Pitchfork's Top 50 Albums of 2011

After the closeness and austerity of For Emma, Vernon has given us a knotty record that resists easy interpretation but is no less warm or welcoming.

More than any other Destroyer record, you can just throw this on and it sounds good, and plenty will do well stopping there. But for those so inclined, there's more to explore.

Above all else, it's the best M83 record yet.

Even considering all of the horror on display, this is her most straightforward and easy to embrace album in a decade.

Their music pilfers from the past without shame but also manages to sound like no one else.

There's a real sense of discovery here, or possibilities being probed, and that feeling is infectious.

The music benefits from the increased professionalism, but Garbus has not abandoned her lo-fi aesthetic.

Drake's worked on his own technical abilities, too, and both his rapping and singing are better than ever here

Cleaner, sharper, and just plain stronger, Days is like a single idea divided into simple statements

The group's penchant for druggy atmospherics is mirrored in their lyrical content, which is overtly sexual, narcotics-focused, and occasionally downright frightening.

On Strange Mercy, she ditches Marry Me's naivety and Actor's ostentatious arrangements, boosts the inventive guitar playing, and ends up with her most potent and cathartic release yet.

Horgeous, indelible tunes that are as generous in content as they are restrained in delivery.

Anderson's music has the power to plummet to the depths and drag you right down there with her.

Black Up lets some sunlight in, breathes fresh air, and finds Butler returning to an occasionally lighter flow, the most unburdened he's sounded since the world first heard him.

The record showcases the band's expanded range and successful risk-taking, while retaining what so many people fell in love with about the group in the first place.

This feels like a family of songs, one whose complexion and course changes as a whole with every spin.

Parallax feels like a more complete work than any other Atlas Sound record, with the differences between the songs less distinct and everything flowing together more naturally.

Space never feels like a showcase for Nicolas Jaar; it's just a modest and well-decorated gathering place for some things he loves, a place for them to interact.

They push each other and have fun doing it, and the result is a stadium-sized event-rap spectacle that still sounds like two insanely talented guys' idiosyncratic vision.

Callahan has nothing to add to the general conversation about music in 2011 but is making the best albums of his career.

So while there are few identifiable words here and the titles don't really register, there's a hell of a lot being expressed.

It's a tighter and more focused record that pares back the band's habit for noisy embellishment and psychic jewelry to reveal taught rhythms and catchy hooks.

He's brought all his skill to bear on Looping, as composer and arranger and texturologist, in order to build something this simultaneously sweeping and subtle, deep and immediate.

Cut Copy have the architecture of dance music down perfectly and the confidence to execute the genre's moves with absolute precision.

A rich stew of warm disco, grown-and-sexy R&B, and classic g-funk, it sounds engineered to waft out over barbecues.

The notion of music as a cheapened, battered object, touches nearly every aspect of Ravedeath, 1972, a dark and often claustrophobic record that is arguably Hecker's finest work to date.

Goodbye Bread is filled with such rich, breathtaking moments, and Segall, who plays every instrument here, sounds as though he's savoring every part of process.

He's condensed the sprawl and stylistic shifts of Person Pitch into seemingly tidy songs.

David Comes to Life is absolutely worth the commitment, a convincing demonstration of what can happen when a band works without limitations.

What puts On a Mission over the top is Katy's way of expressing herself with emotions that extend past "wooo, druuunk".

Her best music, this album included, has the effect of putting one in the kind of treasured, child-like space-- not so much innocent as open to imagination-- that never gets old.

While they still have room to grow as songwriters, the energy in every atom of New Brigade's charred, sub-25-minute rush is seductive.

Perri's invariably calm tenor assumes the reassuring presence of a tour guide who won't tell you where you're going but ensures you pass through safely

The really amazing thing about the album is how anthemic and affirming it feels despite the near total absence of proper sing-along choruses.

Electronic Dream is pretty, but it's pretty like the morning sun twinkling off of a dangling machete blade.

SBTRKT is ultimately a colorful and highly enjoyable future-pop record, an extension of bass culture but not indebted to it.

Li proves a rich and compelling character in her songs, which are dark but also complex, contradictory, and, thank goodness, still rough around the edges.

Section.80 still stands as a powerful document of a tremendously promising young guy figuring out his voice.

It executes what it sets out to do masterfully while allowing the group room to grow and mature.

Sepalcure nimbly incorporate current trends but arrive at a sound-- politely mysterious rhythms put to life by haunted vocal samples-- that's familiar and rich.

If he was feeling any pressure to validate himself and his peers, Underneath the Pine doesn't show it.

The band rarely sacrifices the rock'n'roll fun-- they no doubt deliver that elusive black-and-blue, but it's a hit that feels like a kiss.

Hibernation is a record for pulling up the covers and dreaming and then venturing out to the town to see the strange and magical world of encroaching adulthood.