Critics Poll 2011: 20-1

Some commentary is omitted. Historical album rankings are unchanged.

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20. Belles Will Ring

Crystal Theatre
(Dot Dash/Remote Control)

More reading: Track By Track

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19. Sand Pebbles

Dark Magic
(Dot Dash/Remote Control)

More reading: Track By Track – Sand Pebbles

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18. Snowman

Absence
(Dot Dash/Remote Control)

More reading: Interview – Snowman

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17. Jack Ladder and the Dreamlanders

Hurtsville
(Spunk!)

More reading: Interview – Jack Ladder

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16. Witch Hats

Pleasure Syndrome
(Longtime Listener)

More reading: First Listen: Witch Hats

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15. Collarbones

Iconography
(Two Bright Lakes/Remote Control)

More reading: Interview – Collarbones

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14. Laura Jean

A fool who’ll
(Chapter)

More reading: Storytellers – Laura Jean

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13. Harmony

Harmony
(Casadeldisco/Other Tongues)

More reading: Track By Track – Harmony

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12. Teeth & Tongue

Tambourine
(Dot Dash/Remote Control)

More reading: Track By Track – Teeth & Tongue

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11. Oscar + Martin

For You
(Two Bright Lakes/Remote Control)

More reading: Track By Track – Oscar + Martin

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10. Twerps

Twerps
(Chapter Music)

More jangly than a wrist full of bracelets, Melbourne’s Twerps have never been afraid to reveal just how firmly their influences are embedded in their DNA. Yet in the time between their first recorded offerings and this album’s release, they’ve slid over that uncomfortable hurdle between surly teenage homage and the liberating, yet harsher, light of adulthood to declare their own sovereignty. Though their hair’s a little longer and jeans more frayed, Twerps have emerged spiritually untainted, with their lust for experience and late night moments of profundity intact.

From the road trippin’ positivity of ‘Dreamin’ to the hedonistic ‘Who Are You’ and the loving pledges of ‘Don’t Be Surprised’ and ‘Bring Me Down’, this record is the antidote to that Sunday afternoon nothing time when your head hurts, your cupboards are empty and your lover won’t answer their phone. Twerps are the friends that turn up, uninvited but intuitive, grinning at your door with bottles of beer, still-warm pizza and reassuring hugs. This album is evidence that when the Twerps promise that things are going to be OK, there’s every reason to believe them. – Hannah Brooks

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9. Lost Animal

Ex Tropical
(Sensory Projects)

Disbanding one of Melbourne’s best bands in favour of his solo project, here Jarrod Quarrell gives us a pared-down sequel to St Helens’ Heavy Profession. Teaming with producer John Lee (Mountains in the Sky) and sideman Shags Chamberlain (Pikelet), Quarrel drifts moodily through a sultry new setting. From the diffuse pulse of ‘(Intro) Beat Goes On’ to the canned wonkiness of ‘Cold Cut Nature’, he oozes romance without resorting to platitudes. He even recasts one-time St Helens tunes (‘Don’t Litter’, ‘Say No To Thugs’, ‘Lose The Baby’) into brooding album highlights. – Doug Wallen

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8. Single Twin

Marcus Teague
(Remote Control)

An insular side-project by a beloved front-man is by no means an unusual occurrence, but it’s rarely done this well. Crafted over six years on his home computer, ex-Deloris singer-songwriter Marcus Teague self-recorded one of the year’s most haunting albums with little more than acoustic guitar, an out-of-tune banjo and a knack for lyrical poignancy. Absurdly titled in his own name, the record traced stories of split identities, learned reflections and obtuse characters in unfamiliar places - all with desolate arrangements blanketing his murmured poetics. Marcus Teague’s long and trying germination resulted in a uniquely beautiful record; a humble snapshot of six years of one man’s life told with nearly unrivalled sincerity and eloquence. – Max Easton

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7. Seekae

+DOME
(Rice Is Nice/Popfrenzy Records)

Different people want very different things from “electronica”, the genre that demands bigger inverted commas with every passing week. Some want howling mid-range chainsaw brutality, others want dimly re-imagined chillout beats and emotive white-soul singing. Genre defying Sydney trio Seekae are stronger than the latter temptation and their 12-track sophomore LP +Dome bows to no imagined commercial pressure. The themes Seekae explore here are a continuation from those they started: +Dome is another contribution to the unstable post-dubstep trend, another combination of the electronic/downtempo/garage/ambient/hip-hop genres, and ultimately another notch on the old indie music belt. – Jen Peterson-Ward

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6. Adalita

Adalita
(Liberation)

Commentary for this entry is no longer available. The original No. 6 ranking is retained.

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5. Geoffrey O’Connor

Vanity Is Forever
(Chapter Music)

From the barely audible directive that opens the first track, ‘So Sorry’, it’s clear that from here onwards Geoffrey O’Connor is valiantly taking the reins. ‘Feel Young’ is his whispered mantra: one that lights the candles and pours the wine for the following 12 songs. Like a female dancing the tango, listening to Vanity Is Forever is an experience best enjoyed by leaning into it. Since the destination is complete abandon, resistance or half-measures don’t bode well for travellers touching down on O’Connor’s hazily sensual landscape. While he invites us to have our way with him, really it’s the other way around.

Vanity is Forever is a debonair leap into a new realm, one where incredible characters, weaving in and out of songs, line illusory walls and dimly lit strangers spit esoteric truths, while O’Connor, like an omnipresent director, watches it unfold on a flickering, claw-marked monitor. It’s an album that absolutely defies typical descriptive terms, shatters reference points and reduces eras and influences to wisps of smoke. Ingenious, fascinating and inspiring, Vanity is Forever proves that O’Connor has single-handedly changed all the rules. – Hannah Brooks

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4. Total Control

Henge Beat
(Iron Lung)

Perhaps as an obliquely positive spin on the “doom boom” of recent years, Henge Beat squeezes frontman Daniel Stewart’s primordial references of songs like ‘Stonehenge’ next to the modern concerns of ‘Meds II’ and ‘Retiree’, while the potential limitations of punk codes are contravened by bold and defiant experimentalism. Combining the charisma and scholarly wit of Stewart with the sonic fantasies of Eddy Current’s Mikey Young at its core, the Total Control five-piece administers a bracing rock thrust, while staying hip to the sounds of new young technophiles. Throw in some UV Race playfulness, awkwardly smeared over bleak, if not sardonic themes, plus a synth-punk throwback sound-as-addendum and you have an album revisiting old tropes, making them new again and reminding us that nothing ever really changes. – Steph Kretowicz

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3. Dick Diver

New Start Again
(Chapter Music)

Anyone that’s caught them on an off might know that Dick Diver’s knack for charming pop songs can be offset by an impressive capacity for self-sabotage. Luckily, the wry, observational nuggets that populate New Start Again prove the former, while keeping the latter at bay – for the most part. Wrangled by Mikey Young – Melbourne’s own garage renaissance man (see directly above) – the band are loose, but manage to stay just the right side of sloppy. The guitars chime and cut, while allowing plenty of room for Al Mackay and Rupert Edwards’ (and Al Montfort and Steph Hughes, for that matter) frequently brilliant lyrics. On songs like ‘Through The D’, ‘Seagulls’ and ‘On The Bank’, the result is striking; they create a strand of Australiana that does away with Paul Hogan, Noiseworks and the cultural cringe, and they make it sound easy. – Edward Sharp-Paul

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2. Royal Headache

Royal Headache
(R.I.P Society)

“Maybe she broke your heart - I know she did.” One line, but it's like an intense Google Maps search that goes: Australia, Sydney, Redfern, Shogun's living room then straight into his soul. Shorrty, Joe and Law are all great musicians, but Royal Headache is Shogun. That voice is astonishing. He sings, “I know she did” on 'Really in Love', and the band's intense stage performance, ear for melody and no bullshit attitude to the music industry crystallise down into four words. There has been debate and conjecture as to who Shogun and Royal Headache sound like but the point is moot. Right now, they sound like the best band in Australia. – Tim Scott

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1. HTRK

Work (work, work)
(Mistletone)

In a year in which pastiche proved fashionable and credible, it’s heartening that an album that sounds like nothing else has come out on top. It’s also surprising that something that is so clinical and relentless has been such a fulfilling and enduring listen throughout 2011, when the dime store diversions of far less demanding music were in high supply. This album prevails though, for at its core, Work (work, work) is a visionary, fully accomplished reflection on the contemporary manifestation of that perennial artistic theme: sex.

Because the problem with pleasure today is that it’s just really hard work. When the injunction to “enjoy!” is no longer optional but a veritable demand in all aspects of our daily lives, desire and its consummation are no longer something special and rare but just a grind. A relentless grind from which we cannot escape. Grind, grind, grind. Or Work (work, work). Labour isn’t just something we do between nine and five anymore, it’s constant, pervasive – at the gym, the club, in bed we’re always, “Working that body out”, as Jonnine Standish intones through the distant haze of ‘Work That Body’.

“Girls move to the back/Boys move to the front”, she drawls elsewhere, on standout ‘Eat Yr Heart’, over genuinely industrial beats, the sound of persons and machinery locked in some doomed sex/death march. “Your body’s so perfect”, “You fill me up” are heard later. Whispered refrains from the mist of the album’s clinical, soulless atmospheres, Standish’s elliptical mantras are like bizarre snatches from the clichéd language of porno talk, cosmetics commercials and R&B tracks – all about sex but strangely void of passion.

This might describe Work (work, work) as a whole: it is both a mirror of contemporary sex and its inversion, mercilessly replicating its hydraulic, oppressive character while also peeling back the true horrors that are its runoff: contorted, mechanised bodies ripped apart and reassembled with petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals so that they may continue their macabre dance of interlocked limbs.

Manufactured pheromones, plastic breasts, “glucose, cellulose, saccharine” (‘Eat Yr Heart’) – not to mention Viagra, amyl nitrate, Ketamine – sex truly is synthetic and we’re all doing bondage, whether we realise it or not. Looking for a eulogy or a genre-defining moment on this record can only miss the point – that the languorous pacing, stubbornly-looped programmed beats, and listless x-rated choruses are all there to teach us but one thing: at the end of all this grinding, we’re emptied out, as bleak as this album’s undeniably desolate atmosphere. Yet, gluttons for punishment, we give into desire once again, get back on the grind and press play. – Lawson Fletcher

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CRITICS POLL 2011 PT 1: 50-21

READERS POLL 2011: Top 20 albums

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This was a collaborative Mess + Noise poll. The historical compilation record is preserved separately.