Best Albums of 2010
I’m going to be posting my 2010 wrap up in a few parts this year. Here are my picks for best albums of 2010.
In other posts I’ll put up a 2010 mix playlist for you to enjoy, highlight albums my friends made this year and then sweep up some 2009 albums that saw their day in the sun for me in 2010.
I’ve linked to youtube videos for a single from the album in question as well as rdio full album streams. You can search itunes or amazon for these if you wanna buy them. Which you do.
If you don’t know what rdio is, you’re missing out on a cheap ($5/month) way to hear most of the music you want legally in it’s entirety. $10/month gets you a mobile app. It’s a great deal. It fits in nicely with my music listening flow — check it out on rdio, buy it on vinyl if I love it.
Here is this playlist on 8tracks.com (free to listen to)
Here is this playlist on rdio (requires trial/membership)
Here is the same playlist on iTunes (previews only unless you buy it)
10. Muford & Sons - “Sigh No More”
YouTube - “The Cave”
Rdio full album stream
There is no question that this is a good album by a good band, and I find myself really touched by the insistent, aching vibe that lies beneath this album as a whole. It’s in the top 10 by an inch, just because I don’t find myself returning to it as often as I otherwise might. For some reason, the official video for “The Cave” sums it up perfectly. Where I see that there would be this really dark emotional video, they’re handing instruments to guys dressed like Wes Anderson extras on a beach somewhere. That sort of disconnect between the music and the presentation sometimes sneaks into the listening experience.
9 - Twistable, Turnable Man: A Musical Tribute to Shel Silverstein
YouTube - Dr. Dog “Unicorn”
Rdio full album stream
Shel Silverstein lived an inspirational creative life. His songs are no exception and this album is full of lovingly crafted recordings of those songs. They are surprising for all kinds of reasons, Silverstein’s wit and joyful wordplay chief among them. Hearing John Prine deliver the baleful songwriter’s lament “This Guitar is For Sale” is unexpectedly powerful. Shel’s writing can be endearingly, openly sentimental and the song “Daddy, What If” wears the crown here. Bobby Bare Jr was the voice of the child on his father’s original recording of the song; this album has him carrying the torch and singing the duet with *his* daughter.
8. Young The Giant - “Young The Giant”
YouTube - “My Body”
Rdio full album stream
Hits are a funny thing these days. I probably heard the song “My Body” in a commercial somewhere that had a TV. Maybe a mention on twitter or facebook from my friends. It wasn’t until I happened to see that my 15 year old brother in law had listened to this on his rdio account that I gave the album a listen. It’s a strange mix — side A has a modern hipster rock sheen while side B can barely contain the Coldplay-meets-late-90’s-alterna-rock of it all. Young The Giant could almost be two bands, I just happen to like listening to both of them.
7. Kings of Leon - “Come Around Sundown”
YouTube - “Radioactive”
Rdio full album stream
It’s an accepted fact of my life (and, I suspect, the lives of many other music nerds as well) that albums that don’t quite grab me on a first listen grow to become perennial favorites. This band is like one of those albums. I respect these brothers as businessmen, I admire their determination and on this album, after years of only kind of getting it, I connect with the music like never before. The lead singer’s voice is just so fucking sexy. There, I said it.
6. Broken Bells - “Broken Bells”
YouTube - “The High Road”
Rdio full album stream
James Mercer of The Shins plus Danger Mouse could have very well amounted to not much at all. Instead, each song is a grooving, melodically enthralling journey. In an interview on NPR the duo revealed that their favorite part about these songs is that the endings of almost all of the songs take a dramatic turn. It’s true — by the end of each song you’re somewhere much different than where you started. Beautiful artwork too.
5. Ben Folds & Nick Hornby - “Lonely Avenue”
YouTube - album introduction by Folds/Hornby
YouTube BONUS - “Things You Think” w/ Pomplamoose
Rdio full album stream
My relationship with this album is complex. I listened to his Ben Folds 5 singles in highschool, I loved his first solo record in college, I went on the road with my band named after me and in that band was a man named Sam Smith. Sam is one of my best friends. Sam now plays drums for Ben Folds. We picked up Sam from a tour stop with Ben in Buffalo, ripped him out of his bunk on the tour bus and into our minivan for the CD release tour for our album The Way We Found It. Nick Hornby wrote the book High Fidelity that validates my music nerdery and the very existence of this list, though Sam was the one to inspire me to make these year-end-lists. Nick Hornby’s feelings about Ben were published in this book. My feelings about Ben’s new album are published on this blog. I helped Sam set up his portfolio which is like a blog. The license plate from the minivan that we picked up Sam in is on the windowsill above my sink. I still haven’t mentioned anything about the music on this album which is, of course, terrific. When I listen to it I think of the faces Sam makes when he plays the drums and gets excited about a groove. I get bummed when I know it’s Ben playing the drums on some tracks, even though I think it is pretty cool that he can do that.
4. Arcade Fire - “The Suburbs”
YouTube - “Ready To Start”Rdio full album stream (licensing fail)NPR (?!) full album stream (expired)
Best $7.99 you ever spent
Well, I can’t find links to hear it for free, but that’s all the more reason to just impulsively buy it. After all that’s what America is about. A complicated relationship between art and commerce, sterility and spontaneity, youth and aging. This short memoir in pop album form touches on those themes while exploring what it was like to grow up in the late 70’s/early 80’s suburbia . It’s also just a collection of really interesting, catchy songs. It’s almost unfair how consistently great this band is.
3. Band of Horses - “Infinite Arms”
YouTube - “On My Way Back Home”
Rdio full album stream
Driving from Vermont to Canada to meet my wife in Montreal after the worst summer of my life with a burned CD from the digital download included in the vinyl copy of “Infinite Arms” waiting for us back in California. The plaintive, gentle, mystical sound filling my car with a kind of cotton melancholy. I’ll weave something out of that someday.
2. Vampire Weekend - “Contra”
YouTube - “Giving Up The Gun”Rdio full album stream (licensing fail)
Best $7 you ever spent
I loved their first album but with a little hesitation — if they couldn’t follow it up and it was going to simply be a flash in the pan, I was going to feel silly about liking an album by a band of Ivy-leaguers who embraced African rhythm with somewhat unnerving gusto. So it is with great relief that I love love love love love this album more than the first. So many interesting chances taken, so many beautiful vocal hooks laid bare over organic machines making noises in some kind of post-apocalyptic hippy dance party.
1. The Tallest Man On Earth - “The Wild Hunt”
Rdio full album stream
Kristian Matsson aka The Tallest Man On Earth sings songs in English and in spite (or because) of this being his second language, the winding, obscure stories he sings in a billy goat gruff gravel growling whine are extraordinarily powerful. So powerful that the recordings on this album are simply of him and his guitar. Where that might be a marketing ploy in other circumstances, in his it is simply the case that this is the most visceral way to experience these songs. I can’t stop listening to this album, I can’t stop singing these songs, and I never ever want to.
1. Ok Go - “Of The Color of the Blue Sky”
YouTube Channel (every song has a brilliant video)
Rdio full album stream
No, that’s not a typo. These two albums are tied for first place. Ok Go is a YouTube sensation, sure, but, and I hate to sound crotchety and old here, I liked them way before they started hamming it up for the camera. I think their major label self-titled debut was great, I thought their follow up was OK. And though I was eager for more new music from them this album really shocked me with it’s complete commitment to a new direction and integrity. The production is brave and brash and perfect. The songwriting is honest and heart-wrenching and the grooves, oh the grooves. Dan, the drummer in this band is one of my favorite in modern music.
Up next…either a mix of 2010 songs or albums by my friends. Or maybe the lost gems of 09. We’ll see.
