(Nearly) Best of 2011

Obviously there were more than ten decent records released in 2011, so here's another ten that could easily have made my list but fell just short of the final cut :


David Lynch - Crazy Clown Time

Nothing too surprising on here if you're a serious Lynchead - eerie Americana much like the incidental music from his flicks. Karen O guests on the opening track but he's resisted bringing in a bunch of hipster indie guest vocalists to rake in the cash and done most of the hard work himself. This sounds like the audio equivalent of those photo exhibitions he does with stuff like half-melted snowmen in Mid-Western back yards and bleak landscape shots. Nice stuff Dave, now quit wasting your time opening Parisian nightclubs I can't afford to go to and make another fucking film.

Wild Flag - s/t

Girl band royalty form new band (I don't like the term supergroup) and crank out bitchin' debut record! I was never that into Sleater-Kinney but when I heard that two of them had teamed up with the chick from 90s grunge starlets Helium, I was pretty keen to hear the results which turned out to be pretty damn good. Four-way girl rock in the vein of early Breeders, the pop end of L7 and the best bits of all their previous groups, this is a big colourful treat of a record. Everything on here is bright, snappy and life-affirming - they slot in perfectly with the current crop of girl groups that they influenced back in the day and keep it fresh, new and catchy. Welcome back!


Jesu - Ascension

Justin Broadrick nails it AGAIN - nobody else can do sad/heavy in quite the same way as this guy. In the post-Godflesh landscape he's started well and gotten even better - 'Ascension' matches their unfeasibly great debut from 2005 and see their sound swell and evolve to new heights of gorgeous melancholy. Jesu are like the audio equivalent of Vicks Vapo-Rub - a tonic to your ills that makes the recovery process almost worth getting sick for. Visceral yet soothing at the same time, this is a redemptive journey to the higher spheres of guitar music. Ascendant, if you will.


Cat's Eyes - s/t

Faris from The Horrors plus some chick that sounds like Nancy Sinatra go retro and pull off an unexpected blinder. I say that because side projects often suck, mainly due to the fact that they often represent vanity projects made up of material the creator's other groups rightly turned down because it wasn't any good. Fortunately, The Horrors are a group of such weirdos that any one of them could probably go away and knock together something decent that sounds nothing like their other stuff. This is half an hour of sublime 60s style girl band pop, great for playing in the club and a cracking debut, whether or not they follow it up.


Dum Dum Girls - Only in dreams

Another one that goes without saying. I'd have probably put this in my top ten had I not already done that with their debut in 2010 - this one sounds a bit more polished than their first one but they've lost none of their charm in the transition, Dee Dee's songs have just taken a step closer to becoming the massive hits they deserve to be. Every track on here is punchy, catchy and guaranteed to put a smile on your face - put all that in a live setting with four black-clad babes playing it and the smile gets even wider, at least in my case. Same time next year ladies?


Africa Hitech - 93 Million Miles

Looking back at my list it seems somewhat dominated by rock music, which is probably as good a reply as you'll need to the continued assertion in the hipster press that 'guitar music is dead'. That's not to say there wasn't any decent electronic stuff this year, but there's plenty of zeitgeist-chasing to put you off the genre. '93 million miles' fall through the cracks a bit, eschewing underground scene trends as well as anthemic commercialism to bring you an eclectic mix of noobly bleeps and ponderous techno twiddling that's ideal for a bit of public transport headphone action. Mellow but not bland, colourful but not invasive, it's one tasty electronic slurpy.

The Pains of being pure at heart - Belong

Even the NME called these guys out for being pussies when this LP landed early last year. The NME!! I felt the same way about their first record but this follow-up had enough 4AD-style indie crunch to it to make me sit up and listen. This sounds like all those jumper clad Scottish indie groups, all girl/guy vocals and lyrics about general inadequecy offset with swathes of guitar noise - anything too twee and wimpy still gets balanced out with a good chunk of robust feedback and infectious volume. Nothing too original admittedly, but 'Belong' surprised me by how much it didn't suck and stayed on my stereo for much of early 2011.


Windmills by the Ocean - II

This is probably more of an EP than a full-length, five tracks clocking in at just under half an hour - that said, the LPs from Teeth and Cat's Eyes both lasted about that long so I suppose it depends what you do with the time at hand. I know absolutely nothing about Windmills apart from that they play colossal post-rock soundscape stuff and this is presumably their second record. This reminds me of Cult of Luna when they whip up a racket that makes you feel like you're on a cliff edge watching a sonic shitstorm bearing down on you. It's pretty fucking epic. If they can figure out a way to power wind turbines with this they'll coin it in.


The Fall - Ersatz GB

Another year, another good Fall album. Mark E. Smith is a bit like Lemmy these days - gnarly old dudes stuck in their ways who having been doing this shit so long that they can knock out a good album every year or two despite touring constantly and being about 1000 years old. I saw The Fall in April 2011 and they still knock you out - Smith's gone the tried and tested route of drafting in younger musicians to keep it fresh, including a rhythm section that look like they're fresh out of the local rugby league squad and another female keyboard player he's probably shagging. We need dudes like him to keep standards high. Keep 'em coming Mark!

Suuns - Zeroes QC

Another one I know virtually nothing about - I can't put my finger on what these guys are doing, there's elements of loopy electronica on here plus weird saxophone noises and plonky keyboard stuff, but they can lean back and rock out pretty hard when they want to. Their main strength is that every track on here is almost embarassingly catchy - this shit is addictive, I can't work out what's going on but I like it a lot. Like the Witch House stuff that landed in 2010, this holds a certain fascination for me because I don't know who the fuck they're making this music for. It's all too much to deal with. I love it, I just don't know why it exists.