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Red's Best of 2011: The YECA
Member Since: 4/21/2011
Posts: 1,785
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Omfg, your worst songs list. Besides What The Hell, which I actually like despite it's obvious flaws, I'm so glad to finally see someone dragging all of that garbage. I don't know if I've ever mentioned it before, but you're one of my favorite members here, just because you don't put up with a lot of the generic Top 40 **** of today.
Also, it's nice to see the Goddess that is LIGHTS on your best of lists constantly.
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Member Since: 8/2/2008
Posts: 22,610
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Houdini FTP is a better version of MGMT.
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ATRL Senior Member
Member Since: 3/19/2008
Posts: 37,076
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^ They're completely different!
Great top 3 + Waste, Arlandria
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ATRL Senior Member
Member Since: 10/1/2002
Posts: 14,726
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Nice to see so much love for Lights!
- Foos x 2 and FTP x 2. Wicked stuff. "Bridge Burning" is my fav song off that album as well, and "Arlandria" is probably in my top 3. You are right, the Foos are from complacent
- Nice #1 in TVOTR!
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Member Since: 1/19/2006
Posts: 4,466
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The Lonely, Houdini, and Waste are the only ones I've heard and enjoyed. Didn't really listen to many albums this year to have known about the others.
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Member Since: 1/9/2011
Posts: 2,528
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Foster the People...twice!
The Lonely was one of the few non-singles songs that debuted in my countdown. It also had the best run of the four Christina Perri songs that debuted, peak-wise.
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Member Since: 8/9/2010
Posts: 17,189
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FTP
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Member Since: 7/15/2005
Posts: 27,703
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I don't know these songs.
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Member Since: 7/14/2009
Posts: 22,692
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10/15
Lights! I sadly don't get the appeal of Swimming Home, I don't it in comparison to the other soft songs of Evanescence.
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Member Since: 9/20/2009
Posts: 5,170
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evanescence
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Member Since: 10/11/2004
Posts: 28,320
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Arlandria, Waste and Houdini, YAY!
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ATRL Administrator
Member Since: 5/2/2000
Posts: 2,844
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HELLO. I'm in the building. You have 22 pages of stuff, holy ****. I can't promise that I'm gonna go through all that, but I will be around from here on out. Joy to the world!
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ATRL Senior Member
Member Since: 5/9/2003
Posts: 3,779
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Lots of greatness for sure. And grats on winning the fantasy finals.
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Member Since: 1/26/2006
Posts: 17,384
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Acid Turkish Bath (Shelter From the Storm), Waste and Houdini
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Member Since: 11/17/2010
Posts: 12,926
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Lights
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Member Since: 3/18/2008
Posts: 25,896
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Catcus In The Vally is beautiful
Swimming Home i cant even describe its, just, AMAZING...probably my favorite song from them
Waste
Siberia, love listening to this in the car
Houdini is just amazing, of my top 5 from the album
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 8/11/2007
Posts: 63,796
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Bridge Burning
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Member Since: 6/16/2006
Posts: 9,960
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Waste + Houdini, amazing choices!
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ATRL Senior Member
Member Since: 9/26/2001
Posts: 22,475
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YECA Countdown #7: Top Fifteen Albums of 2011 (15-11)
I guess by "tomorrow", I meant "two days from now".
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I don't know if I've ever mentioned it before, but you're one of my favorite members here, just because you don't put up with a lot of the generic Top 40 **** of today.
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Well, thank you for the compliment, but I totally do listen to some pretty genuinely terrible music...though I guess I do admit that it is terrible.
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HELLO. I'm in the building. You have 22 pages of stuff, holy ****. I can't promise that I'm gonna go through all that, but I will be around from here on out. Joy to the world!
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WELCOME TO THE YECA BUILDING! (You really should check out the music videos and YouTube video lists, though, if nothing else.)
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Lots of greatness for sure. And grats on winning the fantasy finals.
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I am the champion...of that league.
Alright, let's finally get to one of the two biggies, as we begin our journey through my fifteen favorite albums of 2011. The battles for album supremacy this year were particularly fierce, especially near the top. Trust me when I say that Korn does have some competition at the #1 spot this year. It's not a guaranteed #1 for them at ALL.
| Kasabian
Velociraptor!
In many ways, this year's albums list was the toughest to put together yet. Between being unable to decide whether or not an album is worthy of being in the top 15 only days before completing this list and listening to albums just in the nick of time, ranking this year's top 15 was more of a torturous undertaking than ever before. My #15 album is a great representation of that problem. Up until some point in mid-December, I hadn't even really listened to Kasabian's latest album, Velociraptor!, despite owning the album for months. I really enjoyed their singles, particularly "Days Are Forgotten", and yet, I couldn't bring myself to listen to the album. I finally did...and I found myself really enjoying the album! The best part of this album is that there's a lot of different sounds to be found here. "Acid Turkish Bath" sounds as if it was inspired by the solo material of Serj Tankian, "Let's Roll Just Like We Used To" feels like a song that just traveled in time from the 1960's, "Re-wired" sounds almost White Stripes-esque, and "Days Are Forgotten" sounds like a Bond theme waiting to happen. This mish-mash of sounds finally gets Kasabian into the same ballpark of epic goofiness as Muse. They're not quite equals, mind you, but, considering that no one else is in that ballpark, that's pretty impressive.
Favorite Songs: Acid Turkish Bath (Shelter from the Storm), Days Are Forgotten, I Hear Voices |
| Florence + the Machine
Ceremonials
Another album that wasn't in the top fifteen until just recently, Ceremonials finally impacted me in a much larger way at the end of the year. Oh, sure, "What the Water Gave Me" and "Shake It Out" were always impactful and powerful, but it wasn't until December that I really got into the other songs on the album: the powerful opening track "Only If For A Night", the soon-to-be smash single "No Light No Light", and, particularly, the last three songs: The building-to-an-explosive-climax "Spectrum", a song that would make Kate Bush proud in "All This and Heaven Too", and the album's emotional (and literal) conclusion, "Leave My Body". It sure took me a while to realize that this was an album worthy of being one of my favorites of the year...but, once Ceremonials got to that point, it simply was not going to let go of me.
Favorite Songs: What the Water Gave Me, Leave My Body, Spectrum |
| Evanescence
Evanescence
I wasn't sure what to make of the prospects of Evanescence's comeback album, honestly. "What You Want", despite being a pretty good comeback single, was Evanescence...being Evanescence. That didn't tell me anything about the quality of the album. Then, I heard "Lost in Paradise" for the first time...and I was blown away. With one listen to that beautiful song, I was ready to dive in. I'm glad that I did. Granted, this album is not exactly a bunch of songs like "Lost in Paradise". In fact, songs such as the aforementioned "What You Want", "The Change" and "Made of Stone" are mid-tempo and up-tempo songs that get your fists pumping and your hearts racing. That being said, Evanescence has always been at its best when it focuses on Amy Lee's voice and her piano playing, and that's the case here as well. "My Heart Is Broken" is a fantastic look at what happens when Evanescence's softer and harder sides come together perfectly, and songs such as "Lost in Paradise" and "Swimming Home" head toward the softer, Amy-influenced side of the coin and are better off for it. In other words, it's a classic Evanescence album: An album full of hard and powerful songs that also features softer, better songs in between.
Favorite Songs: Swimming Home, My Heart Is Broken, Lost in Paradise |
| SONOIO
Red
Johnald telling me that he had not known that this album had existed before I did was a bigger surprise than Red itself, but only slightly. After discovering SONOIO through the ATRL turntable.fm room, I just had to seek out the latest album from this intriguing artist. As I mentioned when I spoke about "As Long..." earlier, none of the other songs on that album can match the dense brilliance of that particular tune, but SONOIO (aka former Nine Inch Nails keyboardist Alessandro Cortini) tries his damned hardest with the other songs on this sometimes-brilliant album. Single "Enough" is also the longest song on the album, but it barely feels like it with how it seems to fly by. "Can You Hear Me?" has, perhaps, the single best beat on the album, a driving piece of music that never fails to get me excited. "Minutes" is one of the album's most beautiful moments, with a delicate beat covering a song about a normal conversation. "Scientist" sounds (dare I say it) Daft Punk-esque. And between it all, there's the vocals of Cortini himself, which would sound decidedly average anywhere else, but, on this album, sound just right.
Favorite Songs: As Long As You Make A Sound, Enough, Can You Hear Me? |
| Chevelle
Hats Off to the Bull
This album just flat out hit me like a ton of bricks. "Face to the Floor" certainly did not prepare me for this. While that song is certainly a good one, it's also generic Chevelle. Funny, you can also say that about Sci-Fi Crimes' first single, "Jars". Unlike that album and that first single, however, Hats Off to the Bull sounds like Chevelle legitimately giving a damn, which can only mean good things in the long run. It was extremely difficult to narrow down my list of favorite songs, and I just couldn't bring myself to lower it down to three, because I have so many favorites. Other favorites such as "The Meddler" and "Ruse" were not even good enough to make the finalized group of songs. Meanwhile, let's look at the songs that did: We've already covered the title track, but "Revenge" and "Envy" are Chevelle at their slower-paced best, and "Piņata" is Chevelle calling back to two of my favorite singles of theirs, "I Get It" and "The Fad", with a riff that sounds eerily like a combination of those two songs' riffs. Hats Off to the Bull is Chevelle coming closer to the soaring heights of their classic album Wonder What's Next than they have since the release of that very classic, and a brash and powerful reminder that mainstream rock music in America is anything but dead.
Favorite Songs: Hats Off to the Bull, Piņata, Revenge, Envy |
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Okay, we may just reach the end of this list and the beginning of the singles list by the end of the year with this set being posted right here and now. God, I hope so. Albums ten through six are next, and among the next five are an album that is truly unique, an album so awesome that I can't help but scream its name every time I say it, two of my favorite discoveries of 2011, and an album that you've never heard of only if you did not have a pulse before 2011. See you then.
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ATRL Senior Member
Member Since: 6/9/2002
Posts: 6,789
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These are five albums I haven't heard, but your write-ups do a very good job of making me want to hear them. Even Evanthingy! The Florence one is the one I really have to hear, as I like the single. Not sure why I haven't listened to that yet. This Kasabian album keeps getting mentioned, so I should listen to that, and that SONOIO thing sounds quite great, as well.
Looking forward to the next set!
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