Columnist lists his favorite albums from 2011

This is not a year-end best-of list.

It just looks like one. But don't be fooled -- no music critic can ever definitively state what the "best" of the 30,000 or so albums that get released every year actually are. But what we can do is list our personal favorites. With this in mind, here are the records I dug the most in 2011:

PJ HARVEY, "Let England Shake": The imagery is disquieting -- arms and legs in trees, reservoirs of blood -- on this death-cloaked masterpiece inspired both by conflicts of the present and of Britain's past. Countless perish, but the one thing that never dies is the hope that we can learn something from it all.

TOM WAITS, "Bad as Me": Tom Waits' voice is a crazy person that lives inside his lungs, occasionally escaping to freak out the neighbors and passers-by on this frenetic collection of blues convulsions, ragtime tantrums and lunatic lullabies that's so in-your-face, you practically have to wipe Waits' spittle off your brow when it's over.

THE ATLAS MOTH: "An Ache for the Distance": Majestic, sweeping, enveloping darkness, where both black metal and doom get drawn and quartered and all that spilt viscera forms the shared organs of a new strain of savagery.

DWARVES, "Born Again": As a species, pop punk could be classified as an invertebrate, largely devoid of spine, but the Dwarves have been providing it with some backbone with tunes a lot like the social diseases they invariably spread: catchy, libidinous and stuck with you for life.

MASTODON, "The Hunter": These dudes take a break from mapping out 14-minute prog-metal labyrinths in favor of equally catchy, concise and concussive jams.

RYAN ADAMS, "Ashes & Fire": Adams' voice flickers like a lit match in a stiff breeze on this largely acoustic collection of splayed-heart hymnals. "Nobody has to cry," he sings at one point, and he may be right, but Adams' shoulder is right here if you need it.

HATE ETERNAL, "Phoenix Amongst the Ashes": Hate Eternal frontman Erik Rutan's Uranium-dense riffs wrap around you like a boa constrictor strangling its prey, resulting in a record so physically impactful, it should come with a seat belt.

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS, "Go-Go Boots": The Truckers are a Swiss Army knife, capable of doing just about anything and still cutting to the bone. Here, they come with the year's best country, soul and 100-proof rock 'n' roll.

TOMBS, "Path of Totality": Tombs connects the dots between Neurosis, Killing Joke and Burzum like a fist connecting to a soon-to-be-fractured jawbone. This is the outermost extreme of psychedelia.

GHOSTFACE KILLAH, "Apollo Kids": Hip-hop's Iron Man creates around three dozen new forms of slang per record. On "Apollo," he's at his most playful and inventive, the Urban Dictionary incarnate.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.