Choosing 25 albums from the past year proved to be a difficult task. 2011 produced a whole whack load of great music and it was tough to come up with and order the list below. Other than the albums below, there were a bunch that I couldn’t fit in my top 25. Those albums include Lykke Li Wounded Rhymes, Adele 21, Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues and The War on Drugs Slave Ambient.

2011 proved to be another fantastic year for Canadian music. Leading the way was Drake with his second album Take Care. Other Canadians with good albums this year include City And Colour with Little Hell, Austra with her debut Feel It Break and Arkells with Michigan Left.

Hope you enjoy these albums as much as I did and as always if there was an album you really liked that I didn’t mention, please let me know!

Posted by: alberto
Posted on: December 29th, 2011
Tags: arctic monkeys, beady eye, bon iver, cults, destroyer, dum dum girls, florence and the machine, foo fighters, fucked up, girls, iron and wine, jay-z, kanye west, m83, mastodon, noel gallagher, pj harvey, portugal the man, the antlers, the black keys, the horrible crowes, the weeknd, watch the throne, wavves, white lies, wu lyf, year in review
Categories: Music
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Similar to 2010, this year has been a fantastic year for music. We saw debut albums from both Gallagher brothers, Cults, and Grouplove. We also heard some of awesome singles from M83, Lana Del Rey, and The Weeknd. Mixed in with these catchy singles and debuts were a bunch of solid albums. Some of those include Foo Fighters’ Wasting Light, Fucked Up’s David Comes To Life and Girls’ Father, Son, Holy Ghost.

As is the case with every year there is always this one song that gets to me that becomes my guilty pleasure. This year that award goes to Katy Perry. Her single ‘E.T.’ was so catchy and was played everywhere I turned that it got tattooed in my head. Also on my playlist are two tracks from Canadian rockers The Sheepdogs. Although their album ‘Learn & Burn’ was released in 2010, they really hit it big this year thanks to winning the Rolling Stone Magazine contest.

The 80 songs below is pretty much a soundtrack to my year. From songs that were released in January right up until December every song on here was played countless amounts of time. Hope you enjoy the list and let me know if there were any songs you really enjoyed that I should check out. Happy Holidays!

Posted by: alberto
Posted on: December 23rd, 2011
Tags: 2011 playlist, bon iver, cults, dreamers, dum dum girls, foo fighters, fucked up, girls, lana del rey, m83, mastodon, playlist, the sheepdogs, year in review
Categories: Music
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Continuing my Year In Review posts, I am following up my 2009 Playlist with my Top Albums of 09. I will admit that this list was a little easier to come up with than my playlist but was still difficult to decide what order certain albums get slotted into to.
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Posted by: alberto
Posted on: December 23rd, 2009
Tags: arctic monkeys, band of skulls, bat for lashes, dead weather, dinosaur jr, glasvegas, julian casablancas, lily allen, mastodon, metric, pearl jam, phoenix, tegan and sara, the antlers, the big pink, the xx, them crooked vultures, thirty seconds to mars, white lies, yeah yeah yeahs, year in review
Categories: Music
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So it’s been about a month now since the release of Mastodon’s latest album ‘Crack The Skye’ and I’ve just got around to listening to it now. After reading a few reviews of the new album I decided to get it. Prior to listening to the album I had a few thoughts of how it would sound like: really heavy, lots screaming and a bunch of noise. But after giving it a good listen yesterday I was totally wrong on all fronts. Listening to this album is like listening to Iron Maiden mashed with Rush mashed with new age heavy metal.

Throughout the album these guys have crazy guitar solos and great vocals. There are a few tracks that include some screaming but it’s a type of screaming that you can actually listen to. Although the album only has 7 tracks the 10+ minute tracks make up for not having more tracks.

Overall the album is a really good listen if you want to hear some great vocals mixed with awesome guitar solos. Listening to this album has made me appreciate this type of metal. I will definitely get the rest of Mastodon’s catalog and see how their earlier stuff compares to this new album.

Posted by: alberto
Posted on: April 29th, 2009
Tags: crack the skye, mastodon
Categories: Music
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