Thank­fully, 2011 had a much bet­ter musi­cal show­ing that 2010. This is due, almost entirely, to two things: Spo­tify and my own musi­cal cry for help last Jan­u­ary. Thanks to the help and sug­ges­tions of: Brenna Proczko, Jeff Gab­hart, Mike Bil­leter, Nate Hoff­man, Tara Payne-Mueller, Brenna Rausch, Holli Rausch, Bryce Rausch, The Rock Gar­den Tour, &c.

Groove­shark: http://grooveshark.com/playlist/+2011+Best+Of+Last+Year/65678255

Spo­tify: http://open.spotify.com/user/awayken/playlist/15AoQe0jJvXAu3HE2T9Dka

1. Scary Mon­sters and Nice Sprites — Skrillex
   • Well, I wouldn’t have thought that “dub­step” would be in my future when 2011 began. This was a year for dis­cov­er­ing Spo­tify, and Spo­tify helped me dis­cover Skrillex. It feels a lit­tle juve­nile to be into this artist and his music so much, how­ever, the lat­ter part of 2011 was one for musi­cal guilty pleasures.
   • Hat tip: Spotify
2. Don’t Carry It All — The Decem­berists
• After the Decemberist’s 2009 album, The Haz­ards of Love, I didn’t know what to expect from the band. For as much as I appre­ci­ate their efforts with that con­cept album, I think it’s hard to com­pete with 2006’s The Crane Wife (one of my favorite all-time albums). The King Is Dead is a return to song-based vignettes, this time with har­mon­ica. It’s a good album with some really fan­tas­tic songs on it.
• Hat tip: Myself, Tara Payne-Mueller
3. Air­planes, Pt. II (feat. Eminem & Hay­ley Williams of Paramore) — B.o.B
• In these recents years, Mike Bil­leter has become my hip-hop musi­cal con­nec­tion. So, when I put the call out for new music, I knew he would come through with a rap / hip-hop rec­om­men­da­tion. I’d never heard of B.o.B before Mike sug­gested his lat­est album, so it wasn’t on the power of the artist but on the power of his guest per­form­ers and sam­ples that I decided to pur­chase. (Actu­ally, I was try­ing to add this to a wish­list to review later, and I acci­den­tally pur­chased it. How­ever, I don’t regret the happy accident.) A rap album with Rivers Cuomo? Yes, please.
• Hat tip: Mike Billeter
4. Tighten Up — The Black Keys
• Hello, the blues. The Black Keys — on their album, Brother — have this raw energy that I asso­ciate with early The White Stripes or the first LP by Cold War Kids. You get the feel­ing that they just drag their instru­ments into the record­ing stu­dio, setup, and kill it. While this track doesn’t show as much growl as oth­ers, it has plenty of bite. Add to all that, lyrics about a no-good woman, and you have a bluesy winner.
• Hat tip: Sat­ur­day Night Live, Jeff Gab­hart, Brenna Proczko
5. Jack Spar­row (feat. Michael Bolton) — The Lonely Island
• To say that I’m a fan of The Lonely Island would be true. I’ve fol­lowed them since they were mak­ing The ‘Bu, back in the day. I really loved Incred­ibad, their 2009 album. I didn’t love their lat­est offer­ing, Turtle­neck & Chain, as much, but there are a cou­ple of tracks that stuck with me. This was an obvi­ous win­ner. It’s actu­ally two really good songs mashed together, sewn together with humor.
• Hat tip: Sat­ur­day Night Live (again??), prob­a­bly Bryce
6. We Used to Wait — Arcade Fire
   • What a climber! This Arcade Fire track went from noth­ing to being num­ber three on my Charts (All Time) playlist. Yes, that means that We Used to Wait is the third most played song in my iTunes in the entirety of the time that I’ve had my iTunes. Ever. Need I say more? (Yes, I prob­a­bly should.) The Sub­urbs, the album that this song comes from, is prob­a­bly one of Arcade Fire’s best (and they have a lot of great albums). One my first intro­duc­tions to this song was the fan­tas­tic inter­ac­tive music video that came out. You need to check it out, if only to see the grand future that music has on the web.
   • Hat tip: Myself, Jeff Gabhart
7. Haile Selassie — Bright Eyes
• This was a great year for get­ting albums from some of my long­time favorite artists; Radio­head, The Decem­berists, Death Cab for Cutie, Arcade Fire, and Bright Eyes all had new LPs. Unfor­tu­nately, this was not a good year for falling in love with those albums (notice that Radio­head doesn’t even appear on this list). Bright Eyes favored pretty well, with this track being one that grabbed me imme­di­ately. The title, inter­est­ingly, is taken from an emperor of Ethiopia who was appar­ently a pow­er­ful polit­i­cal force for Ethiopia as well as a mes­siah to the Rasta­far­ian reli­gious move­ment. So, it’s any­one guess as to whether he’s com­ment­ing on pol­i­tics or reli­gion or both.
• Hat tip: Myself
8. Rise — Flobots
• I first dis­cov­ered this artist on the­sixy­tone. This track, how­ever, I only found when I finally pur­chased the album, Fight With Tools, after my musi­cal cry for help. Let’s hear it for rock-and-roll-rappers who use vio­lin! This song came as a pleas­ant sur­prise tucked into an album whose good tracks I’d already over-listened to.
• Hat tip: Myself
9. Rolling In the Deep — ADELE
   • I had no idea who ADELE was when I first heard this song. It was on a mix CD that Brenna Proczko burned and mailed to me. There was some­thing haunt­ing and pierc­ing about her voice. She seemed to be a voice from the past, bring­ing to my mind Ella Fitzger­ald. Not two days later, I redis­cov­ered ADELE through a music fes­ti­val iPhone app that had some clips of her per­for­mances. It seemed to be fate; so I bought her album, 21.
   • Hat tip: Brenna Proczko
10. Gen­er­a­tor ^ First Floor — Free­lance Whales
• Did you ever pick an album based on its title or the title of its artist? I have, and this is one such album. This song has enough banjo and tam­bourine to feel grounded, enough weird accor­dion box to feel ethe­real, and a band name that makes me won­der what the Twit­ter “fail mas­cot” does in his scarce time off. The vocals make me think of Owl City or The Postal Ser­vice, but the sound of the band brings Suf­jan Stevens sharply to mind (although I spent 10 min­utes try­ing to fig­ure out which artist was brought sharply to my mind).
• Hat tip: Mike Billeter
11. High Hawk Sea­son — The Moun­tain Goats
• This is a strong vocal depar­ture for The Moun­tain Goats. Nor­mally, John Darneille takes on the singing him­self, but this track fea­tures a cou­ple other voices doing back­ground vocal har­monies. What isn’t a depar­ture is the poetic qual­i­ties of his lyrics. To wit, drift through the streets / walk between the cars / new­born sons and daugh­ters / spat forth from dis­tant stars. / the sum­mer will reveal itself / to those whose hearts are true / and to the faith­less few.
• Hat tip: Myself
12. Win­ter Winds — Mum­ford & Sons
• This album was prob­a­bly my favorite of last year. I deeply love nearly every song on Sigh No More, which means that indi­vid­ual play counts are low because I have to lis­ten to the whole thing every time I start one song. So much of the music by Mum­ford & Sons has an epic qual­ity to it. They are bril­liant at build­ing to ecsta­tic crescen­dos, expertly pitch­ing each instru­ment note by note: the lyrics, the vocals, the strings, the wood­winds, the brass, the per­cus­sions, and even the silence. And, yes, every song is like that.
• Hat tip: Brenna Rausch, Mike Bil­leter, Jeff Gab­hart, Brenna Proczko
13. E.T. — Katy Perry
• Okay. I don’t know how this hap­pened. Katy Perry snuck up on me, with the help of Ben Folds and my wife. (It’s a long story that isn’t that inter­est­ing.) Before I knew it, I was using Spo­tify to indulge a sweet tooth named Kath­eryn. Guys, she earned her GED in her fresh­man year of high school. Now who’s embar­rassed to be lis­ten­ing to Katy Perry?
• Hat tip: Pen­ta­tonix, Holli Rausch, Spotify
14. Codes And Keys — Death Cab for Cutie
• I blame myself. I haven’t given Codes and Keys, the album that has this track, enough time to make an impres­sion on me. As such, I was strug­gling to pick a track from it. Would any make it? I’d already scrapped Radiohead’s King of Limbs because three lis­ten­ings pro­duced no notable songs. Would I have to sim­i­larly and uncer­e­mo­ni­ously dis­card Death Cab? Thank­fully, no. This track, in par­tic­u­lar, makes use of strings in a way that Death Cab has never done before. This orches­tral touch really adds a lot to their already rich arrangements.
• Hat tip: Myself
15. Tor­nado ’87 — The Rural Alberta Advantage
• Recorded on the Uni­ver­sity of Sioux Falls cam­pus, released on PBS radio and as a pod­cast, fea­tur­ing a mix­ture of rock-and-roll and gar­den­ing is the Rock Gar­den Tour. This is a show that Holli turned me onto a while back. I’ve kept up with it in vary­ing degrees since then, but every once in a while a track they play hits me like light­ning. Tor­nado ’87 was one such track. Pre­vi­ously, it was Air­suit by Wind­mill, which made the (2009) Best of Last Year list. This time, how­ever, I enjoyed this song — and the pre­views of the oth­ers — that I bought the album, Depart­ing. This track is a stand-out, and the music video is worth a watch, as well.
• Hat tip: The Rock Gar­den Tour on Gar­den by Pi
16. Enter The Ninja — Die Antwo­ord
• There are some bands and musi­cal groups that I col­lect purely for the nov­elty. Many of these groups grow out of “nov­elty” sta­tus and become legit­i­mately note­wor­thy: Bright Eyes moved from crackly-voiced emo kid to polit­i­cally active  indie music poster child; Sigur Rós moved from Hopelandish-speaking Ice­landic art project to being known for some of most beau­ti­ful orches­tral work in pop­u­lar music; The Streets moved from corny British rap artist to a solid hip-hop force many were sad to see go. Despite this his­tory, I can’t see such a future for Die Antwo­ord. Die Antwo­ord is a hip-hop group based out of South Africa. The group con­sists of Ninja (lead vocal­ist), Yo-Landi Vi$$er (female, back­ing vocal­ist), and DJ Hi-Tek (disc jockey). The qual­ity of the rap is decent, the beats are catchy, but the style of the band is 5 par­secs over the top (just like that ref­er­ence). Plus the South African accent just sounds bizarre, espe­cially at rap speeds. Still the album, $O$, tick­led me enough to get quite a few lis­tens this year and to earn a spot on the “Best of” list.
• Hat tip: Some “most NSFW music videos of 2010″ blog post, Wikipedia
17. Orig­i­nal Friend — Lunch Money
• If you’re a par­ent, this is the album to get. Ian loves it, and the songs are catchy and adult enough to keep our san­ity as par­ents. This is actu­ally a children’s album that I would vol­un­teer to lis­ten to. It’s qual­ity all around.
• Hat tip: Holli Rausch
18. Kill Every­body — Skrillex
• Another dub­step song? Yes. Deal with it. There’s a lot about this song’s title that I like, but there’s even more I love about the con­tents of the song. The vocal exem­plify the best prop­er­ties Glitch rock, the melody expertly blends nuances of Met­al­core with Trip-hop sen­ti­ments, and he even pays homage to 8-bit and Chip­tune com­mu­ni­ties with­out jeop­ar­diz­ing the integrity of his dubstep/trance land­scape. Skrillex must have used a lad­der to crawl onto the roof of his house, beats clutched tightly to his chest, to get the height needed for a drop this sick. I wouldn’t be sur­prised if he tossed the beats a lit­tle up in the air before let­ting grav­ity take over.
  Okay — I just read that back, and I have to go beat myself up.
• Hat tip: Spotify