AllMusic's Favorite Rock Albums of 2011

Twenty years after Nevermind, Nirvana's drummer Dave Grohl still thunders with his Foo Fighters, who sounded fiercer on Wasting Light than they have in years. Other veteran rockers continued to build on their strengths: Tom Waits revisited Rain Dogs territory on Bad as Me, Paul Simon released a new millennial Hearts & Bones with So Beautiful or So What, while PJ Harvey released the dense, haunting Let England Shake. Not all the rock of 2011 was so weighty, though: the Black Keys capitalized on their breakthrough with the trashy El Camino, a record with nothing but beats and riffs on its mind.


...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - The Tao of the Dead
Brett Anderson - Black Rainbows
Arctic Monkeys - Suck It and See
The Black Keys - El Camino
Blitzen Trapper - American Goldwing
Lindsey Buckingham - Seeds We Sow
Duran Duran - All You Need Is Now
Foo Fighters - Wasting Light
John Wesley Harding - The Sound of His Own Voice
PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
Joe Henry - Reverie
The Jayhawks - Mockingbird Time
John Paul Keith - The Man That Time Forgot
The Kills - Blood Pressures
Nick Lowe - The Old Magic
Radiohead - The King of Limbs
Paul Simon - So Beautiful or So What
Urge Overkill - Rock & Roll Submarine
Tom Waits - Bad as Me