I think that this has been a pretty good year for music. I've enjoyed it anyway. I've not been to as many shows as I'd have liked to but the ones I have been to have been excellent, including an incredibly life-affirming, all-time favourite gig. So, albums. Here we go...
10. Total Life Forever - Foals
I only purchased this on Monday afternoon and its appearance in my top 10 is proof (I hope) of its quality rather the lack of quality in other albums this year. A real progress from their first album which was good but didn't meet the hype. Less frenetic than their older stuff but really quite moving and mature (do all things get maturer and darker, except Weezer?). If i had got this in May when it came out, I am pretty confident that it could have made my top 3.
9. One Life Stand - Hot Chip
Though Hot Chip have always been obviously brilliant, their albums have always left me wanting something more. Their singles are never less than AMAZING but The Warning was empty in places and Made In The Dark was the ultimate in suffering from an overabundance of ideas. On One Life Stand however, I feel that they have reached a happy medium. Cohesive in tone and darkly melodic, it finds places that their music couldn't quite reach before. Soul music.
8. Scott Pilgrim OST - Various Artists
Is this cheating? I don't care. An ecclectic musical soundscape that perfectly matches the film in tone. Beck's work on making Sex Bob-omb and Crash and the Boys' music from the books come alive would be worth the album price alone. It is nice when things that you've had an idea of in your head for so long get realised and it was like it should be. Alfred thought that Hagrid would be blue and have actual dustbin lids for hands and he was disappointed. Luckily, I didn't have this problem here.
7. Contra - Vampire Weekend
I like Vampire Weekend a lot and I enjoyed Contra when it came out (especially when Clara thought that it was "in December drinking hot chowder") but it didn't maintain repeated listens for that long. However, when I saw them live last week it really made the album make a bit more sense, especially the longer, slower tracks (that you can't easily do a nodding dance to.) Giving Up The Gun is particularly brilliant. Plus, Jake Gyllenhaal in the video playing tennis super-seriously is funny.
6. Serotonin - Mystery Jets
As the Mystery Jets get weirder as people (see Blaine's haircut), they get more and more mainstream as in terms of their music. The melodies are beautiful and the voices of all have never been better. While the lyrics can be hit and miss, the best (there's an invisible line where your bodies meets mine/and crossing it seems like a drug) far outweigh the worst (the weather man he says that soon it will be snowing?) This album should have been a lot bigger than it was.
5. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - Kanye West
In one word, grandiose. In a few, Kanye's best album by far. I've always felt that before his work has been best in the singles whereas the albums have been overlong and messy, full of skits that I can never quite get the point of. On this, Kanye brings it all in and has created an album that must go on to be seen as his best. While on their own, the songs don't reach the crossover level that songs like Gold Digger did, together they show insight into the incredibly fractured mind of the man who is the World's Greatest Popstar. It is bigger, badder and better than anything he has done before.
4. Love King - The-Dream
Looking back a year, I wouldn't have expected an album anything like this in my top 10, let alone 4th. Sure, I've always been a fan of classic RnB styling (see Everybody In Love's high placing in my top 10 singles of '09) but it has always been a singles affair, feeling that on an album it can become tiresome. Love King is anything but. The production is so shiny and glossy and the Dream has one hell of a knack for a melody. FLORIDA UNIVERSITY
3. The ArchAndroid - Janelle Monae
There is nothing sexier than ideas (or am I thinking of breasts? IDK, ask again later) and The ArchAndroid is full of them. A afro-futurist space opera about oppression, identity and love from the perspective of a messianic cyborg sung by the human she was based on who has been sent 700 years back in time. What more could you want? Great music in a plethora of styles, sung with a beautiful and unique voice? It just happens to have that too. I can't wait to see where this goes next.
2. The Age of Adz - Sufjan Stevens
I had never mega been into Sufjan Stevens before but I took a chance with this album and I do not regret it at all. The Age of Adz can transport you to another place, so thick and glorious is the production. A 25 minute long song should never work but it does and it is beautiful and stunning and it makes life better by existing. This whole album does that. Sublime.
1. Romance Is Boring (and Alls Well That Ends EP) - Los Campesinos!
Romance Is Boring has been the soundtrack of my year and it'll likely be the soundtrack to the rest of my life. It contains every feeling I have ever felt. The specificity of Gareth's lyrics to his own stories only make them more relatable to all of my mistakes and missteps in life. I cannot imagine 2010 without this album and I cannot imagine my life without this band. Even when everything else seems bleak and I feel so painfully alone that I cannot speak, I know that I have Los Campesinos!
Special Mentions
Learning - Perfume Genius (like so many things I've written about, haunting)
Hurley - Weezer (album cover of the year)
The Suburbs - Arcade Fire (sorry to say I didn't give it enough of my time)
Heaven Is Whenever - The Hold Steady (well, it's The Hold Steady)
Quarantine The Past - Pavement (great introduction to a great band)
Albums that didn't come out this year but I found out about this year and love
Yeah, So - Slow Club (all kinds of stunning)
Waited Up 'til It Was Light - Johnny Foreigner (band with three members AND boy/girl vox? PLEASE)
At The Club - Kenickie (is there a more desirable woman than Lauren Laverne?)
next, films? x
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