Best Records of 2011 (so far)

Inspired by NPR All Songs Considered doing their midway wrap of the year's best, here is my own list. With videos of the standout track from each. There is a big list here to help you compile your own.

1. Destroyer - Kaputt



2. Toro Y Moi - Underneath the Pine



3. Cass McCombs - Wit's End



4. Bon Iver - Bon Iver



5. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues



6. Bill Callahan - Apocalypse



7. Smith Westerns - Dye it Blonde



8. Panda Bear - Tomboy



9. Low - C'Mon



10. Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes

Favourite Albums of 2010

It has taken me until the first day of January 2011 to finally get around to posting this list. Most people had theirs published by the first week of December. But a lot can change in a month, and it felt only fair to allow these albums time to order themselves properly in my head (and to a certain extent, on my last.fm profile).

So, here it is, my favourite albums released in 2010... with videos for the top ten!

** Update - realised that the Girls album came out in '09. Added Surf City from NZ **

1. Avi Buffalo - Avi Buffalo

When I first heard this record I realised there was no way another record could eclipse it in 2010. And it contained my fave song of the year too, check it out below and find out more about Avi Buffalo on their subpop page.



2. Tallest man on Earth – The Wild Hunt




3. Wild Nothing – Gemini



4. Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest




5. Damien Jurado – Saint Bartlett



6. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs



7. Sally Seltmann – Heart That’s Pounding



8. Local Natives - Gorilla Manor



9. The Ancients – The Ancients 2



10. Tame Impala - Innerspeaker



11. Sun Kil Moon – Admiral Fel Promises
12. The Morning Benders - Big Echo
13. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffitti – Before Today
14. Surfer Blood – Astro Coast
15. The Black Keys – Brothers
16. Lower Dens - Twin Hand Movement
17. Magic Kids - Memphis
18. Woods - At Echo Lake
19. Parades - Foreign Tapes
20. Surf City - Kudos

For a glimpse at what others are putting into their lists check out this aggregated top 20 from the NME.

Bloggers Choice '08

Forget the magazine editors & big label marketing budgets. This is the best music from 2008 chosen by the most passionate music fans alive: music bloggers.

Hype Machine bring together the best albums, songs and artists of two-thousand-and-GREAT! And in true HypeM style there's free downloads, full albums and bloggery analysis a kimbo.

Check out Music Blog Zeitgeist.

Best Australian Albums Ever

The results are in from a poll on Mess And Noise to find the Top 50 Australian albums of all time. The top ten ended up being:

01 The Saints - I'm Stranded
02 You Am I - Hourly Daily
03 You Am I - Hi-Fi Way
04 Triffids - Born Sandy Devotional
05 Radio Birdman - Radios Appear
06 Avalanches - Since I Left You
07 The Saints - Eternally Yours
08 Augie March - Sunset Studies
09 The Birthday Party - Junkyard
10 The Dirty Three - Ocean Songs

The full 50 and subsequent discussion is here. The poll came as a comment on the list compiled by The Age newspaper which asked music industry types to pitch their oz top ten. The results for their poll is here, with Midnight Oil's 10-1 leading the list. The full article in The Age is also online.

But my own votes for the Mess and Noise poll were thus:

01 Dirty Three - Ocean Songs
02 You Am I - Hi Fi Way
03 ACDC - TNT
04 The Avalanches - Since I Left You
05 Golden Rough - This Sad Paradise
06 Grand Salvo - 1642-1727
07 Gaslight Radio - hitch on the leaves
08 INXS - Kick
09 Drones - Wait Long By The River...
10 New Buffalo - The Last Beautiful Day

I think the top three are basically interchangeable, and even for someone who presented an Australian music program for 8 years on radio it was tough to pick my ten favourites of "all time".

On You Am I's "Hi Fi Way" which features toward the top of all the final lists, music journalist Ed Nimmervoll has this to say:

It’s still hard to believe how much You Am I accomplished with their epochal second album. Vibrant, even thrilling, in sound, but imbued with melancholic childhood memories and a sense of coming of age that was idiosyncratically Australian, Hi Fi Way set a benchmark that hasn’t been matched since.

True.

I've included INXS on my top 10 because it rules, and it was the first album I ever bought with my own pocketmoney. Also true.