ILM's Top 77 ALBUMS of 2011

If Lex doesn't like it it's bound to be good.

haha lex you're always saying things like 'feeble'. You prefer strong and muscular music?

Listening to "It's Real." Sounds more swedish than jangle to me -- I imagine that if I listened to this 10 times I'd find it really dug into me, the way those Club 8 records do, but I'd have to listen to it 10 times to find out. "Slight" is about right.

so many ilxors had never heard hardcore vox before?

― Armand Schaubroeck Ratfucker, Tuesday, January 31, 2012 12:08 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i like fucked up but the whole thing of people marveling about OMG A SHOUTY HARDCORE BAND GOT A BONER FOR THE SOFT BULLETIN gets a bit much

also no one who listens to black metal gets to complain abt hardcore vox

― the 500 gats of bartholomew thuggins (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, January 31, 2012 12:09 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

have heard tons of hardcore vocals over the years (love john brannon, for instance), but 9 times out of ten, "hoarsely bellowing angryman" is not a sound i enjoy. at least not in recorded music - can def be cathartic live. i'm more a punk than a HC fan, and when i do like HC, i like it in small doses & with the tuff-guy shit dialed down.

dying crow style BM vocals are much easier for me to digest, probably because they seem more weird than belligerent - the he-man testosterone frenzy isn't such a factor.

Sort of early REM meets Unrest meets Heavenly.

Lacks the urgency of early REM and Unrest, lacks the amiable amateurishness of Unrest and Heavenly

Marling was my #1, btw. I don't prefer this LP to her previous one, but I do think it is more of a piece, and I like the darker route she's heading down lyrically. She's probably the most interesting young singer/songwriter around atm.

Also voted for the Tom Waits and Fucked Up.

There was one track on the Grouper album I was quite taken with, but the album didn't find a place on my ballot in the end. Couldn't really get into it.

haha lex you're always saying things like 'feeble'. You prefer strong and muscular music?

i like slight records when they're very still, like phaedra or mirel wagner

slight jangly guitar pop is my idea of hell though to be fair

like that real estate record, it feels slight but i think jangle pop is kinda slight by nature
no way. lots of music i love, i mean LOVE, could be classified as jangle pop: the feelies, the smiths, the whole sarah catalogue etc. but it does not feel slight by any means. it may feel bright or light but not slight. not sure about that real estate yet, the vibe is great but i am not sure about the quality of the songs.

Jesus you guys, how do you like your milquetoast in the morning?

it's nice sometimes not to have a songwriter telegraph 60 seconds in advance exactly when a song is going to end.

this fucked up album is really good. Why didn't I hear it earlier.
It just missed out in metal poll top 125 I think.

a fucked up album cannot be good, it can only be fucked up. which it is by the way. q.e.d.

it's just so aimless

so wrong.

My number 1. Based solely on the fact that it was by far the most-listened to album of 2011 for me. First few times it felt like 'nice vibes' and great for driving on late summer days etc....but somewhere around the fifth or sixth time "Municpality" and the final track started clicking and I began to like every individual track. I think it's too straightforward to be considered some sort of paragon of P4k indie. Tellingly my mother asked if it was "easy listening". Lovely stuff.

Jesus you guys, how do you like your milquetoast in the morning?

Guilty as charged, though for me it's more of an evening background music album. If I focus on it too much, it can become slightly annoying.

http://i.imgur.com/nzVwd.jpg

42. Radiohead — King of Limbs (362 points, 13 votes)

P4K: DNP
P&J: 33

Spotify

sadly, my #1 being a less hyped indie record than Days means it's probably out of the running

a fucked up album cannot be good, it can only be fucked up. which it is by the way. q.e.d.

rmde

oh right there was a radiohead record this year

found King of Limbs dull. then again it took two years for me to come around to In Rainbows so...ya never know.

very sad that new Radiohead/Yorke albums are no longer exciting.

i listened to the second half of this way more than the first half

Shit of Limbs more like.

especially "Codex" which was really pretty

i loved that real estate record but i dont think i voted for it

same for war on drugs-- honestly assumed most ILM ppl would hate it!

Hey do you guys like the band Radiohead?

42 counts as low enough to count as a victory right?

i didn't know there was an actual radiohead album out, they always seem to be in the background getting in the music press for marketing their music in some unexpectedly quirky guerrilla fashion and i always try to pay as little attention as i can

I quite liked Little By Little and Give Up The Ghost, but they're more like quite decent b-sides than anything else.

Save us Johnny Fever!

#42 is accurate. It was good enough to place.

last one for the day real quick

http://i.imgur.com/ynGFR.jpg

41. Andy Stott — Passed Me By/We Stay Together (363 points, 13 votes)

P4K: DNP
P&J: 157

Fuck yeah

my relation to radiohead is strange. when i heard "creep" it made an impression. everything else until amnesiac totally passed me by. amnesiac ruled my world in 2001. the next one, name forgotten, was still good though a little on the too mcuh on the stadium rock side of things. everything after i didn't care anymore. i have the feeling their big time is over. and i don't regret it.

I've enjoyed TKoL whenever I've played it, and I put it on the lower half of my ballot after one such listening session...but tbh the only song I remember anything about now is Little by Little.

i tried to get into andy stott last year but couldn't, neither made much of an impression, rather like actress previously. i don't think i "get" music this abstract

TOO LOOOOOW

sorry about my terrible english...

and what does rmde mean, jon?

I can get behind the Andy Stott, even if its a just an album length exploration of sidechain compression.

this one is such a grower, took me about 3 months of listening to it a couple times a week and then it just completely flipped my wig

White Denim's album is worth checking out if you kind of want Radiohead to get off their electronic horse and get onto something else.

can someone post a list of all the albums so far thx

Andy Stott's pretty good, yep.

The best Radiohead song from this year was "The Daily Mail", imho.

I only got the Andy Stott very recently.. A good companion to this is Perc's 'Wicker & Steel' album, which didn't get nominated but has more of a pummelling techno style.

42 counts as low enough to count as a victory right?

i didn't know there was an actual radiohead album out, they always seem to be in the background getting in the music press for marketing their music in some unexpectedly quirky guerrilla fashion and i always try to pay as little attention as i can

― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend)

Sometimes it seems like you're happier when artists you hate place low than when artists you actually do like place high or at all. Also if you do try to pay little attention why do you bother to posting when Radiohead do appear in these lists? I think everyone on here knows just how much how you hate them by now. I'm not a fan of this album by the way, just wondered why you have to comment everytime they appear?

xp to Radiohead: The moment in "Codex" where the horns come in is really startling and happy-making. There's something very "movie score" about this song and it's working for me.

"Little by Little" -- love this opening, the notes are very carefully strewn around in a late-Pavement kind of way (but it may just be the guitar tone that's making me think of Pavement here.) Love the way the drums are insistent but very quiet.

I'm also a guy who never listens to Radiohead, but this may just be a stupid mistake on my part.

never heard of andy stott before but this track "dark details" sounds interesting (except the technically slowed down vocals)

http://youtu.be/bHweamNAkjY

never really heard about sidechain compression before, looking it up...

so is that how stott creates that vacuum on the bass drum hit that makes my entire room throb?

my problem with real estate (since i'm contractually obligated to have a problem with 6 out of every 7 albums listed) is that "fake blues" is so incredibly fucking great. maybe it's unfair to damn a band for being overshadowed by a single favorite song, but so be it. "fake blues" got me interested in real estate and matt mondanile/ducktails a couple years back, but it also hung heavy over their debut album, calling attention to the fact that, absent a few more tunes of that caliber, the pleasant vibes just aren't enough. days doesn't even have one song that hits me as hard.

this threads going to be all about how you all hate Radiohead until J0rdan posts the next album tomorrow isn't it?