Well, 2011. You were quite the year! So much so that I’ve only been able to recover enough to think about you a full week into 2012. Crazy, huh? New jobs, lots of change, oodles of shenanigans, and yes, lots of good music. So much so, that I undoubtedly missed vast quantities of things that I really should have got to. Ho hum.
So what things did Skye like? Blimey. I just looked at the Excel spreadsheet of this year’s releases (see how cool Skye is!), and there’s a lot of stuff on there. However it’s fair to say that I do actually have a favourite record of 2011, despite my general resistance to ranking things. I know, crazy times, huh, maybe the Mayans are right after all.
What was good that was always expected to be good? Wilco’s The Whole Love, St. Vincent’s Strange Mercy, the new records by TV on the Radio, Rome from Danger Mouse and Daniel Luppi, Low’s C’Mon, the new Mogwai (they may surprise less, but they certainly still do know how to perfect that cracking LOUD/quiet/LOUD stylee). The Go! Team, Bon Iver, Wild Beasts, Feist, all at the tip-top of their game. Sons & Daughters made a welcome return with the typically bonkers Mirror Mirror.
Surprises? Laura Marling’s return to form with A Creature I Don’t Know after the very disappointing I Speak Because I Can; The Fall from Gorillaz was also a surprise, not because Albarn and co had lost it in any sense but because I’m genuinely impressed that a record of such quality could come out of an iPad. Cheeky buggar of the year award to Arcade Fire for basically releasing The Suburbs again and yet, still I bought it.
Who else did I thoroughly enjoy? Cults, a band who visited Cambridge and I managed to miss them, causing my biggest headdesk moment of the year. Loved Welcome to Condale from Summer Camp as well as Loch Lomond’s Little Me Will Start a Storm. Mirror Traffic from Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks racked up the playcount in iTunes, and I was all set to pick up the vinyl until the chaps in the record store told me the copies had gone up in flames in the big riot warehouse disaster. Fuck you, arsonist record-burning dickbags.
We’re getting close to the top. Carloman’s Carloman was probably one of my absolute picks of the year. An inspired record about Medieval kings and emperors. I loved Everything’s Getting Older from Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat, can’t get enough of If Not Then When by King’s Daughters and Sons (which, fact fans, I’m listening to as I type) and, all bias aside since they’re from my old hebridean haunts, adored The Dead Man’s Waltz. And if it was possible to wear out an mp3, then I’d probably have to replace Anna Calvi’s debut by now.
Skye’s top listen of 2011? King Creosote and Jon Hopkins’ Diamond Mine. Some things never change. I first wrote about KC on TMS in July 2005, and this is the second time Kenny has made one of my absolute favourite records of the year. It’s beautiful, it’s thoughtful, it’s so resonant with echoes of Fife even if that isn’t quite the attempt. Not only is Diamond Mine my favourite record of the year, but “Bats in the Attic” is probably my favourite song.
So there it is. Thanks, 2011.
