Favorite Albums of 2011 #16 through 12

16: Thurston Moore - Demolished Thoughts

Thurston Moore is a wizard with the guitar, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone who's heard a few Sonic Youth records, but this acoustic folk album

15: Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die but You Will

This is a more direct, more drum-happy Mogwai and it's outstanding. Proof that bands can be great, change, and then be great again. It's a mixed bag of styles but not of quality; some tracks sound like Mogwai circa early 2000s, some sound like fuzzy pop/rock, some are on the heavy end of post-rock. This band keeps proving that they can experiment without totally abandoning the sound that made them so popular in the first place.

14: Piatcions - Senseless>Sense

Alt. rock filtered through masses of heavy echo and reverb (otherwise known as shoegaze). I love the guitar work and I love that this band employs some really nice quieter parts. The fact that it isn't always going for the jugular is a plus as they manage to often obtain a gorgeous crystalline guitar sound.

13: Russian Circles - Empros

Russian Circles never fail to impress. Here's their fourth album of heavy post-rock, post-metal, atmospheric sludge (whatever you want to call it). I love how the production makes the drums thud with a hollow echo and how the low end is crushed into a jumbled mess of distortion. This album is varied to a point where I'd expect people to find it inconsistent, but there's beauty in the heavy crunch of "309", the catchy melody at the beginning of "Mladek" and the dreamy acoustic track, "Praise Be Man."

12: A.A. Bondy - Believers

He left the rustic folk behind here, in favor of lush reverb-laden beds of guitar echo. The album feels delicate and highly personal; his lyrics are uplifting and this is a wonderful guitar record. On his other albums, as on this one, I find the personality so easy to identify with. He's rapidly becoming one of my favorite songwriters.

A.A. Bondy - American Hearts (2007)

A.A. Bondy’s debut album is a lush, atmospheric folk/Americana album and his version of the style nails everything I like about it nearly perfectly. For one thing, he has the voice for the style; it’s breathy and communicates so much emotion. It does this in a “show, don’t tell” way. I know how he feels about the songs based on the tone and inflection of his voice, rather than just the words he sings. These are songs of reflection on memories, good and bad, but all filtered through a lens of contentment. It’s a happy album, but it doesn’t sound that way at first. To put it bluntly, the album is beautiful and just seems extremely relevant to my life. But beyond that, A.A. Bondy is clearly one of the more talented singer/songwriters in folk music today. His melodies are intricate and dense, easy to get lost in, and they suit his vocals well in that they just seem to fit together. Some music captures the spirit of rural America exceptionally well, and A.A. Bondy’s American Hearts is one of those albums. I think his future albums (he’s released two more since) would expand on his strengths, both as a lyricist and as a composer, but this is an excellent contemporary folk album.

9.0 / 10