Better Late Than Never...Or Not: 2010 Year In Review

Is it too late for 2010 music reviews? No, I say! If people are still going to insist on tedious 'Happy New Year" salutations 13 days into 2011, then I feel justified in posting my thoughts on the state of music in the last 12 months.

As always, comments/thoughts/suggestions/insults are always welcome. Happy New Year!...

10. Sleigh Bells – Treats: The debut album from Brooklyn’s Sleigh Bells comes out of the gate hard and never relents, making the album’s name, Treats, an understatement at the very least. Each song brings with it wave after wave of feet off the floor fury, taking only the slightest, contextual breath of air on album favorite ‘Rill Rill’. Make this one for the all-time summer rotation.

9. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Before Today: Ariel Pink (aka Ariel Rosenberg) has been working the underground scene of Los Angeles for over a decade, but Before Today not only marks his large-esque label debut with 4AD (along with all the trimmings such as recording in a studio for the first time), it also represents his first opportunity to bring the baroque aspects of his lo-fi mastery to a wider audience. The opportunity is not wasted. You only need to listen to the 70’s funk fueled, psychedelic glory of song of the year ‘Round And Round’ to understand why. ‘Bright Lit Blue Skies’, ‘Beverly Kills’ and ‘Can’t Hear My Eyes’ are also very much worth a listen.

8. The Morning Benders – Big Echo: This Grizzly Bear co-produced album came from a favorite ‘new’ (it’s actually their second album) band out of San Francisco. Big Echo is an amalgamation of quasi Grizzly Bear soundings and a subtler version of Cymbals Eat Guitars. Reverberating guitars and echoing vocals flow throughout, sprinkled with enough knocks and clacks to keep even the most ADD amongst us intrigued. Listen to ‘Excuses’, ‘Stitches’ and ‘Sleeping In’.

7. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs: This is the album that anyone who ever read Andreas Duany’s Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and Decline of the American Dream, always wanted to write. It is at once an observant diatribe on an underlying driver of the decline of Western society, while remaining head-noddingly pleasing. By album’s end, the recurring theme may have grown tired, but songs like the powerful ‘Suburban War’ and Blondie-infused ‘Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’ keep you coming back for more.

6. Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest: Following up the excellent Logos from 2009 under his solo-moniker, Atlas Sound, Bradford Cox returns to Deerhunter for full band duties, while retaining his familiar pysch-punk, shoegaze wavelength on Halcyon Digest. Album favorite, ‘Desire Lines’ begins with an almost Arcade Fire, ‘Rebellion (Lies)’ like intro before settling into its own washed out stride that slowly builds back up again with an increasingly urgent, guitar spun vortex of a finish. Also check out ‘Revival’ and ‘Helicopter’.

5. LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening: With rumors abound that This Is Happening would represent the final chapter of the improbably dance-tastic rise of LCD Soundsystem, James Murphy and Team DFA had their work cut out for them… how to top an album that included arguably the greatest song of all time (‘All My Friends’ off 2007’s Sound of Silver). First the bad news; the album they came up with includes the tedious piss-take ‘Drunk Girls’, which was subsequently and unfortunately released as the first single, adopted by the masses and reiterated ad nauseum by commercial and non-commercial radio alike. The good news? The rest of the album represents the culmination of what it means to be alive in the 21st century. Yeah, it’s a rough, spoiling world, but This Is Happening is a reminder that even if we’re all going down, we can go down dancing on our own grave. This becomes immediately apparent at the 3:05 mark of opening track ‘Dance Yrself Clean’, when that killer synth hammers home for the first time. ‘All I Want’ takes the mood in a different direction with a sarcastic take on breaking up by somehow turning it into a sing-a-long. However, it’s on the orient under-toned, music industry shunning ‘You Wanted A Hit’ that Murphy makes clear his reasons for moving on. He’s grown up; he’s got his own ideas on who he is, what he is and how his artistry will evolve. Unfortunately, in a world of mindless ‘Drunk Girls’, his ideas no longer sell.

4. The National – High Violet: Can Matt Berringer and Co. do no wrong? After three straight brilliant albums combined with an always engaging live show (which, on a personal level, was best represented at a special High Violet preview show at Royal Albert Hall in May, when during the penultimate song of the night Berringer rallied out the anthemic ‘Mr. November’ (from 2005’s Alligator) while he swam his way through the crowd to the back of the iconic venue before ultimately climbing up into one of the private stalls and throwing the mic into the second level, the final chorus being fulfilled by the all too lucky few packed high above him… an incomparable moment), it would appear not. The follow up to 2007’s excellent and politically charged Boxer was always going to bear the burden of high expectations. That follow up, High Violet, succeeds on multiple levels. Berringer’s somber baritone and intricate lyrics still persist, but political discourse is refrained and a more introspective dialogue is melted overtop a polished, complex accompaniment, that still comes off as feeling intimate, an aspect attributable to the album being recorded in Aaron Dessner’s garage. From opener ‘Terrible Love’ to follow up ‘Sorrow’ through ‘Afraid of Everyone’ and ‘Runaway’, the heavy themes endure, leaving the listener emotionally drained but thoroughly satisfied.

3. Joanna Newsom – Have One On Me: The warmest feelings are not always the result of an open fire or a cherished lover. Harpist, pianist, singer-songwriter and overtly talented Joanna Newsom proves as much on Have One On Me. Her voice, often playful, always ease-inducing, layers fable-like lyricism in an unabashedly intimate manner over classically inspired, folk rooted songs, the effect of which overwhelms your heart before it even reaches your ears. All the more impressive is her ability to carry such an uniquely powerful style over two-plus hours of a triple-album, the pinnacle of which rests ‘In California’ with soul bearing realizations such as, ‘Well, I have sown untidy furrows across my soul, but I am still a coward, content to see my garden grow so sweet and full of someone else’s flowers’, which lead not to reconciliation, but to the ominous questioning of, ‘My heart, I wear you down, I know. Gotta think straight, keep a clean plate; keep from wearing down. If I lose my head, just where am I going to lay it?’ With 18 songs for the choosing, other favorites are a plenty, but ‘Baby Birch’, ‘Go Long’, ‘Esme’, ‘Autumn’ and ‘Kingfisher’ consistently stand out.

2. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy: Kanye West has never been known as a subtle guy (the obvious exhibit A being his dead-on call out of George W. Bush during the live, nationally broadcast Hurricane Katrina benefit concert in 2007). On top of that, he’s probably misunderstood by 99% of the people that pay attention to him. Together, the man is a lightening rod for controversy. No shit, you say… but just in case you’re drinking the Matt Lauer amateur hour juice, you might have missed that he’s also someone who is so far ahead of his game musically it’s scary. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy expertly weaves soul, rap, pop, rock and even comedy through a loom erected (ahem) of soul searching and man v. world sentiment. Yeezy is supported throughout by some little known contributors, such as Jay-Z, RZA, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj, Chris Rock and, no joke, Mr. Bon Iver himself, Justin Vernon. The album is relentlessly impressive from start to finish, but favorites include ‘Power’, ‘All Of The Lights’ and ‘Blame Game’. Despite all of Kanye’s perceived self-gratification, it’s perhaps ironically appropriate that he should conclude this magnum opus with the words of Gil Scott-Heron, his questioning words being just as, if not more so, appropriate today as they were in 1970: ‘Who will survive in America, who will survive in America, who will survive in America…’

1. Sufjan Stevens – The Age Of Adz: The simplest way of describing this complex, impressive angle on the Sufjan of old is a metamorphosis. This is a man whose music never floated along a level of simplicity, but with 5 odd years to mature, the 50 state project boasts of yesteryear were blown up, reconfigured and evolved to take on a whole new genus in the Sufjan taxonomic rank, while still retaining the aspects that made him such a formidable, musical species to begin with. At first listen, Age of Adz leaves heads shaking, wondering if what their ears just interpreted was indeed the way it was intended, but upon subsequent listens, its inter-connectedness becomes apparent. The subtle tuning and somber elegance of opening track ‘Futile Devices’ is deceiving, but provides a necessary transition between 2005's Illinois (and more recently, his summer 2010 EP, All Delighted People) and the direction displayed on ‘You Are The Blood’, Sufjan’s contribution to 2009’s Dark Was The Night compilation. From here, Adz is shot through a hadron collider of electronica, as first realized on second track ‘Too Much’. Twisting synth, thumping drum machine, electric blips and even spontaneous hand-claps are layered upon the old, recognizable orchestral folk. Maturity, life/death, spurned love and its escape all set the tone from here on out. Highlights all, with ‘I Walked’, ‘Vesuvius’ and ‘I Want To Be Well’ amongst favorites, while not forgetting the album’s multi-layered, ever-repeating, Auto-tune dabbling penultimate marathon ‘Impossible Soul’; a track, and message, to be taken as seriously as the musician behind it.

Other excellence: Efterklang – Magic Chairs, Caribou – Swim, Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles II, Wild Nothing – Gemini, Beach House – Teen Dream, Ludovico Einaudi – Nightbook, Tame Impala – Innerspeaker, Warpaint – The Fool, Owen Pallett – Heartland, Toro y Moi – Causers Of This

Bonus Post!

For consistency's sake (and to further solidify the irrelevancy of this blog), I present to you... My unfinished and never published, 2009 Year In Review:

10. The Horrors - Primary Colours

9. Fever Ray - Fever Ray

8. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - The Pains of Being Pure At Heart

7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!

6. Bat For Lashes - Two Suns

5. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimist

4. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

3. The xx - xx

2. Atlas Sound - Logos

1. The Flaming Lips - Embryonic

Other excellence: Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca, Wild Beasts – Two Dancers, Girls – Album, Phoenix –Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, The Middle East – The Middle East