2011 Best Albums by MM

Another year is about to end. Life keeps moving despite our efforts to slow down time and it relentlessly shape us into different things.

Life has no mercy and we evolve and morph to become progressively a different person. Some days we are happy and everything seems complete. Music is there celebrating our victories and adding to our joy. Others, we are deep down in sadness, remembering moments that made us cry, weeping about loves that never worked out, frustrated about things that turned out exactly the way it shouldn’t. Those days, music is there too, adding to our suffering, removing tears from our eyes, making us feel as if we would not belong anywhere, as if there is no fix to our problems. Also from time to time, music brings hope. And listening to a song will convince you could do it all, that you are close, that things will change and that life will eventually become everything you want it to.

Life is hard, but in the end, music stays, life moves on.

Summarizing the best music of a year is essentially trying to write an abstract of your life over a period of time. Our end-of-the-year lists talk about who we are and who are we about to become. Our lists tell a lot about our joys, our defeats and the hopes we carry through life.

My list for 2011 is no exception, and it encompasses the music that had walked, run, or flown with me through this year. As objective as I try to be all the time, my list is undoubtedly full of feelings, fears, ambitions and desires. It is as I said, a part of me, a description of MM during 2011.

Below, my top 15 albums of this year, a collection of good music that will stay with us forever. I hope you like it.

1 Bon Iver - Bon Iver

“Not the needle, nor the thread, the lost decree
Saying nothing, that's enough for me
And at once I knew I was not magnificent
Hulled far from the highway aisle
(Jagged vacance, thick with ice)
I could see for miles, miles, miles” from Holocene – Track 3

2 The King of Limbs – Radiohead

“No one gets hurt
You’ve done nothing wrong
Slide your hand
Jump off the end
The water's clear and innocent” from Codex – Track 6

3 Burst Apart - The Antlers

“If the wheels jump off the road,
There’s no widows left to know,
No perfect love above,
No punishment below” from No Widows – Track 4

4 Helplessness Blues - Fleet Foxes

“I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me” from Helplessness Blues – Track 6

5 The Year of Hibernation - Youth Lagoon

“When I was seventeen,
My mother said to me
"Don't stop imagining. The day that you do is the day that you die."
Now I pull a wanton carriage,
Instead of the horses, grazing along.
I was having fun. We were all having fun” from 17 – Track 4


6 Smother - Wild Beasts

“Boy what you running from?... Boy?


Cause it's a terrible scare,

But that's why the dark is there,

So you don't have to see what you can't bear,

The lion's share" from Lions Share – Track 1

7 Yuck – Yuck

“Did you see the fire brigade?
Steed heavy and filled with rage
Through the city dissolve my fire
After dinner I was burning with desire
They can never burn out my love for you” from Suck – Track 7

8 The Rip Tide – Beirut

“Sound is the color I know,
Sound is what keeps me looking for your eyes,
And sound of your breath in the cold,
And oh, sound will bring me home again. from East Harlem – Track 3

9 Go Tell Fire to the Mountain - WU LYF

“And I said son
You know I love you forever
Your faith is true
You know I love you forever
But my blood runs blue” from LYF – Track 1

10 Circuital - My Morning Jacket

"With the sun on my shoulder
And the wind in my back
I will never grow older
At least not in my mind
I feel so wonderful, wonderful, wonderful the way I feel” from Wonderful (The Way I Feel) – Track 4

11 Father, Son, Holy Ghost – Girls

“Oh god, I'm tired
And my heart is broken
It's so hard to feel so all alone
And so far
So far away from home” from My Ma’ – Track 5

12 Dye it Blonde - Smith Westerns

“I want to shine before I show up
I want to die with my chin up
And definitely maybe I will live to love
Definitely maybe I will live to love” from All Die Young – Track 4

13 James Blake - James Blake

“Kestrels breed

Looking farther than I can see

Without talked to read

She'll take a shining to me


Beacon, don't fly too high” from Lindisfarne I – Track 4

14 Conatus - Zola Jesus

“When the only one sticks around
When they call your name out of a crowd
When you say you don’t hurt when I am going alone
And you know it don’t hurt but I keep it strong so I don’t try to go” from Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake – Track 8

15 Smoke Ring for my Halo - Kurt Vile

“In the morning I'm not done sleeping

In the evening I guess I'm alive

It's alright to still peel myself up sleepwalking

In a ghost town” from Ghost Town – Track 10



BONUS:

Finally, since I know some folks use this blog as a source for good music, I include a complementary list of albums from this year that I highly recommend…I know it’s too much, but so what!

16 Skying - The Horrors
17 Celebration Florida - The Felice Brothers
18 Last Night on Earth - Noah & The Whale
19 The Big Roar - The Joy Formidable
20 The King is Dead - The Decemberists
21 We Are the Tide - Blind Pilot
22 Cults - Cults
23 Kaputt - Destroyer
24 Days - Real Estate
25 Let England Shake - P.J. Harvey
26 El Camino -The Black Keys
27 Civilian - Wye Oak
28 Build a Rocket Boys - Elbow
29 Canta Lechuza - Helado Negro
30 Departing - The Rural Alberta Advantage

Enjoy,

MM

(@MMLeiner)