Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
2: Kanye West & Jay Z – Watch The Throne
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
3: Atlas Sound – Parallax
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
4. Thurston Moore – Demolished Thoughts
For those who don’t know Thurston Moore he’s the genius behind Sonic Youth. With his solo work he offers something very different from the raw material that characterizes his band. This album is very personal, folky and acoustic, oh and it’s produced by none other than Beck. Perfect on a rainy autumn day.
5. John Maus – We Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves
John Maus sometimes sounds so stereotypical that we might wonder if his music is just a big joke ! Everything is exaggerated and weird, from the way he inserts strange sounds when you least expect it, or his obvious nonstop mimicking of Ian Curtis. It’s a lot to handle, but somehow it works perfectly.
6. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
7. Cut Copy – Zonoscope
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
8. Nicolas Jaar – Space is Only Noise
Jaar is only 21, but he already released one of the most acclaimed and talked about album of the year. I think that says it all.
9. The Kills – Blood Pressures
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
10. Metronomy – The English Riviera
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
2. Adele – 21
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
3. Cliff Martinez with various artists – Drive (Original Movie Soundtrack)
Drive the film was bad-ass. Ask all my friends, I was obsessed with it. The soundtrack is very much a reason for the films incredible machismo. The 80s derived pulses are all encompassing. Walking down the street with this soundtrack in your headphones makes you instantly feel indestructible (warning: this can be dangerous is Los Angeles).
4. Bon Iver – Bon Iver
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
5. Grouplove – Never Trust a Happy Song
When I first met Hannah Hooper of Grouplove she was describing to me how she envisioned Grouplove’s tshirts (which the company I was working for was creating). We talked about color and I complimented the artwork she brought into the screenprinting shop. Before she and Grouplove’s manager left our office they set down a copy of their EP, which included versions of “Naked Kids” and “Colours“. The EP was brash. I waited close to a year to hear ‘Never Trust a Happy Song‘ and wasn’t disappointed. The album features the energy bands like Arcade Fire seem to have lost (or perhaps matured out of).
6. Black Keys – El Camino
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
7. Destroyer – Kaputt
Kaputt was gorgeous. It is a modern headphone album reminiscent of Animal Collective’s ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion‘. Tracks like “Downtown” pair 80s saxophones with distinct harmonies. The music is entrancing and layered deep enough to find new surprises with each play.
8. Tyler, The Creator – Goblin
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
9. Lil’ Wayne – Tha Carter IV
‘Tha Carter IV‘ for me is a classic hip-hop disc. Lil’ Wayne was by far 2011s boldest rap star. While Kanye and Jay-Z were busy declaring there dominance with world tours and a sub-par album, Lil’ Wayne was reminding us “How to Hate a Bitch”. The album is offensive, honest and on “How to Love” Weezy shocks us with a track that is so sensitive it is hard to believe it is coming from a Young Money Millionaire.
10. Drake – Take Care
Drake’s second full length album was nothing if not grandiose. A-list cameos and production alongside Drake’s smooth (and occasionally morose) rhymes made for 2011’s most accessible disc.
1 – Mogwai – Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will
Mogwai yet again releases an amazingly ambient yet centrally driving album filled with anticpatory progressions and songs that blend sonically disparate sections as if they were just one melodic chorus.
2 – Yeasayer – End Blood
Yeasayer’s ’End Blood‘ EP made the list thanks to its incredibly different acoustical musings from previous efforts. Described by the band as “two ideas that didn’t fit on (2010 album) Odd Blood” its a radical shift for the relatively newly established band, and hopefully the sound of things to come.
3 – Tech N9ne- All 6′s and 7′s
4 – Ashtar Command – American Sunshine
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
5 – Das Racist – Relax
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
6 – Sbtrkt – SBTRKT
7 – Yelawolf- Radioactive
8 – Atlas Sound – Parallax
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
9 – Sean Douglas – If We’re Dying
Sean Douglas fills a void in pop music with somewhat of a Billy Joel and Elton John have a threesome with The Fray sort of vibe. The emotions behind the songs are clear, the musical backing to his excellent and punchy voice is melodic and radio-ready, and the album as a whole works as a thoroughly orchestrated composition.
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
2. Adele – 21
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
3. The Decemberists – The King is Dead
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here
4. Rufus Wainwright – House of Rufus
A massive 19-disc box set of all the magic of Rufus—live performances, albums, singles and b-sides. Even though I could never afford this, it makes the list for best releases. And my Christmas wish list.
5. Bon Iver – Bon Iver
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here.
6. Paul Simon – So Beautiful or So What
I have always surrendered to anything written by Paul Simon, but this album has charm and wit in spades. He even managed to hold back on that penchant for African drumming.
7. Florence and the Machine – Ceremonials
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here.
8. City & Colour – Little Hell
Although I’m the first to admit this album doesn’t top City & Colour’s previous efforts, it says a lot that it still crushes most other releases of the year.
9. Cake – Showroom of Compassion
Made the Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011 list here.
10. J Mascis – Several Shades of Why
I’m not usually brave enough to name a favourite album, but this year it was easy. Mascis brings the power of Dinosaur Jr, the simplicity of bare and honest lyrics, and then his godlike guitar virtuosity, to bear in this true 2011 masterpiece.
Tv On The Radio didn’t take too long to follow up 2009′s brilliant ‘Dear Science,‘ and as usual didn’t disappoint. This time the Brooklyn outfit set up camp on the West Coast and the sunnier climate appears to have seeped through to these tracks.
With another mild change of direction the tracks on ’Nine Types Of Light‘ have borrowed some of the horns from its predecessor but definitely comes across as a more laid back affair.
Lyrically frontman Tunde Adebimpe and singer-guitarist Kyp Malone seem less preoccupied with tales of apocalypse and the end of the world and more focussed on making sure you tell the ones you love exactly how you feel for them. That this would be the last album Gerard Smith would appear on before his untimely death makes this all the more poignant.
Meanwhile, special praise should go to guitarist and producer extraordinaire Dave Sitek for realizing that the band’s sound needed a tweak and for incorporating some of the ideas he has been involved with in his “other” projects recently. TVOTR haven’t lost the electricity that initially made us fall in love with them, they have just refined the way they administer it to us.
Last year I sat through a blogger and A&R roundtable organized by one of the majors in London. In between talk of “organic artist growth” and “breakout singles” The name of the Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, and more specifically Tyler, The Creator‘s ‘Yonkers‘ video, came up several times as the label people seemed genuinely baffled by the success the collective were enjoying and the way they had gone about it.
Then in May he followed this up with his first non-independently released album ‘Goblin‘ acting as a metaphorical punch to the stomach. In between persistent arguments with his inner voices, tongue-in-cheek suggestions that we ”kill people, burn shit, fuck school” and general disclaimers to his position as hip hops posterchild Tyler spits some of the best venom since Eminem’s debut album.
Cole found himself asking ”Is ‘Goblin’ a comedy album? I still don’t know. Tracks like “Yonkers” are dark, featuring samples that seem to be pulled from horror films. The rhymes constantly reference murder and explicit sex, and flow slowly as if they were first written to be high school poems. The album confuses me to no end, and I can’t stop listening to it“.
The musical superduo Ashtar Command, composed of Chris Holmes (Sir Paul McCartney‘s go to DJ) and Brian Liesegang (Founding member of Filter) first showed up on our radar with a track on the PS3 game ‘Red Dead Redemption‘. Their debut album ‘American Sunshine‘ was an unexpected and delightful revelation.
Chief Cougar Microbes collaborator Kyle hailed it as an “incredible masterpiece that should be known collectively throughout the web as the most underrated album of 2011 .
The album is slightly conceptual, non-surprisingly themed around an “American Sunshine” indie-super-collabo-album idea. Which basically means they have everyone from Har Mar Superstar, Rachel Yamagata and Alex Ebert, to Joshua Radin and Z. Berg doing their thing.
However it never feels that these artists were just added in ‘just because’. There is no gimmick here, its pure music. The tracks combine a range of haunting algorithmic synth-outs to indie progressive rockfests that leave your ears and soul wanting more.
Hopefully Holmes and Liesegang feel that yearning and continue to release incredibly original and unique musical experiences long into the future. If 2012 isn’t the end of the world that is“.
It feels like it was only yesterday that we started hearing about The Decemberists. It amazes me to think that the band has released six official studio albums earning a spot amongst indie rocks biggest success stories. Cougar writer Emily added them to her list describing ‘The King Is Dead‘ as “A folky album with well-crafted song after well-crafted song; it is the quiet and beautiful dark horse in my collection this year“.
Jazmin mused that ” Something that makes The Decemberists one of my favourite bands is their ability to make each of their albums so very different but yet distinctively Decemberists-esque. The folk undertones of ‘The King is Dead’ are absolutely no exception.
Perhaps their best album since ‘Your Majesty’, ‘The King is Dead’ is the perfect mix of beautifully crafted acoustic melodies such as ‘June Hymn’ and singalong anthems such as ‘This Is Why We Fight’. If the best bands are those that keep evolving, The Decemberists’ 2011 outing is a case study in why they’re already a step ahead of the rest“.
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