Radiohead
THE KING OF LIMBS XL
CHOICE CUT: BLOOM
Girls
“The way Chris’ songwriting and JR’s production interact is amazing. There’s good musicianship and there are some lyrical lines that I think are really special, like ‘...and then she’ll love me for all the reasons everyone hates me’.”
—RUBAN NIELSON of Unknown Mortal Orchestra
FATHER, SON, HOLY GHOST
TRUE PANTHER
CHOICE CUT: ALEX
Ambrose Akinmusire
WHEN THE HEART EMERGES GLISTENING BLUE NOTE
CHOICE CUT: HENYA Bay Area trumpeter debuts as a bandleader on Blue Note with mostly meditative LP: Akinmusire’s muffled slipstream is ripe with purpose, and shines brightest during the subtle, open-air excursions—of which there are plenty.
Favorite Album:
GOBLIN by Tyler, the Creator “I love this album because it puts a stamp on time—when listening to it, you instantly know that hiphop after this one album will have to be different.”
tUnE-yArDs
WHOKILL 4AD
CHOICE CUT: POWA
TV On The Radio
NINE TYPES OF LIGHT
INTERSCOPE
CHOICE CUT: CAFFEINATED CONSCIOUSNESS
Unknown Mortal Orchestra
UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA FAT POSSUM
CHOICE CUT: NERVE DAMAGE! Portland via New Zealand lo-fi spunksters spring to life in their florid but dusty debut, tracing a glittering stripe of rainbow-funk rock: riffing on the nonsensical (“Nerve Damage!,” “Jello and Juggernauts”) and just plain riffing (“Thought Balloon,” “FFunny FFriends”).
Vinicius Cantuรกria & Bill Frisell
Lร GRIMAS MEXICANAS
eONE
CHOICE CUT: AQUELA MULHER
Bill Callahan
APOCALYPSE DRAG CITY
CHOICE CUT: ONE FINE MORNING
Cymbals Eat Guitars
LENSES ALIEN
BARSUK
CHOICE CUT: DEFINITE DARKNESS
Dengue Fever
CANNIBAL COURTSHIP CONCORD
CHOICE CUT: UKU Los Angeles six-piece expands its formula with psychedelic synth-quirk and somet i mes r iotous ‘60s f unk hor ns, conjuring another hazy spaghetti western out of Cambodian surf pop.
Favorite Albums:
BLACK UP by Shabazz Palaces “BLACK UP might be my favorite album of the year simply because it’s the boldest. The abstract arrangements have a wonderful sense of freedom to them. It can be hit or miss, at times, but hip-hop so desperately needs an injection of creativity and this record is a full needle”.
—PAUL SMITH, drummer/ producer
NEW HISTORY WARFARE VOL 2: JUDGES by Collin Stetson “Love the sound and feeling. It makes me feel upside down in high speed forward motion and the technique is profound, almost unbearable.”
—DAVID RALICKE, horns
Casiokids
AABENBARINGEN OVER AASKAMMEN POLYVINYL
CHOICE CUT: DET HASTER!
Action Bronson
DR. LECTER
SELF-RESLEASED
CHOICE CUT: BUDDY GUY
Kurt Vile
SMOKE RING FOR MY HALO MATADOR
CHOICE CUT: RUNNER UPS
“Dude’s got a psychy-Neil Young thing goin’ on. I dig it. Our record also rules.”
—HONOR TITUS of Cerebral Ballzy
Pistol Annies
HELL ON HEELS COLUMBIA NASHVILLE
CHOICE CUT: HELL ON HELLS
Danny Brown
XXX
FOOL’S GOLD
CHOICE CUT: RADIO SONG
Cerebral Ballzy
CEREBRAL BALLZY
WILLIAMS STREET
CHOICE CUT: INSUFFICIENT FARE ‘80s-hardcore revivalists sprint through 12 songs in 20 minutes, skating, snearing, puking, ogling, spitting, cutting class: no regrets, no consequences.
Mountains
AIR MUSEUM THRILL JOCKEY
CHOICE CUT: BLUE LANTERNS ON EAST OXFORD Brooklyn alchemists craft more electroecstasy with their finest long-play yet, twining digital and acoustic fibers into twinkling rivulets that bloom into unending waterfalls.
Favorite Album:
THE VOICE ROLLING by Mind Over Mirrors “Fully-saturated harmonium blistering from bliss out to harmonic overdrive; hints of kosmische and some heavy nu age: echoes abound. Current Chicago resident Jamie Fennelly has created his own lush yet beastly concoction of bubbling stasis. Controls set either straight for the sun or perhaps your mind’s eye. Oh wait....”
— KOEN HOLTKAMP of Mountains
Drake
TAKE CARE
YOUNG MONEY/CASH MONEY/UNIVERSAL
CHOICE CUT: CREW LOVE
Feist
METALS CHERRYTREE
CHOICE CUT: CAUGHT A LONG WIND
Phonte
CHARITY STARTS AT HOME FOREIGN EXCHANGE
CHOICE CUT: NOT HERE ANYMORE Phonte raps with gritty gusto as the country spirals around him in this 2011 record for the times. Charity Starts At Home is a working class hero on the verge of existential implosion, meditating the merits of monogamy, hustling despite layoffs and spiking mortgage rates—preaching to the choir, really, but without sounding preachy.
Destroyer
KAPUTT
MERGE
CHOICE CUT: SUICIDE DEMO FOR KARA WALKER
Charles Bradley
NO TIME FOR DREAMING DAPTONE
CHOICE CUT: HOW LONG
Fleet Foxes
HELPLESSNESS BLUES
SUB POP
CHOICE CUT: HELPLESSNESS BLUES
Quilt
QUILT
MEXICAN SUMMER
CHOICE CUT: COWBOYS IN THE VOID Mellow melodists traverse space and time, channelling Left Coast folk circa Summer of Love, all the way from Boston in 2011.
Favorite Albums:
ASLEEP ON THE FLOODPLAIN by Six Organs of Admittance, & 936 by Peaking Lights
OK MIDNIGHT, YOU WIN by Happy Jawbone Family Band
“Together they stitch the ways in which I’ve come to know now... totally contradictory and totally on the same track.”
“It’s the album that Lou Reed would’ve wrote if he never moved out of his mom’s house and ate more junk food instead of drugs.”
—SHANE BUTLER, guitar, vocals, banjo
—JOHN ANDREWS, drummer
Atlas Sound
PARALLAX 4AD
CHOICE CUT: TE AMO
Paul Simon
SO BEAUTIFUL OR SO WHAT HEAR MUSIC
CHOICE CUT: QUESTIONS FOR THE ANGELS
Metronomy
THE ENGLISH RIVIERA BECAUSE MUSIC
CHOICE CUT: THE BAY
“Shit is just mad catchy. I love the new move with more live instrumentation. Dude is a really good songwriter.”
—JOHNNY SIERA of The Death Set
Pure X
PLEASURE
ACÉPHALE/LIGHT LODGE
CHOICE CUT: HEAVY AIR
Jay-Z & Kanye West
WATCH THE THRONE ROC-A-FELLA/ROC NATION/DEF JAM
CHOICE CUT: NEW DAY
The Stepkids
THE STEPKIDS STONE’S THROW
CHOICE CUT: LA LA
Alec Gross
STRIP THE LANTERNS SOLEBURY MTN. MUSIC
CHOICE CUT: IF YOU DON’T MIND (BABY GO AHEAD) Syrupy-voiced singer-songwriter gets conceptual over a soulful union of country and folk originals, belting like a supreme narrator when things get heavy.
Favorite Album:
CIRCUITAL by My Morning Jacket “Muscular and still so musical. These guys are some of the most important musicians working today.�
Fucked Up
DAVID COMES TO LIFE MATADOR
CHOICE CUT: TRUTH I KNOW
Oneohtrix Point Never
REPLICA
MEXICAN SUMMER/SOFTWARE LABEL
CHOICE CUT: ANDRO
Nostalgia 77
THE SLEEPWALKING SOCIETY TRU-THOUGHTS
CHOICE CUT: BEAUTIFUL LIE Composer and gentle-jazz auteur returns from four years of collaborations with a record all his own—sorta. Josa Peit’s earthy baritone dominates the bulk of this LP, but in the best way; the German chanteuse realizes Nostalgia’s vision in every track she graces, from the dreamy “Beautiful Lie” to crisp, Howitzer-organ grumblers “Sleepwalker” and “When Love Is Strange.” Sleepwalking Society is mostly a marvel of steely blues, though its exiting gesture, the sighing instrumental “Hush,” is its greatest triumph.
Raphael Saadiq
STONE ROLLIN’ COLUMBIA
CHOICE CUT: GOOD MAN
Ry Cooder
PULL UP SOME DUST & SIT DOWN NONESUCH
CHOICE CUT: LORD TELL ME WHY
SBTRKT
SBTRKT
YOUNG TURKS
CHOICE CUT: SOMETHING GOES RIGHT It’s no stretch to say Aaron Jerome goes to as much trouble in chiseling an anti-ego as he does composing brooding funk-step grooves for the antisocialite. But the smoldering, Little Dragon-boosted standout “Wildfire” brought SBTRKT out of self-prescribed anonymity once Drake remixed it, tuning many ears to the Londoner’s self-titled debut. The charred-butprecise soprano of Sampha makes him a key feature, a space-lounge singer booted into the dance party SBTRKT engenders for the quiet confines between your headphones.
The Death Set
MICHEL POICCARD NINJA TUNE
CHOICE CUT: WE ARE GOING ANYWHERE MAN Aussie émigrés record their first full-length since the untimely death of co-founder/leader in 2009: the glossy punk-ballads are more dense, more serene, more poignant than before, but the trio’s raison d’être remains thrashing headlong into the unknown—while slapping you in the head and braying like a Beastie.
Curren$y
WEEKEND AT BURNIE’S
JET LIFE/WARNER BROS.
CHOICE CUT: THIS IS THE LIFE
Willem Maker
AGAPAO SELF-RELEASED
CHOICE CUT: REVIVAL 6
Favorite Album:
BEHOLD THE SPIRIT by William Tyler “BEHOLD THE SPIRIT was released at the end of last year, but it’s a 2011 discovery for me. I had the pleasure of recording a quick session with Mr. Tyler in Nashville, and his debut confirmed my suspicions from that brief encounter—a rare emotional intelligence and a guitarist of The highest order.”
Little Dragon
RITUAL UNION
PEACEFROG
CHOICE CUT: SHUFFLE A DREAM
PJ Harvey
LET ENGLAND SHAKE ISLAND/VAGRANT
CHOICE CUT: ALL AND EVERYONE
The Roots
UNDUN
DEF JAM
CHOICE CUT: MAKE MY FEAT. BIG K.R.I.T
The Black Keys
EL CAMINO NONESUCH
CHOICE CUT: GOLD ON THE CEILING
Frank Ocean
NOSTALGIA, ULTRA SELF-RELEASED
CHOICE CUT: WE ALL TRY
Joe Henry
REVERIE ANTI
CHOICE CUT: GRAND STREET Producer, singer-songwriter and downright multihyphenate Joe Henry lives in that ignominious domain of an influential musical pusher too often overlooked. His twelfth solo album is a lush and lethargic cycle of free-flowing compositions: they stumble and crash over their own feet, edges frayed into deliberate, stylish shambles. However bedraggled, the music always sounds sympathetic against Henry’s crooked tenor: “I deserve a much nicer hotel room than this,” he warbles in the album’s weary opener. Damn right.
Yuck
YUCK
FAT POSSUM
CHOICE CUT: STUTTER
Tedeschi Trucks Band
REVELATOR SONY LEGACY
CHOICE CUT: MIDNIGHT IN HARLEM
“It has such an amazing mix of blues, rock, funk, and country. Derek Trucks’ guitar work is worth the price of album alone.”
—BEN WILLIAMS
The Weeknd
HOUSE OF BALLOONS
SELF-RELEASED
CHOICE CUT: WICKED GAMES
Shout Outs EP’S
TRACKS
BODY LANGUAGE, Social Studies
ASAP ROCKY, “Peso”
FORT LEAN, Fort Lean
THE WAR ON DRUGS, “Come To the City”
PHANTOM FAMILY HALO, The Mindeater
ELYSIAN FIELDS, “Sweet Condenser”
MO KOLOURS, EP1: Drum Talking
JAMES BLAKE, “I Never Learnt To Share”
GARY CLARK JR., The Bright Lights
DJ KHALED, “I’m On One”
HINDI ZAHRA, Until The Next Journey
BEN WILLIAMS, “Moonlight In Vermont”
THE ALABAMA SHAKES, The Alabama Shakes
BEASTIE BOYS, “Make Some Noise” BEN SOLLEE, “Embrace” TIM HECKER, “The Piano Drop” VANAPRASTA, “G-” BATTLES, “Ice Cream” BODIES OF WATER, “Open Rhythms” TWIN SISTER, “Kimmi In A Rice Field” NICOLAS JAAR, “Variations” WASHED OUT, “Eyes Be Closed” UNKLE f. NICK CAVE, “Money And Run” THE ANTLERS, “Rolled Together” KATY B., “Katy On A Mission”
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
M. Sean Ryan sean@hashmagazine.com
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Monica So
monica@hashmagazine.com www.hashmagazine.com Š HASH 2011