ALBUMS OF 2011

Even though, if Universal and EMI have their way, there will soon be just three majors left, it’s only the musical mainstream that keeps shrinking. The amount of great music made outside of that mainstream keeps increasing year by year. Consequently, and as usual, connections have been made between albums on this list in order to squeeze in more than the fifty advertised. This, as ever, doesn’t necessarily mean that albums bracketed with others would not have made a shorter list in their own right, and still there are those that didn’t make it that would considerably enrich any collection.

For example, it seems unthinkable to have no Bill Frisell album on the list in a year when he released two, one comprising his reimagining of John Lennon songs. Similarly, there were two by Thea Gilmore, a fine song by song revisiting of Bob Dylan’s “John Wesley Harding” and a collection of previously unrecorded Sandy Denny songs, while Cass McCombs released two of his own material.

South African songwriters I’d like to have found a place for were Chris Letcher, whose very good “Spectroscope” was perhaps not quite as impressive as its exceptional predecessor, “Frieze”, and newcomer Brendon Shields, whose high quality, lo-fi debut, “Truth And Recession”, was an unexpected gem. West Africans Sidi Touré and Boubacar Traoré both made outstanding albums and, from the same part of the world, Vieux Farka Touré and Seun Kuti, sons of famous fathers, each took a step towards their own wider renown.

Other outstanding debuts included those by young Danish punks Iceage, Scottish noise-poppers Veronica Falls, Cashier No 9, which I bought in a London shop about a minute and a half into the opening track, and a couple of fine new bands from the Sub Pop stable, the Head & the Heart and Still Corners. Transplanted New Zealander Ruban Neilson’s Unknown Mortal Orchestra made a marvellous record, full of wonderfully skewed and slanted tunes and ideas, that dropped off the list at the final reckoning, while there were sturdy if unspectacular folk efforts by Eliza Carthy, her cousins Marry Waterson and Oliver Knight, and the Unthanks. Wolves In The Throne Room and the mighty Earth, who will have influenced a couple of bands that did make the list, made a thunderous racket, Radiohead and the Horrors, highly praised elsewhere, were worth a look, and Feist and Lykke Li flew the female songwriter flag high. Young bluegrass related practitioners Sarah Jarosz, Joy Kills Sorrow and especially Abigail Washburn made excellent records as, in the same general field, did the older, wiser Alison Krauss, the positively grizzled Peter Rowan and Punch Brothers banjo virtuoso Noam Pikelny, and there’d have been an old school soul record on the list too if the material on very late starter Charles Bradley’s debut had consistently matched his voice and the quality of two or three of the songs.

Here are the top fifty places plus the best compilations, live albums and a couple of reissues. Straight reissues are usually excluded to make space for less well-known releases, although I have featured two notable On-U Sound re-releases in celebration of the label’s 30 th birthday, and the Smiths box selected itself. I wish I’d had space for the long-awaited reissues of underheard country soul classics by Bobby Charles (now a triple disc, including an interview) and Jim Ford, and for Light In The Attic’s wonderful re-release of Michael Chapman’s brilliant “Fully Qualified Survivor”. And, even among better known artists putting out stuff you already own, it’s hard to resist those meticulously compiled reissues that are now pretty much, but not invariably, the norm. Here R.E.M.’s “Lifes Rich Pageant” and “Chore Of Enchantment”, part of Giant Sand’s massive 25 th anniversary reissue programme, probably led the way.

These and other 2011 releases that I recommend but couldn’t find space for, even by cheating, can be found on a separate list at the end of this piece.

NUMBERS 50-21

50. King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine (Domino) / Richard Buckner – Our Blood (Merge)

- after agonizing for days over which of these was going to occupy the final place on the list and finding myself completely unable to make a decision as to which to drop, there was really no option but to include both – actually, they do have a few things in common: firstly, both are by independent songwriters who have made a lot of albums, although the darkly introverted American Buckner’s ten (but his first for five years) can’t compete with King Creosote, who owns a record label, Fence Records, is therefore a member of the Fence Collective of independent Scottish folk singers and of the Burns Unit and whose real life identity, Kenny Anderson, estimates that he might have released forty or more records in less than a decade and a half, although this collaboration with the much higher profiled electronic composer and producer Jon Hopkins is the first to have really been noticed; secondly, both feature a considerable amount of unobtrusive but highly effective electronic intervention, Creosote’s by virtue of his collaborator’s pedigree, Buckner’s homemade version a little more primitive by virtue of the fact that the first and second versions of the recordings for the album were lost due to mechanical breakdown and computer theft; thirdly and most crucially, they are both among the most gorgeously melodic and lyrically compelling of any I heard during the year

49. Dave Alvin- Eleven Eleven (Yep Roc) / Steve Earle – I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive (New West) / Joe Ely – Satisfied At Last (Rack ‘Em) / Tom Russell – Mesabi (Shout! Factory)

- sometimes you just have to trust what you know – I’ve been listening to these wonderful folk/blues/country/roots rock songwriters for so long that I sometimes find myself taking them for granted, particularly when it comes to compiling lists like this one, so let me correct that – Alvin, who reunites for one rowdy, roughneck song with Blaster brother Phil, makes his best for a decade or more; I had the good fortune to hear Russell play some of these songs live and his remarkable consistency never falters as he uses the background of his youthful discovery of Bob Dylan (Bob’s hometown of Hibbing is in Mesabi iron ore country) and the career choice this spearheaded to split his record between growing up near Hollywood and living in a Tex-Mex border town; Ely’s album, the high point of which is a superb version of Leo And Leona, one of Flatlander compadre Butch Hancock’s best story songs, re-establishes him as lord of the Texas highway; and, if Earle, whose decision to name his after Hank Williams’ last single was either brave or plain reckless, seems to be treading water, where that water is in The Gulf Of Mexico, one of the year’s best protest songs, or the post flood New Orleans, that’ll do nicely as well

48. Mary Hampton – Folly (Teaspoon) / Bella Hardy – Songs Lost And Stolen (Navigator)

- Hampton and Hardy are two young English folk musicians whose debut albums, released in 2008 and 2007 respectively, arrived more or less like bolts from the blue (although real cognoscenti will tell you that the singing, writing, fiddle playing Hardy had been a BBC Young Folk Awards finalist a few years earlier) and received uncommon praise, Hardy being compared with a young June Tabor and Hampton drawing a rave review from no less than Eliza Carthy – so, these follow-ups have been eagerly awaited, and very nearly live up to expectations, the difficulty being that, when the debuts are as startling as theirs were, those expectations can be unrealistically high – just as the most impressive song on Hardy’s first, among her outstanding renditions of mainly traditional material, was one she had written herself in a traditional style, so The Herring Girl stands out here, though this time its companions are all self written – Hampton’s songwriting has always come from a weird and ethereal place, to match her arrangements and delivery, so it’s no surprise that the only traditional song here, accompanied by sampled birdsong, sounds like one of her own – it’s therefore perfectly in keeping that she also sings an Emily Dickinson poem and a spiritual learned from Blind Mamie Forehand that sounds nothing at all like its source

47. William Elliott Whitmore – Field Songs (Anti-) / Frank Fairfield – Out On The Open West (Tompkins Square)

- what sets Whitmore and Fairfield apart from many similar artists using the Old, Weird America as their musical template is not only that they really do sound as though they recorded their songs during a day or two’s sabbatical from some ’20s medicine show, though with better recording equipment, but that this isn’t any kind of shtick … it’s how they naturally sound – Fairfield, whose songs feel like they come from the same seemingly endless supply of “Unheard Ofs And Forgotten Abouts” that he collects and has released under that title, could be the direct musical descendant of Frank Hutchison, generally considered the first white recorded bluesman (as long as you accept that white blues was a forerunner of country), except that he’s also a fine fiddle and banjo player – Whitmore’s entire approach might be summed up in two of his album titles, his musical range by “Hymns For The Hopeless” and his basic philosophy by “Ashes To Dust”, except that there’s a whole lot we can do between ashes and dust to make the world a better place, if we only have the faith, the foresight and the fortitude – if it’s not too much of a contradiction, this kind of authenticity often sounds fake but, if the young John Fahey could fool the blues community into believing that his alter ego, Blind Joe Death, was in fact an ancient bluesman, you get the impression that Whitmore and especially Fairfield could do the same to old time rural music collectors looking for long lost recordings by bootleggers or fire and brimstone preachers holed up in impossibly remote Appalachian hollers

46. Chris Thile & Michael Daves – Sleep With One Eye Open (Nonesuch) / Andy Statman – Old Brooklyn (Shefa)

- the level of sheer, barely believable brilliance on these two albums (Statman’s is a double) from arguably the two hottest pickers in the business will have mandolin fans salivating, once they pick up their jaws, but the quality of the overall musicianship will impress even those who can’t tell a mandolin from a ukulele from a cittern, even from a banjo – the Thile/Daves disc is as heartfelt a tribute to the brother duets of pre- and early bluegrass as, oh, probably “Skaggs & Rice” at least, fashioned with fun, love, respect, energy, enthusiasm and skill levels you can hardly credit; Statman, almost as breathtaking on the clarinet as he is on the mandolin and one of my favourite musicians anywhere, kicks off like Albert Ayler has joined the parking lot pickers at Merlefest and then broadens out into an ever-changing, ever-imaginative mélange of bluegrass and old timey, blues and free jazz, klezmer, Jewish religious music and New Orleans funk, a ’50s R&B hit and a cross-denominational hymn by the composer of Amazing Grace, all in the company of a stellar musical cast and a tea kettle – astonishing!

45. Okkervil River – I Am Very Far (Jagjaguwar)

- having struggled for months to get a proper handle on this album despite the fact that I had never met an Okkervil River record I didn’t end up loving, the fact that the band’s previous effort had been as the great Roky Erickson’s backing band and the not unimportant consideration that a couple of trusted Okkervil River fans of my acquaintance rated it highly, I decided to stick it on the short list for this exercise anyway and give it another shot later – having done so, but with proportionally reduced expectations, I found myself starting to fall in love with it after all and now it at least sounds like a really good collection of songs, if not quite a great album – some of it still sounds big and bombastic and overwrought and unfocused and it’s still no “Stage Names”, but who has more than one of those in them anyway?

44. Martin Simpson – Purpose + Grace (Topic)

- “Prodigal Son” and “True Stories”, which lifted him, once and for all, into the very top tier of folk artists, were always going to be hard, if not impossible to top, so Simpson, whose dual command of British and American styles has few, if any, peers, has consolidated instead – confining his writing to a couple of banjo jaunts this time, he invites along three mighty mates in Dick Gaughan, June Tabor, with whom he reprises and even surpasses an earlier

collaboration on Richard Thompson’s Strange Affair, and Thommo himself, and then gets the first two to sing while he plays, something that only someone with supreme confidence in his own abilities would have dared, and only someone with the ability to match that confidence would have pulled off – as if that wasn’t enough, he also finds new and bright gold in the frequently tarnished In The Pines, Little Liza Jane and Barbry Allen, so ,while this might be something of a holding pattern for Simpson, if aeroplanes adopted holding patterns this engrossing you’d never want them to land

43. Derek Gripper – The Sound Of Water (New Cape)

- perennially nurtured and nourished by the sounds and moods of its Western Cape surroundings, Gripper’s nylon string acoustic guitar finds a kindred spirit in the traditional folk-fuelled compositions of the brilliant Brazilian Egberto Gismonti, compositions which it seems to have been born to play – still more impressively, Gripper’s own explorations, especially Joni, Copenhagen and Anna Magdalena, referencing Mesdames Mitchell, Madosini and Bach respectively, mine an equally rich seam, uncovering similar depths of soul in the process

42. Nils Økland / Sigbjørn Apeland – Lysøen: Hommage à Ole Bull (ECM) / Andrew Cronshaw – The Unbroken Surface Of Snow (Cloud Valley)

- Norwegians Økland (violin and his country’s wonderfully resonant Hardanger fiddle) and Apeland (piano and harmonium, including one that belonged to Norway’s great 19 th century composer Ole Bull) pay tribute to Bull and Lysøen, the island which he owned, where he lived in idyllic contemplation and where this album was recorded, by way of the folk music that inspired him, and mainly by way of meditative reflection that suggests rather than flaunts the vast sweep and grandeur and allegedly unparalleled beauty of the place – English composer and multi-instrumentalist Cronshaw, a much admired figure on the fringes of the British folk scene for many years, irregularly emerging from the shadows into the half-light to release intriguing and often sonically audacious albums (this is his first for seven years, since the splendid “Ochre”), is not on the ECM label but, on this evidence, shares many of its sensibilities; a regular writer about Scandinavian music, he accurately evokes the album’s title here by combining the folk tunes of Finland with those of Armenia, interrupted briefly for a solo meditation, on zither, on an old Scottish tune, in a series of long, languid and lovely compositions (the title track lasts more than half an hour) in the company of Armenian duduk player Tigran Aleksanyan

41. Joe Lovano / Us Five – Bird Songs (Blue Note)

- not quite a straight tribute to the bop genius (Bird played alto), veteran tenorist Lovano and his exceptional young band investigate, instead, without resorting to a single bop cliché, a few of the possibilities of music composed by or for Charlie Parker, or closely associated with him, reinventing Donna Lee as a ballad, mercilessly messing with the classic Moose The Mooche, playing three short Parker themes as a round, trebling the length of Yardbird Suite through a cornucopia of melodic, rhythmic and stylistic variations, and playing the Aulochrome, the first horn designed to harmonise with itself

40. The Caretaker – An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (History Always Favours The Winners)

- electronic musician James Kirby took the Caretaker moniker from the Jack Nicholson character in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining”, using the ghostly ballroom scene as the template for his fascination with describing musically the way that memory works – this album, inspired by a study that suggested that Alzheimers sufferers remember things better in the context of music, arranges and layers excerpts from pre-war ballroom and parlour music 78s, treats them ever so slightly, draws attention to their physical deterioration by emphasizing their clicks and pops and then invites us to listen – the fact that contemporary listeners will probably never actually have heard this music before, other than as some sort of imagined soundtrack to somebody else’s life, is unimportant as the

eerie, hauntological results nevertheless produce a strangely satisfying sense of nostalgia and, oddly, a desire to listen again and again

39. Drive-By Truckers – Go-Go Boots (ATO/PIAS) / Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit – Here We Rest (Lightning Rod)

- hard on the heels of “The Big To-Do”, the Truckers continue to impress as a remarkably prolific and consistent source of some of the best rock in the American South – “Go-Go Boots”, which states its business by featuring a tribute to Patterson Hood’s father David’s brilliant but underappreciated Muscle Shoals country soul mate Eddie Hinton, is a mite slower and more soulful, but no less searing, than its predecessor, with Hood the younger continuing to contribute from an apparently endless well of fine songwriting, Mike Cooley pitching in, as ever, with a couple of plainspoken standouts and the ever improving Shonna Tucker impressing more with each outing – the problem with former Trucker and Tucker spouse Isbell seems to be that there’s only one of him and, while he apparently has two or three killer songs in him per record, he tends then to fill them up with tough and well played but somewhat generic roots rock – not at all bad, therefore, but anybody expecting him to repeat his top Truckers form of Outfit, Decoration Day, Danko/Manuel and The Day John Henry Died all at once is going to wind up disappointed

38. Paul Simon – So Beautiful Or So What (Decca)

- heading towards his 70th birthday Simon hooked up again with veteran producer Phil Ramone and, with a judicious mixture of old fashioned craftsmanship and modern production, Indian and West African musical references, old time blues and gospel samples (including, memorably, a seventy year old Rev JM Gates sermon) and some of his best lyrics for years, which reflect on where he’s been (there’s a brief but obvious nod to his early I Am A Rock), where he is (in a world where a damaged Vietnam vet regrets the path his life has taken while a new generation spends Christmas in Iraq as those at home face an uncertain financial future) and where he’s headed (The Afterlife, with eyes on the prize but tongue firmly in cheek), made possibly his best album since “Graceland”

37. The Decemberists – The King Is Dead (Rough Trade)

- the last couple of Decemberists albums have probably been too elaborate for their own good – pretentious was becoming a fairly easy way for the unconverted to describe them and arguments pointing out Colin Meloy’s lyrical erudition and encyclopaedic knowledge of British folk and folk-rock were beginning to sound hollow, even to believers, so “The King Is Dead”, which kicks off like an old fashioned Neil Young record, references American music not too far from the interesting mainstream, and has songs you can actually sing along to, is a welcome change, perhaps even a breath of fresh air – the jangling presence of Peter Buck ensures that a couple of the songs sound like classic R.E.M., or at least bands like 10 000 Maniacs when they sounded like R.E.M., while the backing voice of Gillian Welch and, occasionally, David Rawlings add country-folk cred to what was becoming a bit of a prog-folk band – Meloy still writes lyrics that are impenetrable without a copy of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable to hand but, as arguably the year’s most penetrative lyric (by Dawes, not the Decemberists) points out, there’s no point in trying to make out every word when you should simply hum along – at least you can this time

36. Wilco – The Whole Love (dBpm/Anti-)

- six and seven studio albums in, Wilco, once a band that promised the earth, moon and stars (the brilliance of “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” and “A Ghost Is Born”), seemed to be settling for the first mentioned as it drifted too far from its promise, and premise, for comfort, even though it still made records that were eminently worth hearing and owning – this eighth at least suggests, without quite demonstrating it conclusively, that they haven’t forsaken

experimentation, noisy extemporization or the employment of edge in the service of the kind of comfortably sturdy songwriting that Jeff Tweedy appears to be able to do with his eyes closed

35. Arbouretum – The Gathering (Thrill Jockey) / Wooden Shjips – West (Thrill Jockey)

- for their third album for Thrill Jockey and their fourth overall, Arbouretum have replaced one of their guitarists with keyboards, adopting a somewhat more textured feel to their open structures and simple, droning, distorted folk-infused melodies – clothing allegorical lyrics influenced by the writings of Carl Jung and Jimmy Webb (there is an unexpected and unexpectedly convincing rethink of Webb’s The Highwayman) in equally dense and mysterious arrangements set to a relentless tread that is deliberate but never ponderous, the album represents an important, if incremental, advance on its predecessors and, heavy as it is, it never seems excessively loud, something that the band apparently rectifies in live performance – the Wooden Shjips, whose own keyboards are garage psychedelic rather than atmospheric ambient, are now on their own third full length album, but their first in a proper studio with a proper engineer – driving their riffing, snaking guitars to levels of intensity and volume that match anyone you can think of, they churn rather than rumble, channelling their inner Elevators (and Stooges) a little like the Black Angels do, for example, but with Suicide (who didn’t even have guitars) and krautrock (which did, but not where the Wooden Shjips put them) replacing the Doors as the other critical stylistic component – the added clarity and focus provided by the more conventional recording experience has made a significant difference

34. Bon Iver – Bon Iver (4AD / Jagjaguwar)

- the much anticipated successor, more than three years down the line, to the remarkable “For Emma, Forever Ago”, has caused a fair amount of division among both critics and Justin Vernon’s long standing fans - it’s a far more polished affair, a factor that no doubt contributed to its No 2 US chart placing and subsequent, if still unexpected, Grammy (although his presence on a Kanye West record won’t have harmed his prospects there) but, equally, it’s also a much more prosaic affair, from the title down to the deliberately AOR/MOR production on the last track, which always leaves me feeling at least slightly irritated but might have been what hooked the Grammy voters; to combine two views I have heard expressed, it sounds like David Foster producing Bruce Hornsby – but, all of that aside, and even if it doesn’t have the backwoods back story of the debut, it is, nevertheless, an extremely attractive record with several songs of real quality and a good deal more flesh and blood about them than might have been expected of the artist

33. Dub Colossus – Addis Through The Looking Glass (Real World)

- former Transglobal Undergrounder Nick Page’s first album in this incarnation, which seamlessly and superbly mixed reggae and dub rhythms with the Ethiopian music of that country’s musical Golden Age, was a cultural exchange so obvious it came as a shock to realize it might not have been done before – terrific reworkings of reggae classics the Abyssinians’ Satta Massagana and Althea & Donna’s Uptown Top Ranking notwithstanding, this second, influenced perhaps by the recent Western profile of the so-called Godfather of Ethio-jazz, pianist Mulatu Astatke, seems more like a jazz record - either way, a great idea is once again matched by nearly flawless execution

32. Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx – We’re New Here (XL) / Shabazz Palaces – Black Up (Sub Pop)

- this entry could conceivably be considered a representation of the future of hip-hop as seen through the eyes of its past as Jamie Smith of London’s the xx doesn’t just remix, but, in some respects, deconstructs rap forefather Scott-Heron’s final album, the dark, claustrophobic but still hopeful “I’m New Here”, rebuilding it into something that, as the title submits, is in fact new and shiny (sadly, Scott-Heron died shortly after its release), and turning it into something of an electronic music primer as he runs the gamut of styles and beats, while the brooding, ominous, at times downright menacing Shabazz Palaces, the new musical home of Seattle rapper Butterfly from early ’90s

favourites Digable Planets and the first hip-hop act signed by renowned hometown indies Sub Pop, use a vast array of traditional (including the jazz favoured by the Planets) and electronic but mainly abstract sources and effects to fashion a superb if unpredictable and unsettling record that retains just enough rootedness in the past as it points the way to a sonically adventurous future

31. Barn Owl – Lost In The Glare (Thrill Jockey) / White Hills – H-p1 (Thrill Jockey)

- there’s nothing that invigorates the soul (or syringes the ears) quite like guitars turned up as far as they’ll go and being allowed to drone and feed back symphonically and in accordance with some greater musical plan that will possibly only be revealed on the Day of Judgment; a friend calls it voice of God guitar and Barn Owl, with more than a cursory nod to the influence of Alice Coltrane, have a plentiful supply of it and, more importantly, an understanding of what to do with it so that it ultimately all coheres in a huge, hypnotic roar that, cosmic though it clearly is, is as much Anglo-American space rock as German kosmische musik – White Hills have been memorably and perhaps aptly criticized by somebody else as “running a marathon around a riff” … which they do; “H-p1” is a long, intense album consisting of long, intense tracks and my version comes with an additional disc containing more of much the same but, if they might be able to stand some editorial intervention, that might defeat the point – White Hills have much to say about the state of the world, and say it mainly through their guitars while delivering several moments of epic, if noisy, magnificence amid the commotion and clamour

30. Laurie Levine – Six Winters (Rhythm)

- in the year when the rest of the business made Adele the broken relationship queen of the world, my own favourite break up album was made by Laurie Levine, a Johannesburg singer-songwriter whose previous musical career was as an ethnomusicologist specializing in South African traditional music (she published a book on the subject) and, for two albums, as a purveyor of decent quality local pop that never suggested for a moment that she might have a “Six Winters” in her – an inch perfect production by Dan Roberts sees to the album's sound, but it’s the startling leap in maturity and consistency of the material Levine gave him to work with that brings me back to it over and over again – whether or not they’re deliberate, there are distinct traces, and sometimes more, of the likes of Julie Miller, Mary Gauthier and especially Joanna Newsom in a Levine delivery that gets the balance between confidence and uncertainty, fragility and steely resolve exactly right, and which demonstrates, if nothing else, that she has found, in folk, country and general roots orientated styles, a context that fits her writing like a glove

29. Aurelio – Laru Beya (Real World)

- the untimely death, a few years ago, of Andy Palacio from Belize robbed Garifuna music of its most internationally visible ambassador just as he was becoming internationally visible but, on the strength of this record, his third, Aurelio Martinez from Honduras, also the first black man to become a deputy in that country’s National Congress, who contributed backing vocals to Palacio’s breakthrough album “Watina”, is more than ready to take up the mantle – the Garifuna are a Central American people descended from shipwrecked West African slaves and their music is an intoxicating mix of West African (there are telling guest appearances from Youssou N’Dour and members of his band), Caribbean (including reggae) and Latin American styles – all it needs is exposure

28. Megafaun – Megafaun (Crammed Discs)

- Megafaun, formed by the band members left behind when Justin Vernon left DeYarmond Edison to become Bon Iver, have taken three albums and an EP to settle into a style that really suits them on a fairly consistent basis, but I wouldn't dare to predict that this record’s unassuming, open air, rolling country flavoured rock (some have suggested “American Beauty” era Grateful Dead though one song uses the exact tune of Neil Young’s Cortez The Killer) will necessarily be the way of the Megafaun future; the undeniably skilful use of melody and harmony is still

leavened, though not as much as previously, by free noise, found sound and primitively plunked banjos, Scorned pays tribute to the Staples Singers without making Megafaun a soul or gospel outfit, the horns on Isadora suggest there might be another new direction in the offing, the closing Everything is gospel and who knows what to make of the hidden track in the context of a career path – for now, though, it’s more than focused enough

27. Zomby – Dedication/Nothing EP (4AD) // SBTRKT – SBTRKT (Young Turks) // James Blake – James Blake (Atlas)

- from the point of view of an outsider, labels seem extraordinarily important in electronic music; every minute shift in the landscape seems to generate a new sub-category (alter the bpm by one or two, the model sampler you use by a few months or perhaps as little as the key and everybody’s running around looking for a new way to describe what you’re doing) – these three are all British musicians working in a field known as post-dubstep that many commentators agree is too broadly encompassing and ill-defined to be a meaningful characterization, even for electronic music, but none of this has changed the fact that Zomby (mainly instrumental, lots of techno references), SBTRKT (some songs, but mainly fairly conventional pop/soul vocals by outside guests) and James Blake (all songs, including a great cover of one by his father, ’60s/’70s jazz rocker James Litherland – Colosseum, Mogul Thrash etc – but using his own heavily treated and manipulated vocals) have taken up an inordinate amount of my listening time, and that each time I listen the imagination at work impresses me more

26. Dawes – Nothing Is Wrong (ATO/Loose) / Jonathan Wilson – Gentle Spirit (Bella Union)

- the first time I heard Dawes (support act for Jackson Browne and backing band for Robbie Robertson) and was immediately drawn to the first two songs on “Nothing Is Wrong” I wondered whether this wasn’t Counting Crows all over again … you know, instant response to their apparent grasp of and facility with a certain area of ’70 rock classicism, followed quite quickly by the realization that this isn’t such a clever trick after all – well, by the time I got to the last track, A Little Bit Of Everything, I was completely hooked, and have remained that way ever since, and that’s even though it deliberately sounds like (but isn’t) mid ’70s Warren Zevon on piano and David Lindley on lap steel; in fact, it’s because their songs are so good that they easily get away with that sort of thing – they’re beautifully produced by Jonathan Wilson whose own album suggests that there might be nobody around who understands the bittersweet tunefulness of that classic Laurel Canyon sound better, or can reproduce it more accurately without resorting to trope or cliché – though its length still makes me wonder if it doesn’t drift and float just a little too much, its evocation of David Crosby’s “If I Could Only Remember My Name …” and even parts of Gene Clark’s “No Other” while retaining its own character bode extremely well for young men coming to the Canyon

25. The Low Anthem – Smart Flesh (Bella Union)

- I understand how some might find this group insufferably precious … the glacial tempos and sepulchral harmonies, the sepia tinted memory of an imaginary but easily imagined past, the use of arcane and archaic instrumentation as implements to provide colour rather than to really play, the vacant pasta sauce factory that served as a studio, the appropriation of Leonard Cohen style (Burn) and Gram Parsons tune (Apothecary Tune), even the out of focus lisp (Smart Flesh) – then again, all of that’s exactly what convinced me that the Low Anthem might be a group with legs and that this album’s predecessor, the gorgeous “Oh My God, Charlie Darwin”, wasn’t an exquisite flash in the pan

24. Thurston Moore – Demolished Thoughts (Matador) / J Mascis - Several Shades Of Why (Sub Pop)

- Moore, with Sonic Youth, whose future seems uncertain following the end of his marriage to band member Kim Gordon, and Mascis, with Dinosaur Jr, were at the forefront of extreme guitar volume in independent rock in the ’80s and ’90s; however, Moore’s previous major solo release, “Trees Outside the Academy”, saw him exploring a quieter, acoustic approach, while still admitting a certain amount of noise, some of it made by Mascis’s guest guitar, into the mix, but his principle collaborator on the record was violinist Samara Lubelski, once of intriguing but short lived ’90s band the Sonora Pine – Lubelski’s is once again the main supportive instrumental voice on “Demolished Thoughts”, an album that concentrates even more closely on Moore’s quieter side, albeit one that still features strong textural links with Sonic Youth, but whose exceptional Beck production (he also produced the year’s Stephen Malkmus album) makes it a significant sonic advance on its predecessor – Mascis himself gets plenty of assistance, from Kurt Vile and members of Band Of Horses and Black Heart Procession and others, for his own second acoustic solo disc, which reveals, all over again, his considerable melodic abilities, still delivered in that trademark laconic, half-stoned drawl and as attractive without the earsplitting guitar attack as they were with it

23. Beirut – The Rip Tide (Pompeii)

- having loved both the idea and the execution of Zach Condon’s first two albums in a Beirut disguise that has always sounded like a band even when it wasn’t, I did wonder how long he/they would be able to sustain what was a very particular sonic concept, that of an American musician’s memories, principally via Mexican mariachi and Eastern European tonalities filtered through Italian romanticism and French flavour, of living in New Mexico and visiting old Europe – this gorgeous album, Beirut’s third, whose overall feel may best be summed up in the line from East Harlem quoted in the booklet (“she’s waiting for the night to fall / let it fall, I’ll never make it in time”), comes after a lapse, interrupted only by a couple of EPs, of four years, and what is most noticeable is that, although the more obvious foreign influences have gone, the sound of the band and the focus of the clearly maturing songwriting seems pretty much the same, suggesting either that these were always Beirut’s to begin with or that the band has so completely assimilated their effect and moulded them to its own purposes that those influences have achieved precisely what influences are meant to

22. Joe Henry – Reverie (Anti-)

- where the concern was once that everything Henry did might be eclipsed by his family connection with Madonna, the fear must now be that his fast growing production CV (Bettye LaVette, Mary Gauthier, Allen Toussaint) might overshadow his superb songwriting, evident on a dozen albums over 25 years, once country rock but now a jazz-tinged take on folk, blues and pop noir, and getting better all the time – for “Reverie” he simplifies things sonically by sticking to a small acoustic group (he says this is his first album for a while that he has been able to play right through on guitar) as his skill behind a desk ensures that the album sounds wonderful, while his talent for making wise, sharp and frequently poetic observations about the world and his (and our) place in it ensures that the songs more than match the production - when he says that he was listening to Ellington and Sinatra in preparation for this album, there’s absolutely no sense that he might have been aiming too high

21. Aziz Sahmaoui & University Of Gnawa - Aziz Sahmaoui & University Of Gnawa (General Pattern)

- once a member of both Paris’s highly regarded North African music ensemble, the Orchestre National De Barbés, and Joe Zawinul’s world/jazz fusion Syndicate, Moroccan multi-instrumentalist Sahmaoui draws on both for his first solo album, in the company of Senegalese musicians, the University of Gnawa, who, allied to his use of the distinctive Malian ngoni as virtually his default instrument, emphasize the West African roots of the Moroccan gnawa trance music that he combines with desert blues, reggae, surf guitar, Maghrebi pop and several other styles to produce pan-African music of the highest order

THE TOP TWENTY

20. Yuck – Yuck (Fat Possum)

- according to a message scratched into a Smiths’ vinyl run-off groove (and yes, I do know that it wasn’t originally theirs), talent borrows, but genius steals – that these Pavement (and Dinosaur Jr, and several others from that general musical era and area) soundalikes make this list when the new and perfectly fine album by Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus doesn’t (and the one by Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis probably only did as a bracketed companion with Thurston Moore’s) might say less about the music itself than it does about the way I listen to it, but I can’t help loving the way these young Brits have arrowed into to the very essence of ’90s independent American rock and borrowed not only enough to make their influences absolutely obvious, but to have created something that stood out from the 2011 rock landscape as fresh and thrilling, if not entirely new and original – not quite genius, then, but talent, certainly

19. Panda Bear – Tomboy (Pawtracks) / tUnE-yArDs – W H O K I L L (4AD)

- voices, celestial and visceral, intuitive and instinctive, solo or stacked, raw and untended or looped, treated and irretrievably altered, and used as much for their own sake and because of the sound they make as in service of the song on which they’re making it, are what connects these albums – Panda Bear is Noah Lennox of the Animal Collective, whose previous, Brian Wilson saluting “Person Pitch” remains a favourite and whose “Tomboy”, with some of the most gorgeous harmonies anywhere, is headed that way too, with the only concern being that, because the sound is so fantastic, I find myself allowing the songs to run into each other and approaching the album rather as an overall sonic experience rather than a collection of discrete songs, which could be my fault rather than that of the songs – Tune-Yards is Merrill Garbus of, well, of tUnE-yArDs (which is how she insists on writing it; so, too, that letter-by-letter spelling of the album title – the fact that she and her album easily overcome such foolishness is a measure of their excellence), a ukulele playing percussionist and live and studio sound manipulator with one of the most honest to God stop you in your tracks voices of the year (I had not heard her before this, her second release) whose varied, pop-hybridized sonic and rhythmic approach has some wanting to call what she does World Music – I’m content simply to regard it as terrific music

18. Destroyer – Kaputt (Dead Oceans) / Metronomy – The English Riviera (Because)

- I see that “Kaputt” is Canadian Dan Bejar’s ninth (or ninth-ish) album in charge of Destroyer, but I had not, consciously at least, heard them before, which seems odd given my attraction to the skewed power-pop of the New Pornographers, with whom Bejar has also been involved – the upshot of that is that I can’t compare “Kaputt” with any previous Destroyer album; I can, however, compare it with several albums from the ’80s that I once liked quite a lot in the days when sonic polish used to impress me, as long as it wasn’t being applied to disguise a lack of substance … albums like Steely Dan’s “Gaucho”, and perhaps even their earlier “Aja”, Roxy Music’s “Avalon” and the first couple of albums by Prefab Sprout – these are, for the most part, “Kaputt”’s templates in sound and style, and it copes extremely well, both in reproducing their sonic and stylistic essence and in avoiding sounding like a mere imitation or pastiche – the album, whose long closing track Bejar has described as “ambient disco”, is elegant and indulgent (particularly if you get the edition with the additional 20 minute track), but packed with musical and lyrical wit and intelligence and the realization that, if you apply too much polish it’s hard to get a foothold – this, along with the lesson that too much sugar eventually hurts your ears as well as your teeth, is one that Metronomy, who operate in vaguely similar terrain, except that their sheen is usually electronically applied, and their languid West Coast is England’s west coast … Devon, to be precise, where Joseph Mount grew up, have also learned well – electronic pop, even electronic pop with the accent on the songs rather than the dancefloor, always seems to me to be on the verge of becoming something I’m not going to like, yet I have liked “The English Riviera” from the moment I first heard it

17. EMA – Past Life Martyred Saints (Souterrain Transmissions)

- I suppose it’s inevitable that Erika Anderson, previously guitarist with Gowns and Amps For Christ and now recording as EMA, will be compared with Patti Smith and her many acolytes, probably because, at some level, and to those of us who remember the impact of “Horses” all those years ago (and even often to those who don’t, but understand that impact), this kind of album was once unthinkable pre- Smith that is – it’s a strikingly original solo debut, brave, powerful, confrontational, cathartic, emotionally real, raw and stark, not an easy listen, certainly, despite a musically compelling stylistic range from lo-fi acoustic through a cappella voices to enraged and distorted rock, but one that draws you in and then back again and again – whether Anderson will transcend those comparison remains to be seen, of course, but, even if she doesn’t, this was an album worth making

16. The War On Drugs – Slave Ambient (Secretly Canadian)

- Kurt Vile’s solo rise and apparent departure from the band, except for two guest guitar appearances here, might have the effect of drawing attention away from the fact that this is, and always has been, essentially his mate Adam Granduciel’s vehicle (Granduciel wrote everything on its debut predecessor, with just three co-writes from Vile) for expressing his admiration for Springsteenesque, Pettyish, Dylanesque classic songwriter rock and then filtering it through blissed out psychedelic layers of out of focus sonic textures, as though a thin film of My Bloody Valentine/Spacemen 3/Sonic Youth ambience had been applied to “Basement Tapes” era Bob’s vocals – Granduciel’s great advantage is that he writes songs to match

15. Colin Stetson – New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges (Constellation)

- there’s the merest hint of the breadth of saxophonist Stetson’s musical CV in the guest appearances here, in the briefly sung and spoken sections, by Laurie Anderson and My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden, who has herself sung with Sufjan Stevens and the Decemberists, but it doesn’t really come close to adequately paraphrasing a resumé whose credits include cross-generational rock and post-rock (Tom Waits, David Byrne, the Arcade Fire and Godspeed You! Black Emperor), folk and free jazz (Bon Iver and Anthony Braxton) and, no doubt, free range chicken squawks when the Zornian mood takes him, but, academically interesting as all that may be, it doesn’t capture, describe or adequately explain the emotional, intellectual and sheer gut response which this album is capable of generating as Stetson, his treated sax and his Evan Parker-like circular breathing and multiphonic techniques shift and drift, sonically, between the cello and the chainsaw, epic grandeur, avant-noise both human and alien, and spontaneous composition that sometimes comes close to spontaneous combustion

14. White Denim – D (Downtown)

- one of Austin, Texas’s White Denim’s defining strengths has been their ability to play the notes, beats and challenging rhythms of prog and even jazz-rock with the energy and attitude of punk and the angles of postpunk, so that the intellectually and technically complex becomes as satisfyingly straightforward and emotionally engaging as the best rock is surely meant to be – for this, their third album, they have gained a second guitarist and recorded in a proper studio for the first time, and there’s just enough of a general cleaning up that “D”, parts of which are quite breathtaking, sounds like exactly the album the first two were headed towards, so that White Denim now sounds even more like several great bands from between about 1969 and 1973 tacked onto a Meat Puppets/Mission Of Burma hybrid, only with better developed chops and ideas to burn

13. Tom Waits – Bad As Me (Anti-)

- although Tom Waits’ first studio album for seven years appears to engage, and even indulge, in a certain amount of stock taking, reaching back, with a mighty gang of musical conspirators who include Keith Richards, Charlie

Musslewhite and Augie Meyers who clearly just love to play this kind of battered R&B and bent out of shape rock ‘n’ roll, beyond “Swordfishtrombones”, the album that most recognize as the place where the boozy barroom philosopher-poet grew wings and the drunken midnight choir became a junkyard angel’s marching band formed by Captain Beefheart to play music composed by Harry Partch, when Waits takes stock like this sparks fly, bells ring and grown men weep for joy – according to one of the songs, “I’m the last leaf on the tree, the autumn took the rest but they won’t take me”; for the good of music itself we better pray he’s right

12. Bill Callahan – Apocalypse (Drag City)

- “Apocalypse”, Callahan’s follow-up to the brilliant “Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle”, is fairly typical … the understated baritone drawl, the strikingly melodic snatches all but buried in the deadpan delivery, the superficially simple but often impenetrable lyrics, and that’s what we would want from a man who has been ploughing this furrow for as long as he has, either in/as Smog (sometimes a band and sometimes just Callahan) or more conventionally solo under his given name – of course, that means that the quality is assured, if not for all tastes, Callahan’s acoustic singer-songwriter method having less than most of his troubadour ilk to do with conventional folk, blues, country or other rootsy tropes and more to do with art, and even arch, rock – this seems to be a kind of concept album, with songs referencing each other as he calls on Kris Kristofferson, Mickey Newbury, George Jones and Johnny Cash to help him understand what it means to be American, “derided for things I don’t believe and lauded for things I did not do”

11. Nicolas Jaar – Space Is Only Noise (Circus Company) // Ricardo Villalobos / Max Loderbauer – Re: ECM (ECM)

- Jaar is the young American/Chilean electronic musician son of a well-known visual artist, whose full length debut (there have been shorter form releases that those with greater knowledge of this music might have heard) identifies him as essentially experimental techno laced with skewed electro-pop at tempos to which it’s surely impossible (well, definitely quite hard, no matter who you are or what you’ve heard) to dance, which gives him plenty of time and space to mess around, intriguingly, attractively and, ultimately irresistibly, with a range of influences broad enough to encompass Golden Age Ethiopian jazz and a line in affecting pop melody – perhaps principal among these influences is the German/Chilean Villalobos, who was given access, with experimental musician Loderbauer, to the storied and often stunning ECM catalogue of modern, mainly European jazz and contemporary composition, ostensibly to produce a remix album – rather than attempting to be inclusive, which would have been impossible, the resultant double disc takes a relatively small coterie of ECM artists (for example, textural Norwegian pianist Christian Wallumrød, guitarist John Abercrombie, French free jazz horn player Louis Sclavis, Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava, Estonian holy minimalist composer Arvo Pärt) and doesn’t so much remix their compositions as completely reinvent them, focusing on their sense rather than their specifics – Miles Davis used to talk about finding the spaces between the notes; these guys find the spaces between the spaces, and the results are as wonderful in their own way as anything else in the label’s catalogue

10. Fatoumata Diawara – Fatou (World Circuit)

- Nick Gold’s unfeasibly consistent World Circuit label continues its highly impressive and almost inevitable winning streak with “Fatou”, the debut album by one of Oumou Sangare’s backing singers, born in Ivory Coast to Malian parents but relocated to Paris against their wishes to pursue a career in acting – she doesn’t wail with quite Sangare’s explosive intensity but rather tends, with great assurance, towards the more classy, pop-conventional, internationally inclusive guitar-picking singer-songwriter approach of another acclaimed European resident Malian, Rokia Traoré, as she criticizes a variety of questionable societal and cultural approaches towards women and dispenses sound advice, sometimes in parable, that appears to have been personally tested

9. Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring For My Halo (Matador)

- Vile, whose cool name, which is apparently his real one, and ultra cool album title ought immediately to attract your attention, seems to have left The War On Drugs in favour of his solo career, although he plays a little on their latest record and his War On Drugs partner Adam Granduciel is in his live band (and all over this album) – the move appears to have worked well as both produced outstanding, and arguably even exceptional, albums during 2011, with Vile’s a considerable advance on his previous three and well worth the investigation that the name and title might provoke – his laconic drawl reminds me a little, despite myself, of a young, American Lloyd Cole without the studied intellectual insouciance, but his connection to an earlier pop/rock time seems more casually achieved and his indie-folk nonchalance less forced than some of those with whom he has been compared

8. P J Harvey – Let England Shake (Island)

- Harvey says that, each time she makes an album, she gets as far away from its predecessor as she can, so don’t be expecting another “White Chalk”, or even another “A Woman A Man Walked By”, actually a duo record with long time collaborator John Parish – “Let England Shake”, which features Parish, former Bad Seed Mick Harvey, a drummer (sometimes) and almost no-one else, is therefore not much like any of its predecessors in the Harvey catalogue (Polly Jean or, for that matter, Mick), even though it’s still somehow archetypal Harvey (Polly Jean) – kicking off with a title track that features a combination of auto harp, xylophone and trombone (don’t worry, guitars, drums and keyboards are just around the corner) expresses a concern that England’s “dancing days are done” because its “blood won’t rise again”, it takes a long, hard and unflinching look at England itself, its place in the world, and Harvey’s own place in it (England and, therefore, the world) and, with multiple references to war in general, and several to World War I and Gallipoli in particular, possibly to emphasize the unending cycle it represents, doesn’t much like what it sees

7. Juju – In Trance (Real World)

- English guitarist and desert blues producer Justin Adams and Gambian singer and riti ace Juldeh Camara made two outstanding albums as a duo, with 2007’s “Soul Science” and 2009’s “Tell No Lies” setting a benchmark that was going to be hard to keep hitting; so they formed a band, with added bass and drums, expanded the 2010 “Trance Sessions” EP to full album length without wasting a single note, even on the 15 minute Deep Sahara, and hit it again, focusing even more closely on the wailing, sawing, seemingly eternal groove and letting Camara’s ecstatic one-string fiddle take their driving, droning West African trance-blues deeper into the music’s psychedelic heart

6. Ry Cooder – Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down (Nonesuch)

- having successfully completed his so-called Californian trilogy Cooder continues the unexpected solo resurgence it announced by reasserting his musical pedigree in folk, blues, gospel and Tex-Mex infused roots rock as he summons the spirit of Woody Guthrie, vents his considerably enraged spleen, makes a series of pertinent political points about US foreign and financial policy via an unflattering comparison between bankers and Jesse James, a brutal Christmas protest song and, for light relief, an inch perfect imitation of John Lee Hooker, and comes up with what must be close to his best album ever

5. Josh T. Pearson – Last Of The Country Gentlemen (Mute)

- 2011 seems to have a been something of a year for, if not quite earth-shattering comebacks, then at least striking re-emergences, with that of the now possibly even more physically and emotionally dishevelled Texan Josh T. Pearson, more or less missing since he led his erstwhile band Lift To Experience through the astonishing “Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads” a decade earlier, among the least expected – seven songs, recorded over two Berlin studio

nights, is all we got (unless, like me, you bought the Rough Trade Shops edition with an additional EP of Christmas songs, not as unusual as it sounds considering Pearson’s upbringing in religious fundamentalism), but four of those songs, rambling, shambling, painfully raw, occasionally arcanely, archaically phrased and sometimes sounding like they’re being made up as he goes along (they surely could never be perfectly accurately repeated) are each more than ten bleakly gripping minutes long – it’s just Pearson, his voice, his acoustic guitar and a few desolate strings under the baton and bow of Bad Seeds/Dirty Three violinist Warren Ellis, and an immediacy, intensity and honesty that is almost shocking – and the three shorter ones simply take less time than the others to do all of that

4. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop)

- I have two, separate but related, points to make about this album – firstly, having made Fleet Foxes’ self-titled debut my album of the year for 2008, I was initially somewhat disappointed in this one … and remained that way for several months; it was quite obviously a good record, but my concern was that it sounded too much like its predecessor and, what it does having been done before, it lacked that startling first impression – secondly, when Fleet Foxes first appeared, everyone rushed to the harmony rich folk-rock sections of their record collections and decided that this was CSN and the Beach Boys for a new generation; I wasn’t so sure, tending towards the first David Crosby album and the Beach Boys’ “Surf’s Up” for touchstones, but for feel and texture rather than for actual sound – what Fleet Foxes had done, I decided, was perfectly synthesize their influences (and it turned out that “Surf’s Up” was indeed one of them) into something that was actually quite new and eminently worth pursuing, which is, of course, precisely why my initial response to “Helplessness Blues” no longer makes sense – it’s the fact that it sounds just like Fleet Foxes, but not just like “Fleet Foxes”, that makes it a great record – “If I had an orchard I’d work till I’m sore” … has any line better summed up a band’s approach?

3. Tinariwen – Tassili (V2) / Tamikrest – Toumastin (Glitterhouse) / Terakaft – Aratan N Azawad (World Village) / Bombino – Agadez (Cumbancha)

- trouble in the northern Mali desert meant that Tinariwen had to set up in the Algerian region after which the record is named for their fifth album, but, like the Sahara that is their home, the shifts in their music, though constant, are no more than incremental; so, while they appear, on the face of it, to have undergone something of a radical change by restricting themselves to just acoustic instruments, calling in Wilco’s Nels Cline to provide a little electrical ballast, collaborating with members of TV On The Radio and utilizing a couple of Dirty Dozen Brass Band horns on one track, in fact the results are as hypnotically timeless as we’ve come to expect, yet sufficiently different to be interesting and fresh – the other three albums demonstrate that, despite their similarities there is enough room in the Tuareg version of the desert blues for more than just one fine band – Terakaft, formed out of Tinariwen, rock a little more raggedly and rowdily than their more famous relative, and Tamikrest and Bombino represent the next generation, the latter, an especially fluid guitarist, having an attractively light touch, albeit one that reduces some of the music’s sense of gravitas, producing a kind of Saharan acid folk-rock, while the former are almost psychedelic in their sonic intensity

2. June Tabor & Oysterband – Ragged Kingdom (Topic) / June Tabor – Ashore (Topic)

- either of these albums might have made the top ten of this list on their own, and together might have topped the list had it not been for that misjudged version of Dark End Of The Street, one of the greatest of all soul songs; as a double header, their coverage of all that is wonderful about English folk music is extraordinary – the Oysterband collaboration, following up at last on the outstanding “Freedom And Rain” of 21 years earlier, when the group still spelt its name as two words, is the one that turned heads, turning Joy Division’s classic Love Will Tear Us Apart on its own head in the process, getting to emotional grips with Bob Dylan and Shel Silverstein and electrifying traditional English folk in a way that has hardly been imagined, much less heard, since the heyday of Sandy Denny and Fairport – “Ashore”, recorded with her own group, whose restraint and taste are the perfect foil for Tabor’s

dramatic if occasionally slightly mannered vocals, is a carefully chosen, majestically sung set of sea-themed songs, from Finisterre, out of that early Oyster Band alliance, via Elvis Costello’s Shipbuilding to a truly epic Across The Wide Ocean; I saw the concert, and the record is as spellbinding

1. Gillian Welch – The Harrow and The Harvest (Acony)

- eight long, if by no means entirely publicly barren, years after their last album under her name (the David Rawlings Machine included contributions by Welch), a full band affair that briefly hinted at a different direction, Welch and her musical shadow, extraordinarily sympathetic guitarist, harmony singer and co-writer David Rawlings, have returned to the stark and spare Appalachian inspired brilliance that first picked them out and set them apart with a darkly mysterious but stunningly beautiful set of original songs that prove a match for the ancient ones from which they borrow ideas, refrains, a sense of plainspoken magic that’s often just out of reach, and even titles, yet leave most of the contemporary songwriting competition trailing in the dust

COMPILATIONS, REISSUES ETC

16. Shin Joong Hyun - Beautiful Rivers And Mountains: The Psychedelic Rock Sound Of South Korea 1958-1974 (Light In The Attic)

- Shin Joong Hyun seems, during the period covered by this compilation, to have been all musical things to all men in South Korea, even the president … guitarist, singer, songwriter, arranger, producer, bandleader, general Svengali about town and even prisoner, torture victim and mental hospital patient after he had failed, refused or neglected to write a song in praise of the current dictator – this collection, which offers an excellent insight into a pop world most of us probably didn’t even know existed, covers a vast range of pop and rock styles, including surf guitar twang, ’60s pop soul (and ’60s Seoul pop), acid folk and folk-rock, psychedelia, funk and several points between and beyond – there are one or two misses, which is the case with nearly all careers, of course, but quite a few stone cold hits (albethey sung in Korean and, as so often, just a tad out of fashionable synch with their Anglo-American counterparts) that are well worth hearing even if foreign music scenes are not usually your drug of choice

15. Muzsikás – Fly Bird, Fly (Nascente)

- for those who don’t already have everything by this band, a state of affairs that I, for one, was unable to imagine almost as soon as I first heard them about twenty years ago, here’s a well-chosen double disc compilation (including two previously unreleased tracks) that reveals, with virtually each heartbreakingly evocative song or blazing instrumental in an impossible time signature, why these brilliant Hungarians are unquestionably one of the world’s outstanding folk groups of the past several decades and their singer, the majestic Márta Sebestyén, is considered one of the great European folk voices, one that is far more accurately assessed in this setting, where a certain amount of rough edge and even stridency is encouraged, than in her quite often overproduced solo work

14. Omar Souleyman – Haflat Gharbia: The Western Concerts (Sublime Frequencies)

- a Syrian wedding singer in the traditional dabke style, live with his two backing musicians who play keyboards and electric saz, a louder version of the long-necked Middle Eastern string instrument dabbled with by hippie bands of the ’60s … sound promising? no? well, I’m here to tell you that it’s way more than that, that you may never have heard anything quite like it, and that you ignore it at considerable risk to a well-rounded listening life; it’s high volume, high intensity stuff, passionate, exhilarating, overwrought, psychedelic even, often to the point of distortion, both sonic and emotional, amazingly well sung and played, and you can dance to it – in fact, I defy you not to

13. Creation Rebel – Starship Africa (On-U Sound) / African Head Charge – Off The Beaten Track (On-U Sound)

- On-U Sound, the English dub label owned by Adrian Sherwood, one of reggae and dub’s most imaginative and innovative producers anywhere and home, at least through the ’80s and part of the ’90s, to a steady stream of desirable and often challenging dub, celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2011 and, if there hasn’t been an awful lot new from it for a few years (although the year did see a fine new album from flagship group African Head Charge as well as one from Little Axe, the dub-blues alter ego of former Tackhead/Sugarhill label early rap house band guitarist Skip McDonald that rejoices in the title of “If You Want Loyalty Buy A Dog”), a celebratory reissue programme saw the re-release, inter alia, of these, two of On-U Sound’s most iconic treasures – Sherwood’s productions, extravagant but frequently inspired and, reflecting his punk sensibilities, never confining themselves to conventional dub techniques, sometimes gave the impression that he had too many ideas for one song, or one album, or even one person, but that’s never the case here – the African Head Charge disc, a welter of chanting, percussion, unexpected effects, phenomenal atmospherics and a speech by Albert Einstein (see what I mean about too many ideas?) remains arrestingly ear catching after 25 years – the even older “Starship Africa”, the visionary debut by Creation Rebel, once the mighty Prince Far I’s backing band, is just as much an Adrian Sherwood album as one by the group itself and is little short of staggering

12. Hedy West – Ballads And Songs From The Appalachians (Fellside)

- the eminent musicologist A.L. Lloyd called Hedy West, who was from the same musical generation as Joan Baez and Judy Collins, far and away the best American female singer of the late ’50s/early ’60s folk revival – arriving in England from a rural, working class Georgia family, but via music and drama studies in New York, with a fantastic voice, a well-developed clawhammer banjo technique and a collection of songs from a tradition of which she was actually a part, she soon became an integral and important component, and indeed repertoire source, of the UK revival, making three albums for Topic between 1965 and 1967 – these, on two discs, are those albums, and they’re stunning

11. Richard Thompson – Live At The BBC (Universal)

- a three CD plus DVD box set that does what the title says … features the great English folk-rocker, acoustic and electric, solo, with band and, for the first disc, in dazzling duet with Linda, in live performance for the Beeb between 1973 and 2009, confirming the frequent brilliance and astonishing consistency of arguably the musician with the worst blinding talent to mass recognition ratio in rock’s convoluted history – the DVD is the killer, by the way, with about half given over to the Richard & Linda Thompson era, a special boon for those of us who grew up without access to decent television

10. The Louvin Brothers – Satan Is Real / Hand Picked Songs 1955-1962 (Light In The Attic)

- Charlie and Ira, the God fearing Louvin Brothers from rural Alabama, were among the great influences, on rock ‘n’ roll harmonizers like the Everly Brothers and country-rock icons like Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, but further afield too - “Satan Is Real” consists entirely of religious songs, some of them as dark as the eerily high voiced Ira’s legendarily unstable temperament and even as scary, while “Hand Picked Songs”, chosen for inclusion by the likes of Beck, Mark Lanegan, Will Oldham and the Black Angels, is mainly secular, many of the songs having entered the country-rock lexicon and being well-known in more contemporary versions, none of which are as memorable as those of the Louvins

9. Various – To What Strange Place: The Music Of The Ottoman-American Diaspora 1916-1929 (Tompkins Square)

- if we find the music within this three CD set foreign and unusual, and most of us will, at least for a little while, imagine how strange immigrants to America from the then Ottoman Empire found their new homeland a hundred years ago, without having had the benefit of modern media to prepare them for the change – the first two discs here reflect the response of some of them, Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, exiles from Anatolia (in modern day Turkey), recorded almost exclusively in Manhattan, singing and playing in the style of the old country in the years between World War I, during which a number of ethnic purges took place in the region (Anatolia, not Manhattan), and the onset of the Great Depression, when the music didn’t stop, but the formal recording of it virtually did – the third disc features the music they would have brought with them on records – it’s exotic, naturally, though by no means as unfamiliar as it would have been just a few decades ago, but hugely evocative stuff that easily found a place in my heart – it features, though it only stands out because of the instant recognition factor, one of the earliest versions of Miserlou, the Turkish love song turned Dick Dale surf guitar classic that drove the soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction”

8. Various – Bambara Mystic Soul: The Raw Sound Of Burkina Faso 1974-79 (Analog Africa) / Sorry Bamba – Sorry Bamba Vol. 1: 1970 -1979 (Thrill Jockey) / Ebo Taylor – Life Stories: Highlife & Afrobeat Classics 1973-1980 (Strut)

- blessed, for sure, are the crate diggers, those hardy and arguably slightly mad souls who scour the bargain bins, flea markets, private back rooms and, occasionally, official archives of the world in search of great music of the past that was, for one reason or another (and these range from the very simple to the highly complex), totally overlooked, or else hopelessly localized, at the time – West Africa has been a particular focus for a while, but still the riches proliferate – for example, who, outside of the region, knew anything about the wonderful popular music of Burkina Faso, still called Upper Volta when the songs on the outstanding “Bambara Mystic Soul” were first released; or, having focused for so long on Bamako, Timbuktu and, more recently, the desert itself , that Mopti in Mali, the home of Sorry Bamba and his bands, boasted its own musical delights; or, at least until the advent of terrific recent Ghanaian compilations, that an entire double album by highlife into Afrobeat’s Ebo Taylor would be this good to listen to?

7. Various – This May Be My Last Time Singing: Raw African-American Gospel On 45rpm 1957-1982 (Tompkins Square)

- 72 songs, mainly from the ’60s and ’70s, recorded cheaply and released and distributed privately, locally or, at best, to a significantly limited audience, across three CDs and nearly four hours that present, not only raw, but also raucous, real, rare and devoid of any artifice whatsoever, gospel music before it wimped out in abject genuflection at the altar of the mainstream record industry – these largely unknown voices, unshakably passionate, fantastically soulful, fanatically convicted but also driven sometimes from the very peak of ecstasy to the very brink of despair, and waging constant war with the devil, might just change your life

6. Home Service – Live 1986 (Fledg’ling)

- quintessentially English, with a Northern brass band styled horn section replacing the usual fiddle in their electric folk lineup, the fiercely political Home Service, out of the Albion Country Band and led by the wonderful voice and songwriting of John Tams and the slightly rockist, almost prog-folk electric guitar of former Gryphon man Graeme Taylor, Home Service were made for ’80s Britain, where theirs, notionally at least, was the perfect anti-Thatcher soundtrack, anthemic but dignified, uncompromising without being rabble-rousing, an implacable voice of reason amidst the inflamed and inflammatory polemic – this recording, from the 1986 Cambridge Folk Festival, rescued from a cassette that remained forgotten and deteriorating in a cupboard for a quarter of a century, has led to the

group’s triumphant reformation; its naturally flawed but perfectly acceptable sound quality only adds to the atmosphere and to the story

5. Amédé Ardoin – Mama, I’ll Be Long Gone: The Complete Recordings 1929-1934 (Tompkins Square)

- according to some, the historically crucial but biographically mysterious Ardoin, whose relatives continue his name and his accordion legacy in Louisiana today, the younger Ardoins combining it with funk and hip-hop, may have lost his mind following a racist beating and died in 1941in the same institution that saw the end of unrecorded early jazz icon Buddy Bolden twenty years earlier, but, in just a few sessions, across five years, he recorded 34 timeless songs, full of lonesome blues and high, keening longing, and pulsating dance tunes, many with white fiddler Dennis McGee, that are little short of Cajun music’s Rosetta Stone – you can easily imagine this sound issuing forth from the porches, prairies, swamps and especially the dancehalls of south-west Louisiana as far back as even oral history can remember

4. The Smiths – Complete (Rhino)

- all eight albums (four studio, one live, three compilations), each superbly remastered, packaged in a replica of its original vinyl cover and housed in a box; there’s nothing more to know, except that this is unquestionably now the only way to own the output of Britain’s most important band of the ’80s

3. Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Tell My Sister (Nonesuch) / Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Odditties (Querbeservice)

- the McGarrigle sisters’ eponymous 1975 debut album seemed just about perfect and, if anything, time has treated its mixture of French-Canadian/Appalachian/other American folk and nostalgic pop and parlour song inspired originals, where unfathomable sadness turns into and unrestrained joy and back at the pluck of a banjo, the bleat of an accordion or a blast on the tenor saxophone, so well that it seems absolutely timeless – because perfection is impossible to top, the follow-up, “Dancer With Bruised Knees”, which was nearly as good and not just a repeat, has always struggled in the light of the expectation generated by that debut – but the sound of perfection can be bettered, as demonstrated by “Tell My Sister”, a beautiful remastering of the two records that adds a third disc of 21 demos and previously unreleased songs and versions that clearly reveal the remarkable quality of the as yet unproduced raw material and contextualize the debut in a way that arguably even enhances it – “Odditties” is a decent if inessential collection of the kind of songs the two would sing together for fun, or for the occasional side project that might present itself

2. The Beach Boys – The Smile Sessions (Capitol)

- it used to be possible to claim that the best pop album ever conceived only really existed in its composer’s head, Smile legendarily being the post Pet Sounds record that Brian Wilson was never able to complete because, not to put too fine a point on it, it drove him mad – well here, at long last, following the use over the years of various excerpts on official Beach Boys albums, the reasonably wide availability of several bootleg versions of varying degrees of quality and “completeness” and Wilson’s own 2004 re-recording of it (an event, certainly, but one that had to be viewed against the realization that the singer was 37 years older and the musicians were entirely different from those for whom the music had been conceived), here it is, in all sorts of versions detailing various portions of the recording process all the way up to a massively expensive multi CD/vinyl and fancy artwork set for which you’ll have to take out a second bond – in fact the double disc box does the trick, containing all the songs, a lot of the groundwork, a bit of the studio discussion and a Smile button – and the music? – well, it’s both all anybody could seriously have hoped for (I have to confess to having owned an almost complete bootleg of it for years, though the sound here is, of course, radically improved) and yet, inevitably after four or more decades of hype, a trifle

disappointing; however, if some of it suggests that Wilson may already have been mad when he recorded it, enough of it displays the mark of real pop genius to make it, even now, a crucial part of any decent record collection

1. Mickey Newbury – An American Trilogy (Saint Cecilia/Drag City)

- the Nashville transplanted Texan Newbury, who once said (despite possessing a really fine, if typically understated voice) that he was a writer who sings, rather than a singer-songwriter, was certainly more heard about than heard, best known for writing hits for singers like Kenny Rogers, Jerry Lee Lewis, Tom Jones and dozens more, for stitching together the American Trilogy that turned into an Elvis Presley Vegas showstopper, for providing a way into the business for Kris Kristofferson and Townes Van Zandt and for having had his songs covered by Scott Walker, Nick Cave, Willie Nelson , Solomon Burke and hundreds of others – according to him he was successful enough by 1970 to have retired, but he continued to put out albums of his own anyway and, between 1969 and 1973, he released three, each soulfully restrained, impeccably crafted and beautifully written, “Looks Like Rain”, the truly exceptional “Frisco Mabel Joy” and “Heaven Help The Child”, that have been hard to find more or less ever since, but that have hardly been bettered by any American songwriter I can think of – this box set remasters all three of them from tapes previously thought to have been destroyed and adds a fourth disc of demos for what, for me, was easily, with the Beach Boys’ “Smile”, which falls into a category all of its own, the reissue event of the year

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER (the next 50)

Greg Allman – Low Country Blues (Rounder)Atlas Sound – Parallax (4AD)Maggie Björklund – Coming Home (Bloodshot)Ketil Bjørnstad / Svante Henyson – Night Song (ECM)Charles Bradley – No Time For Dreaming (Dunham)Cashier No 9 – To The Death Of Fun (Bella Union) Comet Gain – Howl Of The Lonely Crowd (What’s Your Rupture?)Earth – Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light (Southern Lord)Explosions In The Sky – Take Care, Take Care, Take Care (Bella Union)Feist – Metals (Polydor) The Felice Brothers – Celebration Florida (Loose)Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas – Highlander’s Farewell (Culburnie) The Head And The Heart – The Head And The Heart (Sub Pop)Hiss Golden Messenger – From Country Hai East Cotton (Blackmaps)Iceage – New Brigade (What’s Your Rupture?)Iron & Wine – Kiss Each Other Clean (4AD) Sarah Jarosz – Follow Me Down (Sugar Hill) Diana Jones – High Atmosphere (Proper)Joy Kills Sorrow – This Unknown Science (Signature Sounds) Alison Krauss & Union Station – Paper Airplane (Rounder)Lepisto & Lehti – Radio Moskova (Aito)Chris Letcher – Spectroscope (2 Feet/Sheer Sound) Little Axe – If You Want Loyalty Buy A Dog (On-U Sound)Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes (Atlantic)Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks – Mirror Traffic (Domino)Dan Mangan – Oh Fortune (City Slang)Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know (Virgin)Jessica Lee Mayfield – Tell Me (Polymer Sounds)Cass McCombs – Humor Risk (Domino)

Buddy Miller – Majestic Silver Strings (New West)Mountains – Air Museum (Thrill Jockey)Zoe Muth & the Lost High Rollers – Starlight Hotel (Signature Sounds)My Morning Jacket – Circuital (V2)North Mississippi Allstars – Keys To The Kingdom (Songs Of The South)Jack Oblivian – Rat City (Big Legal Mess)Noam Pikelny – Beat The Devil And Carry A Rail (Compass)Radiohead – The King Of Limbs (XL)Richmond Fontaine – The High Country (Decor)Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band – Legacy (Compass)Brendon Shields – Truth And Recession (MIA)D. Charles Speer & the Helix – Leaving The Commonwealth (Thrill Jockey)Still Corners – Creatures Of An Hour (Sub Pop)Sidi Touré & Friends – Sahel Folk (Thrill Jockey) Boubacar Traore – Mali Denhou (Lusafrica)Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Unknown Mortal Orchestra (True Panther Sounds)The Unthanks – Last (Rabble Rouser/EMI)Veronica Falls – Veronica Falls (Bella Union)Abigail Washburn – City Of Refuge (Rounder)Marry Waterson & Oliver Knight – The Days That Shaped Me (One Little Indian)Wolves In The Throne Room – Celestial Lineage (Southern Lord)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER (they also serve …)

Ryan Adams – Ashes And FireThe Adults – The AdultsAfrican Head Charge – Voodoo Of The GodsentScotty Alan – Wreck And The MessThe Baseball Project - Volume 2: High And InsideThe Bats – Free All The Monsters Tab Benoit - MedicineThe Black Keys – El CaminoBlind Boys Of Alabama – Take The High RoadBlitzen Trapper – American GoldwingBonnie “Prince” Billy – Wolfroy Goes To TownBoris – Heavy RocksGreg Brown - Freak FlagGuy Buttery – To Disappear In PlaceAnna Calvi – Anna CalviGlen Campbell – Ghost On The CanvasVinicius Cantuaria & Bill Frisell – Lágrimas MexicanasEliza Carthy – Neptune Guy Clark – Songs And StoriesCowboy Junkies – Demons: The Nomad Series Volume 2Steve Cropper – Dedicated: A Salute To The 5 RoyalesDeath Cab For Cutie – Codes And KeysJohn Doe - KeeperDum Dum Girls – Only In Dreams Elbow – Build A Rocket Boys!

Robert Ellis - PhotographsErland & the Carnival - NightingaleBill Frisell – Sign Of LifeHowe Gelb & A Band Of Gypsies – Alegrias Thea Gilmore – John Wesley HardingThe Gourds – Old Mad JoyEmmylou Harris – Hard BargainJohn Hiatt – Dirty Jeans And Mudslide HymnsMalcolm Holcombe – To Drink The RainThe Horrors – Skying Hurray For The Riff Raff – Hurray For The Riff RaffJackie-O M*t*e*f*c*e*– Earth Sound SystemWanda Jackson – The Party Ain’t OverJames Farm – James FarmThe Jayhawks – Mockingbird TimeEilen Jewell – Queen Of The Minor KeyDavid Kilgour & the Heavy Eights – Left By Soft Jesse Lége, Joel Savoy & the Cajun Country Revival - The Right CombinationJaspar Lepak – Forgiving WindLilo - LosslessLittle Roy – Battle For SeattleLow – C’monNick Lowe – The Old MagicKate Maki - MoonshineMarineVille – Fowl SwoopThe Paul McKenna Band - Stem The TideIness Mezel – Beyond The TranceRandy Newman – The Randy Newman Songbook Vol.2Obits – Moody, Standard And PoorOld 97’s – The Grand Theatre Vol.2Other Lives – Tamer AnimalsThe Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - Belong Panther & the Zoo – More FunPapercuts – Fading ParadeR.E.M. – Collapse Into NowRobbie Robertson – How To Become ClairvoyantSeasick Steve – You Can’t Teach An Old Dog New TricksSeudan - SeudanRon Sexsmith – Long Player Late BloomerSloan – The Double CrossSnakedog - RoadSnakefarm – My Halo At Half-Light Somerfaan – Laaste SomerD. Charles Speer – ArghiledesSpiers & Boden – The WorksTaraf de Haïdouks & Koçani Orkestar – Band Of Gypsies 2Chip Taylor – Rock And Roll JoeTedeschi Trucks Band - RevelatorKami Thompson – Love Lies

Teddy Thompson - BellaSteve Tilston – The ReckoningTom The Lion – The Adventures Of Tom The LionVieux Farka Touré – The Secret Trembling Bells – The Constant PageantSarabeth Tucek – Get Well SoonThe Twilight Singers – Dynamite StepsThe Vaccines – What Do You Expect From The VaccinesNibs van der Spuy – Morning StarChad Vangaalen – Diaper IslandVetiver – The Errant CharmWashed Out – Within And WithoutBarnaby Weir – Tarot Card RockJim White – Sounds Of The AmericansLucinda Williams - BlessedThe Wronglers with Jimmie Dale Gilmore – Heirloom MusicWu Lyf – Go Tell Fire To The Mountain Wye Oak – Civilian

MORE RECOMMENDED REISSUES ETC (alphabetically)

Charles “Packy” Axton – Late Late Party 1965-67Batsumi – BatsumiEric Bibb – Troubadour LiveThe Blasters – Live 1986Bubble Puppy – A Gathering Of PromisesTim Buckley – Tim BuckleyTim Buckley – Starsailor: The AnthologyKate Bush – Director’s CutMartin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick – Walnut Creek Michael Chapman – Fully Qualified SurvivorBobby Charles – Bobby Charles Sandy Denny – The North Star Grassman And The Ravens Derek & the Dominos – Layla And Other Assorted Love SongsJackie DeShannon - Come And Get Me: The Complete Liberty And Imperial Singles Donovan – Sunshine Superman Bob Dylan – Studs Terkel’s Wax MuseumBob Dylan – In Concert: Brandeis University 1963 Jim Ford – Harlan County Julie Fowlis – Live At Perthshire AmberGiant Sand – Center Of The Universe Giant Sand – Purge & Slouch Giant Sand – Chore Of Enchantment Guru Guru – Live in Germany ‘71Roy Harper – Songs Of Love And Loss The Jesus And Mary Chain - Psychocandy The Jesus And Mary Chain - DarklandsThe Kinks – The Kink KontroversyThe Left Banke – Walk Away Renée / Pretty Ballerina

The Left Banke – The Left Banke TooThe Legendary Stardust Cowboy – For Sara, Raquel And David: An AnthologyThe Long Ryders – Native SonsNick Lowe – Labour Of LustBrian McNeill – The Road Never Questions: The Best Of Brian McNeill Volume 1Neutral Milk Hotel – On Avery IslandNirvana - NevermindVan Dyke Parks – Arrangements Volume 1Lee “Scratch” Perry – The Return Of Sound System ScratchPopol Vuh – Revisited & Remixed 1970-1999Primal Scream - ScreamadelicaR.E.M. – Lifes Rich PageantSebadoh – Bakesale Sigur Ros – InniBruce Springsteen – Live At The Main Point 1975Candi Staton – Evidence: The Complete Fame Records MastersThe 3Ds – We Bury The Living: Early Recordings 1989-1990Various – Ace Story Vol 3Various – Come Together: Black America Sings Lennon & McCartney Various – Dark River: Songs Of The Civil War Era Various – Delta Swamp RockVarious – Dirty Water 2: More Birth Of Punk AttitudeVarious – The First Rock And Roll Record Various – Hank Williams: The Lost NotebooksVarious – Ishumar 2: New Tuareg GuitarsVarious – Johnny Boy Would Love ThisVarious – The Karindula Sessions: Tradi-Modern Sounds From Southeast CongoVarious – Movement: BBC Radio 1Peel Sessions 1977-1979Various – O Brother Where Art ThouVarious – Oak Ash ThornVarious – The Original Sound Of Cumbia: The History of Colombian Cumbia & Porro 1948-79Various – Steele The ShowVarious – The Story Of Trojan RecordsVarious – Sweet Inspiration: The Songs Of Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham Various – Tally Ho! Flying Nun’s Greatest BitsVarious – This One’s For Him: A Tribute To Guy ClarkVarious – Upside Down: The Creation Records StoryVarious – Winter’s Bone Various – Wheedle’s Groove: Seattle’s Finest In Funk & Soul 1965-1979Various – WOMAD: Sounds Of The Planet 2011Loudon Wainwright III – Album III / Attempted Mustache / UnrequitedNeil Young & the International Harvesters – A Treasure