50 Best Albums of 2011

Another batch of deft satires from the pop-parody kings. There are your viral video faves, a long-overdue sendup of the homoerotic undercurrent of homophobic rap ("No Homo") and history's first John Waters-Nicki Minaj collab. All this and… Michael Bolton!

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• Jon Dolan's Original Review: The Lonely Island's 'Turtleneck & Chain'
• Video: The Lonely Island Talk New Album

On this EP from the best (and loudest) of the indie surf-pop brigade, the reverb is as thick as a peasoup fog, and the melodies are pure sunshine. Wavves add even more punk clamor to their sound while cutting 2011's finest musical fan letter, "I Wanna Meet Dave Grohl."

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• Stacey Anderson's Original Review: Wavves' 'Life Sux'
• Video: Wavves on Meeting Lil Wayne and Writing a Song for Dave Grohl

From 63-year-old Bradley comes a period-perfect soul revival. Every brass blast and chicken scratch could have come straight off a 1968 Stax Records release, but it's Bradley's ragged, resilient powerhouse singing that makes this soul, not "soul."

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• Listen: Charles Bradley's 'Heartache and Pain'

Polly Jean Harvey steeps her latest in her homeland's folk music and the "gray, damp filthiness" of its history. There's a punk sense of horror in low-key death-folk ballads like "The Last Living Rose," as if she's crashing the Renaissance Faire to torch the maypole.

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• Rob Sheffield's Original Review: PJ Harvey's 'Let England Shake'
• Video: PJ Harvey's 'Hanging In The Wire'

These tripped-out Texans riff le through indie rock, psych blues, punk country and hippie boogie in hard-driving punk-pastoral garage jams. But their great fourth disc never feels jumbled – they're far too busy high-tailing it to the next inspired mash-up to get bogged down.

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• Will Hermes' Original Review: White Denim's 'D'
• Listen: White Denim's 'Drug'

Slide guitarist Derek Trucks and his wife, singer-guitarist Susan Tedeschi, combine their deep-blues and 1970s Dixie-soul passions in this big band. The chops and funky surge are first-rate; songs like the torrid "Until You Remember" sound like history renewed.

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• David Fricke's Original Review: Tedeschi Trucks Band's 'Revelator'"
• Listen: Tedeschi Trucks Band's 'Until You Remember'

This retro-soul master segues from 1960s Motown to Fifties R&B to Seventies psychedelic soul. But Saadiq isn't just a human highlight reel. He's a riveting singer and a clever songwriter; check "Radio," about a girl named Radio who needs him bad but can't pin him down.

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• Jon Dolan's Original Review: Raphael Saadiq's 'Stone Rollin'
• Video: Raphael Saadiq Performs 'Stone Rollin' at SXSW 2011

The best record yet from the blues-punk duo Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince is sex-drenched fury. Mosshart howls ferociously, from the gospel-tinged "Satellite" to the primal "Nails in My Coffin," while Hince manhandles his guitar in dangerous and excellent ways.

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• Rob Sheffield's Original Review: The Kills' 'Blood Pressures'
• Listen: The Kills Calm Down a Bit on 'Blood Pressures'

Long-running indie sage Dan Bejar makes his grand 1980s yacht-rock statement. The synth-slathered sound definitely has a sense of humor – Michael McDonald would shave his beard for the lounge groove of "Chinatown." But it just enhances Bejar's unkillably weird songcraft.

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• Jon Dolan's Original Review: Destroyer's 'Kaputt'
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Everyone knows that Swedes are pop wizards. But R&B? With their third album, the Gothenburg quintet spiked their synth-happy pop with freaky soul – injecting New Wave, dubstep, house and the niftiest Prince impersonation ever to drift across the Atlantic.

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• Will Hermes' Original Review: Little Dragon's 'Ritual Union'
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This taster for the 27-year-old bluesman's major-label LP, due in 2012, is richer than most full-length records, showing off Clark's gifts for smoldering electric R&B, boogie locomotion and acoustic-Hendrix drama. Eric Clapton and Questlove have become huge fans. Here's why.

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• Will Hermes' Original Review: Gary Clark Jr's 'The Bright Lights EP'
• Video: Gary Clark Jr. Plays New Songs at Rolling Stone Studio

Vile's hippie folk lays melancholic mumbling over psychedelic ambience and sun-spotted folk-blues picking. "When it's looking dark, punch the future in the face," he advises. It's his version of optimism – and it suits this hazy, gripping and hard-bitten album.

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• Will Hermes' Original Review: Kurt Vile's 'Smoke Ring for My Halo'
• Kurt Vile's 'Smoke Ring for My Halo'

The high-concept sludgemetal eccentrics hook up with Maroon 5's producer and – Zeus be praised – come up with a killer rock-radio record. Mastodon streamlined their molten thrash into a taut thwump that doesn't pull back one bit on their natural complexity or innate weirdness.

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• Chuck Eddy's Original Review: Mastodon's 'The Hunter'
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No one chases bongbrained, stereophonic beauty with the evangelical fervor of Animal Collective's Noah Lennox. His fourth solo LP has his most focused songs yet, adding gravity to his signature pile-on of echo-chamber chorales, ping-ponging FX and space-ghost synths.

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The elegiac guitars and wry vocals sum up the shaggy beauty of the Pavement leader's finest solo record to date. Cali stoner gems like "Stick Figures in Love" suggest that, after 20 years, Malkmus is just getting started.

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• Jon Dolan's Original Review: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks' 'Mirror Traffic'
• Video: Stephen Malkmus Rocks New Songs in L.A.

A crystal vision of Los Angeles rock, circa 1974. Dawes leader Taylor Goldsmith is the spitting image of Jackson Browne at his most plaintive, singing of truth seekers and "a ballerina in Phoenix," while his bandmates nail every golden guitar lead and Eagles harmony.

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• Will Hermes' Original Review: Dawes' 'Nothing is Wrong'
• Dawes Debuts New Songs, Reveal How They Recorded Second Album

SuperHeavy's debut finds Mick Jagger in excellent company – including reggae heir Damian Marley, R&B siren Joss Stone and Indian composer A.R. Rahman – and surrounded by a whirlpool of electro-funk, Jamaican dancehall and Bollywood glitz. Think of this not as a side project, but as a huge, freewheeling party.

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• Will Hermes' Original Review: SuperHeavy's 'SuperHeavy'
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Faith, love and loss are as tangled as the singer's country-preacher beard on this stark, confessional masterpiece. Pearson, who once led the Texas trio Lift to Experience, strips his obsessions to their harrowing marrow in the blues and rapture of his magnetic howl and hypnotic picking.

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• David Fricke's Original Review: Josh T. Pearson's 'Last of the Country Gentlemen'
• Listen: Josh T. Pearson's 'Woman, When I've Raised Hell'

This Mississippi producer-MC's songs are tinged with tenderness and humanity – "World's fucked up and they claiming I'm to blame," he rhymes on this mixtape. His soul-steeped beats and warm-molasses flow could turn closing time at the strip club into a hugfest. "I don't rap, I spit hymns," he boasts – and backs it up.

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• Big K.R.I.T. Continues to the Dirty South Legacy

"It takes all kinds of kinds," Lambert sings – and proves it. Four gives us all kinds of Mirandas: from honky-tonk traditionalist ("Same Old You") to sonic experimenter (the hazy, half-drunk daydream "Fine Tune") to loving wife ("Better in the Long Run," with Blake Shelton). Even so, it's her most easeful and assured effort yet.

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• Listen: Miranda Lambert's 'Baggage Claim'

Morello balances Woody Guthrie folk-warrior screeds with Rage Against the Machine guitar heroics – praising unions, firing off face-melting solos and duetting soulfully with Ben Harper. It's working-class storytelling and roots-minded songcraft hot-wired by a master mechanic.

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• Jon Dolan's Original Review: Tom Morello, The Night Watchman's,'World Wide Rebel Songs'
• Video Playlist: Tom Morello Rocks Out as The Nightwatchman

Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley throw the year's best country bash, a romping testament to the power of close-harmony singing and sisterly camaraderie. It's an album for our Great Recession: songs about trailer parks, mounting debt and ne'er-do-well men who make hard times harder.

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• Chuck Eddy's Original Review: Pistol Annie's 'Hell on Heels'
• Listen: Pistol Annie's 'Hell on Heels'

The first official album from these New York hip-hop satirists is the year's best stoner comedy (sorry, Harold and Kumar). Das Racist rhyme "lesbian" and "Wesleyan," and undercut braggadocio about money and girls with political wisdom like, "What good is this cashmere if they're still dying in Kashmir."

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• Rob Sheffield's Original Review: Das Racist's 'Relax'
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Flo's second LP rivals Adele's 21 for British white girl soulmama massiveness. From "Shake It Out" to the arena-scale Motown of "Lover to Lover," Big Red brings it again and again, choirs and string players backing a voice that soars so high, it makes them seem like ants on the ground below.

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• Jody Rosen's Original Review: Florence and the Machine's 'Ceremonials'
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On her third disc as St. Vincent, singer-guitarist Annie Clark keeps the thrilling art punk flowing. Whether she's telling some lucky guy to "come cut me open" over analog-synth seizures or singing a guitar-grinding single mom's lullaby, she turns sexy unburdening and weird-science sonics into something irresistible.

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