Thesis
It's finally that time of the year. Not wintertime! I'm talking about Top 10 time! Lists, fam! There's been a lot of writing leading up to this point. A lot of listening too. But mostly to Kanye. Who's going to be Number One?! All that and more, on
#METASWAG.
Here's a chance to catch up on what you've probably missed!
Bonus Awards
This is a time of giving, so I'mma give you even more awards!
Most Inspirational Song Of 2010
> "Firework" - Katy Perry
Runner-up: "You Can Count On Me" - Panda Bear
Best Music Video Of 2010
> "Telephone" - Lady Gaga
Runner-up: "Check It Out" - Nicki Minaj & Will.I.Am
Best Dance Song Of 2010
> "Like A G6" - Far East Movement
Runner-up: "Check It Out" - Nicki Minaj & Will.I.Am
Best Runner-up Of 2010
> "Check It Out" - Nicki Minaj & Will.I.Am
Best Album Of 2011
> Kaputt - Destroyer
Runner-up: James Blake - James Blake
Mmm, bonus.
Top 25 Albums Of 2010 (10-01)
10| The Age Of Adz - Sufjan Stevens
For the life of me, I can't figure out why this record is so divisive. I mean, homeboy is rocking his usual stuff with a slightly updated steez. Does adding some glitchy effects and AutoTune constitute a New Sound? Is this 1965? Is he Bob Dylan? The sound on this album just makes sense. I hear so much of Michigan and Illinois here. Sounds approachable. The melodies are still intact and still soaring. Something to love! Take the same old Sufjan charm and throw on some crunchy bass and electronic gurgling. Sounds good to me.
I guess it must be mentioned that this is like a comeback record or something, following Sufjan's abandonment of his 50 States Project and loss of innocence (maybe). The sorta unremarkable - except for the title track - All Delighted People EP seemed to be the last of Sufjan's Old Sound. The music on Adz does represent some sort of step forward, but not because of the electronics. It's the melodies, the arrangements. They remain complex and catchy, but have an added weight to them. Density. It's hard to describe. It's like Sufjan had to go somewhere else for a while to achieve this kind of maturity - or I guess it could be age ("Now That I'm Older"). Whatever he discovered, it's resulted in assured music. Classic music.
It's a huge album, but it's cohesive and filled with memorable moments. "Age Of Adz" is glorious, alternating between claustrophobic and echoing verses and a pounding, epic film chorus. BOMBAST, fam. This album is chock full of it. "Vesuvius" is a sort of emotional and charging anthem in the vain of "Illinois," which is to say, ecstatic and amazing. "Impossible Soul" is 25 minutes of Sufjan topping himself, minute after minute. It's a masterfully executed suite, never tired or stagnant. Hard to imagine anything grander coming out of him now. With The Age Of Adz, he's outdone himself.
09| The Way Out - The Books
If ever there were an album to improve your condition, here it is. The Way Out is a trip, seemingly alive and affirmative. It's an amazing conversationalist, conjuring up striking visuals in its storytelling and asking the listener important questions. It also tells great jokes. Who knew that a fiddle solo could draw laughter amidst children's death threats? The sonic world here is one filled with silliness and profundity in equal parts, a sense of humanity. For something constructed almost entirely out of assorted samples (along with that beautiful guitar/cello duo), there's nothing artificial about the sound.
It's a part of the magic of the album. The nonsense lyrics aren't forced - they have a truth of their own. "Group Autogenics I" cordially introduces itself and the album's agenda. This is about improving oneself. The force described in "A Wonderful Phrase By Gandhi" seems to similarly hold this record together as it holds us all together. Perhaps unseen, but not at all unheard. The inventiveness is audible in The Way Out, and it sounds amazing and natural. "Free Translator" is the sort of ancient guitar work and melody that seems to come from within, dust dancing in summer sunlight. "The Story Of Hip Hop" contains enough sonorous activity to keep your ears busy for a lifetime (or hour or minute or time between other time). It makes me "all happy inside." With every song, the band reaches for a new path to happiness. It's one thing for an album to have moving parts, and another for those parts to create a mindset. The heart beating in this album believes in you.
The Books are making us better. I didn't know that.
08| Have One On Me - Joanna Newsom
This is the LOTR Extended Editions of albums. I don't know how far I want to take that metaphor ("Does Not Suffice" = The destruction of the ring?, "Go Long" = The Battle Of Helm's Deep?), but both of the trilogies are widescreen triumphs, intricate and rewarding, emotional, and unabashedly long. Themes emerge and come to satisfying conclusions. In both, the individual parts can stand alone as masterpieces. I also happen to love them both. Worth every second. And from the title of the record, one can insinuate that Joanna knows the length of this thing. We can enjoy another disc without worry - it's on her.
Each disc works as a complete listening experience, and these songs are some of the best of her career (All-Time?). In its length, it almost invites the listener to construct her or his own listening experience. The progression of the album seems meticulously assembled, but the standouts are apparent and do not falter out of context. "Baby Birch" - which may or may not be about an abortion - is probably the emotionally hardest hitting song of the year. After some lonely minutes of voice and harp, a wicked guitar enters the frame, and finally drums and handclaps usher in the tragic climax of the narrator's separation from her baby birch. So yeah, it's got the same kind of storybook imagery of Ys and Mender, but with better arrangements. Where the arrangements were great before, they are now miraculous (exaggeration in Christmas spirit). The percussion alone is extremely complex, and the more subtle use of strings and horns here are far more effective than the relatively crowded Ys material. All of this showcased in "Good Intentions Paving Company," the best song ever.
And maybe this is the best album ever. When you sit down with HOOM and listen to the trilogy as a whole, it rewards like no other album this year. The sheer volume of breathtaking moments is unbelievable. From the understated and haunting beauty of "Go Long" to the twisting catchiness of "Kingfisher," this is an album that tugs at your head and heart. But realistically, it only achieves its full effect on special occasions. But what special occasions those are!
07| Does It Look Like I'm Here? - Emeralds
This one accidentally became the score to my summer. It was the first album I turned to while drawing on my back porch, jogging, and napping. It's versatile. The music itself works well as a sweat-covered and bleached-out picture of a lazy summer day. It's hard not to feel the warmth emanating from the sun of "The Cycle Of Abuse" or "Summerdata." Or the sweltering pulse of "Double Helix." This album is hot! Then again, it's the sort of hot that can sometimes inspire a sunburned midday nap.
Most of the songs are grounded in chugging synth appregio and Mark McGuire's Weather-Channelesque guitar, but never does the album feel repetitive or tired - unlike this list.
To write it off as ambient is a disservice to the liveliness here (depending on your attitudes toward the genre). While it certainly works as background or chillout music, it's simply too alive and present to function solely as a homework companion. The one-two punch of "Genetic" and "Goes By" is almost unbeatable this year. The first song of the suite is the stuff of sweeping landscapes and huge battles. The charging keyboards are fierce in their propulsion of the song and even more (forgive me) epic when paired with McGuire's dazzling guitar. It sounds like the climactic fight in an 80s sci-fi thriller. The layers and layers of synth lines have alternately massaged my brain into a lava nap and recharged my legs with lightning on jogs, depending on my mood. Versatile, fam! The follow-up song is the comedown, a more pleasant resolution to the intensity of the previous 12 minutes (not that "Genetic" doesn't wrap itself up nice and sweet).
Improving on last year's superbly spacey What Happened, the band's latest album injects some hot life into the formula of mixing huge ambient soundscapes with dynamic guitar and effects. Perfect for chilling out and warming up, Does It Look Like I'm Here? bleaches you out until you're asking that very question.
Emeralds definitely are, and they're here to stay.
06| Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son Of Chico Dusty - Big Boi
Even moreso, Big Boi is Here. And it's about time.
From the album's whistling intro to its closing "Yeah," Left Foot signals Big Boi's arrival. It's an energetic one - "Daddy Fat Sax" is skittering and pounding, "Shutterbug" is soulful cheese, "Shine Blockas" is a classic feel good jam. The album's delays are well-documented, but none of the difficulty is heard in the music itself. It feels like the composed work of a master that it is - not a patchwork of singles, but a complete product. "Tangerine" is filthy drums and oozy synths, infinitely fun stuff. And memorable too. "Hustle Blood" transforms Big Boi's flow into bumbumdiddybumbum. It sounds great. It just works.
Every risk the record takes pays off. Like, what's up with the salsa finale to "The Train: Part II," an otherwise somber and effective meditation on self-delusion? Who cares - it's great! I can't begin to understand half of the decisions that resulted in what I'm listening to, but all of them seem to be in the spirit of fun. And I don't mean to condescend - to reduce this to "a fun listen." Because it's a strong, lush, and groovy rap record. It crams a goofy weirdness into an accessible package. Big Boi's is the best solo rap performance of the year. In fact, this album is nearly flawless. If it weren't for "Follow Us."
But it's missing the Relevance of a certain other rap record this year.
05| In Evening Air - Future Islands
How did this little album sneak into the Top 5? Clocking in at 36 minutes and without much fanfare, it just grows and grows. This is clearly the work of someone that cares about his music: Sam Herring. This music is important to him, maybe necessary for him to even function. Because it means so much to him, it begins to mean quite a lot to the listener. This is an album that begs to be internalized - its jams about longing and hurt are universal.
And it's fun, too. That helps. The bumping beat of nearly every song ranges from dancey to rocky, but always moving. And the operatic, grand emotion that Herring emits is fun in itself. It's melodrama (very real emotion), but it's engaging and exciting. The lyrical subject matter is almost teenage emo stuff, but the execution is far from exaggerated or false.
Every song is built around the simple trio of a bass guitar, drum machine, and cheap keyboard. There's a rawness that results from these basic elements. There's never a question of how these instruments are interacting with one another, but the results are often surprisingly huge. The overdrive that kicks in at the end of "Long Flight" is dramatic and powerful, a wave of crushing fuzz. "Inch Of Dust" has the sweep and stomp of an 80s classic slowburn. It has the guts to climax with, "Call on me/I'll be there always." Really, the whole album is this honest. Its guts are on display and they pay off big. You get the sense that nothing is being hidden from view, and that makes the music so much more resonant and memorable.
There's surprising poetry emerging from the basics of every song. This simple album is well-worth revisiting to discover the intricacies tucked within. Each listen rewards. It's dependable.
04| Teen Dream - Beach House
This album is so old. Been listening to this for a year today.
It refuses to fade into memory. "Silver Soul" and its buzzing guitars and bubbling background sounds just as fresh as the day it first hit my headphones. "Walk In The Park" still flies like an eagle into the future at its peak. "10 Mile Stereo" remains the most enchanting heartbreak song ever. "Take Care" continues to tug at hearts. It's all poignant, all crashing, all catchy. The immediacy of this album is in (now indie household name) Victoria Legrand's vocals, and the evocative force of nature within them. She's got organ pipes in her vocal chords, fam!
Beach House have been good (and basic) from the beginning. The band's still all about drum machines, shimmering guitars, and shiny synths. Which is totally fine. The addition of solitary piano and cymbal crashes doesn't at all upset the fragile balance of this album - it seems to strengthen the tunes. Now there's some meat on the bones of these ballads and anthems. Now there's an added studio finish to the album. Now there's a grownup feel to the songwriting. Now there's no use denying the emotional power of these songs.
Can't you feel it?
03| Paul's Tomb: A Triumph - Frog Eyes
But seriously folks, this thing is monumental. Carey Mercer operating at full-power. Carey Mercer writing his masterpieces and tossing the crumpled-up rejects our way. Carey Mercer spitting on us through his tears. Carey Mercer cramming every possible self-flagellating taunt and grim suggestion into 50 minutes of golden guitar rock.
Interested?
Well, maybe not. What I'm trying to say is that this is an album of epic proportions (it has a colon in its title), and it's unafraid of the human soul's darker sides. It explores this territory with a rollicking good band. Two too-great guitars, some slinky-cool keyboards, and those ever-marching drums. All working in delirious harmony. These instruments enter some sort of locked-talons freefall in the first minutes of opener "Flower In A Glove" and never let go. The whole album is in that first song - all of the sinking moments and triumphant howls, the best poetry of the year and its most vital guitar-playing. Same goes for "Odetta's War," with its shrieks and expulsions. Following two minutes of uninterrupted intense climax comes a shocking halt (spoiler alert) that throws the whole song into stark relief. These moments exist in every other song on the album. That's the beauty of it. The entire five-act play in different variations, stretched out and remade flesh over and over again.
By the time you've arrived at "Paul's Tomb," you're beaten down and emotionally exhausted. The finale takes the last of it out of you. Multi-climax and brutal, it's the finish this work deserves. Even though it ends with Mercer warning, "You're never going to break on through," you can't wait to put yourself through it all again. I'm describing some gorgeous S&M nightmare. Which is what it is - and it's perfectly realized.
This album: a triumph.
02| Public Strain - Women
Two fierce guitar rock albums in the Top 5? Call me boring. I don't care. This album fought its way to this position. It's combative and noisy - hard to ignore.
"Can't You See" opens things in a drowsy fashion, hinting at a fire burning in the center of the song - but obscuring it beneath blankets of fog. There's so much potential energy waiting to be released. "Bells" is interminable and three minutes long. "Drag Open" finishes itself off with some of the beautiful and angular guitar lines that made "Shaking Hand" so mesmerizing on their debut. Women are on-point here. They strike up a tension between songs. "Venice Lockjaw" is the calm breeze before the perfect storm of "Eyesore" and its End Times guitars. No song has the sort of turn that "Eyesore" has at its midpoint. Where things turn inside-out in slow motion before exploding outright. It's the Greatest Guitar Riff Of All-Time.
Um.
Where the debut would separate its noise and its pop (to an extent), this album is unafraid to bury its best melodies in distortion and integrate its loudest groans into simple ballads. Unfortunately for all of us, the tension permeating this record finally released itself in the band's breakup (possibly the worst thing ever to happen). Here's hoping that Women take up the fight once more, and recapture the momentum so masterfully exhibited on this album. Because this is a perfectly constructed collection of jams - heartfelt and restrained, noisy and gripping. There's no sour note struck here.
I wanted so badly for Public Strain
to be Number One. It was sitting atop this list for months, but my Best Man Ben Beane pointed out that I wasn't being honest with myself. There was only one album that could be my Number One, and for better or for worse, it's everyone else's too.
01| My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - Kanye West
Music can't be Important like this unless it's heard by the masses. Let's be real here, it doesn't really matter how revolutionary Carey Mercer's lyrics are or how interactive The Book's collages are or how perfect Public Strain is. Because those albums are not going to move hundreds of thousands of units like this. Only Yeezy could make an impact like this, a record like this. You want to listen to it and I want to listen to it. Even my dad, who inexplicably confuses every rapper with Diddy, found something to like in it.
This is Kanye West's Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - his magnum opus, something that before had only been hinted at. Every song is a masterwork and strikes its own chord. Nothing feels regurgitated on the album, each second is exciting and new. "All Of The Lights" is probably the best (if not biggest) pop song of the new decade. Counter that with the duo of menacing songs featured at the album's center. Jay-Z qualifying and endorsing "Monster" and "So Appalled" as canon. What else could Nicki's verse be? This stuff is legendary.
Personal Legend: "Runaway" was striking its life-or-death piano keys in my car on a snowy drive to Indy. The low-traction indicator flashed as the tires lost grip of the road below them. Snowflakes floated midair in the on-coming traffic's headlights as my car did a full 360-degree spin in the middle of the freeway. "Look atcha!" "Ladies and gentlemen!" After that, I'm pretty certain this album has become ingrained in me. But maybe this story was already ingrained in me.
The narrative of the album is unmistakable and Big. Follow me:
"Dark Fantasy" is the prologue, the flashback to Yeezy's beginnings and the prophecy of what's to come. "Gorgeous" is the political, sample-hook stuff of his glory days. "POWER" is Yeezy on top, until he realizes how lonely it is there. "All Of The Lights" and its interlude is the fall, the paranoia and heartbreak that comes with fame. "Monster" and "So Appalled" track his subsequent transformation into a disgrace and villain. "Devil In A New Dress" is his failed recovery, aching and fractured (even Rick Ross's dumb dumb verse can be explained away as a portrayal of the confidence and bravado that now rings hollow). "Runaway" is the only obvious answer for Ye, the decision to isolate himself in martyrdom. "Hell Of A Life" and "Blame Game" are his sick retreat and the eventual nadir of that isolation. "Lost In The World" and "Who Will Survive In America" is the real comeback - the realization that the only way to survive in this world is to overcome the hollowness of grief/insecurity/The Today Show/self-pity, and embrace (in the words of Jigga) loooooove.
That's right, fam - this is the comeback story of life itself. This is Terrence Malick's The Tree Of Life. This is Everything. That's what makes it Important - it tells such a personal tale of redemption, makes it universal, and then packages it as the best album of the year. This is Pop Music as a Moral Lesson. And Yeezy taught it well.
Conclusions
Well, it's been quite some year. And it's all pretty and snowing out. I'm feeling great and cozy, though. It's nearly Christmas! What a wonderful time of year. What do you think about that Top 10? I guess I like it. Maybe some of them could be rearranged. I feel totally unhip for ranking FlyLo so low. Oh well. I'll be hipper next year. Right? I've already got a list worked out that includes an emerging superstar, a comeback record, and some southern rap. Not bad!
Movie list (TOP 10 MOVIES OF 2010 & Bonus) will be up next. Just saw some winning films a couple days ago. Cool! Well, see you around.
Happy Holidays! Who knows when Part 6 will be up.
