YPOIW TOP 25 ALBUMS OF 2011: Honorable Mentions

Unfortunately, every album that we loved this year couldn't make the final cut of 25. What follows is a list of our favorite albums that didn't make the cut. We still love all of you and have a happy and safe Christmas. We'll return to our regular content soon, but for now... here's our Best of 2011: Honorable Mentions.

Clams Casino - Rainforest EP/Instrumentals

In some ways, Clams Casino's signature production style helped define the landscape of hip hop in 2011. Not only did many of the year's notable rappers employ his beats, including A$AP Rocky, Main Attrakionz, Lil B, and even Soulja Boy, but his bedroom approach to beat making also coincided with the rise of the DIY aesthetic in hip hop. But the argument could be made that many of the MCs with whom Clams Casino has collaborated don't do his beats justice. Debate aside, it's difficult to deny the power of Clams Casino's music in an instrumental context. Throughout the majority of these tracks, Clams manages to transform a number of unlikely samples (e.g. Adele's "Hometown Glory" on "Realist Alive") into an unrecognizable haze of highly atmospheric, somewhat shoegaze-y quality. Surprisingly, despite how much Clams detaches the samples from their original intentions, the results often make for an almost overwhelming level of emotion. The drums, however, are what keep these beats grounded in hip hop. Clams uses a line of drum sounds that aren't far off from what could be found in basically any club hip hop hit, yet even though this does add a danceable side to his music, it hardly ever feels tacky. Instrumentals finds Clams taking a few detours as well, like on the beat-less track "The World Needs Change", the minimal dance excursion "She's Hot", and two of the few examples in which samples aren't completely obscured, the Björk sampling "Illest Alive" and the Janelle Monae sampling "Cold War". To me, Rainforest is the more consistent of the two releases, but both showcase an unbelievable amount of strength. Clams Casino is providing not only instrumental hip hop a much needed push forward, but hip hop production in general; furthermore, he is establishing himself a position at the forefront of what I believe to be a new age of hip hop innovation. -Danny Spiteri


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Dog Day - Deformer

Once in a while you stumble upon a band that barely anyone knows, yet you fall madly in love with them. That happened to me this year with Dog Day. It was an interesting year for the band, they devolved from a four-piece to a two-piece so a valid question was whether or not they could continue turning out their brand of dark indie pop at the same level as before. In my opinion they turned out one of the best records of the year. I think musically Deformer has a little bit of something for everyone. There are some songs that just sounds like straight up indie pop and others that come off as fast punk rock tunes. The one constant throughout Deformer is the cloak of darkness that seems to cover every single song. This record is also a bit more grungy and Grimy than any of Dog Day’s previous efforts. This could be because they really went back to basics by was self-recording and self-releasing Deformer. To me, when a band puts that much effort into making an album it really shows that they care about what they’re doing, and I believe that how much this duo cares comes through in their music. So, does Deformer push any boundaries? No, not really. What it does do is give you some catchy as hell pop tunes that you can tell are played with passion, and played with care. -Mark Gillis

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La Dispute - Wildfire

La Dispute's Wildlife is one of my favorite albums of the year and I'm glad we decided to do honorable mentions so I could get a chance to talk about it. I'm just going to get this out of the way, La Dispute is a post-hardcore band from Michigan. Their sound is a unique one and there's more variation here than on the majority of records I've heard this year. La Dispute uses quiet sections with spoken word vocals to complement the chaos and they're often heartfelt and beautiful. I believe this to be a really tight record, but the thing that keeps me coming back are the absolutely amazing lyrics. The nature of the music allows the lyrics to be detailed at the level I've never seen before. On "St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church Blues" the narrator describes a window on a church, but goes as far to describe it as "That stained-glass window sits untouched amongst the brickwork worn". As for the content of this release, it's absolutely brutal. The themes on this album cover a wide range of horrible human conditions and circumstances. You'll hear about an accidental murder, a schizophrenic son stabbing his son, and a seven year old boy dying of cancer on 3 consecutive tracks. The 3rd person narrative throughout the album gives this band more in common with The Hold Steady than one would expect. Containing both a mix of autobiographical and fabricated stories, they do share one common trait: they're all completely captivating in every way. -Kyle Shoemaker


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Milo- I wish my brother Rob was here

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know that I gave a very favorable review to Milo's mixtape at the time of it's release. I'm glad to say that very few of my opinions about it have changed since I first reviewed it. It's a shame that it didn't make the list proper, but while it wasn't at an extremely high position on many personal lists (excepting mine of course, where it took number three), I did notice it on quite a few of them. I think that speaks well of the album: Milo's lyrics are infinitely interesting, his personality is infinitely accessible, and the references he makes are pretty much tailor-made for music geeks who write for blogs. It's almost impossible not to like. And that's not to say it's twee and not to be taken seriously. The music is also infinitely relatable. Milo gets you better than you get yourself. I hope he makes more music. -Austin Kirley

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My Morning Jacket - Circuital

I am floored at how little love this album got this year. Even among My Morning Jacket fans, this album got a consensus "meh." I really couldn't disagree with this sentiment more. Circuital is an eccentric album, propelling My Morning Jacket a little further away from their southern rock roots. This album just has so many elements I enjoy. Jim James' lyrics retain their tongue-in-cheek humour, the guitars soar, and the songs sprawl with splashes of space-funk. Opening track "Victory Dance" is a fine example of what I love about this album, it's a bit of a slow-burner, no question, but the rewards are worth the wait. I think the reason this album doesn't get its due diligence is its lack of one extra-strong track here as a starting place for the album. There is no "One Big Holiday" or "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Part II" on this album, just a solid collection of great tracks. Tracks like "The Day is Coming" and "Outta my System" stand up there with My Morning Jackets best tracks. This is a powerhouse of a band, and they showcase it like pros on this album. Criminally overlooked. -Josh Custodio


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The Roots - undun

The Legendary Roots Crew did it again. For their entire careers post-Things Fall Apart, they released solid album after solid album, never topping their 90s masterpiece until 2010 when they made the criminally underrated How I Got Over. Led by Black Thought’s memorable and divisive political flow, solid guest spots, and ?uestlove’s drumming and production, the Roots had topped themselves. And now, a year and a half later, in December of 2011, the Roots topped that. I guess the free time working on Jimmy Fallon’s show as a fantastic house band has given them time to think about evolving their sound. With this concept record that mixes The Wire’s complicated morality in the inner-city with a Momento narrative device, The Who’s Tommy-esque complex rock opera inclinations with mid-2000s Sufjan Steven’s orchestration, undun is now the definitive Roots album. Captain Kirk Douglass’s guitar fills, ?uest’s live drumming, and the rest of the production create a soulful Marvin Gaye atmosphere with even more of a political bent. Guest features by the smoothly Southern Big K.R.I.T. and the eccentric Greg PORN are perfect accents to the hardworking Black Thought. In the end, that is the supreme weapon in the Roots’ arsenal: Black Thought. When Pitchfork and Rolling Stone are out there dissing Thought’s rhymes and flows, calling him tame, I guess I can see where they are coming from—to a certain extent. He is not a horror core rapper shocking the world like Tyler, the Creator. He doesn’t have speed of some of his peers. Instead, Black Thought is an emcee for adults with adult taste. . . no bullshit, no nonsense. The working man’s emcee, like the Who who were a working man’s band. It all comes around in the end. By time the album ends, with the orchestral and jazz suite that is built around a Sufjan Stevens piano interlude, it feels like a birth, and after that birth, you want to start the record over again. undun is an addiction, and unlike the world of its protagonist, it is a good addiction. -TJ Duane

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Serph - Heartstrings

I’m gonna do my thing and direct your attention towards an exemplary piece of music from Japan. Serph’s Heartstrings was my substitute World’s End Girlfriend album of the year—that is, my mind-numbingly complicated experiment in electronic excess. It is video game music, classical concertos, and IDM thrown into a carefully discerning blender. I love the breadth of sounds from which he draws, and the entire album is peppered with the interplay of “real” and synthesized instruments. That was one of my favorite things about The Age of Adz, but Heartstrings takes it to a level that nearly falls off the tip of excess and becomes indiscriminate noise. In fact, after my first listen, I thought this was a very sloppy album, but I kept returning to it and it gradually began making sense to me. The problem was that Serph is quite good at making the carefully constructed intricacies of his songs sound effortless, and Heartstrings is an album which needs time before the listener can even distinguish everything that is happening, much like a Max Tundra record. But once you unpack it, this album is one of the most fun and most maximalistic collections of music to be found in 2011. -Steve Jones

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Young Montana? – Limerence

For the past few years IDM has been a dead genre. Autechre and Squarepusher have fallen from grace, neither Boards of Canada nor AFX have released material in years and the whole Warp Records label seems to be moving into different areas. Enter Young Montana?, a young British beat maker, and his album Limerence to save the day. His debut record contains influences from so many places the end product sounds nothing like I’ve ever heard before. Genre boundaries are torn down throughout the record, IDM, hip hop, breakbeat, dance and anything else Young Montana? can get his hands on is twisted, chopped up and taken to the extreme It pulls from off kilter hip hop instrumentals similar to Flying Lotus, dense sonic assaults similar to Clark, and has a sly tongue in cheek approach which is entirely Young Montana? himself. The one big difference about Limerence to its peers is that it’s fun, it’s catchy, and yet it’s still layered and complex enough to sit down and listen to. While you’re in your big chair with headphones on, listening and stroking your beard, I dare you, DARE you, try not to smile, or bump your head. It’s impossible. -TTK