Bryan Sanchez – Top 3 Albums of 2011

3. Jay-Z / The Throne / Kanye West – Watch the Throne (Roc-A-Fella / Def Jam)

Detailing your life for us, blending it all with a kitchen drawer filled with tremendous production and emceeing about the lonely night after, religion, love, family and more, Watch the Throne was a terrific swing of life. There’s the confident swagger of showcasing your strengths (“Ni**as in Paris”) and the sincere honesty and admittance of faults (“New Day”) that both highlight fantastic music. West definitely supplies the jaded and emotional way life is and how easy it is to get lost in it all, while Jay-Z employs the wise, battle-tested guru that ensures each line is heavy and full of promise. Living extremely wealthy, successful and mostly thriving lives, they’re still human like the rest of us. In succinct terms, it’s eleven songs that feature grandiose and now wonderfully typical West arrangements that are neatly juxtaposed with subtle touches: every last song being an absolute banger in terms of craft. There’s the transitions that set up and diminish what was before and it bluntly ends up being the best hip-hop album of the year. It’s crisp, lean and mean: for many and all, what anyone could have hoped for when Kanye West and Jay-Z decided to finally hook up. And still, it could get more talk – it’s that good.

Jay-Z / The Throne / Kanye West – “Otis”

2. James Blake – James Blake (ATLAS / Polydor)
Subtle, dynamic, raw, cold, dark, lush. All delightfully and now overused abjectives to describe this album. There’s a jagged pattern amongst the drums, the beats are overlaying on top of each other and now, Blake’s voice joins in an additional layer of sounds. All the instruments – piling and rounding into and on top of each other – act as small decoys for the synthesizers and keyboards Blake has perfected. For James Blake everything relies on the meshing of both vocals and keyboards/drums/other simply because it is at the forefront the majority of the time. His music always sounds invitingly all-encompassing while possessing the blossoming quality of filling your ears with menacing clouds of sound. Some would make you think he’s got his own style of dubstep and others (like yours truly) would say there’s probably some truth to that. This isn’t electronic as much as it is music for life: openly deduced and entirely free for interpretation, the music is ornate and decorated, a swelling, flourishing layers of gold. It’s simply another new style that Blake is endearingly conquering while keeping everyone closely engrossed into every downright gorgeous sound that is flowing from this, his self-titled debut. I’m sure by the time his next album comes out we’ll have a whole new set of adjectives to cover.

James Blake – “Unluck”

1. The Antlers – Burst Apart (Frenchkiss Records)
Rising above, The Antlers quietly released the best album of the year without much fanfare – as everyone would have wanted. After the bleak strands of life left over from Hospice’s theme (the album itself was one of the best albums of 2009) they join the fragmented life seaming out of Burst Apart and take hold of it, never wanting to let go again. The music transcends with a muscular fusion of rock and pop that clearly marks a stage of alternative music where the band employs various styles – some more metallic (“Parentheses”) and some more freely bumping with bliss (“Every Night My Teeth are Falling Out”) – with sublime results. Beginning with the declaration of “I Don’t Want Love,” grabbing hold of the feelings and realizing the guilt trip (“French Exit,”) ending with the mixed, bittersweet feelings and closure on “Putting the Dog to Sleep,” and somewhere in between the lullingly amazing “Hounds,” this is the album after the breakup. As affecting as it all was effective, Burst Apart marks a great moment for the band. Continuing to progress and develop is key and for The Antlers, their music will surely garner more attention as time passes. Until then, they’ve already made stunning music to behold with Burst Apart shining the brightest.

The Antlers – “French Exit”

Final Top Ten of 2011:
1. The Antlers – Burst Apart
2. James Blake – James Blake
3. Jay-Z / The Throne / Kanye West – Watch the Throne
4. Radiohead – The King of Limbs
5. Atlas Sound – Parallax
6. Bon Iver – Bon Iver
7. Tom Waits – Bad As Me
8. Feist – Metals
9. Charles Bradley – No Time for Dreaming
10. My Morning Jacket – Circuital