So, I think now that there’s less than a month left in 2010, it’s time for those of you stragglers still saying ‘two-thousand ______’ to convert. It’s ‘twenty-ten,’ and it will most definitely be ‘twenty-eleven’ soon. This is just one of the ways emerging from the god-awful ’00s will improve our lives: saving time through shorter year names. It may be too soon to analyze how music will change and influence culture in the coming decade and beyond, but it’s just the right time to look back on music this year, and why not, maybe even make a list of my Top Ten Albums of 2010. Here we go!
10. The Age of Adz -- Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan dropped this and his All Delighted People EP (which really, at an hour, shouldn’t be called an EP) on us with relatively little notice this fall. After lying mostly dormant since 2005′s Illinois, save for a multimedia “symphonic and cinematic exploration of New York City’s Brooklyn-Queens Expressway,” appropriately titled The BQE, Sufjan’s return to recording came as a surprise. The Age of Adz furthers his exploration into electronic music, one that’s always been there since his second album, Enjoy Your Rabbit, but has been overlooked in favor of acoustic and orchestral arranged pieces. Adz is a mixed success — on the one hand, Sufjan pushes his songwriting to new limits (especially with the album’s sublime 25-minute closer in five parts, “The Impossible Soul”), but in other places the lyrics and structure seem like he’s just panning it (in “I Walked,” the album’s first single, he sings, “I walked / ’cause you walked / but I won’t probably get very far”). But despite a few questionable lyric choices and his newfound, couple-of-years-too-late infatuation with Autotune, The Age of Adz, while certainly no Illinois, is a pretty damn good album.
9. Congratulations -- MGMT
The release of this album (like two others on this list, Odd Blood and Contra), was foreshadowed by the critical question: could the band repeat the success of their first album? For MGMT, it’s a yes and a no. Their first, Oracular Spectacular, was a solid piece with a few stand-out tracks (“Kids,” “Time to Pretend,” “Electric Feel”). By contrast, Congratulations is solid, perhaps slightly more cohesive, but without any (sorry) spectacular songs on it. There’s no weak tracks, really, and it’s not that the album isn’t dynamic (“Siberian Breaks” clocks in at over 12 minutes, and is totally engaging), but nothing gets stuck in your head the way “Kids” did. To that end, though, it’s commendable, and MGMT deserve [title of the album] for breaking away from expectations. Congratulations is both surprising and inevitable as the next logical step in MGMT’s growth.
8. Odd Blood -- Yeasayer
Odd Blood is another sophomore release from a band whose first album was met with a lot of critical acclaim. Here, though, the aesthetic has veered into uncharted territory, rather than progressing logically. Yeasayer’s first album, All Hour Cymbals, married popular psych/folk of the late ’00s with Middle Eastern harmonies and instrumentation (notably the sitar on a couple of tracks). In Odd Blood, Yeasayer foregoes their mystique for the straightforward, heartfelt passion of the ’80s. The album’s stand-out track, “Ambling Alp,” finds frontman Chris Keating singing the chorus, “stick up for yourself, son / never mind what anybody else done,” over the motif of WWII-era boxing. Fight the Nazis! Be yourself! The electronic sounds are amplified, too, and the listener gets the impression that Yeasayer has just discovered synths and drum machines (not true, but man are they pushing them). It’s an experiment that can wear out after a few tracks, but one that’s grown on me with multiple listenings.
7. The Suburbs -- Arcade Fire
It’s a pretty tried-and-true tactic (at least since the late ’70s) to find ennui, pathos, but also beauty in the sprawl of American suburbs. Film, literature, and all art has explored this for decades, and Arcade Fire is not really doing anything new here. That said, the band’s signature over-the-top orchestration and grandiosity is a unique presentation of the suburbs. They don’t waste any time getting into the thick of it, the album’s title and first track beginning with a cymbal crash on beat one, over the drums, piano, acoustic guitar, and bass, which seem to have already been driving that rhythm since before the track began. There’s no intro, and the musical effect is like being dropped into the middle of the actual suburbs, surrounding you without beginning or end. The album’s closer, “The Suburbs (Continued),” conceptually similar but stylistically different, fades out, a reminder that however far away you get, the suburbs will still be there. Between the two bookends are an impressive 14 tracks, in which the theme of the suburbs is explored fully, though unfortunately from only one perspective — the former inhabitant returning. The one thing this album might be missing is a more nuanced approach to the suburbs… what, if any, good things can come from them? How do they change and inform who a person is? Single-dimensionality aside, the album has a number of stand-out tracks, among them the aforementioned title/opener track “The Suburbs,” “Modern Man,” “We Used to Wait,” and the terrific, penultimate, Régine Chassagne-featuring “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains).”
6. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy -- Kanye West
“Up early in the morning taking meetings in Silicone Valley” – with these words, finally getting on Twitter, Kanye announced his comeback, having been mostly absent from pop culture since the 2009 VMA’s debacle. This summer he proceeded to make good on his return, performing at Facebook headquarters in Silicon (Kanye humorously acknowledged his typo in the following Tweet) Valley, announcing a project in August to release new songs every Friday until Christmas, collaborating with up-and-coming artists like Nicki Minaj and reaching across the genre aisle to Justin Vernon (a.k.a. Bon Iver). Buying into My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy requires not just listening to the album, but buying into the entire Kanye West neo-tortured artist persona. He’s already been the biggest name in hip-hop, was exiled, and returned, despite attempts to tear him down coming from every angle. Musically, the album triumphs, especially “Monster” and “Runaway.” It’s an incredibly balanced album, and listening to the sixty-eight minutes in its entirety never wears on the ears (although I admit to gravitating toward longer, more developed songs lately). The album closes with tied-together tracks “Lost in the World,” which samples “Woods” from Bon Iver’s 2009 Blood Bank EP, and “Who Will Survive in America,” which contains a spoken word sample from poet/musician Gil Scott-Heron. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy finds Kanye at his most introspective, yet simultaneously proclaiming to be “the best living or dead hands down.” It’s the tension between these two extremes that makes this album as good as it is.
5. One Life Stand -- Hot Chip
Hot Chip as emotional people, rather than as a few British guys having fun with synths, has always existed as filler material for albums (see “Made In the Dark,” “In the Privacy of Our Love”). I was taken aback by One Life Stand after I realized that these ten tracks were each as heartfelt and emotionally resonant as anything that Hot Chip has made before. While 2008′s Made in the Dark began with the explosive “Out at the Pictures,” lyrics in One Life Stand‘s opener, “Thieves in the Night,” include “…I’ve lost you here in the crowd / open your arms, I want to be found” and “happiness is what we all want.” I wish the album were a little longer, but the band doesn’t lose any musicality in moving toward expanded sentimentality. The closing track, “Take It In,” is gorgeous, and in between the album explores brotherly love, friendship, and romance — affection in many forms. I wouldn’t have expected from a band that once wrote a song called “Crap Kraft Dinner.”
4. The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III) -- Janelle Monae
I first heard Janelle Monáe’s “Tightrope” on The Current in May, and it stuck with me enough to look her up — and hot damn, is she good. While I’m least drawn to the concept album aspect of The ArchAndroid (which seems like a pretty hackneyed sci-fi story, to be honest), the music is outrageous and refuses to adhere to a genre. Featuring Big Boi and Of Montreal on two separate tracks, the album dances gracefully from jazz to hip-hop to contemporary pop and indie rock. Monáe is fond of Philip K. Dick references, to be sure (a little too fond, in my opinion), but she’s got a great voice and is a creative powerhouse. In particular, “Cold War,” “Tightrope,” and “Make the Bus” stand out. I hope that Janelle Monáe doesn’t settle down stylistically too soon — it’s too much fun to see her energy taking on all areas of contemporary music, making them her own.
3. Contra -- Vampire Weekend
Sophomore releases! Vampire Weekend’s Contra feels like more an extension of their first album than a completely new set of work. That said, their eponymous release was so good that that’s not necessarily a bad thing here. Contra is totally solid, though it starts off a little slow. Three out of the first four tracks are under 3 minutes in length, and it’s not until “Run” that the album really feels like it’s gaining traction. However, the initial tracks, while short, are catchy, especially “White Sky,” a song about New York MoMA (though it’s a little much in its name-dropping Richard Serra), and “Holiday.” The last few tracks are meatier, with the best being arguably “Giving Up the Gun,” which has a great music video to match. One of the most striking things on this relatively short album is the instrumentation in the percussion — while most of the songs use traditional sets, the album also prominently features marimba and shekere (not sure how/if I should pluralize those). I’d like to see Vampire Weekend continuing their exploration of untraditional pop instrumentation. The musical ideas are already there, and the band needs to keep on expressing them in different ways.
2. Plastic Beach -- Gorillaz
Gorillaz seems to have been shaking off the conceit of its fictitious band members ever since 2005′s Demon Days, and it’s just as well. It’s difficult to balance being a conceptual band (one with a canon narrative that changes in real time) and actually producing good music (which Gorillaz do, for sure). In Plastic Beach, Gorillaz have become less the characters they used to be, but in the process, made their most cohesive album to date. Similar to the tensions between being a band in concept and in practice, Gorillaz struggle with blending hip-hop (through various featured artists) and pop (Damon Albarn of Blur is the behind-the-scenes frontman). Here, in expanding their genre to include some soul and gospel through Bobby Womack, the band becomes less a disparate collection of hip-hop and pop songs, but a blurred group of songs, impossible to define by genre. In addition, the guest artists are bigger (and more diverse) names than Gorillaz have ever featured before, including Snoop Dogg and Lou Reed. The album’s title refers to a loose motif (it’s no Suburbs) of pollution/corporation/evils of society? It’s best to try to overlook that. My favorite tracks are those produced solely by the band: “Rhinestone Eyes” and “On Melancholy Hill,” which would work as well as instrumental tracks as they do as songs. While the tracks with guest artists do a great job of featuring their voices, it’s the music that really shines on this album.
1. This Is Happening -- LCD Soundsystem
It’s rare, and extremely notable, for a band to put out an album while providing the knowledge that it will be their last work under that name. To that end, it may be the only way to provide a semblance of closure and avoid losing one’s edge, save for dying young. Any creative person or group who becomes well-known for their work needs to either keep moving stylistically, experimenting with their art (which is not necessarily an economically stable pursuit), or else declare that it will end. LOST, which for all its flaws remains one of my favorite television shows, found direction when they announced in 2007 that the show would end after three more seasons. For James Murphy to release this extraordinary work and make it known that it’s LCD Soundsystem’s last record makes the critical response to it all the more immediate and important. The music: incredible. Like all of my favorite songs, each is cathartic and profound on a personal, creative level. The deeper tunes like “I Can Change” and “Home” are balanced by fun in “Drunk Girls” and “Pow Pow,” the latter of which is the funniest continuous eight minutes of music I’ve heard in years. Without explicitly stating it, the song has a clearly defined narrator/speaker, who repeatedly prefaces his lyrics/statements with, “from this position,” a phrase meant to be taken as a disclaimer to the entire song. He runs the gamut from “we have a black president and you do not, so shut up,” to “I have stayed home and learned a little more about my neighborhood, which is good.” He corrects himself, but leaves the mistakes in as part of the song. The electronic sounds on the album, while repetitive, still reach moments of climax, and dynamically respond to the lyrics. The peak of “Home,” the album’s closing track, featuring the lines “if you’re afraid of what you need / look around you, you’re surrounded / it won’t get any better” occurs almost two minutes before the end of the song, while the rhythm continues on until the very end of the track. It reflects a reluctance on Murphy’s part to finish the song, as if by doing so he’s sealing his musical fate, but with the knowledge that it has to happen for his work to have significance. Going into the album with its title, This Is Happening, in mind, the work becomes both a celebration and a funeral. Like all good art after its glorious creation, it’s over.
