# 1 (TM) Middle Brother - Middle Brother

Supergroup my ass. That term generally signifies bland half-baked jams (Superheavy, Them Crooked Vultures), main group throwaways (Golden Smog, Monsters of Folk), intriguing novelty (The Baseball Project, Tinted Windows) or sheer wretchedness (Chickenfoot). Middle Brother brings their A game and top flight songs.

Middle Brother brings together three songwriters (Deer Tick's John McCauley, Dawes' Taylor Goldsmith and Delta Spirit's Matthew Vasquez) whose main bands have yet to rise above club status. They cherry pick the best attributes from each band and reign in their excesses. While Vasquez (the Crazy Horse inspired "Blue Eyes", the irresistible 50's pastiche "Someday") and Goldsmith ("Thanks for Nothing" and "Wilderness") shine, it's McCauley's rumpled stumblebum who dazzles. The theme is pie-eyed lovable losers, and the only cover, a suitably shaggy run through The Replacements' rarity "Portland", manages the neat trick of saluting patron saint Paul Westerberg and eclipsing his original.

But the stunner, and the best song on the year's best album, is "Daydreaming", whose chord progressions hint that this is the kid from Big Star's "Thirteen", a few years older, still lovesick and longing, looking for someone to "be an outlaw for my love". Simply gorgeous.

Middle Brother - "Daydreaming" (from Middle Brother)

Big Star - "Thirteen" (from # 1 Record)

# 2 (TM) Butch Walker and The Black Widows - The Spade

Butch Walker is a melody freak. And a fun junkie. And with The Spade, he hits all my musical g spots - big guitars, gigantic hooks and instantly memorable choruses. There's also bit of hair metal cheese wrapped in a glam, alt-country sandwich. But the main focus is F-U-N. With an in-jokey, self-referential, self-deprecating boys club atmosphere, The Spade was 2011's best non-stop party.  

Butch Walker and The Black Widows - "Bodegas and Blood" (from The Spade)

#1 (MA) Nick Lowe - The Old Magic

Nick Lowe has been mining the same territory for nearly twenty years now, meaning that "this phase" of his career has gone on for longer than the part that we normally think of as "his career," namely the Jesus of Cool and Labour of Lust years. His stock-in-trade is now to create new songs that you swear you've heard before, 1960s country and R&B classics that you just can't place, records that James Carr and Charlie Rich probably made before you were born. And he does it with such ease, such wit, such elegance that you might fail to notice the genius behind all this effortless beauty. The Old Magic is pure grace, the kind of album that will never be in fashion, but can't go out of style.

#2 (MA) Ezra Furman & The Harpoons - Mysterious Power

There's a moment on Mysterious Power when you realize that this isn't the Ezra Furman you know, the clever but sometimes too-jokey troubadour whose whine too often overwhelms his roar. It happens on the third track, "Hard Time in a Terrible Land," when Ezra and the Harpoons cast all notions of indie propriety aside and rock out with abandon. There are no trappings of irony here. Instead, Mysterious Power is a deeply felt set of songs, alternatively tender and ferocious, that reveal a songwriter and band at the height of their powers.

#3 (MA) Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost

Yeah, so it's May, and we're still telling you about the albums we enjoyed last year. Maybe it's just taking us that long to get our heads around them. I feel rushed when December comes and I have to tell you how I feel about an album I bought five minutes ago. How should I know how I feel about it? I don't even know it yet. This is one of those albums that took some time to get to know. On one level, it's irrepressibly indie, the kind of thing made for the blogger/tumblr/twitter culture that celebrates songs that only twenty-seven people will ever know. On another, it's rooted in the let's-roll-another ethos of the 1970s, an unapologetic rock record that demands to be revisited, not just consumed. I bought this on mp3, but I find myself reaching for the gatefold cover and lyric sheet that I don't have. It's magic.

Adam Yauch

# 3 (TM) William Elliott Whitmore - Field Songs

William Elliott Whitmore's Iowa farmer perspective infuses darkly soulful songs with dirt underneath the fingers backbone that are delivered in an extraordinarily rich, booming cannon of a voice. Each song is a call to arms, inspring listener action and reaction. Reminds me of Jay Farrar's gift - sounding like an old soul frozen in a young man's body.

Field Songs mark time like old time spirituals, songs of faith and promise sung by slaves to try and temporarily ease their burdens. The sparse instrumentation (a gently picked banjo, a barely strummed guitar) places the focus on Whitmore's bruising vocals, and he hangs on to words like he's afraid to let them go. At 8 songs and 34 minutes, Field Songs scores a quick and decisive knockout, landing blows for the oppressed and depressed everywhere.

William Elliott Whitmore - "Let's Do Something Impossible" (from Field Songs)
William Elliott Whitmore - "Johnny Law" (from Animals in the Dark)

# 4 (TM) - Lydia Loveless - Indestructible Machine

21 year old Lydia Loveless (who name conjures up a goth country diva) initially impressed with "Steve Earle", a fitting "tribute" that paints Earle as a stalker of sweet young things who "won't stop calling me" and "just wants to write some songs", but all she wants is for Steve "to please introduce me to your son", the ultimate backhanded compliment. And it's just the tip of the iceberg for Indestructible Machine, an album awash in that Old 97's galloping backbeat, but recasts Rhett Miller as Loretta Lynn.

But mostly this album recalls the glory and go-for-broke-ness of the debut Lone Justice record, especially on the roiling "Bad Way to Go" and the unapologetic war cry of "Do Right." Loveless may not possess Maria McKee's wondrous range, but that's really praising by faint damn. Loveless is a take-no-prisoners storyteller and the freshest new female alt-country voice in recent memory.

Lydia Loveless - "Steve Earle" (from Indestructible Machine)
Lydia Loveless - "Alison" (Elvis Costello cover from her "Bad Way to Go" Record Store Day 7")

# 5 (TM) The Decemberists - The King is Dead

Deciding to cast aside the wonkier folk-prog pretensions that conjured dreams of 17 song suites and nightmares of Jethro Tull comparisons, The King is Dead is far and away the most inviting record The Decemberists have ever made. It also contains the best collection of melodies on any 2011 album. Sounding like a more lucid REM in their prime, songs like "January Hymn", "All Arise", "Dear Avery" and "June Hymn" all sound like instant classics. A panoply of song indeed.

The Decemberists - "January Hymn" (from The King is Dead)

The Decemberists - "Cuyahoga" (REM cover)