Friday, December 10, 2010

Best New Music of 2010, albums #10 - #1

(For the intro to this article and albums #21 - #11, go HERE)


#10 - We Landed on the Moon, This Will Be One For The Books

Okay, things are getting serious now. The top 10 albums are all excellent and deserve to be checked out, starting with this one. WLOTM have been a favorite band of my for years, and each time I get to meet and hang out with them, they move further up the list. They are wonderful musicians and people, and this album is a delight from start to finish. Powerful female vocals with music that ranges from nautical & bouncy to thick & distorted showcases the breadth and ability of a band on the verge of making it big (fingers crossed). As good as this album is, though, check them out live. They put on a massively kick-ass show.




#9 - Apples in Stereo, Travellers in Space and Time

For about 6 years now, the Apples in Stereo have been one of my top five bands, and I have very high expectations for them as a result. This album fell far short for me on first listen - gone are the ‘60’s inspired fuzz and riffs, and in their place is ELO-esque synthy space-pop jams. I was devastated. But then I grew up and gave it another listen (hey, this is becoming a theme!), and damned if it hasn’t won me over. It might not have the musical merit of some of the other albums on this list (i.e. #8), but it’s a near perfect distillation of the 70’s pop sound into a modern group, and a group I happen to respect at that. Two thumbs up.




#8 - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Beat the Devil’s Tattoo

I love this album. BRMC is a blues rock band that focuses less on perfecting the genre (whereas the Black Keys have devoted their entire discography to that goal), and more on creating dense bluesy soundscapes. They can make a pounding rock song (like Conscience Killer, track 2), but they have the ability to take engrossing sonic journeys in the music and have it come together as a song. I will listen to this album on repeat and find new things each time - it’s incredible. BRMC also wins my award for band with the worst luck and best job persevering through it. They've had constant turmoil in band line-up over the past 15 years, and their sound tech died back stage this summer during a concert. And that sound tech was the father of one of the members. DAMN.




#7 - The New Pornographers, Together

The New Po are my favorite band, hands down. Five albums in, plus a slew of b-sides and a live CD, and every song they make, every last one, is solid. They hold the record for my iPod of having never once been skipped on shuffle. This album picks up where Challangers left off, taking the band on a mellower, more introspective path than their first three albums, and I’m perfectly okay with that. A.C. Newman commands the good ship New Po with first and second mates Bejar and Case wonderfully, making a diverse but distinct album of lush melodies with nearly indecipherable prose. As good as all the members are on their own or in other projects, the New Pornographers takes their individual merits and becomes more than the sum of its parts. Together (see what I did there?) the group becomes the best band still touring - buy this album, preferably at a sold-out concert.




#6 - Nigel Godrich, Beck, & Broken Social Scene, Scott Pilgram vs. The World

Nigel Godrich has been Radiohead’s producer since OK Computer, and has made several of Beck’s albums among many others. Beck wrote and helped record all the songs Scott Pilgram’s fictional band, “Sex Bob-omb.” Broken Social Scene did the same for “Crash and the Boys,” another fictional band. And all of them helped craft and select the songs for what is arguably the best mix-tape in pop music of the past decade. The Scott Pilgram soundtrack is a glorious homage to the Toronto music scene that inspired the original graphic novels (including songs from which the lead characters were named), and plays like a carefully crafted cassette handed from one teenager in love to another. It’s simple, wonderfully compiled, at times hilarious, and a better play list than either you or I have ever made.




#5 - Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse present, Dark Night of the Soul

If you buy this album, you’ll first be presented with a sticker listing some of the contributors; Black Francis, Julian Casablancas, Vic Chesnutt, James Mercer, Iggy Pop, Suzanne Vega et. al. Then on the back you’ll notice, “In Memory of Mark Linkous [a.k.a. Sparklehorse] and Vic Chesnutt,” both of whom committed suicide after working on the album but before it was released - the album was in legal limbo when Sparklehorse took a gun to his own heart. It's a little bit intimidating.

As the title might suggest, this album is very dark in tone, becoming even more grim having been made near the end of the these two truly great artists' lives, both of whom clearly lived in such pain. DNOTS (which you can check out and explore at www.dnots.com) is at times hard to listen to because of the emotion it envelops, but listeners will be rewarded with an album of some of the best songwriting and production of its collaborator’s careers.




#4 - Cut Chemist, Sound of Police

Firstly, why this album is cool: Cut Chemist is one of the premiere artists and a founder of turntableism, and is most popular as the DJ behind Jurassic 5. He also is continually trying to improve his own skill, keeping him at the forefront of the art. He was asked to be the opening act for a music convention, and decided to handicap himself as much as possible - all live mixing of only 45’s and LP records, one mixer, one set of loop pedals, and only one turntable. All transfers between vinyl would have to be be done while loops were playing to cover them up.

Secondly, why this album is awesome: Sound of Police is taken from two practice sessions for his live show, and features two roughly 25-minute songs. It is strictly a DJ album, broken up only by where he needed a water break because of the frenetic pace needed to keep up using only ONE turntable. It features African, Blues, and Brazilian music, and is so compelling to listen to that you’ll be absolutely floored when you remember HE ONLY HAD ONE TURNTABLE. Such skill is almost unfathomable.





#3 - LCD Soundsystem, This Is Happening

I’m starting off the Top Three with James Murphy’s professed last album as LCD Soundsystem, marking the end of one of the best moniker’s in music history. This is Happening works as a swan song, staying true to the mixture of ‘80’s pop (a la David Byrne) and electronic dance beats that made the group/man famous, while also featuring a shockingly wide array of influences and tones. ‘Drunk Girls’ feels simultaneously modern and retro-chic as it talks about, well, drunk girls (sort of). Then tracks like ‘Pow Pow’ give you a danceable beat while trying to reconcile the various aspects James Murphy, the musician and the man: He's grown up and matured, but he still feels young and silly (see - 'Drunk Girls'). As the song states repeatedly, "There's advantages to both!", so I'm not sure what he's decided. The album comes off as a retrospective of the group, an introspective of Murphy, and a grand finale for it all. Hopefully Murphy will be back in some form or another in the future, but for now, this will do just fine.





#2 - Dan Mangan, Nice, Nice, Very Nice

WIth the possible exception of #10 on this list, I’ve played through Nice, Nice, Very Nice more than any other album this year. I have a habit of overplaying an album and getting sick of it for months or years, but after running through this more than 15 times, Dan Mangan really holds his own. The songs are perfectly crafted singer-songwriter melodies, some of which are shockingly earnest, though all showcase Mangan’s wit and lyrical/poetic abilities. It's clear why he's won numerous awards in his home country of Canada, including best vocals and best lyrics of the year for a Canadian artist. Mind you, this is the same country that spawned great albums from the Arcade Fire and Ne Pornographers, so winning is a BIG deal. He won both for ‘The Indie Queens are Waiting’, a devastatingly pretty duet that features my favorite verse of the year:

“Bus down to the local record store,

Buy something to make you like me more.

Indie queens and tatty east-side punks,

They are listening.

Always waiting.

Are you watching, are you?

Are you watching,

Or just waiting to see

That your days are numbered?

'Cause my days are numbered too”

I guarantee that if you bus down to a local record store, buy this album and give it to somebody, they will like you more. If not, I owe you a drink and a sympathetic ear.





#1 - Robyn, Body Talk pts. 1-3

I wanted to place this at the top of my list for two reasons; 1) It really is a fantastic album that deserves a ton of praise, and 2) Besides other music critics, people have largely dismissed Robyn’s efforts as drivel. It is sometimes pop music in the vein of a Lady Gaga or Ke$ha, but her ability as a musician and song-smith so greatly outshines those she’s commonly compared to that it’s embarrassing. Body Talk is definitely her best work, despite being a little difficult to purchase - it has been released over the course of the year in three parts for a total of 21 songs, but was most recently released as a compilation of the three parts with only 15 songs (cutting 6 total from parts 1 & 2). For my list, I refer to the three individual parts, because the songs that were cut are some of my favorites.

On all three parts, Robyn covers a lot of pop ground, showing MC skills with Snoop Dogg on 'U Should Know Better', transforming into a ‘Dancehall Queen’ on the dubby track by that title, and becoming an operetic diva on fully orchestrated aucoustic versions of 'Hang with Me' and 'Indestructible', before busting out dancefloor-friendly versions of both. The combination of all three parts is incredible, especially having been done entirely in 2010. While albums like #8, #7, and #5 on this list might feature more capable songwriters or more complex tracks, Body Talk is a tour-de-force of pop and dance music that surpasses other albums in these genres on almost every level. I’d like to hear arguments against my choosing it as the top album of the year, but currently my opponents are too busy acting out 'Dancing on My Own’.




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