The Best Albums Of 2011 (So Far)

​The year isn't quite half over, but as of today, "summer" is officially here - even if the calendar needs a few weeks to catch up - and by the time summer is over, so will 2011. Or close enough. So Rocks Off asked our staff to give us their favorite two albums of the year so far, plus one outstanding local or Texas release, which we'll give you at high noon.

Chris Gray: At this point, I have heard a lot more new music that I have thoroughly enjoyed than at six months into 2010. This makes me happy, and also makes me wonder if 2011 is peaking a little too early. Screw it. My two favorites so far are Bob Geldof's How To Compose Popular Songs That Will Sell and Gregg Allman's Low Country Blues.

I had no idea what to expect from Geldof's album, and was both delighted and impressed with what I did: A sometimes giddy, sometimes growling affair laced with rock, pop, blues, techno-blues and disco, plus one dynamite love song in "Dazzled By You." I had a pretty good idea what to expect from Allman, a pretty comprehensive cataloging of blues and R&B from the past 75 years or so, and boy did he ever deliver: Skip James, Amos Milburn, Muddy Waters, Otis Rush, Bobby Blue Bland, Sleepy John Estes, etc. Dive in.

Both albums, paraphrasing Geldof's "Silly Pretty Thing," make me want to fill my lungs and sing. Here are a few more: My Morning Jacket, Circuital; Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues, Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers, Teenage and Torture; PJ Harvey, Let England Shake, Steve Earle, I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive; Foo Fighters, Wasting Light; Preservation Hall Jazz Band & Del McCoury Band, American Legacies.

So far 2011 is shaping up to be the best musical year of the 2010s. Easily.

Neph Basedow: Refreshingly, I feel 2011 has so-far produced many mentionable records. I hemmed and hawed over a list including Yuck, Those Darlins, Man Man, Twin Shadow, and Smith Westerns, but ultimately decided the Decemberists' The King is Dead and the Generationals' Actor-Caster are the best of the bunch.

I group the Decemberists into a small niche of modern musicians with The National, Radiohead, Grizzly Bear and the Jicks, who consistently produce quality records, and The King is Dead is no exception; a decade-plus into their career, they're showing no signs of a senior slump.

I'm enjoying Actor-Caster for different reasons; it's fresh, well-produced, a nice blend of New Wave and rock, and most importantly, instills the hope of a lasting good band.

John Seaborn Gray: So far my favorite album of the year is All Eternal's Deck by the Mountain Goats. It's really the first album of theirs that sounds like it was done by a real band, instead of just John Darnielle and a couple of extra musicians. I like the cohesion to it, and the songwriting, as always, is great. Close on its heels would be Okkervil River's I Am Very Far, a really different and weird album for those guys but one that is quickly growing on me.

Craig Hlavaty: J. Mascis, Several Shades of Why - the Dinosaur Jr. front man opened up for Queens of the Stone Age and the Black Angels during SXSW at La Zona Rosa, and for the first time Mascis solo made me stop and tilt my neck. Several Shades of Why also features Kurt Vile on various instruments, but you mainly stay for Mascis' sad bastard odes to displeasure and sadness.

The Foo Fighters Wasting Light rules, it rules, it rules. We all know that Adele will be big No. 1 winner on all the best-of lists, but my vote will be for the Foos this year. After countless daily spins, it's still in my regular playlist.