The Unknown: The White Sea

For anyone out there who obsessively listened to M83's "Midnight City" to the point that you couldn't crawl out of bed in the morning without it playing it before you poured yourself a cup of coffee, a new cure for that addiction is available.  The "Midnight City" addiction will never go away but there's a patch.  Morgan Grace Kibby who sings on the habit-forming track has branched out on her own with her solo project The White Sea (not the first time - see The Romanovs).  With vulgar lyrics sung so sweetly, you can't help but fall in love with this album of summer serenades.  The album features the lyric of the year:  "I'll fuck you blind and make a run for it; screaming hey oh, hey oh, hey oh."  I mean, come on, who hasn't thought that once in their life.

Buy The White Sea's new album, In Cold Blood...now!

Check out:  Warsaw

Don't forget to check out our blog's awesome new book The 111 Best Lists of the 2000s.  Available now! (featuring M83)

The 111 Best Albums of 2011

Here they are.  The 111 Best Albums of 2011 as voted on by you my readers.  If you don't like the results...then vote for something better next year.

I personally, always like the results of this list much better than most critic lists.  This list is always more honest to me.  While Adele dominated most lists...she only cracks the top 40 here.  Or the Decemberists who barely made it on many critic lists jumped up high here because the people just liked the album.

Here are the 111 Best Albums of 2011:

1. Bon Iver - Bon Iver
2. The Black Keys - El Camino
3. The Decemberists - King Is Dead
4. Yuck - Yuck
5. M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
6. Death Cab For Cutie - Codes and Keys
7. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
8. Radiohead - King of Limbs
9. Wilco - The Whole Love
10. Foo Fighters - Wasting Light
11. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy
12. The Weeknd - House of Balloons/Thursday/Echoes of Silence
13. Manchester Orchestra - Simple Math
14. PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
15. Wye Oak - Civilian
16. Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost
17. Jay-Z & Kanye West - Watch The Throne
18. The Strokes - Angles
19. TV on the Radio - Nine Types of Light
20. R.E.M. - Collapse Into Now
21. Iron & Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean
22. Bright Eyes - The People's Key
23. Florence + The Machine - Ceremonials
24. Middle Brother - Middle Brother
25. Telekinesis - 12 Desperate Straight Lines
26. Destroyer - Kaputt
27. War on Drugs - Slave Ambient
28. Wild Flag - Wild Flag
29. Coldplay - Mylo Xyloto
30. Tune-Yards - Who Kill
31. Foster The People - Torches
32. Fucked Up - David Comes To Life
33. Real Estate - Days
34. Beirut - Rip Tide
35. Ryan Adams – Ashes and Fire
36. Rural Alberta Advantage - Departing
37. Tom Waits - Bad As Me
38. Adele - 21
39. Gomez – Whatever’s On Your Mind
40. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Hysterical
41. Raveonettes - Raven in the Grave
42. James Blake - James Blake
43. Stephen Malkmus - Mirror Traffic
44. Alexander (Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros) - Alexander
45. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Belong
46. Tapes N Tapes - Outside
47. Paul Simon - So Beautiful or So What
48. Class Actress - Rapproacher
49. Dawes - Nothing Is Wrong
50. My Morning Jacket - Circuital
51. Dum Dum Girls - Only in Dreams
52. Ersatz G.B. - The Fall
53. Arctic Monkeys - Suck It And See
54. Atlas Sound - Paradox
55. Explosions in the Sky - Take Care, Take Care, Take Care
56. Rival Schools - Pedals
57. Sigur Ros - Inni
58. Battles - Gloss Drop
59. Dustin O Halloran - Lumiere
60. Sam Roberts Band – Collider 
61. Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Part 2
62. Drake - Take Care
63. Washed Out - Within and Without
64. Feist - Metals
65. Jason Isbell - Here We Rest
66. Fountains of Wayne - Sky Full of Holes
67. Grouplove - Never Trust a Happy Song
68. Handsome Furs - Sound Kapital
69. Childish Gambino - Camp
70. Low - C’mon
71. Crooked Fingers - Breaks in the Armor
72. Blitzen Trapper - American Goldwing
73. Deer Tick - Divine Providence
74. EMA - Past Life Martyred Saints
75. Hey Rosetta! - Seeds
76. SBTRKT - SBTRKT
77. The Head and the Heart - The Head and the Heart
78. The Roots - undun
79. Noah and the Whale - Last Night On Earth
80. Mates of State - Mountaintops
81. New Found Glory - Radiosurgery
82. Gillian Welch - Harrow and Harvest
83. Anna Calvi - Anna Calvi 
84. Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears - Scandalous
85. Found - Factorycraft
86. Metronomy - The English Riviera
87. Library Voices - Summer of Lust
88. The Vaccines - What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?
89. The Kills - Blood Pressures
90. Juliana Barwick - The Magic Place
91. Cut Copy - Zonoscope
92. We Were Promised Jetpacks - In The Pit Of Our Stomachs
93. Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo
94. Tennis - Cape Dory
95. Cults - Cults
96. The Antlers - Burst Apart
97. Friendly Fires - Pala
98. Bombay Bicycle Club - A Different Kind of Fix
99. J. Mascias - Several Shades of Why
100. Tyler the Creator - Goblin
101. Noah Gallagher - High Flying Birds
102. Ladytron - Gravity the Seducer
103. We Are Augustines - Rise Ye Sunken Ships
104. The Airborne Toxic Event - All At Once
105. And You Will Know us By The Trail of Dead - Tao of the Dead
106. The Felice Brothers - Celebration, Florida
107. The Joy Formidable - The Big Roar
108. Okkervil River - I Am Very Far
109. Glossary - Long Live Us All
110. Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes
111. The Deep Dark Woods - The Place I Left Behind

Buy these albums and more here and here.

The 11 Best Songs of 2011

I usually don't like doing Top song lists of the year (ironic...huh?) but I wanted to give everyone a last chance to get your votes in for the top album of the year.

Just list your favorite albums of 2011 in the comment section below.  Monday is the final day to vote.

Here are the 11 Best Songs of 2011:

1.  Midnight City - M83 (Hurry Up We're Dreaming)
2.  Holocene - Bon Iver (Bon Iver)
3.  The Birds Part 1 - The Weeknd (Thursday)
4.  Shell Games - Bright Eyes (People's Key)
5.  Pumped Up Kicks - Foster The People (Torches)
6.  Under Cover of Darkness - The Strokes (Angles)
7.  First of the Year Equinox - Skrillex (also the best video)
8.  Get Away - Yuck (Yuck)
9.  Gold on the Ceiling - Black Keys (El Camino)
10.  No Church - Jay-Z & Kanye West (Watch the Throne)
11.  Hasa Diga Eebowaii  (The Book of Mormon)

Buy these songs and their albums now!

The 55 Best Albums of 2011 (1-11)

So here it is...my top 11.  My choices.  My opinion.  So, shut up.

SEND ME YOUR LISTS!  I'm still collecting your top 20 lists for a massive 111 Best albums of 2011.  It doesn't have to be 20...just all your favorites albums you can think of.

Here are the 11 Best Albums of 2011:

1.       Yuck - Yuck (Holing Out)

2.       M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming

3.       The Strokes - Angles

4.       The Weeknd - House of Balloons/Thursday/Echoes of Silence (get all 3 for free!)

5.       Bon Iver - Bon Iver

6.       Wilco - The Whole Love

7.       Rural Alberta Advantage - Departing

8.       Foo Fighters - Wasting Light

9.       Wild Flag - Wild Flag

10.   Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost

11.   The Black Keys - El Camino

Buy these albums and many more for under $5...for a limited time.

The 11 Best Songs By M83

M83 ran into an interesting hurdle with their new epic double-album masterpiece.  It leaked.  Now, most albums leak these days.  There's actually websites out there that keep track of the very instant an album leaks and links to them. When the Jay-Z/Kanye West collaboration didn't leak...that was huge news!  But not only did M83's new album leak...it leaked two months early.  A week or two yearly can actually build a buzz.  When it's two months early...who doesn't have the album by that point?  It's kind like going to see a movie in a movie theater when you already own the DVD.  That's the one thing I never understood about the music industry.  Why wait so long to release music when you have the album done?  It's not the same as a movie where you can build a following with a trailer.  Most albums pick up momentum after their out.  M83 had the indie rock song of the late summer with "Midnight City" but the album was months away.  With a song that was that exciting why not have the album ready to buy.  With music, the longer you make people wait to make your albums available the more likely they will move onto the next big thing.  I've been listening to their new album so long, when making this list, I forgot which songs were new and which were old.

Here are the 11 Best Songs By M83:

1.  Kim & Jessie (Saturdays = Youth)
2.  Don't Save Us From The Flames (Before The Dawn Heals Us)
3.  Graveyard Girl (Saturdays = Youth)
4.  Skin of the Night (Saturdays = Youth)
5.  Teen Angst (Before The Dawn Heals Us)
6.  Farewell - Goodbye (Before The Dawn Heals Us)
7.  Bruits De Train (Digital Shades)
8.  A Guitar And a Heart (Before The Dawn Heals Us)
9.  America (Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts)
10. Dark Moves of Love (Saturdays = Youth)
11.  Asterick (Before The Dawn Heals Us)

Buy M83's new album, Hurry Up I'm Dreaming...now!

The Unknown: The 11 Best Depeche Mode Bonus Remix Tracks.

Last week, Amazon ended its Affliates program for residents in California.  This came about from a new law signed by California Gov. Jerry Brown.  In crude terms, the new law put a new tax on retailers who were located in California.  Since Amazon had affiliates located in California under the new law that would make Amazon a "California" business and be susceptible to the new tax.  Therefore, Amazon ended its affiliates program to avoid being hit with the new tax.  It's a stupid law.  It probably hurts California more than it helps it.  Since the world is moving toward digital business, having affiliates programs only helps the California economy and their taxes, since all affiliates located in California have to pay taxes on their earnings.  With the lost earnings from Amazon, that's less taxes that will now be paid to the state.

With the limited quality releases this month, I'm going to catch up a bit on the releases I've missed or overlooked.

Though I love Depeche Mode, I can't say I'm thrilled about the massive amount of bonus tracks for their latest Remix compilation. Each retail affiliate was given certain bonus tracks that were only associated with their deluxe edition.  The total amount of bonus tracks tops out around 25 extra tracks on top of the already 37 tracks from the regular deluxe edition.  Some of the tracks can be bought individually...but others like the ten tracks from Beatport.com will cost you about $4 a piece.  So, if you want to get the additional 10 bonus tracks of dubs and instrumentals, you'll be shelling out $40 which is more than you would pay for the regular deluxe edition.  Of course, if you want to just by the Beatport deluxe edition, it's only a mere $78...and is oddly missing ten tracks that are readily available on the other editions.  I can't really figure out what DM's goal is on this one.  It's one thing to lure people into buying the album for a couple extra tracks.  But only the true fans are going to buy multiple editions.  Aren't the true devoted fans the ones you want to bribe to keep around?  Not the ones you want to gouge?  I did a heavy search and have picked up most of the bonus tracks and out of the 25, here are the ones I found the best bang for your buck.

Here are the 11 Best Depeche Mode Bonus Tracks from the new Remixes:

1.  The Sinnner in Me (Sixtoes Remix) - HMV Digital
2.  In Chains (Myer vs. Wilder Deconstruction) - Itunes
3.  The Sun and the Rainfall (Black Light Odyssey's Further Excerpts) - HMV Digital
4.  Personal Jesus (Sie Medway-Smith Dub) - Beatport
5.  In Chains (Tigerskin's No Sleep Alternative Remix) - Beatport
6.  Sister of Night (Ida Engberg's Giving Voice to The Flame) - Amazon Digital Edition
7.  The Sweetest Perfection (Phil Kieran Vocal Remix) - Amazon Digital Edition
8.  Suffer Well (M83 Instrumental) - Beatport
9.  Wrong (Trentemoller Club Remix Dub) - Beatport
10.  A Pain That I'm Used To (Jacques Le Cont Dub) - Beatport
11.  John The Revelator (UNKLE Dub) - Beatport

Buy Depeche Mode's Remixes 81-11...now!