The best national music releases of 2011

Comments (0) By Backbeat Staff Tuesday, Dec 27 2011

Washed Out, Within and Without (Sub Pop). Mastermind Ernest Greene's latest effort explores the space between shoegaze and lullaby pop while finding its footing in a lo-fi dreamscape along the way. This album is a soundtrack to lazy nights, wasted nights, regrettable nights, painful nights, heartbroken nights, forgotten nights and the best nights. — Whipple

Wilco, The Whole Love (dBpm/Anti-). While The Whole Love's opening cut, "The Art of Almost," is a bit jarring and finds Wilco treading on entirely new terrain, some cuts feel like they could easily fit on earlier albums. Jeff Tweedy and company manage to hold on to the past, clinging to the essence of what makes the band great, and still evolve organically. — Solomon

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Wolves in the Throne Room, Celestial Lineage (Southern Lord). On Celestial Lineage, Wolves in the Throne Room conjures a profound and unmistakable sense of dour isolation, like being dropped into a redwood forest in the middle of the night and coming to without the vaguest notion of where you are, with only moonlight and the distant drone of unknown machinery feeding your senses. Terrifyingly brilliant. — Herrera

Lucinda Williams, Blessed (Lost Highway). Although Lucinda Williams is married now and has said that she's in a much happier space, Blessed isn't necessarily a "happy" album, especially since she touches on death, suicide and loss on it. Williams sticks to her unrestrained, no-bullshit way of songwriting, creating some of her most poignant work to date. — Solomon

Zola Jesus, Conatus (Sacred Bones). Conatus is a seamless fusion of electronic composition and experimental rock. There's something so weighty and majestic about this material, and it's balanced by a lightness and sense of spaciousness that suggest a hopeful spirit at the core of the songwriting. Nika Danilova here fully infuses her ghostly pop songs with a classical sensibility. — Murphy