Now that it’s 2012, here is a look back at the past year in music. We’ve rounded up the usual suspects, sat back, reflected and squared in with discosalt Magazine’s “top 10” best albums of 2011.
 Twenty-two tracks of flawlessly crafted synth drenched in intrepid, day-glo, art-pop scenery, without a wasted moment. Citing Billy Corgan’s twenty-eight-track, nine times platinum, alternative magnum opus Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, as his inspiration, Anthony Gonzalez, forges his ongoing love affair with dreams and the magical escapism of his youth into seventy-four minutes of bittersweet nostalgia, reconciled through epic dance jams, more evocative of The Breakfast Club Soundtrack.Read more articles on M83 |
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 This is one of the best-sounding rock records all year. On Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Girls trade in the free-spirited, sun soaked, west coast sound of Lust for Life for a deeply soulful and melancholic mix of delicate acoustic balladry, blues and noisy rave-ups, that overflow with emotion to perfectly capture an end of summer tenor. Centered around Christopher Owens’ wounded vocals, this is a collection of affecting songs brooding on love and fear, equally naive and emotionally aware.Read more articles on Girls |
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 Meshing a surplus of grunge and shoe-gaze genetics from over a decade ago, into one versatile, low-fi production, Yuck might sound like they belong in the early 90′s. Yet they manage to shake off the mere “nineties revivalist” label by putting their own personal and affecting spin on a range of influences. With obvious nods to My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, Teenage Fanclub and Dinosaur Jr., Yuck distinguish themselves as one of the more technically gifted guitar acts to recently emerge, releasing one of the most invigorating albums this year.Read more articles on Yuck |
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 The Horrors shed their sometimes campy, dark, garage-rock aesthetic for a radically re-invented sound that includes a new range of musical influences from gothic pomp to dream pop, psychedelia to shoe-gaze, pushing the band forward into murky, unexplored territory. The result is a dazzling collection of emotionally inflected rock and psychedelia, musically varied but singular in ambition, where the parts not only beget the whole, but where the whole synthesizes the part. This is The Horrors definitive album; mature, focused, and proof that some bands really are better at growing up than others.Read more articles on The Horrors |
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 For an album about escape, Bon Iver puts forth a valiant effort to stay the course. This is a more vibrant and lush linchpin than it’s lauded, but comparatively skeletal, predecessor albums, masterfully combining the fruit of these labors, “bringing it all back home” into one sophisticated and robust album. Flourishing from a consistent reciprocity of warm, beatific instrumentation consolidated by studio finesse, Bon Iver is a wash of memories from places visited or dreams of places to go. Less about geography or culture and more about occupying a state of mind; living outside yourself and finding beauty in that space.Read more articles on Bon Iver |
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 Now a trio, The Antlers abandon the trauma of their last album, and turn it inside out, to create an entirely new memento of near-equal weight and beauty. Unlike the raw emotional wrecking-ball that was Hospice, Burst Apart is an ode to recovery, more outwardly focused than the last, with pulsing beats, forward propelling guitars and a cristalized sound sheathed under Peter Silberman’s consistently self-aware and honest, lyrical command. Evoking a longing feeling of nocturnal desolation, Burst Apart doesn’t completely wrench The Antlers, or the listener, entirely out of the dark, but proffers a flicker of light that is hopeful.Read more articles on The Antlers |
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 A lo-fi, Brooklyn, shoe-gaze, garage rock album, every bit as potent as their debut. Sounding less like Joy Division and more like a backyard acid trip – heavier on atmosphere, hotdogging the bands ultra-tight cohesion and aggrandizing the cult following of Brad Hargett’s tone-wary, reverb drenched bass voice. With leering and brash psychedelic organ swells, noisy guitars, sinister rockabilly riffs, and the echoy distance Hargett places between the instrumentation and the listener – this is sinister American pop at it’s best, from a band that has the songwriting chops to pull it off.Read more articles on Crystal Stilts |
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 Black Up is a hip-hop album that sounds unlike any other hip-hop album this year. Borrowing from African roots, jazz, ambient, electronic and dub-step and led by enigmatic Seattle based rapper Ishmael Butler aka ‘Palaceer Lazaro’, once ‘Butterfly’ of Digital Planets, Black Upis both dense and dissonant. This is a sonic move reminiscent of early Wu-Tang and J-Dilla mixed with the atmospheric magic of DJ Shadow, sounding at once throwback but some how still miles ahead.Read more articles on Shabazz Palaces |
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 Listening to Nurses, it’s apt to make comparisons to Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear and MGMT. Yet, sheathed under the collocquial blanket of freak folk and neo-psychedelic rock, this is a sonically ambitious and immaculately constructed pop record. Forged under the strength of Aaron Chapman’s sharp, addictive, and divisive vocals, there is enough here, to separate Nurses from their peers.Read more articles on Nurses |
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 Kurt Vile knows exactly what he’s trying to say, but would like us to think otherwise. On his fourth record, Smoke Ring For My Halo, Vile’s self-doubting, loner conversations with himself unfold like a rambling diary entry, which is part of the allure. Sonically, Smoke Ring channels the energy of the seventies – notably the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Tom Petty and John Fahey -both paying homage to these influences and imbibing the genre with some new found energy through wry lyrical observations.Read more articles on Kurt Vile. |
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11. WILCO: THE WHOLE LOVE
12. YOUTH LAGOON: THE YEAR OF HIBERNATION
18. BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB: A DIFFERENT KIND OF FIX
19. PANDA BEAR: TOMBOY
20. MY MORNING JACKET: CIRCUITAL
