Twenty Best Albums of 2011: #’s 4-6

6. The Mountain Goats – All Eternals Deck

Intimations of doom, boasting the clarity of a dream half-remembered. Five years after hiring rock accompaniment, John Darnielle learns to trust the tug of a bass line or when necessary to bend his voice for percussive ends, peaking on “Beautiful Gas Mask,” in which the arrangement takes its cue from Darnielle’s hysteria only to settle, like ash over the decimated landscape, on the quietest intonation of the refrain “Never sleep. Remember to breathe deep.” But he wants to he can still strum those acoustic strings until I swear they snapped (“Estate Sale Sign”).

5. Serengeti – Family and Friends

“Ever since I lost my job, I started a blog / It’s going so great / It’s about the ins and outs of the perfect date,” David Cohn raps, holding a mirror up to those like us typing this review. He’s hip-hop because that’s how his rhymes sound and beats snap, but in sensibility he’s closer to Beck than Beck is these days.

4. Britney Spears – Femme Fatale

What I wrote in April: “…so post-feminist/post-sexual/post-woman that to wonder whether she’s used or being used by the purported objects of lust she’s dancing/fucking is as beside the point as comparing ‘Libya’ and ‘Iraq.'” I also argued that her femmebot sheen darkens when a song demands more personality than her designers have programmed her with. That was April. Now I count only two rubber doughnuts in one of the most sustained contemporary examples of disco apocalypse. When the IT department wheels her away for disassembly she won’t need “Hit Me Baby One More Time” when she’s got “Till The World Ends” for an epitaph.