Retrospective: Was Bigger Better in 2011?

“Racks on racks on racks / Maybachs on bachs on bachs on bachs,” Jay-Z and Kanye West boast halfway through their elaborate collaborative album, “Watch the Throne.” Although seemingly trivial, these few throwaway syllables capture in a nutshell the opulence of the music of 2011. Whether it was Lady Gaga’s exhaustingly huge, chrome-plated “Born This Way,” or Zola Jesus’s climactic duet that opened up M83’s double album, music in 2011 compared with music in preceding years was bigger, more ambitious, and yes, louder. Albums were generally more sophisticated, better produced, longer, and in the case of Jay-Z’s and West’s, downright expensive-sounding. This maximalist trend produced mixed results: while many of the year’s greatest albums were demanding conceptual works, such as Gang Gang Dance’s “Eye Contact” and Destroyer’s “Kaputt,” other ambitious albums fell under the weight of their own magnitude.

Much of the year’s big sound came not from typically epic legends but from young artists who had been previously known for sparseness. The hipster parvenus of 2009—Girls, Real Estate, Neon Indian, and Washed Out, among others—have shed away the indolence and lo-fidelity gauze of their original chillwave associations, opting for polished and meticulous sophomore LPs. Bon Iver, who charmed blogs and hipster crowds in 2010 with a guitar and a cabin, now makes his rounds on national television with a nine-piece band. The San Francisco-based Girls evolved from its shoddily produced debut to create the operatic “Father, Son, Holy Ghost.” And while the first album of New Jersey-based Real Estate sounded like a compilation of instrumental demos, its 2011 album “Days” was a full fledged compendium of pulsing ’90’s college-radio rock. Altogether, the indie scene transformed from personal projects recorded in garages to full bands playing carefully arranged music.

However, these transformations once again proved that bigger is not always better. While “Father, Son, Holy Ghost” proved to be a step forward for Girls, it was sometimes overwhelmed by bombastic minor-pentatonic guitar solos, Pink Floyd-esque gospel choirs, and organ swells. Despite great advancements in recording quality and musical structure, “Father, Son, Holy Ghost” lacks the spontaneity and scrappiness that made its predecessor so dynamic. Lady Gaga, too, lost some of her singular inventiveness on “Born This Way:” its maxed-out, headache-inducing production surely threatened the sanity of listeners after one too many plays. Interestingly enough, one of the more memorable albums of the year was released by the newcomer Yuck, who stayed away from overproduction in its ferociously romantic debut. We can only hope that Yuck doesn’t follow current musical trends and trade in originality for density in subsequent projects.

Perhaps it is very telling that two of 2011’s standout albums, “Bon Iver,” and “James Blake,” were characterized by restraint. Although these albums were very ambitious, sonically and personally—as “James Blake” saw the transformation of James Blake from a dubstep producer into a dubstep singer-songwriter, if such a thing exists—they rely on tremendous use of negative space. In Blake’s “The Wilhelm Scream,” for example, icy keys and drum hits float through a sonic vacuum.

Blake and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon are more concerned with wielding evocative sets of textures than creating a multitude of quality songs. “Bon Iver,” for all its orchestral scope, somehow has even fewer identifiable hooks than the artist’s stripped-down debut, and “James Blake” relies heavily on covers. Yet it is these artists’ negotiations between styles that has made their albums so evocative. Both Blake and Vernon employ formidable contrasts: the music is at once restrained and powerfully soulful; the singers overtly masculine while also pensive and poetic.

Bon Iver and James Blake’s albums are tempered rather than overcompensating. They point to a developing indie taste of discernment that is more fascinated by voice and performance rather than songcraft and lyrical content. Although many artists overextended themselves in attempted extravagance, 2011 showed the power of sonic experimentation and extensive studio production. All that’s left is to get on Spotify and spread the word.