Music

Top 10 Punk Releases: 2011

by Sam Sutherland

2011 was a year. And like years before it, people released albums. And like those other years, we ranked what we thought were the best of the respective genres we cover — Indie/Pop/Rock, Hip Hop, Pop, Metal, Punk, and Electronic.

We also reached out to as many of the artists featured here as we could to get lists of their own. Click on a name to check out our best-of the year’s best-of the year’s.

Top 10 Punk Releases: 2011

 

10. The Copyrights – North Sentinel Island

There were a lot of reunions that no one asked for this year. And there were reunion albums that no one asked for and even less people listened to. But the Get Up Kids released an album that made pretty clear that they weren’t just pandering and trying to scrape a few remaining dollars out of their old fans’ pockets. There Are Rules is a pretty weird album, one that can only be explained by accepting that the members of the Get Up Kids have continued to evolve since their dissolution, and while they still love writing music together, they have no interest in rehashing the past. Which is rare, and awesome. (Read Matt Pryor’s own year end list)

8. Banquets – Top Button, Bottom Shelf

Pitchfork described this record as being like CCR meets the Wipers, which is pretty accurate (even though they might have intended it an insult). The energy of Rick Froberg’s past efforts in the punk and hardcore trenches is still here, but it’s matched by some of the strongest songs of his career and a greater effort to give them room to breath. Until Hot Snakes reunite permanently, this is a pretty great way to keep our lives as Froberg-full as possible. (Read Obits’ own year end list)

6. OFF! – Four EPs
	Keith Morris yelling like a madman over perfect ’80s hardcore instrumentals! Everything about this ruled!

5. Samiam – Trips
	Worth the wait. Not only is Trips the best sounding record in the Samiam discography (thanks to some help from Green Day’s Billy Joe Armstrong), it has some of their best songs since Dull, marking the band’s triumphant return to the moody pop-punk throne (it’s cooler than it sounds, throne-wise). (Read Sergie Loobkoff’s own year end list)

5. Soul Control – Get Out Now
	This is the kind of inventive, weirdo-hardcore that keeps an otherwise staid genre fresh, year after year. Hardcore needs bands like Soul Control as much as it needs Terror or whatever, just to remind everyone that there are possibilities lurking along the dark edges of the pit. (Read Jim Connolly’s own year end list)

3. Bomb the Music Industry! – Vacation

Not only the default answer to the cop-out concept that only Radiohead or Trent Reznor can benefit from releasing music for free online, Bomb the Music Industry! are also one of the most musically exciting bands operating in the DIY punk circuit today. Moving further and further from the ska and hardcore that defined earlier albums, there’s a lot of Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello creeping in on many of Vacation‘s best songs, all of it filtered through braintrust Jeff Rosenstock’s unique worldview and lyrical approach. (Read Jeff Rosenstock’s own year end list)

2. Touche Amore – 2. Parting the Seas Between Brightness and Me

In the past year, this really cool thing happened — screamo, a once-great genre that was Hot Topic-ized into a horrible mess of haircuts and t-shirts, was reclaimed, not just artistically, but commercially. Bands like La Dispute and Pianos Become the Teeth produced incredible albums that were also extremely popular, with everyone from grizzled hadrcore vets to scene newbs. Leading the pack was Touche Amore, a band who captures everything that was great about the old Level Plane roster without just rehashing the ’90s. This record is a mean, condensed blast of emotion and utter heaviness. And they still have nowhere to go but up.

1. Fucked Up – David Comes to Life
	Surprise. (Read Ben Cook’s own year end list)