I also never expected my favorite album to come from someone who held the spot previously, but the iTunes “most played” playlist doesn’t lie. It’s a divisive one, but people who like it really like it.

I picked 15 favorites and several honorable mentions, plus a Favorite Columbus Albums list below — separate but equal in enjoyment and quality. As usual, I limit my lists to albums, so some EPs and 7”s I liked (e.g. Envelope, Sundown, Malefactors of Great Wealth, Dolfish) aren’t listed.

That is all.

15. Wussy – Strawberry

MP3: Grand Champion Steer

As Chip said about Wussy’s Chuck Cleaver, “One wouldn’t expect the heavily tattooed Cincinnati songwriter to produce his best collection of songs this late in his already highly-prolific career, but that’s exactly what he’s done.”

14. TV on the Radio – Nine Types of Light

TV On The Radio – “Will Do” by Interscope Records

13. The War on Drugs – Slave Ambient

MP3: Come to the City

12. Tom Waits – Bad As Me

Tom Waits – Bad As Me by antirecords

I’ve never been a Tom Waits fanboy, but this record grabbed me and didn’t let go.

11. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues

MP3: Helplessness Blues

10. Crooked Fingers – Breaks in the Armor

MP3: Typhoon

Best songs since Red Devil Dawn.

9. Southeast Engine – Canary

MP3: New Growth

8. Centro-matic – Candidate Waltz

MP3: Only in My Double Mind

7. David Bazan – Strange Negotiations

MP3: Wolves at the Door

6. A.A. Bondy – Believers

MP3: Surfer King

5. Youth Lagoon – The Year of Hibernation

MP3: Cannons

4. Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring for My Halo

MP3: Jesus Fever

3. Bill Callahan – Apocalypse

MP3: Baby’s Breath

2. Gillian Welch – The Harrow & the Harvest

MP3: The Way It Goes

1. Bon Iver – Bon Iver

MP3: Holocene

By now, I know every moment on this album, but I’m still continually surprised by its beauty. Seeing Bon Iver in Philly would also make my Favorite Life Occurrences of 2011 list.

Honorable mention:
The Roots – Undun
The Black Keys – El Camino
Dawes – Nothing is Wrong
Joe Henry – Reverie
Ryan Adams – Ashes & Fire
Mountain Goats – All Eternals Deck
Richard Buckner – Our Blood
Thurston Moore – Demolished Thoughts
J Mascis – Several Shades of Why
Tim Easton – Beat the Band/Since 1966 Vol. 1
Thao & Mirah – Thao & Mirah
Joseph Arthur – The Graduation Ceremony

Favorite 2011 Columbus albums:
1. The Black Swans – Don’t Blame the Stars
2. Lydia Loveless – Indestructible Machine
3. Times New Viking – Dancer Equired
4. Psandwich – Northren Psych
5. Saintseneca – Last
6. Blueprint – Adventures in Counter-Culture
7. Bicentennial Bear – Lost Summers
8. The Regionals – The Regionals
9. Psychedelic Horseshit – Laced
10. The Lindsay – Deep in the Queue

Honorable mention:
P. Blackk – Blackk Friday
Moon High – Six Suns
Shane Sweeney – The Finding Time
Tin Armor – Life of Abundance
Alyosha Het – The Purgatourist

Right on the heels of those Archers of Loaf reunion shows and Icky Mettle reissue… This is good news.

Call it payola for a good cause, but every blog (like this one), that links to the new Neko Case song People Got A Lotta Nerve, her label will donate $5 to the Best Friends Animal Society. I woulda posted it even without the extra enticement. More details here.

Neko will be in Columbus on April 23 at the Newport Music Hall with Crooked Fingers. Find more Columbus shows in our Columbus Music Calendar.

MP3: People Got a Lotta Nerve by Neko Case

(okay, it’d have to be a three way relationship, but still)

MP3: Offend Maggie by Deerhoof
MP3: Phony Revolutions by Crooked Fingers

MP3: Phony Revolutions

Seeing Eric Bachmann solo a few months ago was one of my favorite live shows of the year. His voice, lyrics and songs always equal something that I can’t get out of my head. Now that he’s releasing a new album under his Crooked Fingers name, I’m hoping to catch him live again soon.

Forfeit / Fortune comes out October 7. It includes a duet with Neko Case, some beautifully sung Spanish songs, and so much more. I wouldn’t feel twitchy calling this album “eclectic”. Pre-order it here.

I’m going to make this brief. You should know who Eric Bachmann (former Archers of Loaf frontman and the guy currently behind Crooked Fingers) is. You don’t need me to blab about all the great work he’s done, particularly the four CF records, and besides I’m late in posting this feature. I will say that right now he’s on tour promoting last year’s equally impressive To the Races (Saddle Creek), which is the first proper album he’s done under his own name. (He released a movie score for Ball of Wax under his birth name in 2002.) The album was written while he was living in a van in Seattle, and recorded in the middle of winter at a deserted motel on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. So anyway, I talked to him on the phone last week, and he’ll be at Andyman’s Treehouse tonight, with local Eric Metronome opening.

I hear you’re hocking Cuban sandwiches in Denver.
Not anymore. I was last summer. I had a little sandwich stand and it was good, but I’m touring now.

So no one’s running it for you?
No, I couldn’t find anyone to make the bread. I was making my own bread and I didn’t know anyone that could do it.

So there was a dearth of Cuban sandwiches in Denver?
There were none that were that good. I know how to make them because I spent sometime growing up in Florida. It was always something I wanted to do, and something to get my head out of the music business shell. I’m really glad that I did it, but I don’t think I would do a cart again; I’d do a storefront. There’s so many laws for vending carts and they don’t make it easy to make money.

Are you into cooking in general or is it just sandwiches that are your forte?
No, I like to cook. I’m not the best cook in the world, but I like to do it.

It’s been more than a year since To the Races came out. So are you still promoting that record with this tour or are you trying out new material?
I’m just supporting that record, but I should be trying new material because I’m recording soon in the winter. But I’m not playing any of those songs as they’re not finished yet. I should be playing them because it’s good way to learn what’s right and wrong, playing them in front of people. I just haven’t had time to do that. I also want the record to be a more of band thing so I didn’t want to come up with sparse arrangements.

Is the next one going to be a Crooked Fingers record?
I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a Crooked Fingers record, but don’t hold me to that.

Are you touring by yourself or with a couple people?
There’s a woman named Elan Palmer, who’s playing violin and singing and playing a little drums. So it’s just the two of us.

Have you found it preferable touring with less people?
It’s just a different animal. I like to do them both. I like doing it with the bigger band, and like doing it by myself or with just one or two people. It’s important to mix it up constantly so you don’t get bored.

I’ve read elsewhere that this record was a way for you to shake things up. Do feel a need to keep from repeating yourself and does it take something as concrete as doing a record by yourself to keep from repeating yourself?
No. Obviously that’s true that I want to keep from repeating myself—and I think it’s true that most people want to keep from repeating themselves—but the record wasn’t done with that intention in mind. It just kind of fell out. Due to the situation I was living in, it just happened. At some subconscious level, I might have been like, “Well, I haven’t done that yet,” but it really just kind of happened.

So you weren’t intentionally isolating yourself?
Not really. Once I realized I was kind of isolated, I thought that I might as well make the best of it and not be all gloomy about it. It turned out well.

I think it’s kind of interesting that you recorded in the resort area of the Outer Banks.
Well, I was there the week after Christmas so there was nobody there. I had a friend whose sister owned this hotel and they were closed, but she let me stay there. It was quite quiet. The hardest thing about recording was that you could hear the waves and the wind. I had to time things between the weather.

Given the record’s sparse settings, do you feel you would have been confident enough to do something like this previously?
That’s a good question. Obviously, if I felt confident or compelled before I would have done it. I haven’t thought of it that way, but now that you say it, maybe I wouldn’t have had the confidence before to do it. It’s harder to make that kind of record than a denser record because it’s all about the performance and your playing. Everything is so exposed that you can’t hide. And it’s hard to listen to yourself do it because you’re so critical of yourself.

Does it feel more personal?
Not necessarily, but that could change. It’s always changing which of the records I’ve done that I like better. So right now, because I’ve been touring and playing these songs, it’s my least favorite. (laughs)

Dignity and Shame seemed like you were writing from different personas. Do you tend to write that way more frequently or from your own perspective?
More frequently I write from my own perspective, but you’re right about Dignity and Shame. I was trying to get out of the corner that, in my mind, I had boxed myself into. I wanted to make a record a lot different than the others. I wanted it to be bright so in order to do that, I wrote from a place that wasn’t me. It was probably the least experimental record we’ve done, but yet it the most experimental for me to do. Just in terms of how I’ve written and how I’ve made records, it was the opposite of what I’ve done in the past. A lot of people hated that record, and to me that meant that I was successful in breaking out of what a Crooked Fingers record should be.

Do you view the task of making music differently than, say, when you were with Archers of Loaf?
Probably. This is more enjoyable for me. I don’t why. It just wasn’t as fun, perhaps.

Is it more relaxed?
No, it’s not more relaxed, but I’m not afraid to dedicate all my time to it as opposed to back then when I was trying to be cool or something. Then it was trying to fit into a club, and now I just make the music I want to make.

You mentioned the new record. What direction do you see that going in?
If I can pull it off, lots of saxophones and strings and things and more drums. I’m not sure, though, as I haven’t started recording it yet.

Same line-up of Crooked Fingers?
No. As much as like Barton and those guys, it’s a matter of logistics. I live in Denver now so I’ll find people in Denver to play with.

Given that it seems that practically every band from the ’90s has reunited, is there any possibility of Archers of Loaf reuniting?
I doubt it. We still get along, but I’m not compelled that way. Maybe if no one cared about Crooked Fingers then I’d want to go live in my past, but I want to keep moving forward. But if there was $10 million, then sure I’d go do that, to be honest. I hate to be that way, but for something like that I might do it. I’m not going to lie about that. I wouldn’t be miserable doing that, but I’m so into what I’m doing now that something like that would just be a distraction to me. So if I’m going to be distracted, I’d need to get paid for it.