Every year, Dan asks members of Why Make Clocks to list their ten favorite albums of the preceding twelve-month. And every year, I put it off like a bum. This is due to nothing more than the fact that I don’t really buy a lot of ‘new’ music each year. Most of my listening consists of ghosts of years past. On top of that, almost everything I listen to is what Dan listens to, so our lists usually ending up looking rather similar (or would, if I bothered to jot anything down). This year, however, I’ve single-handedly put a spike in Amazon’s mp3 store quarterlies, because of the sheer volume of interesting names and works that have wandered across my desk, as it were. So here they are, in no particular order, my favorite albums of 2011. Forgive me.
The Mountain Goats – All Eternals Deck
Cults – Cults
Julianna Barwick – The Magic Place
The Seed of Something – The Seed of Something
Colin Stetson – New History Warfare – Judges, Vol. 2
Tom Waits – Bad As Me
Russian Circles – Empros
Fetal Pig – Autopia
Wye Oak – Civilian
Darren Korb – Bastion Original Soundtrack (This is, in truth, the soundtrack to a video game released this last July, guys, but it plays through like a proper album. All originally composed by Darren Korb and performed by a small group of musicians from southern California, I think, in concert with Supergiant Games, the developer of the game in question, Bastion. Check it out, it’s almost as good as the Zelda theme.)
