Our Year in Music 2011 coverage has already featured our Listener's Poll Top 100 Spins and our Top Ten Videos of 2011. "Take Your Medicine" by The Quick & Easy Boys was voted song of the year and "Dum Dum Dah Dah" by The Nghiems took top honors as video of the year, and in case you missed them, you can link back to the articles.
Today's feature is The Top 20 Mainstream Albums of the Year. Mini-reviews of these albums that have been posted elsewhere will be credited with links to the entire review, and I will select my personal favorite tracks from each album.
Later this week we will list our Top 50 Independent Albums Of The Year, the Year in Photos and (MY FAVORITE) the Best & Worst Album Covers of the year, along with our list of Top Compilation and EP releases of the year.
Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful and musically enriched New Year. I thank you for listening to Jivewired Radio and for supporting indie music, and I hope you will continue to listen throughout the new year.
Best wishes for a musically-enriched 2012,
Mike
And now, on to the Top 20 Mainstream Albums of 2011 (#1-10)...
01. El Camino by The Black Keys
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
The bottom line is that El Camino is a catchier, glitzier, ballsier BKs. Pre-release, Auerbach and Carney cited the Clash and the Cramps as inspirations, and you can hear their spirit in the speedy blitz of Camino's "Dead and Gone" and "Money Maker," the latter a stellar addition to the songs-about-crafty-hookers canon. But the new songs are far more tricked-out than any of the recordings by those aforementioned bands, or "Tighten Up," or anything on 2008's Attack and Release, a far more reserved full-length Danger Mouse-Keys collaboration.
Each track here is modded with classic cock-rock sonic tchotchkes: handclaps, talk-box guitar breaks, rainbow keyboards. The overall effect is something akin to ZZ Top with glitter in their beards. Which is to say: great. "Sister" slathers a fatback beat (you feel for Carney's kit, he hammers it so hard) and eighth-note guitar chug with spicy instrumental countermelodies. It's greasy boogie bliss.
-- Spin Magazine
Best Songs: Lonely Boy, Hell Of A Season, Dead And Gone, Sister, Money Maker, Gold On The Ceiling
Team Photo: Stop Stop, Nova Baby
02. The Whole Love by Wilco
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
Wilco are releasing The Whole Love on their own label, dBpm, underscoring their vaunted artistic independence; they're pretty much the only band from the Nineties this side of Radiohead who keep experimenting and growing their audience at the same time. The Whole Love seems like a celebration of that freedom, with songs that roam happily all over the place: "Capitol City" is a country waltz with bits of Dixieland clarinet, "Sunloathe" sounds like the Beatles if they were still together in 1974, and the vaguely psychedelic folk-pop title track takes Simon and Garfunkel's 59th Street Bridge down to the Small Faces' Itchycoo Park for a summer-breezin' picnic.
It all suggests a jam band a hipster could love, with every note so tasty and rich you need to hit the gym after a couple of listens. Thankfully, noise-loving guitarist Nels Cline and the restless rhythm section of bassist John Stirratt and drummer Glenn Kotche make sure some of the soft moments aren't too snuggly. That hey-what-the-hell casualness extends to Tweedy, whose tendency to start each of his singer-songwriter meditations with the same "Dust in the Wind" chord progression is almost confrontationally laid back. You gotta hand it to a guy who can sing "Sadness is my luxury" (on "Born Alone") and sound like he's takin' it easy rollin' down Ventura Highway.
-- Rolling Stone Magazine
Best Songs: One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend), Whole Love, I Might, Capitol City, Dawned On Me
Team Photo: Rising Red Lung, Sunloathe, Art Of Almost
03. Let England Shake by PJ Harvey
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
Let England Shake – a genuinely great piece of war art – was made by a woman, too, though in 2011 we really should have moved beyond finding this unusual. But Harvey's gender, and her upbringing on a Dorset farm, are both inherent to its greatness.
Female singer-songwriters are supposed to be winsome things who write about their feelings for guys. Here, we have a 42-year-old woman stringing guts up in trees while attacking a zither. Folk singer Linda Thompson, part of a panel of judges who voted Let England Shake Uncut magazine's album of the year (it won the Mercury prize, and was Mojo and NME's album of the year, too) put it like this: "I was impressed that a woman could go through a whole album and not mention some stupid bloke, except a stupid dead bloke."
-- guardian.co.uk
Best Songs: Let England Shake, The Last Living Rose, The Words That Maketh Murder, All and Everyone, On Battleship Hill
Team Photo: In the Dark Places, Hanging in the Wire, Written on the Forehead
04. Collapse Into Now by R.E.M.
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
It's been 30 years since these Georgia boys released their debut indie single, "Radio Free Europe"/"Sitting Still," which basically invented everything halfway interesting that guitar bands have done ever since. They long ago passed the point where they're beloved just for continuing to exist. But on Collapse Into Now, they sound like they'd rather be a band than a legend, which must be why they keep pushing on. Who knows if Whitman or Patti Smith is proud — but R.E.M. should be.
-- Rolling Stone Magazine
Best Songs: It Happened Today, Oh My Heart, Uberlin, Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I, Mine Smell Like Honey
Team Photo: Blue, Discoverer
05. Lioness: Hidden Treasures by Amy Winehouse
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
“Lioness” only begins to hint at the kind of affection Winehouse inspired — she duets with rap icons and Tony Bennett here. That’s because for all Winehouse’s deep, fatal flaws, her immense talent was fueled by a compelling openness and vulnerability.
The 12-song compilation is slight on new insights — it’s hard to tell what an umpteenth version of “Girl From Ipanema” adds to her legacy. But as vault-emptying collections go, “Lioness” helps rebut the tabloid qualities of her life and death, and return some of the focus back to what won her such allegiance — her voice.
-- L.A. Times
Best Songs: Wake Up Alone, Our Day Will Come, Valerie
Team Photo: Tears Dry On Their Own
06. Watch The Throne by Jay-Z & Kanye West
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
Jay and 'Ye (who've taken to calling themselves the Throne) may be obsessed with their own king-size lives, but the tone here is serious, sober, weighty – more "American Dreamin'" than "Big Pimpin'," more "Can't Tell Me Nothing" than "Touch the Sky." Jay-Z and Kanye aren't nouveau riche upstarts. They're hip-hop monarchs, and Watch the Throne doesn't shrink from its own hype. The songs are packed with samples of some of the most hallowed figures in African-American music – James Brown, Otis Redding, Nina Simone – and it's clear that Jay and Kanye consider those greats their peers. This is an album that takes aim at the history books.
-- Rolling Stone Magazine
Best Songs: Otis, New Day, Murder Excellence
Team Photo: Who Gon' Stop Me
07. Revelator by Tedeschi Trucks Band
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
The 11-piece band that is the Tedeschi Trucks Band yield an end product that combines both Derek and Susan’s individual styles yet opens the listener to an unrestraint that could only be captured in this type of environment. Susan’s vocals define passion and soul that are rooted in blues but are delivered so smoothly and effortlessly. Within the verses on tracks like “Come See About Me” and “Don’t Let Me Slide,” Trucks remains set in the background acting as the reply to Susan’s voice. His slide range nearly complements her as a harmonic voice, though it his guitar providing the sound. “Gonna carry this dream to the other side of town,” sings Tedeschi on “Midnight In Harlem,” a song written by DTB singer Mike Mattison that picks up with Trucks’ solo and exits easily with the help of the horn and sax combo. “Bound For Glory” follows immediately, a courageous song that brings Susan in the foreground the most on the album, especially noted in the uplifting chorus.
-- Glide Magazine
Best Songs: Until You Remember, Learn How To Love, Midnight In Harlem
Team Photo: Don't Let Me Slide
08. Ashes & Fire by Ryan Adams
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
This time out, we have a happy (we hope) and clean (we'll take his word) Adams, making perhaps his sparest, mellowest record to date. His wife makes an appearance, singing a lovely, high harmony, and his friend Norah Jones pitches in, too. At the controls is the venerable Glyn Johns (father of Adams' sometime producer, Ethan Johns), who, at nearly 70, has records to his credit by The Who, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and more.
The result, Ashes & Fire, is soulful and low-key; not without edge but certainly more lean and hushed than, say, Easy Tiger. The lyrics are considerably softer — "I will shelter you with my love and my forgiveness," he sings, later adding, "Do you believe in love?" — but he's allowed to have a honeymoon record, right?
-- NPR Music
Best Songs: Invisible Riverside, Dirty Rain, Do I Wait, Lucky Now
Team Photo: Kindness
09. Stone Rollin' by Raphael Saddiq
Buy It At:
Artist Website | Amazon | iTunes
With Stone Rollin', California's vintage soul man is doubling down on the classic R&B while drawing from a deeper well and muddying up the water. Hitsville is still part of the formula, but so now are Howlin' Wolf and Sly Stone. Rhyming over a rollicking guitar lick shaken from the tree of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, Saadiq sounds like he's never had more fun than on the sock-hop ready "Radio." The former Tony Toni Toné frontman plays nearly every instrument himself but enlists the top-shelf talent of Robert Randolph's steel guitar on "Day Dreams" and Earth, Wind & Fire keyboardist Larry Dunn on "Just Don't." From swampy roadhouse blues on the title track to soaring orchestral harmonies in "Go to Hell," Saadiq's latest filters a dizzying spectrum of black music history through his unique modern lens. Like the album opener, Stone Rollin' is serious as a "Heart Attack."
-- Austin Chronicle
Best Songs: Heart Attack, Radio, Stone Rollin', Good Man
Team Photo: Movin' Down The Line
10. Mission Bell by Amos Lee
Buy It At:
Band Website | Amazon | iTunes
Amos Lee is a 32-year-old soul man with a voice that blends James Taylor and Bill Withers. Lee's singing is both seductive and a little anonymous, his persona often dissolving into a tasteful mix of predictable lyrics and buttery timbres. For that reason, like his labelmate Norah Jones, Lee is a great foil, and the standouts on his chart-topping fourth album — cut with cowboy-mystic indie rockers Calexico providing moody backup — are the cameo tracks. Lucinda Williams is a trembling lover on "Clear Blue Eyes." And on "Behind Me Now/El Camino (Reprise)," Willie Nelson drops in for a duet that's whiskey and cool water: a perfect mix.
-- Rolling Stone Magazine
Best Songs: Jesus, Windows Are Rolled Down, Clear Blue Eyes
Team Photo: El Camino, Behind Me Now/El Camino (Reprise), Learned A Lot
View Albums #11 - #20 here: Top 20 Mainstream Albums of 2011 (#11-20)
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