Albums of the Year: #5-#1
So here it is. My final five albums of the year… I feel incredibly guilty for this list, really, as I’ve just noticed I’ve missed out Girls’ stunning Father, Son, Holy Ghost mainly because I hadn’t actually heard it in its entirety. Which is a damn shame, but I can’t really review what I haven’t heard. I’ll go listen to it, don’t you worry.
I also missed out +, by Ed Sheeran. This is, again, because I hadn’t heard it; truthfully, I don’t think I actually want to, since he strikes me as a singles man as opposed to an album act and therefore the album will probably end up being “The A Team” surrounded by the usual singer-songwriter fare. I’m probably wrong and I’m sure it’s lovely but I won’t be putting it in my list.
So now that that’s half my audience hating me, let’s move onto the list!
#5: Bon Iver - Bon Iver
Yet another band promoted incessantly by those on teh intertubes, Justin Vernon’s folk collective’s second record is as hauntingly beautiful as their first. Vernon’s puce vocals take over everything, but even then the melodies soar through the album as a whole, a collection of love letters to various places in North America. And it was recorded in a vet’s, so bonus points for that.
Video: “Holocene”
#4: Jon Hopkins & King Creosote - Diamond Mine
An album cover is often useful to prejudge what the musical content of a record will sound like. Looking at this cover, you can tell that King Creosote and Jon Hopkins have crafted an heirloom, a period piece filled with love and dedication. As far as the Scottish folk scene is concerned, King Creosote’s forty-seventh (!!!) album is honestly as good as it gets.
Video: “Bats in the Attic (Unravelled Version)”
#3: Wild Beasts - Smother
Wild Beasts have been a consistently great band across everything they’ve made, so it was no surprise to find Smother (and its promotional teaser “Albatross”) was an utterly toothsome array of art-pop at its very best. The slightly-zany lyrics are back, too, with “oh, Ophelia I feel your fall” among my favourites in that category.
Video: “Two Cousins”
#2: Tom Vek - Leisure Seizure
Annoyingly I appear to be the only one in reality to have even heard of Tom Vek, but once again the web is mad for him and his decidedly lo-fi garage-tinged pop music. The result of six years work (well, presumably this is what he was working in that time…) thankfully continues the theme of bedroom-recorded sound, even though I think it was made in a studio this time. Doesn’t matter to me if he made it on the moon, to be honest. Great music from an insane talent.
Video: “Aroused”
#1: SBTRKT - SBTRKT
Given that I have talked about nothing more than I have about SBTRKT in the last year, it really shouldn’t be a surprise to see him at the top of this list. His album is a breath of fresh air into dubstep (yes, the real dubstep), a genre frequently criticised, usually by me, for being so mindnumbingly boring it could lull sharks to sleep. I’m grateful that this man’s work takes some influence from mainstream musicians, in that it remains accessible while still being different enough to keep (most) hipsters content.
Video: “Wildfire”
So there it is, ladies and gentlemen, my top twenty albums of 2011. What a year it’s been. Again, sorry it was only twenty and not a top 1,000, since I’d probably be able to full that too. What are, pray tell, your albums of the year?
