while the playing is as artful as ever. And the songs, themselves… gorgeous and memorable.

Click here to view the embedded video.

02. Wilco – The Whole Love (dBpm)

I think some people wrote Wilco off after their last album. It, for some didn’t hold up to the standards of some fans who might be waiting for another Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. This might be the record to win them back but, honestly, I don’t think Wilco cares. The Whole Love captures a band in its prime. While the songs are all Jeff Tweedy’s in name the entire band is bringing its vast and many strengths to the table and here have produced one of the strongest efforts to bear the Wilco name. The opening cut, alone, is better than most of the rest of this list. Seriously. If you can listen to “The Art of Almost” and remain unaffected, then you might have serious hearing loss or perhaps lack a pulse. Check this clip and see if your heart races:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I know, right? That’s fewer than ninety seconds of a seven-plus minute monster. The record continues with ten terrific songs (see below for “Born Alone”) before slipping into the sublime epic “One Sunday Morning (Song For Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend)”. Often compared to Dylan’s “Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands” this song floats along for twelve minutes without seeming to pass any time at all.

Click here to view the embedded video.

01. Akron/Family – ST II: The Cosmic Birth And Journey of Shinju TNT (Dead Oceans)

Wow. After touring behind their last album and then hiding out to write, Akron/Family came back huge with this record. Elements of noise combine with chants and soaring melodies. Graceful lyrics break into anthemic choruses. Pounding drumbeats support screaming guitar riffs. Gentle visionscapes are crafted with acoustic guitars and silence. This band, has really begun to find more than itself. They have begun to define a sound that is their own and connect deeply with their audience. They deliver meditation music (“Island” and the fourth side of the LP edition which features drones appropriate for play at either 33 or 45 rpm) and philosophical musings (“So It Goes”), and they deliver one of the best songs of the year with the celebratory nostalgia of “Light Emerges”.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hopefully you found something of value in this maddeningly lengthy post. There is so much great music that came out in 2011 that I probably missed one or more (all?) of your favorites. Hell, I could easily have made this list twice as long but none of us has that sort of time.

Here’s to another fine year passed and another in the wings.

-rj

*These are my favorite albums of 2011. I neither carry nor desire the authority to crown something “the best”.

London 1980

August 1, 1942 – August 9, 1995

All the years combine
they melt into a dream
A broken angel sings
from a guitar
In the end there’s just a song
comes crying like the wind
through all the broken dreams
and vanished years

Happy 69^th, Jerry.

When asked about my favorite music, people who know me are likely to identify two groups: The Grateful Dead and Phish. They’d be half right. Not that anyone should feel remiss for the mistake; my kids would probably offer the same response. The truth is that I have fallen out of love with Phish.

In the 90′s my musical world exploded into full life with The Grateful Dead. A few years later, I saw my first Phish show. Those two became the largest contacts on my radar and so life went for quite some time. Yes, I listened to tons of other stuff. I worked in a record store and amassed a hefty collection of music ranging from Louis Armstrong to ZZ Top. But Phish and The Grateful Dead continued to pull me back and dominate my listening and concert attentions.

The Grateful Dead ended and still I’d play their albums and live shows endlessly. Phish remained on the road and I saw them as often as life would allow and still I wanted to see them even more frequently. I collected tapes (remember tapes?) and CDs of their shows and they too stayed near the top of my playlists even during their hiatus and after their eventual ‘break-up’.

Phish used to jam. As a serious fan, I loved most of their material, including that which does not incorporate jamming, but it was the jamming and wild unpredictability that held my attention with Phish. When Phish came back in 2009, I was as excited as any fan (this blog is my testimony) and I went to the Hampton reunion shows and many more that year. The shows were fun. I had an amazing time reconnecting with old friends and sharing the shows with newer friends as well. But the music was not the highlight.

Last year, I found that listening to new Phish had become a chore. What had been a pleasurable obsession became an annoyance and, at times, I felt guilt about that annoyance. Guilt? Here was one of my so-called favorite bands, returned from rock & roll oblivion, and I couldn’t really enjoy what they were doing. Was it me? Had I changed that much? Had they?

It’s always been easy to find people who dislike Phish. In recent years it’s become nearly as easy to find former fans. Serious tourheads turned haters are all over the message boards. But why are they haters? Many are not willing to be more articulate than to say, “Phish sucks now,” and I’m pretty sure I’ve fired off a shot or two like that, myself. It’s easy. What’s hard is explaining why.

I mentioned jamming. I know the Phish 3.0 fluffers have a few jams at-the-ready to defend their favorite band but spare me. One hundred shows into their comeback and Phish hasn’t gotten in touch with “IT” more than a handful of times? At first I thought, “they just came back. They need to play some more shows for it to happen.” But it’s become clear to me that Phish is happy with their output.

Also happy: lots of fans.

Not as happy: promoters of what used to be guaranteed sell-out shows.

Also not as happy: people who want a Phish that plays well enough that the music plays the band.

Not to play the jaded vet card but, it used to be the case that every Phish show I saw was great and better than the last and it seemed unlikely that they could outdo it tomorrow. Then, they’d outdo it tomorrow. Now, it is just not like that. Phish appears to have stopped moving forward. Occasional spurts of inspired playing are bookended, often in the same show or set, by sloppy, careless, performances of what should be rote material. The problem is that you don’t get to be as tight as Phish-of-the-mid-90′s by rehearsing for a week or two before tour and at soundchecks. You get to be The Grateful Dead in the 90′s.

I, of course, LOVED seeing The Grateful Dead in the 90′s but, objectively taking into account what they had done for the previous 25 years, that was often a poor imitation of The Grateful Dead. At age 18 I wondered why the older Deadheads that I knew, ones who had seen the band in the early 70′s, didn’t make an effort to see every show possible. I saw that the road couldn’t go on forever and I wanted to grab up every note before none remained and I didn’t see why they weren’t chasing it as fervently as I.

I get it now.

And so begins my semi-retirement from Phish. I do plan on seeing one local show this Summer. But I won’t be attending SuperBall IX* or travelling to the West coast for shows (unless a miracle of scheduling has me finishing work in Seattle the week of the Gorge shows.) I won’t be listening to every show the day after it happens and I’m not likely to be following set lists as they roll in. (I will continue maintaining my twitter list, Phish-News because it’s easy and useful.) Instead I’m going to continue in my quest to experience bands that jam and other hair-raising, psychedelic, music. Look for me at MPP1 and any Mid-Atlantic Akron/Family shows!

*Super Ball Licks? That’s just too easy!

Last night, Washington, DC’s 9:30 Club was treated to one of the handful of shows on GYBE’s sold out US tour. A packed and attentive crowd enjoyed two hours of soaring guitars, blistering violin, and driving percussion. The eight-piece groups masterful use of dynamics took full advantage of the remarkably quiet audience. At times, some band members stepped off the stage, leaving the others to craft quieter sounds and returning for the powerful crescendos. As before,  the band was backed by their stunning visuals which lend social and political context to the music. While the themes and intent are portrayed in an abstract fashion, the tone and tilt of the message is loud and clear.

This being my first GYBE show I was, understandably, blown away. Other, more inveterate fans, commented that time has had an impact but the group still delivered what the fans came to hear. I will certainly be watching for more dates and hoping that we don’t have to wait another eight years…

Setlist:

Godspeed You Black Emperor
2011-03-20
9:30 Club
Washington, D.C.

Hope Drone
Moya
Albanian
Gathering Storm
9-15-00 Outro
Chart #3
World Police And Friendly Fire
Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls
The Sad Mafioso