Well, I always promise myself that I won’t do a best of this year, but I end up doing something that looks quite like a best of-list. I listen to A LOT of music in a lot of different genres, and I always find it difficult to range albums from 1-10 or even 1-100, so here are the albums I have enjoyed the most in 2011. Why should there be only one winner, when there are so many great albums and bands out there?
There are also lots of other bands that I would love to add here, but they haven’t released an album yet, so this is my way of narrowing it down…
In 2011, I have listened to music a bit differently than other years. I have started walking a lot, and I listen to music with headphones, often on shuffle, and often more upbeat music than what I usually listen to. This has some influence on my list as well. The music on my list is in many genres, both indiepop, folk, electronica and experimental/neoclassical.
Here are my favourites listed by when I heard them first/when they were released (some may have been released properly later, but I may have listened to an advance promo). What are your favourites?
My absolute favourites are in italic, but all these albums have made an impression on me.
(My fav songs of the year should be somewhere in this huge “all loved songs”-Spotify playlist collected through the year: all loved songs)
JANUARY
The Andersen Tapes – as I write “today” ten times
Minks – By the hedge
The Babies – s/t
Brave Irene – s/t
Dark dark dark – wild go
Deerhoof – deerhoof vs evil
Hannah Peel – Broken wave
Seabright – dark city EP
Zoey van Goey – propeller versus wings
Agnes Obel – Philharmonics
Casa Murilo – Lifting Ships
La Bien Querida – Fiesta
Sister Crayon – Below
Tape – Revelationes
Cloud Nothings – s/t
FEBRUARY
Hong Kong in the 60s – My Fantoms
Jenny Hval – Viscera
John Olav Nilsen & Gjengen – Det nærmeste du kommer
King Creosote/Jon Hopkins – Diamond mine
La Sera – La Sera
Mary Me Young – In Pearls and gold
PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
Psychic Powers – Infinity
The Radio Dept – Passive Aggressive
Ringo Deathstarr – Colour trip
Shrag – Ghosts before breakfast
Tune Yards – Whokill
Prefuse 73 – One word extinguisher
Young girls – young girls
Girls Names – Dead to me
Mylittlepony – Making marks
Help stamp out loneliness – s/t
Kids on a crime spree – we love you so bad
Epic 45 – weathering
Vetiver – The errant charm
Dustin O’Halloran – Vorleben
Mechanical Bride – Living with ants
Fred i Son – Diu que no sap que vol
MARCH
Acid House Kings – Music Sounds better with you
Amor de Dias – Street of the love of days
Beach Fossils – What a pleasure
Bill Wells/Aidan Moffat – Everything’s getting older
Craft Spells – Idle Labor
Dignan Porch – deluded
Found – factorycraft
Fredrik – flora
Glyphs – glyphs
Hauschka – salon des amateurs
Johan Heltne – Sara
Kakkmaddafakka – Hest
The Ladybug Transistor – Clutching Stems
Let’s Whisper – The shortest days
MJ Hibbett – Wonderful Wednesday
The Pains of being Pure at heart – Belong
Stars in Coma – Midnight Puzzle
Syd Lane – Hypatia
APRIL
Lake – giving and receiving
Razika – Program 91
Sara Lowes – Back to creation
Various – Love letter to Japan
Unknown Mortal Orchestra – s/t
Smith Westerns – Dye it blonde
Sbtrkt -Sbtrkt
MAY
Baths – Pop music/False B-sides
Brown Recluse – evening tapestry
Comet gain – howl of the lonely crowd
Cults – Cults
Fleet foxes – helplessness blues
the Leisure Society – into the murky water
Solander – Passing mt. Satu
Son Lux – We are rising
Tiny Microphone – Home
Woods – Sun and shade
Various – For Nihon
Emmy the Great – Virtue
Cat’s Eyes – Cat’s Eyes
JUNE
Army Navy – The last place
Biosphere – N-Plants
Butcher the bar – For each a future tethered
Conquering Animal Sound – Kammerspiel
Oh Minnows – For Shadows
Seabright – feel good
Seapony – Go with me
Teruyuki Nobuchika – Sonorite
Butcher Boy – Helping Hands
Säkert – Säkert på engelska
Little Dragon – Ritual Union
Crystal Stilts – In love with oblivion
JULY
The Advisory Circle – As the crows flies
Big Troubles – Romantic comedy
Brilliant Colors – Again and again
Catnaps – Why don’t you whisper?
Folly and the hunter – residents
Moustache of insanity – album of death
The Nocturnes – Aokigahara
Pallers – come rain come sunshine
Release the sunbird – come back to us
Soft Metals – s/t
Widowspeak – widowspeak
William Fitzsimmons – Gold in the shadow
Lucy Wainwright Roche – Lucy
Soley – we sink
AUGUST
Bart & Friends – Stories with the endings changed
Benjamin Francis Leftwich – Last smoke before the snowstorm
Big Deal – Lights Out
Dark Captain – Dead Legs & Alibis
Dum Dum Girls – Only in dreams
Emily & The Faves – s/t
Grimes – Geidi Primes
Hello Moon – Only count the sunny hours
International waters – 1994
Parker Lewis – Pengar & Leenden
Peggy Sue – Acrobats
Pocketbooks – Carousel
Snowblink – long live
Someone still loves you boris yeltsin – tape club
Wisdom Tooth – Somnambulist
Veronica Falls – s/t
Lanterns on the lake – gracious tide, take me home
SEPTEMBER
Lizard Kisses – Tiny Island Teeth
Mara Carlyle – Floreat
Oblako Lodka – s/t
Slow Club – Paradise
Tiny Ruins – Some were meant for sea
A Winged Victory for Sullen – s/t
Spectrals – Bad Penny
Real Estate – Days
Modular – Sinfonias Para Terricolar
Wilco – The whole love
Promise and the monster – red tide
Giorgio Tuma – In the morning we’ll meet
OCTOBER
Bombadil – All the rain promises
Gospel Music – How to get to heaven from Jacksonville, Florida
Wake the president – Zumutung!
Jonathan Johansson – Klagomuren
Crystal Fighters – Star of love
The Hardy Boys – British Melancholy
Mayer Hawthorne – How do you do
Team Me – To the treetops
DJ Shadow – the less you know, the better
LAMA – Endless repeats
Herostratos – Featherweight
NOVEMBER
Goldmund – all will prosper
High Highs – High Highs
Blouse – Blouse
Doldrums – Empire Sound
Anna Ternheim – The night visitor
Loch Lomond – Little me will start a storm
The Sound of Arrows – Voyage
My Sad Captains – Fight less win more
My Brightest Diamond – All things will unwind
DECEMBER
Azure Blue – Rule of Thirds
Bears – Greater Lakes
Standard Fare – Out of sight, out of town
Dillon – This silence kills
Austra – feel it break
Should – a folding sieve
Hans Appelqvist – sjunga slutet nu
Big Fox – Big Fox
Kathryn Calder – Are you my mother?
Misophone – Songs from an attic
