The California Report's Steve Hochman reveals his Top of the Pops for 2011.

First his "Under The Radar" picks:

Hanni El Khatib, "Will the Guns Come Out." This San Francisco-raised son of Palestinian and Filipino immigrants  is the all-American garage-rock boy, not just picking up where the White Stripes and Black Keys took things, but going back to their roots in rock, blue, soul and even doo-wop to create his own gloriously unkempt but virtuosic blend, embodied by the power-blast (and title) of the song "Build. Destroy. Rebuild."  And he confidently puts his own stamp on covers spanning eras and styles: the Dixieland standard "You Rascal You," Elvis' "Heartbreak Hotel" and Funkadelic's "I Got a Thing, You Got a Thing, Everbody's Got a Thing." Oh yeah, he's got a thing alright.
Sea Lions "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sealions But Were Afraid to Ask." Coming out of that well-known rock hotbed Oxnard, this young quintet's debut is DIY at its best -- guileless and sweet, sounding like singer-songwriter Adrian Pillado spent his formative years immersed equally in the Beach Boys and the Cure. Guitars are over-reverbed, the vocals are pointedly buried in the mix, all serving an aura of sweet naivite that calls to mind Jonathan Richman.
Jonathan Wilson, "Gentle Spirit." He's been declared "The King of Laurel Canyon" by the breathless English press. And indeed he's the fulcrum of a vibrant scene, taken under the wing of Jackson Browne and Graham Nash and in turn mentoring and producing such locals as the band Dawes and Mia Doi Todd. His album is stronger on vibe than songwriting, but it's a very cool vibe, powered by his expressive guitar skills and unfolding, yes, gently but with simmering power over the course of its 78 minutes.

TOP PICKS FOR 2011 (In alphabetical order)
Glen Campbell, "Ghost on the Canvas." After a career encompassing guitar-ace status with the Wrecking Crew on (among many others) Sinatra, Presley and Beach Boys sessions, dozens of his own groundbreaking and beloved hits, an iconic TV variety series, acting with John Wayne in "True Grit"  -- and some digressions into troubled behavior -- Campbell has made the album of his life. Literally. "Ghost" traces the arc of his journey from Depression poverty of his Arkansas childhood through his roller-coaster success to his current twilight, 75 with his memories flickering out due to Alzheimer's but his faith in love (both Earthly and eternal) strong. But it side-steps mundane autobiography, rather using colorful allusion in the music (echoes of such classic countrypolitan as "Wichita Lineman" abound) and expressive lyrics to tell the story. Songwriting contributions from Paul Westerberg (including the title track), Jakob Dylan and other young acolytes are uniformly strong, but it's such originals as the curtain-raiser "A Better Place" and "It's Your Amazing Grace," built by producer Julian Raymond from Campbell's insights, that make this "farewell" album a worthy capper to a remarkable journey.  
Ry Cooder, "Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down." Having devoted his last few albums to colorful memories (and some tall tales) about Southern California in the '50s, culminating in his new book "Los Angeles Stories," Cooder taps into his inner Woody Guthrie for his latest album. Pointed sarcasm ("No Banker Left Behind") mixes with poignant tableaus (a lonely old man's lament for his long-absent Mexican maid in "Dirty Chateau"), stirred with norteno polka, blues, reggae, funk, rock 'n' roll and all the other music at the guitarist's great command. And he's not through -- he recently followed up with an "occupied" single, "The Wall Street Part of Town."
Dengue Fever, "Cannibal Courtship." Not only has the alt-Cambodian hybrid evolved into something that far transcends the novelty of its beginnings (L.A. rockers teaming with Cambodian-born singer Chhom Nimol to cover her country's '70s pop hits) with such original avant-beach-pop peaks as "Cement Slippers (sung in English!), but this album marks the recording debut of the Mastadong, Zac Holtzman's custom-built, two-necked splicing of a Fender JazzMaster with a two-stringed Cambodian lute known as a chapei dong veng.
Frank Fairfield, "Out On the Open West." Old-timey music from a young-timey musician. Los Angeles fiddler (and banjoist, guitarist) and singer Fairfield doesn't just play tunes from or evoking '20s rural America, he inhabits them. As such, while he at times he plays it all pretty straight, he makes it all as fresh as it was in the earliest days of recorded music. And in some places, notably "Poor Old Lance" with its otherwordly string trio, he creates a vibe that could be called urban rustic. Or new antique.
     http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201106171630/d
Hanni El Khatib, "Will the Guns Come Out." This San Francisco-raised son of Palestinian and Filipino immigrants  is the all-American garage-rock boy, not just picking up where the White Stripes and Black Keys took things, but going back to their roots in rock, blues, soul and even doo-wop to create his own gloriously unkempt but virtuosic blend, embodied by the power-blast (and title) of the song "Build. Destroy. Rebuild."  And he confidently puts his own stamp on covers from disparate eras and styles: the Dixieland standard "You Rascal You," Elvis' "Heartbreak Hotel" and Funkadelic's "I Got a Thing, You Got a Thing, Everbody's Got a Thing." Oh yeah, he's got a thing alright.
Gabby Moreno, "Illustrated Songs." The Guatemala City-raised Los Angeles resident is  bilingual in her singing (Spanish and English), but many-more-lingual in her music, equally expressive in breezy tropical or country-ish romantic moods ("Fin") as in scorching blues and R&B ("Mess a Good Thing") and even a speakeasy-ready slink ("Daydream by Design"). This isn't dilettantish scattershot, though, but a wide-ranging embrace captured fully in the outsider-solidarity song "Ave Que Emigra" and the earthy, horns-spiked growler "Sing Me Life."
http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201104221630/d
Aaron Novik, "Floating World Vol. 1."
Bay Area composer and bass clarinetist Novik found inspiration in the words of three Mission District "outsiders" for his genre-free chamber music song cycle. The music balances the formality of composition with the top-of-the-head thoughts of the wordsmiths, coming in somewhere between "The Threepenny Opera" and Harry Partch's hobo songs, while an all-star band of players and singers, including Tin Hat Trio/Charming Hostess member Carla Kihlstedt and Katy Stephan giving voice to colorful observations ranging from "Hitler 1945" to "Peanut Butter and Jam Germ Sandwich."  
Sea Lions "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sea Lions But Were Afraid to Ask."
Coming out of that well-known rock hotbed Oxnard, this young quintet's debut is DIY at its best -- guileless and sweet, sounding like singer-songwriter Adrian Pillado spent his formative years immersed equally in Buddy Holly, the Beach Boys and the Cure. Guitars are over-reverbed, the vocals are pointedly buried in the mix, all serving an aura of sweet naivete that calls to mind Jonathan Richman.
 Various, "Hear Me Howling! Blues, Ballads & Beyond"  
The "beyond," from the teenybopper ephemera of "The Beatles Are in Town" to some out-there free jazz, may be the key to truly appreciating what the El Cerrito-based Arhoolie Records label is all about: label founder and guru Chris Strachwitz has always valued energy and immediacy over genre or style. This elaborate 4-CD/book combo drawn from Arhoolie's heady '60s output, with detailed, informative and entertaining text by Adam Machado, was released in early 2011 to celebrate both the the label's 50th anniversary and Strachwitz's 80th birthday. Coming from Germany as a youth after WWII with his mom and becoming besotted with North American regional music, starting with blues and traditional jazz. Recording started as a hobby but quickly became much more as he brought such figures as Texas bluesman Lightning Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb and Big Mama Thornton out of the shadows, not to mention entire cultural phenoma including Cajun, zydeco and norteno. Strachwitz is still going strong and the Arhoolie treasures' value is infinite. And beyond.
     http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201101281630/e

     Jonathan Wilson, "Gentle Spirit." He's been declared "The King of Laurel Canyon" by the breathless English press. And indeed he's the fulcrum of a vibrant scene, taken under the wing of Jackson Browne and Graham Nash and in turn mentoring and producing such locals as the band Dawes and Mia Doi Todd. His album is stronger on vibe than songwriting, but it's a very cool vibe, powered by his expressive guitar skills and unfolding, yes, gently but with simmering power over the course of its 78 minutes.
The California Report's Andrew Gilbert Picks His Jazz Faves for 2011
Under The Radar for 2011:
"The Music City Story" (Ace) is a three-disc set of music recorded by the forgotten Berkeley label Music City from 1950-75. Liberated from the vaults by El Cerrito producer Alec Palao, the music is a vivid cross section of black styles from doo wop and R&B to soul and jump blues. It's a treasure trove that keeps delivering fresh delights.
Flutist Nicole Mitchell's "Awakening" (Delmark)...A third generation member of Chicago's avant-garde Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Mitchell joined the faculty at UC Irvine last summer. Her new album is a gorgeous, hard blowing quartet session.
Inspired by Goya's stark and brutal print series Disasters of War, Berkeley cellist Theresa Wong wrote nearly two-dozen brief songs that she recorded with violinist Carla Kihlstedt on "The Unlearning" (Tzadik). Each piece takes its title from one of Goya's prints, and the music is strange, striking and utterly compelling.
TOP 10 for 2011 (In Alphabetical Order):
Kenny Burrell "Tenderly" (HighNote)
Recorded in 2009 in Pasadena when he was 78, Los Angeles-based guitarist Kenny Burrell's solo recital sums up a lifetime of exquisite music making with elegantly rendered standards and tributes to the late guitar legend Wes Montgomery, Billie Holiday (with whom he recorded), and Duke Ellington, his most abiding musical passion.
Foxtails Brigade "The Bread and the Bait" (Antenna Farm)
Mostly a brigade of two, Foxtails is a darkly alluring Bay Area band built upon the anxious partnership of fiddler Anton Patzner (a founding member of the string metal combo Judgment Day) and guitarist Laura Weinbach, who also contributes vocals of unsettlingly crystalline purity. Whether performing pop tunes, French chanson or dream-ridden originals, they create arresting music marked by unaffected whimsy, surreal imagery and insinuating melodies.
Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas "Highlander's Farewell" (Culburnie)
After perfecting a stripped down duo that revolutionized the ancient idiom of traditional Scottish fiddle music, Scots-born Nevada City-based fiddler Alasdair Fraser and Menlo Park-raised cellist Natalie Haas invited about a dozen of their colleagues to join them on "Highlander's Farewell," including dazzling young string players like Tristan Clarridge, Emily Onderdonk and Brittany Haas.
The Jeff Gauthier Goatette "Open Source" (Cryptogramophone)
Los Angeles violinist Jeff Gauthier writes luscious, lapidary melodies that unspool like sleek and uncommonly strong strands of silk. Featuring brothers Alex and Nels Cline (on drums/percussion and guitars, respectively), trumpeter John Fumo, bassist Joel Hamilton, and David Witham on piano, keyboards and accordion, the Goatette combines hair-trigger volatility with an expansive sense of space.
Nice Guy Trio "Sidewalks and Alleys/Waking Music" (Porto Franco)
On their second album Bay Area Nice Guys (trumpeter Darren Johnston, accordionist Rob Reich and bassist Daniel Fabricant) explore two five-piece suites, Reich's picaresque metropolitan gadabout "Sidewalks and Alleys" and Johnston's evocatively dreamy "Waking Music." Joined by an all-star string quartet anchored by Turtle Island Quartet cellist Mark Summer, the trio combines jazz's improvisational imperative with the dynamic control of chamber music juiced by the rhythms and cadences of klezmer, tango, Balkan brass bands, ragtime, and Nino Rota scores.
Ed Reed "Born to Be Blue" (Blue Shorts)
Since recording his first album at the age of 78, the long-time Richmond resident has taken his rightful place as one of jazz's most keenly observant singers, a stately balladeer with a fine-grained baritone who turns familiar standards into wrenching tales. His third CD possesses all the distilled emotion and narrative coherence of a jazz masterpiece, as he infuses standards like Nat Adderley's "Old Country" and Abbey Lincoln's "Throw It Away" with decades of regret, sorrow, and hard-won self-knowledge.
Eric Reed "Dancing Monk" (Savant)
Rather than trying to channel Thelonious Monk's famously percussive keyboard style, with its splashing dissonances and freight train grooves, Los Angeles piano star Eric Reed reworks Monk's ingenious compositions in his own polished image, with consistently felicitous results. Backed by veteran bassist Ben Wolfe and twenty-something drummer McClenty Hunter, the trio swinging with an effortless buoyancy too rarely heard on the contemporary scene.
http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201103251630/f
Marcus Shelby, "Soul of the Movement" (Porto Franco)
San Francisco bassist/composer Marcus Shelby explores both the sacred and the secular sides of civil rights movement, alternating between vivid original compositions and his arrangements of classic spirituals. His orchestra showcases some of the scene's most vivid improvisers, but the album is dominated by three sensational singers: soaring conservatory-trained soprano Jeannine Anderson, irrepressible jazz and blues singer Faye Carol, and the dynamic soul-jazz crooner Kenny Washington.
http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201102111630/c
John Stowell/Michael Zilber Quartet "Shot Through With Beauty" (Origin)
As the title suggests, East Bay saxophone master Mike Zilber and redoubtable Portland, Ore. guitarist John Stowell share an unabashed love of sumptuous melodies. Accompanied by the invaluable rhythm section tandem of bassist John Shifflett and drummer Jason Lewis, they investigate tunes like Kenny Wheeler's "Kayak" and Dizzy Gillespie's  "Con Alma" and finely wrought originals (Zilber's deceptively pacific 10-minute title track is the album's thematic centerpiece).
Wadada Leo Smith's Organic "Heart's Reflections" (Cuneiform)
A lion of the avant garde for more than four decades, Southern California trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith is sound sculpture who has absorbed a global array of musical traditions. From extended passages of crunching low down funk to a beatific suite dedicated to the 12th century Sufi mystic Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili, this two disc album seems to distill a lifetime of musical and spiritual searching.
http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201108121630/d
Ten Other Notable Releases of 2011  
1) Cow Bop "Too Hick For the Room" (B4MAN-Music)
2) Debbie Poryes & Bruce Williamson "Two and Fro" (OA2)
3) Art Pepper "Blues For the Fisherman" (Widow's Taste)?
4) The Tierney Sutton Band "American Road" (BFM Jazz)
5) The Lost Trio "Mysterious Toboggan" (Evander)
6) Larry Goldings "In My Room" ((BFM Jazz)
7) Zigaboo Modeliste "New Life" (JZM)
8) Josh Nelson "Discoveries" (Steel Bird)
9) Hristo Vitchev "The Perperikon Suite"
10) John Santos "Filosofia Caribena" (Machete)