Another year, another format for my best music of the year. This year, I’m dividing into three parts: my favourite six albums, my favourite tracks and my favourite old music.
So, to kick off here are the six albums from 2011 that I really enjoyed in 2011. There are lots of surprising omissions from this list, as a lot of artists that I really like and even saw live such as St Vincent, Amon Tobin and Devotchka had new albums this year. But, much as I enjoyed a few tracks from each of their albums I didn’t actually get into them as albums. It really was in many ways a year of rather disappointing albums. However, these six are really damn good. None of them are début albums, though some marked new directions whilst others put a level of polish on that made for supremely easy repeat listens. There is an order to this list and I’ll go in reverse order.