The 30 Critical Albums of 2011

The phrase that kept popping up as I was editing reviews this year was variations on "newfound pop sensibility." Plenty of previously lo-fi or deliberately "difficult" artists gave themselves a sonic upgrade and started writing more direct, accessible songs: around our house, my wife was just as likely to be singing the "bang-bang-bang-oi!" chorus of Tune-Yards' "Gangsta" to herself as she was Adele's "Rolling in the Deep." (Which, to be fair, is also a great song, or at least it was the first 437 times I heard it on the radio.) I totally support this renewed interest in engaging with a wider audience: self-conscious hipsterism is an artistic dead-end.

The artists who looked back to pop history this year were finding inspiration in new and interesting places, such as the once-derided sound of '70s classic rock. Jonathan Wilson's gloriously mellow Gentle Spirit was a vinyl-friendly modern take on the old Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter vibe of Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne. The War On Drugs' harder-edged Slave Ambient matched noisy indie-rock flourishes to emotionally-varied songs rooted in Springsteen, Petty and Dylan. Former War On Drugs guitarist Kurt Vile did much the same on his most accomplished solo record so far, Smoke Ring For My Halo.

Meanwhile, artists who love the '80s finally started letting go of both MTV-style synth pop and the UK's fuzzy-guitar C86 scene. Zola Jesus staked their claim as this generation's Siouxsie and the Banshees with the gloriously gothy Conatus. Real Estate invoked the college-radio heyday of post-R.E.M. jangle bands on their second album, Days. Destroyer's Dan Bejar paid homage to the sophisticated Anglo-pop of Prefab Sprout, The Blue Nile, Lloyd Cole and Everything But The Girl on the subtle and gorgeous Kaputt.

Finally, electronic music continued its artistic renewal. Both bands and reviewers finally stopped using the term "chillwave" ironically or self-consciously: when an album as inviting as Washed Out's Within and Without can be described as such, then chillwave is finally, definitively, a thing. (Recent efforts by Toro y Moi and Neon Indian are also well worth seeking out.) Meanwhile, artists as varied as James Blake (whose single "The Wilhelm Scream" may be my favorite four and a half minutes of the year), Zomby and The Field made electronic music that's more deeply soulful and passionate than many bands who play "real" instruments managed.