Our top 10 favorite albums of 2011 thus far – Nr. 10

Well, you know, usually this list goes up like a good 21 days earlier or so, but due to all kinds of stuff we are doing it now, at “about” the halfway mark. It is just so lovely to do a top 10 like this because it are people talking about what great albums they have discovered this year so far. Not the best, but our favorites, the albums that are doing it for us. And perhaps you agree, you disagree, or with so many music coming out it just reminds you or points you to something which perhaps makes you, based on the write-up, think, Well, I might like that actually. So hopefully you enjoy the write-ups, and hopefully you enjoy some of the music that will be spread around here as well!

Ilse: Nr. 10. Washed Out – Within and Without (Subpop Records)
Washed Out comprises of Ernest Greene, who can be labelled as a true ‘lo-fi bedroom pop artist’, as he started producing music in his old bedroom after moving back to his hometown Perry, in rural Georgia. The lush dreamscapes he creates are the result of a variation of sensual and mellow electronic sounds and blissed-out synths ; something that made people identify him with the ‘chillwave’ movement, the kind of loungy and dreamy electro pop which has also been linked to bands like Toro Y Moi and Neon Indian. After being discovered on Myspace and releasing two EPs, Green slowly found fame in the blogging atmosphere. Since then the band has been signed to Sub Pop and this first full length album ‘Within and Without’ is where we’re at now, and it’s a great one to enjoy at this time of the year. It seems to provide excellent company for sunny afternoons or during barbecues and it gives you that feeling of fulfilment after a long hot day on the beach:  you’re heading back to the car while the sun sets and can’t wait to wash off the sand sticking to your sweaty, sun cream greased body and can look forward to a comfortable sleep because the sun made you so pleasantly tired and dizzy.

Random track to listen to: ‘Before’

Linda: 10.   Helen Arney – Animals and other songs about science (N/A)

As we, for the first time ever, actually had rules for making these top 10 lists, I decided to bend them a bit (I’m a rebel). ‘Cause that’s the whole point of having rules in the first place: bending them (also, I’ve been relentlessly watching reruns of Futurama as if it was Friends, hence my current obsession with bending). So here’s my first entry: a loose collection of songs that haven’t been released to form an album, or even an EP. They’re just some tracks that got released during 2011 and just so happened to end up on the same bandcamp page, forming some kind of cohesion between them as they were all coming from the perhaps a bit estranged mind of Helen Arney. And I like them. Mostly because they are incredibly nerdy and played on a ukulele, but also because they are just really catchy. ‘Animals’, a biologically correct song about sex, must be my favourite, if only because of that description. With just vocals and ukele, the songs aren't very complex musically, but lyrically they are all quite brilliant. If you're a bit of a nerd, even a tiny bit (and who secretly isn't?), you'll love this.

Random track to listen to: ‘Animals’

Stef: Nr. 10. Memory Tapes – Player Piano (Carpark Records)

Now, this could still go up and down, because it hasn’t been out yet for too long and I haven’t listened to it THAT much that my opinion is completely fixed. For a good album, on repeated listens, it either holds up or you get more out of it. Or it starts to click. And this album certainly started to click with me when I, not too long ago, was dawdling home from local festival de-Affaire after midnight. Now, I am not liking this one as much as I do the debut (yet), but this record packs so much subtleties, so much lovely shapes and colours in there, it’s amazing. Saying it is not as good as his debut belies the fact that there are so many lovely sounds on the album, and especially how all these sounds follow each other up shows Dayve Hawk’s expertise. There is a bit more variety in there, and therefore it perhaps is not all one consistent flow like Seek Magic. The combinations he can make with his instruments, those sounds, and his unique vocals, and how much emotional baggage it has in its rather alienated and detached way; this is definitely an artist we should treasure. For example, if you listen to the single ‘Wait in the Dark’, the feel is rather detached, but the lyrics and the melancholy that seeps through the sounds, that mixture definitely hits the right buttons for me. “So what did you want me to say / I just don’t feel like that anymore / not at all / This is how it ends / we just stand each other up”. In the wrong hands this is blunt or perhaps overly emotional. But here, in this song, it is as if it is all after the emotional. The point where – and you cannot quite put your finger on why – you see something happen in your life, but you are already detached from it as it happens. Not many artists that can conjure up that feeling, no?

Random track to listen to: ‘Yes I Know’