Monday 5 December 2011

2011AD in Music

We're no closer to hoverboards, self-drying jackets or hyper-accurate weather forecasts, but the contemporary music scene is throwing out classics left, right and centre as 2015 approaches.

For me, 2011 has been the best yet: augmenting my musicOMH album writing with the award-worthy Tracks column, this year I've felt more in touch, more up-to-date and more informed than ever before. Upon being asked to vote on the musicOMH top 50 albums of the year (part one here), I totted up my favourites; before I knew it, had a list of 39 in front of me. In no particular order, you understand.

The pleasant surprise was that I seem to have shaken the nasty habit of listening to an LP, rushing through a review - positive, more often than not - and never giving it a repeat spin thereafter. Hypocritical? Probably, yes. And I've initially felt the same with entries here, I admit - Memory Tapes, Papercuts and Lykke Li - but I can honestly say that I've gone back to each listed album time and again (Memory Tapes, in fact, is playing now; I'm pleasantly surprised to be on humming terms with every track).

Okay, so it's not particularly glorious for a music writer to claim a new-found sense of satisfaction at being familiar with a range of music in a given year, but I'm very pleased to have finally shed my skipping vice (as in skipping tracks, not skipping rope; I still love that) in 2011. The rewards are... rewarding.

And so what of the albums themselves? I encountered most by reviewing them, others through 6 Music, and others still through good old word-of-mouth. Particular highlights for me include Wye Oak's Civilian, Yuck's Yuck and Cymbals Eat Guitars' Lenses Alien for sounding like they're from the best music decade ever (the 90s, obvz); Stephen Malkmus' Mirror Traffic because it's his best solo effort yet, and an album I'm yet to tire of; Chilly Gonzales' The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales because it's so clever on so many levels; and, of course, Metronomy's English Riviera, which is my top, top, top (copyright Jamie Redknapp) album of 2011, hands down.

I've very thoughtfully made a Spotify playlist made up of one track for each of my 39 albums of the year - you're welcome - and I'd encourage anybody without Spotify to otherwise check out a few of these songs as healthy representations of some of the best LPs 2011 had to offer (IMHO, as they say on the internet). I've also linked to each of the 39 I happened to review for, er, posterity's sake. And do keep an eye out for musicOMH's top 50 rundown this week: I may just have had a say in it's number one... (clue: I definitely did)

  

Taken From The Album... (Reviews What I Wrote Linked):
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