SPIN's 50 Best Albums of 2011

It's Grohl's most memorable set of songs since 1997's The Colour and the Shape.

Watch the Throne is far too good to condemn them thus, but not good enough to erase the possibility.

The lack of in-your-face future-funk arrangements isn't a sign that Beyoncé has lost her appetite for domination; indeed, as a singer's showcase, 4 will probably end up bested this year only by Adele's 21.

Gone are the prior albums' "tasteful" (i.e., boring) slow-burners; El Camino's 38 minutes are pure thrust.

For his full-length debut, Greene teams with producer Ben Allen to revisit his '80s reveries, crafting Balearic bliss and refreshing New Romantic flounce. He even invigorates '90s trip-hop's head-nod, making for an even better coast soundtrack.

The songs are more consistent ... flashing a certain lyrical swagger, careening from terrific sex to celebratory violence to uncomfortable cultural realities.

With Take Care, Drake has his accelerated Kanye West moment — when a little too much ambition and all the asshole feelings he's got inside coalesce into an insular, indulgent, sad-sack hip-hop epic.

Delivered in a frail squawk recalling Seattle singer-songwriter Perfume Genius, his coming-of-age songs carve intuitive, idiosyncratic paths (spidery guitar, buzzing electronics) to mountaintop indie-rock catharsis.

Vernon re-accesses that potent sense of self on Bon Iver, a stunning sophomore set whose landscape-painting cover art underscores the idea that his songs inhabit their own psychological space.

Li’s new album, Wounded Rhymes, is equal parts seething ice princess and lonely snowwoman, vacillating almost track by track between fury and despondence over a scotched relationship.

Having inhaled the obliquely fucked hauteur of the Stooges/Neil Young/ J Mascis axis, Vile frames his own more hushed musings with alternately anxious and serene guitar. But thanks to John Agnello’s warm, enveloping production, Smoke Ring for My Halo feels almost suspenseful.

Sung with warmth, these tracks offer a welcome antidote to her more familiar performance mode — spectacular austerity. They’re as bloody and forceful as the battles Harvey references.

It's one 
of the most overly complicated hard-rock records 
of the past ten years. It's also one of the best.