Best Songs of 2011

My fascination with year-end lists has a distinct starting point:  the last week in 1966 when WABC in New York broadcast their 100 top hits of the year.  Aided by my sister Betsy, we set down the song titles as they were played on our kitchen radio over several days.  While we got the top 20, inevitably there were gaps;  what were #37 and #82 anyway? Where did “Sloop John B” and “Secret Agent Man” fit in?  It was an extremely satisfying puzzle for a music loving 12-year old.  The next year though, we just sent away for a printed copy.  So much simpler. 

My roster of the best songs of 2011 is shorter and less radio-friendly than that 1966 list headed by the Association’s “Cherish.”   Hope you’ll find some thing to enjoy at least as much as that gem.

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1. Bell XI, Velcro – None of this countdown stuff.  This one was #1 with a bullet and I wore it out.

2.  Garland Jeffries, Coney Island Winter – Where did he go after “Wild in Streets”?  To Brooklyn, evidently.  Nice to have him back.

3.  Mayer Hawththorn, The Walk – When he first came up, I thought he was goofing on blued-eyed soul.  He’s deadly serious and you should be, too.

4.  Anthony Hamilton, Woo – Sit still.  Go ahead, I dare you.

5.  Bombay Bicycle Club, Shuffle – A genre-defying indie tune that will make you put the top down, head for the beach and smile all the way. 

6.  Movits, Sammy Davis Jr. – Swedish rappers.  I will say no more. 

7.  Adele, Rumor Has It – I like my Adele slinky.  This one is way better than “Rollin’ in the Deep”

8.  Toro y Moi, Still Sound – Biggest, baddest bass line of the year. 

9.  Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie XX,  I’ll Take Care of You – Covered by Drake and Rihanna, this is the original.  Is it ever.

10.   Foster the People. Pumped Up Kicks – I loved it just as much when it was all over the radio this summer as when it was a breakout indie hit last winter.

11.   Jill Scott with Anthony Hamilton, So In Love – Somebody open a window, it’s hot in here.  Tammy and Marvin had nothing on these two.   

Best Albums of 2011

2011 was a weird and wonderful musical year when new music looked both backward and forward.  This list is as varied as any I've compiled, a measure of a restless time in popular music:  there's career topping work from a classic folky, re-energized Southern California rock, smart British "art rock", American power pop, electronic sounds rooted in classic soul and, of course, actual classic soul. 


There were a slew of other recordings I could have also recommend, some you're likely already listening to: solid disks by Ryan Adams and Wilco (long since shaking their "alt country" past), followup albums by Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes that surpass both their impressive debuts, and of course Adele's fine 21.  But the eight disks below gave me special pleasure with the freshness of their sound, the insight of their lyrics or their genius for reinventing the familiar.

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Paul Simon, So Beautiful Or So What  -  Simon turned 70 this year and it shows.  Not in any diminished creative power -- au contraire.  This is a disc as original and listenable as as his best, right up there with Graceland and Hearts and Bones (a desert island pick).  But this is the kind of music only possible after a richly lived life, a meditation on angels, saints and everyday miracles, animated by the poly-rhythms that have fascinated him since "Me and Julio...".  But sit down. You need to actively listen to this music just like in 1973.  Lucky for us, nobody told Paul the album form was done.

Dawes, Nothing is Wrong, Dawes -  And speaking of 1973, here's a band that will put you right back in the front seat of your first car, listening to the Eagles on the radio -- not the fat, coked-out, Hotel California Eagles, but the lean, young Desperado Eagles. There are big debts here to Jackson Browne, Neil Young and Warren Zevon, too, with the stinging guitars, the high, tight harmonies and the lyrics about misadventure in Southern California.  In songs like "Time Spent on Los Angeles" or "Little Bit of Everything" they neatly capture life poised between the cool and the desperate.  

Elbow, Build a Rocket Boys - There's really no US equivalent to the UK Mercury Prize, awarded annually for the best UK or Irish recording.  But the list of nominees, never mind the winner, is always a great guide to smart, original pop and rock that stretches boundaries (think Radiohead and PJ Harvey).  Elbow won the 2008 Mercury and this disk got them nominated again in 2011. I know, you never heard of them.  Just start here, with the voice of Guy Garvey channeling Peter Gabriel on a disk about childhood.

Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie XX, We're New Here - A remix album?  Really, Jack?  You betcha.  Gil was a spoken word visionary, whose "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" was  the 1970 well-spring of rap; "The Bottle" was the coolest tune you could spin at a party in 1974. But then he disappeared, derailed for decades by addiction and madness that he never shook.  He returned to recording before he died this year and on this disk, the British producer and artist Jamie XX remixes his last one from 2010.  With a dub and techno vibe that's worlds apart from Gil's earlier work, this sounds beautifully haunted by his ghost -- a world-weary specter.  Rest in peace, Gil.

Fountains of Wayne, Sky Full of Holes,  -  Just when you think you've had enough of FOW and their smarty-pants pop ("Stacey's Mom"), they tone it down and remind you that they are the genuine article, song craftsman as gifted as Cole Porter.  There, I've said it.  Because in their wry, observant wordplay, this is the tradition they tap, even if they package it in a "Cheap Trick" wrapper.  This is a simple pleasure that in a perfect world would be all over the radio.  Listen to "Action Hero", "Workingman's Hands" or "Acela".  Cole should be flattered.

James Blake, James Blake - Hypnotic.  There's simply no other word for James Blake's self-titled disk. I hear echoes of D'Angelo's 2000 masterpiece, Voodoo. But this is not a hip-hop album.  Instead it has an other-worldly soulfulness, a spare electronic setting and a call-and-response rhythm that hails from a church somewhere on the south side of the twilight zone.

Real Estate, Days - It's hard to believe these guys share New Jersey with Bruce Springstein, but here they are, proud sons of Ridgewood. They weave a musical spell with strummed guitars that's a little bit hippie stoner and warm as the Avalon sun.  Echoes of the Beach Boys and Bob Welch-era Fleetwood Mac.  Get me to the beach.

Anthony Hamilton, Back to Love - This year's soul man for me, Hamilton has been recording for nearly twenty years.  If radio still worked the way it did back in the day, you'd have a shelf full of his disks sitting right next to Al Green, Bobby Womack and Marvin; all like Hamilton have R&B voices that can beg, plead and shout. Full of new quiet storm classics, there's nothing "neo" about this soul.

Best singles list still to come for those of you with short attention spans.