Best of 2011: Prologue

There are good years and bad years, memorable years and years that will fade into the dark cellar of forgotten memories. 2011, for me, will be forgotten. I don't have any bitterness about that reality; it gives me perspective. It means that certain aspects of my life are stagnating and I have to work harder next year to find direction. I can't help but think that my difficulty finding great music this year was a reflection of that stagnation. I found myself perpetually frustrated, upset by the creative meanderings of long-loved veterans, disappointed with new acts from all musical movements. And those lucky few who made it into my list are an odd bunch. For me they represent a group of bands that spent 2011 hunkering down and waiting out a rainy season; a group of musicians that played to their strengths because anything else would have been swatted away by the spirit of the times, who in 2011 was an unforgiving specter.