With more than 200 discs of the day picked by our new music writers this year, there's been no shortage of good stuff to plug into. Here our writers select their crème de la crème of 2011. Or you can browse back through the whole year's selection.
- Mark Kidel's choice: "Harvey has never done comfortable or easy listening. This has been her strength." theartsdesk's original review
- Joe Muggs's choice: "This album veritably glides out of the speakers, full of light, air, easy wit and endless hooks... yet the emotional weight and musical depths hidden behind its inviting surfaces are devastating." theartsdesk's original review
- Mark Kidel's choice: "The second CD by Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver, is one of those earworm-laden offerings that leave you wanting for more and haunted by seductive phrases and catchy tunes." theartsdesk's original review
Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know *****
- Graeme Thomson's choice: "Marling’s third album feels like a more wayward, somewhat wanton older sister to her first two records. It pulls at the hems of her music, musses its hair, smudges its lipstick. Though her ingrained Englishness will never disappear, now... the songs are looser, the rhythms more adventurous." theartsdesk's original review
Elbow – Build a Rocket Boys! *****
- Bruce Dessau's choice: "While other releases have had an instant impact there is an almost unfathomable depth to the work of Guy Garvey and co. Repeat listens have paid much bigger dividends than my bank account." theartsdesk's original review
Motörhead - The World is Yours *****
- Thomas H Green's choice: "Their driven grit, their earthed ire, rather than media-friendly irony and i-Phone sleekness, are just what the doctor ordered."
Metronomy - The English Riviera *****
- Russ Coffey's choice: "The English Riviera has been working a campaign of subtle seduction on you. It's not in your face. It doesn't chat you up or ask you to buy it drinks. It just sits there being pretty and unassuming, and before you know it, you're a little bit in love with it." theartsdesk's original review
Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes *****
- Kieron Tyler's choice: "This is the one that keeps being returned to. Lykke Li’s Wounded Rhymes kept forcing its way to the top of the pile, insisting it had to be heard." theartsdesk's original review
- Joe Muggs' choice: "If 2011 was the year when dance music's natural tendency to fragmentation was taken to extremes, this album was the one that bound those fragments together into one demented but scintillating vision." Rustie review on theartsdesk
Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi - Rome *****
- Peter Culshaw's choice: "The widescreen orchestral luxuriance and sheer craft of Rome made it one of the most accomplished and darkly romantic pop artefacts of the year." theartsdesk's original review
