Top 10 Albums (That We Reviewed) From 2011

It’s always so tough to pick only 10 records.

Let’s start our look back on a great year in new music with a list of the Top 10 Albums of 2011 that we actually wrote reviews for here on Bums Logic. This crop of reviews represents some of the core material published as we launched this new site in 2011 and we thank you all for listening and reading along.

Next week we’ll add another dozen or so favorites from this year that we didn’t write about…. and then maybe think of an excuse to add others, or combine them into one master list and rank them in order. Or not.

So here’s our Top 10 Albums (That We Reviewed) From 2011, in no particular order, and all with links to our original reviews:

Tom Waits – Bad As Me

Drive-By Truckers – Go-Go Boots

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit – Here We Rest

Wilco – The Whole Love

Mastodon – The Hunter

Stephen Marley – Revelation Pt.1: Root of Life

Bon Iver – Bon Iver

Beastie Boys – Hot Sauce Committee Pt.2

G. Love – Fixin’ To Die

Sonic Youth – Simon Werner a Disparu

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G. Love Gets an Assist from the Avett Brothers

On his solid new album Fixin to Die, it sounds like G. Love has traded in his cold beverages for hot ones and wisely let the Avett Brothers mix up the special sauce.

Still best known for kicking out the hip-hop-styled blues and folksy party jams with his backing band Special Sauce, G. Love has made a great new record with the considerable aid of the Avetts rootsy live-sounding production and their able talents as multi-instrumentalists.

Among many standout tracks, “Milk and Sugar,” a love letter to coffee (and sweet women), serves as a subtle hot bookend to his early-career minor hit “Cold Beverages.” Alongside the usual suspects (covers of blues material by Willie McTell and Bukka White), there are also a couple of eyebrow raisers such as takes on Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” and Lou Reed’s “Pale Blue Eyes.” And yet somehow it works, as odd as it may seem.