Best Music of 2011...already?

After 2010's epic run, I expected a bit of a let down. I knew that many critically-acclaimed groups were releasing follow-up efforts, but the year is already beyond my highest hopes. Not only will 2011 trump everything 2010 had to offer, we are about to witness the evolution of music in a single year.

Destroyer's music escapes almost all genres, yet still covers most.  Kaputt's sounds are an amalgamation of soft-rock, jazz, 80s pop, 70s disco, and even big band; or in other words, two generations of junior high dances, proms, break-ups, marriages, and mid-life crises. Somehow Destroyer have covered more genres than most musicians will in an entire career--within a single album. Kaputt is ever-changing, yet oddly seamless within a haze of 1970s, 80s, 90s, 2000s to 2192 bliss. Destroyer has honed the most distinctive sound you will ever witness: and done so with ease.

Fleet Foxes are among many artists competing with the sophomore album hype in 2011. Since 2008, the band from Seattle have been on hiatus which many critics believed to be a retooling of their medieval folk perfection in their self-titled debut. Instead, Fleet Foxes have built upon their folk origins with a heavier acoustic influence. Every track is more structured, more harmonized, and more unified than their previous effort. Robin Pecknold's lyrics are still the pinnacle of the group's potential, but in Helplessness Blues Fleet Foxes have found solace as a cooperative force.

Maybe it was James Blake's ability to reshape time signatures and rhythm into a coherent beat, or his contortion of sound to the point of elegant infraction that won the praises of critics in his 2010 post-dubstep, electronic-mash-up EPs. Whatever the reason, James Blake stared down a massive hill of hype entering 2011 upon releasing his debut album. But here, in his freshman effort, he's redirected his focus on samples of his own voice and piano, creating a simplistic, emotional, eclectic, phenomenon of an album at the most important phase of his career.

Although Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) has released seven of the final eleven tracks of his latest album over the past seven months, the buzz created from his work with Animal Collective's massively acclaimed Merriweather Post Pavilion is at cataclysmic heights. Yet even now, before the final mixes of the album have touched the ears of the masses, I promise there will be no meltdown. Noah has found a way to make his music even more approachable at this stage in his career. His music is hard to label--even more so with my rudimentary writing--but just know this: Tomboy will be the album of 2011.

Radiohead have waited years to release their follow-up to the fan-favorite In Rainbows, and the maturity shows early on. Each track is light, tight, seamless, and focused. Radiohead have layered their sound to the heights of an entirely new soundscape. It's no coincidence that Jonny Greenwood's recent film orchestration has seeped into the Radiohead conscience. Dislocated time signatures, evolutionary simplistic loops, and constant abstract rhythms have only evolved Radiohead's sound into a futuristic eargasm. The Radiohead we've come to know and love is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Not much is known about The Weeknd. What we do know is the trio from Toronto, led by Abel Tesfaye (and backed by Drake), has already captured the hearts of critics and bloggers with their free, indie R&B, debut mixtape. The most interesting aspect of the group's sound is easily thier ability to create a distinctive, nighttime atmosphere. Tales of jealousy, drugs, and "weekend" flings drive the lyrics, bringing to mind a re-invisioned Ginuwine. While The-Dream and Drake have recently invigorated the R&B scene, The Weeknd's synthy, progressive, crooning sound shows complete control of a wavering genre.



-jh