My Favorites of 2010

Daniel, Esq.

I’ve fallen in love with music again this year. My favorite albums of the year:

• Grinderman –- 2
• Gil Scott-Heron -– I’m New Here
• Kanye West –- My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
• How To Dress Well -– Love Remains
• Autre Ne Veut –- Autre Ne Veut
• Bako Dagnon –- Sidiba
• Purling Hiss –- Public Service Announcement
• Black Mountain –- Wilderness Heart
• Spoon –- Transference
• Hisato Higuchi –- Henzai
• The Soft Moon –- The Soft Moon
• John Grant –- Queen of Denmark
• No Age –- Everything in Between
• Deerhunter -– Halcyon Digest
• Aerial Pink’s Haunted Graffiti –- Before Today
• Guido –- Anidea
• Superchunk -– Majesty Shredding
• Olafur Arnalds –- . . . And They Have Escaped The Weight of Darkness
• Sleigh Bells –- Treats
• Four Tet -– There Is Love In You

Really Nos. 1 – 3 are co-equal. I feel like each of them is a modern classic. Gil Scott Heron and Grinderman are albums about aging, decay, resiliance, and vitality. Gil Scott Heron, sounding desperate and defiant, invites you to “bury [his] body down by the highway side.” Grinderman, sounding feral and sexually menacing, aims to bury your body down by the highway side. Kanye’s disc is breathtaking. It’s like the first “arena-rap” album, and one of the most intricately arranged hip-hop discs I can remember. The fact that he liberally sprinkles rock and gospel signifiers into his songs helps tremendously with listeners like me. Star turns like the one by guest rapper Nicki Minaj help, too. How To Dress Well and Autre Ne Veut are spooky, updated versions of R&B (HTDW applies Burial’s template to 80s and 90s R&B to stunning effect). Guido wrote some of the most gorgeous melodies of the year; I can, in a clumsy way, sometimes clap out rhythms in trying to deconstruct a song, but not with Guido: what he does with beats is head-spinning. Spoon made a groove album; in some ways, it's their trance album. And it's great. The Soft Moon is about the best update I’ve heard on 80s goth (with the possible exception of Zola Jesus, who is in the section below). Bako Dagnon has a voice that can cut glass; it reminds me of a female version of Toots Maytal, which is a high compliment. And I haven't been able to stop listening to Hisato Higuchi's lonely, aching Japanese take on the blues. I've seen someone compare his wordless vocals to Blind Willie Johnson's on Dark Was The Night. Can't go that far (that's crazy talk), but I can see the basis for comparison. It's kind of revolutionary, and not to be missed.

My favorite songs of the year:

• Kanye West –- Runaway
• Dirty Beaches -– Sweet 17
• Nerve City –- Sleepwalking
• Grinderman -– Worm Tamer
• Gil Scott Heron -– Me And The Devil
• Karl X Johan -– Flames
• Circle Pit -– Another Trick
• Freestylers –- Cracks (Flux Pavillion Remix)
• Funkineven –- Heart Pound
• Zola Jesus –- Poor Animal
• U.S. Girls –- Red Ford Radio
• Black Mountain -– Old Fangs
• The Nat’l –- ]Bloodbuzz Ohio
• Veronica Falls -– Found Love In A Graveyard
• Electric Bunnies –- Pretty Joanna (soundscan only)
• Cosmetics –- Sleepwalking
• Teme Impala –- Runway Houses City Clouds
• Glasser –- Mirrorage
• The Besnard Lakes –- Albatross
• Arp. 101 –- Dead Leaf
• Heavy Hawaii –- Teen Angel
• John Grant -– Sigourney Weaver
• Minks –- Funeral Song
• Aerial Pink’s Haunted Graffiti -– Can’t Hear My Eyes
• Katy Perry –- Teenage Dream
• Kanye West –- Monster
• Funky Destination -– Jamaica Vol. I
• The Bug –- Catch A Fire

There was so much interesting music being made at the margins this year. My favorite act of 2010 was The Dirty Beaches, who didn’t even release a proper album – instead, they released a string of brilliant, raw singles and performances.

kargatron

Daniel, fix your song url tags!

Daniel, Esq.

Working on it now.

UPDATE: Fixed (I hope). Better?

Daniel, Esq.

all these lists -- especially individual writers lists -- introduce me to so much i've missed during the year. i'll use this space to add some individual songs (or even albums) worth investigating.

dj zinc, feat ms. dynamite -- wile out. one of the most energetic and infectious uk funky tracks i've heard in 2010. even better with lyrics provided.

thomnottom

Now I'm really intrigued by Autre Ne Veut - just saw a review the other day and it grabbed my attention and then see it on your list. Did you get Caribou's album? For some reason (even before they toured together) I really linked him to Four Tet. Just wondering if you didn't like it as much to make your top 20 or if you didn't hear it.

Kinda funny, "Mirrorage" has been running through my head a lot lately. Also glad to see you put "Monster" up there as it's easily my favorite off the new Kanye but doesn't seem to be getting much buzz.

thomnottom

Also, I'm guessing you must be excited for next year as it looks like a number of those singles bands will be putting out their full length debuts in the coming months (Tennis is still my personal fave).

Daniel, Esq.

Did you get Caribou's album? For some reason (even before they toured together) I really linked him to Four Tet.

i never got around to downloading caribou. i was out of town when emusic announced that we had two-days left to download albums from caribou's label, and i didn't make it back home in time to grab it. i see it on a lot of lists, tho. i want to hear it. honestly, i get caribou and four tet confused all the time. the biggest difference to me (at least lately) is that four tet has a darker sound, which i prefer.

Daniel, Esq.

Also, I'm guessing you must be excited for next year as it looks like a number of those singles bands will be putting out their full length debuts in the coming months

yeah. i've been on a singles-kick this year. but i am looking forward to more from a lot of those bands -- chiefly, the dirty beaches, whose debut (badlands) is out on the zoo music label early next year.

amclark2

Nice lists Daniel. Anything to say about that John Grant album? I have it from Amie St., but haven't actually listened to it yet.

cafreema

Man, I have some more exploring to do.

Very interesting lists, Daniel!

Craig

thomnottom

the biggest difference to me (at least lately) is that four tet has a darker sound, which i prefer.

Yeah, you should totally get Swim. To me it's got a Four Tet remixes Matthew Dear kind of feel. Brooding vocals with dark and cacophonous beats.

Daniel, Esq.

Anything to say about that John Grant album? I have it from Amie St., but haven't actually listened to it yet.

i really like this album, in some ways more because of its flaws. grant is supposed to be a gut-wrenchingly emotional writer, especially pertaining to the difficulties he's faced because of his sexual orientation. (n.1). and he is a good lyricist in that way, for instance, in jesus hates faggots:

I can't believe that I've considered taking my own life
Cos I believed the lies about me were the truth
It will be magic to watch your transformation when you realise that you've been had
It's enough to make a guy like me feel sad

but sometimes his words are awkward and jarring (lines sometimes end with a thud when the lyrics don't rhyme and sometimes his lyrics are just unseemly, e.g., "I wanted to change the world/But I could not even change my underwear"). normally this would be off-putting to me, but here i think it's (mostly) endearing.

the real magic with this album is in the arrangements and the lush music, and the secret weapon is grant's backing band (midlake). it's an homage to 70s singer-songwriters, a group who have largely been bypassed in all the retro-fetishism of the last decade. listen to sigourney weaver and you can hear echoes of jackson browne, the carpenters, and neil sedaka. so think soft synth waves, sparse piano, flutes and strings accompanying the typical guitar backing, and you have a pretty good idea of the instrumental terrain. another good example of the sound, and grant's sadness: where dreams go to die.

______________________________________
(n.1) in that regard, grant's disc is a nice companion piece -- lyrically/thematically -- to my favorite from 2009 (dj sprinkles' 120 midtown blues).

Daniel, Esq.

this year's best-of lists are unearthing more gems than i remember in recent years; tho maybe the reason is really that i'm paying more attention to singles than albums this year. in any event, i'll use this space to mention some noteworthy gems that i hadn't heard until late december.

the detachments -- holiday romance (cosmodelica remix). the original version is pure 80s pastiche; good and enjoyable, but derivative and perhaps forgettable. the remix dials back the 80s influences, and adds a dancing synth that lightens, and greatly enhances, the song.

Daniel, Esq.

i'm also kind of in love with this lush, vamping piano-driven remix of the commodores' easy. it's by some act affiliated with divine recordings (a band/group of dj's who operate a pirate radio station in the uk). no youtube clips, regrettably.

Daniel, Esq.

also, this body talk album by robyn is great. i began listening to it in light of a glowing endorsement by no less than OMD:

Why Robyn is the best music artist in the world right now:

Body Talk Pt. 1 and 2 by Robyn were my favorite albums of the year, even though they were actually mini albums. Her breakthrough fourth album in 2005 saw Robyn step away from a manufactured pop sound and start creating her own musical template. The album may be a little patchy, but it contained two monstrous pieces of pop perfection, "With Every Heartbeat" and "Be Mine!"-- achingly beautiful melancholy that heralded the new stripped electro direction that she would take.

The hardest thing to do in music is create your own sound, innovate, and still sell records. Anyone can pretend to be "experimental" or "uncompromising" by making shit music that no-one actually wants to listen to. Walking the razor edge of beauty, art, and sales is the greatest feat, and yet it so seldom gets as much credit as either selling the most or the least, or sounding the worst! The simplicity of Robyn's electronic music is breathtaking. The fewer instruments, the louder the record. A wondrous blend of her own distinctively fragile vocal sound (especially when she double-tracks herself) laid bare against slabs of brutal electronica.

Once upon a time it was raincoat-clad English boys from dark bedsits who wrote electronic music to slash your wrists to. Now it's an elfin Swedish girl who is crying in the corner of the disco as the object of her affections dances to a thumping wall of synthesizer with somebody else! The album version of "Dancing on My Own" is quite simply the best combination of electro, tears, and dancing that has been released so far this century!

The electronic version of "Hang With Me" on Body Talk Pt. 2 proved that "Dancing on My Own" was not an accident. The preview of the single "Indestructible" suggests that her perfect formula still has some mileage.

Just to prove that there is a future in electronic music: even now, over 35 years since Kraftwerk dragged us all into the light with Autobahn, it can still actually go forward. Robyn threw down her marker at the top of Body Talk Pt. 1 with "Don't Fucking Tell Me What to Do". Combining a Kraftwerkian Computer World-style backing with a catalogue of tongue in cheek computerized bitching. She even dances to the beat of plate tectonics and evolution! Suddenly there is light once more at the end of the tunnel and we can all re-board the electro express with a ticket to the next station. No need for retro-futurism!

I don't think that Robyn is interested in making history. She is too busy loving, hurting, singing, and feeling. But she is making musical history. This is Ibsen and Munch set to a metronomic beat. By melting a little Scandinavian pop with a hip-hop sensibility and synthesizers, this lady is marching away from all the over-serious young men who stick too strictly to the old formula.

Daniel, Esq.

there's so much going on in underground dance circles -- a circle i know only from a great distance, being a 42 year-old father -- that i miss thousands of exciting little gems that, by the time i hear them, are completely passe. that might be the case with this song, released in late 2010: storm queen's look right through. it's a male house diva song, of the best type. the lyrics are all desperation:

i'm quite sure, that you never knew
all the pain that i been through
even this morning, looked outside my door
for you laying around the floor
seven long years, of moving thru the streets
letting people in, but they don't talk to me
they look right thru/just like you

the music is a shapeshifter, like the best dance music. it moves from a dark, bobbing baseline, to a punchier uptempo groove, to a huge drop down to just a throbbing bassline. a thrilling track.