| 2010 Faves: 30 Record Albums We Really Enjoyed |
| By Nada Staff | |
| Sunday, 09 January 2011 | |
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In our estimation, 2010 was a banner year for music. Evidence for this assertion lies in the number of albums that received votes for this countdown. With nearly 70 albums appearing in top 5 lists from twenty contributors, this was the most difficult countdown to assemble in our 14-year history. We've pared it down to 30 great records, some of which you'll recognize from other year-end lists and some you may not. We've also included a list of the others that received votes.
30) Band of Joy – Robert Plant 29) Maniac Meat – Tobacco
28) Phosphene Dream – The Black Angels
There was a time when the Old 97’s could do no wrong. Even their first foray into pop music, 2001’s Satellite Rides, was a smashing success. After that, wives were married, children were had, solo careers were launched, and houses were purchased all over this land. Unfortunately from then on their albums pretty well sucked. 2010 changed all that, with the release of the four-song covers EP Mimeograph and the band’s eighth full-length, The Grand Theatre, Volume One. There are many returns to form here – Rhett Miller’s songwriting is back to being melancholy, Murry Hammond is still writing hard-to-understand masterpieces, and guitarist Ken Bethea plays like he gives a shit again. To top it all off, the band is no longer relegated to recording Miller’s solo material castoffs. Why, it feels like 1999 all over again! – AL 26) Plastic Beach – Gorillaz
25) The Soft Pack – The Soft Pack
24) Shabazz Palaces & Of Light EPs – Shabazz Palaces
AC Newman and Dan Bejar are two of the best songwriters working today, but that's only half of the attraction to the New Pornographers. The other is Newman's unparalleled skill as an arranger. Every New Pornographers song has its own internal momentum. Like a steam locomotive, once the song gets rolling it's impossible to stop. There's a consistent chugging. The guitars aren't merely strumming, but creating intertwined rhythms that float and dip into the incomparably synced bass and drums, always at the perfect moments. After the disappointing and uninspired Challengers, it's good to see them back on top with Together. They sound mature but reinvigorated. – Aaron Semer 22) $O$ – Die Antwoord
21) Forget – Twin Shadow
20) You Are Not Alone – Mavis Staples
I waited a long time to see how Cee Lo Green would unleash the greatest weapon in his arsenal, That Voice. That Voice is Al Green high on coke crossed with Frank from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, performed by a Christina Aguilera-Mahalia Jackson mash-up. Then add a horn section and put some fuckin’ stank on it. Lady Killer made my list because it's a little ambitious and a lot audacious; it showcases That Voice quite nicely with a modern-day Motown vibe that is both understated pizazz and in-your-face soul. The theme is consistent and familiar, but it's also really fun. My favorite thing about the album is this: singalongability. Perfect for fellow car and shower-singing needs. – Marika Malaea 18) The Big To-Do – Drive-By Truckers
17) Everything in Between – No Age
I've been a fan of Brooklyn's Dap Tone label since the beginning, and their Budos Band III takes me on an Indiana Jones-style adventure that also happens to be funky as hell. It's not often that a fully instrumental band can keep my interest for an entire album, but III isn't even the first time they've achieved this feat. They write funk songs that move and change, seamlessly blending parts and sections. But the larger achievement on III is the consistency of theme throughout the album. Read the song titles - "Rite of the Ancients," "River Serpentine," "Mark of the Unnamed". Listen to the music - a blend of exotica, African, Indian, and Meters-style funk. Look the album cover - a coiled cobra. It's a complete package, and the overall effect is a mini vacation for the mind. – AS
Singer-songwriter Josh Ritter is so ludicrously talented that a critic’s trope like “singer-songwriter” is a genuine insult. His sixth studio album, So Runs the World Away, populates a world so fully formed that the characters who inhabit it have to be based on real people. That’s a tall order, once you realize that those characters include an ancient mummy who falls in love with the woman who discovered him, or an explorer who, convinced there is a New World under the North Pole, falls in love with his ship. Maybe there’s a pattern here. – AL
Critical acclaim and Grammy nomination aside, Infinite Arms manages to be both a great album and a step backward for former Carissa’s Weird member Ben Bridwell. Leaving Sub Pop to produce and fund their own album, Band of Horses actually bucked convention and made a slicker and more sterile album than their last effort Cease To Begin. This may be the band's natural progression now that the line up is set and is no longer a long list of collaborators. In fact, “Older,” the best song on the album, was written and sung by newcomer Keyboardist Ryan Monroe. With the slick recording I can't help but long but long for the band's two previous and "dirtier" albums, but this is still a great collection of songs. – Tim Basaraba 13) Innerspeaker – Tame Impala
Failed Graves is the best of The Lights' three very good records, if only because it perfectly illustrates what makes their music so compelling. It isn’t their ability to weave familiar influences in to a unique sound without sounding derivative (although that certainly helps; studied listeners will hear the Fall, Joy Division and Pavement references throughout), it’s their ability meld classic pop elements within their otherwise dissonant sonic approach. There’s a seemingly lazy, nervous energy that runs through Failed Graves, giving the listener the feeling that things could explode into chaos or slide in to a slick baseline and catchy guitar hook at any point. – Matt Ashworth
Robots and androids are inextricably linked to hip hop culture, from Zapp and Roger through the current humping of AutoTune. Janelle Monae, however, managed to turn it into something fresh with her debut album, The ArchAndroid. Influenced by Metropolis, Philip K. Dick, and David Bowie, The ArchAndroid is all over the place, in the best way. Glam, classical, opera, R&B, and hip hop all converge to take up OutKast’s freak flag and wave it. I mean, if they’re not using it… – AL
No sophomore slump for Cleveland hometown hero Sott Mescudi, better known as Kid Cudi. This Kanye protégé has grown up fast with another dark, deeply personal "concept" album. That growth is most glaring on "GHOST!" a song about addiction and losing touch with reality. St. Vincent (4AD) appears on "MANIAC," a track that prominently displays Kid's willingness to experiment. The songs dark lyrics are the antithesis of the soaring sound-scape, which seems to recede and flow much like the tide. And "Erase Me" sounds like the best Weezer song in recent memory. – TB
7) Halcyon Digest – Deerhunter In a perfect world, all "alternative" radio stations would have Deerhunter in heavy rotation. On Halycon Digest, Leader Bradford Cox and company took the best elements from their influences (Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, The Breeders), added a slight psychedelic twist, threw in a dab of Motown and released one of the best albums of the year. – Ben Allen
It shouldn’t work as well as it does. Take a liberal amount of earnest, lovelorn lyrics about Love, Truth, and Trust, mix with bearded harmonies straight outta 2008, deliver with Glen Hansardian sincerity, sweeping strings and horns, shake, repeat. That’s Sigh No More in a nutshell. But it does work, almost in spite of itself. Just about each track it a toe-tapping crescendo builder with at least one line that makes you say, “Wait, did he really just say that?” and yes, in order to like this album, you may have to drop a couple layers of that ironic indifference that you worked so hard to cultivate over the years. There’s a danger of these tunes that threatens to topple over into Coldplay-esque ridiculousness, but for now anyway, they’re on the right side of things. After all, Coldplay never had a kickass banjo player. – AL
If Craig Finn had a smarter, more self-indulged brother, it would be James Murphy. As much as Murphy's "aging hipster who would love for you to believe he doesn't give a shit even though he's still hanging around to belittle everyone so he obviously does give a shit" act gets old, LCD Soundsystem's records don't, and This is Happening may be their best yet. So good, in fact, that Murphy backpedaled a bit on his pronouncement that This is Happening would be LCD's last record. Here's hoping it wasn't, but if this is indeed the end of LCD Soundsystem, Murphy went out at the top of his game. – Kasey Anderson
Kayne definitely did what he needed to do to stay in the public eye. But after President Obama calls you a “jackass,” where do you go from there? For Kayne, the next logical step was to create a near-perfect hip-hop masterpiece. Keeping most of the downtempo, meandering style that made 808’s and Heartbreaks so different from his previous three offerings, Kayne sings with a childish glee over carefully-crafted epics and alongside a host of perfectly-utilized guest contributors. A master producer and perfectionist, it's Ye's lyrics that most impress. Love him or hate him, he's one of the most interesting personalities in popular music today. – TB
The Monitor confirms that Titus Andronicus has grabbed the baton from the Hold Steady and is now the young band most effectively emulating that raw power and joy of 1970s-era Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. Much like the Hold Steady, Titus wraps their Springsteen influences in a dirtier, punkier package. But on The Monitor, Titus goes one step further, aping classic E Street drum rolls and guitar leads while convincingly singing that "I've destroyed everything that wouldn't make me more like Bruce Springsteen." – Gabe Baker
Much like their debut Funeral and follow up Neon Bible, Arcade Fire managed to combine feelings of optimism and hope with a distant foreboding darkness on The Suburbs. Incredibly, the album is still very accessible, even with dense, orchestral instrumentation and complex arrangements. Lyrically, the songs focus on recollections of a simpler time, when the suburbs didn’t sprawl to the horizon and there was a sense of community among strangers. – BA
Formerly a divisive subject among our contributors – half lauding the band as blues-rock gods with one of the most mesmerizing live shows around while the other half rolled their eyes and called them just the latest in a string of similar, equally impressive bands in a well-mined genre – the Black Keys united our affections in 2010 with Brothers, their most soulful and accessible album to date. While other artists provided heated debate and disagreements, Kanye and Arcade Fire especially, Brothers' soulful sounds appeared on almost every contributor’s list. – MA Other 2010 favorites Songs--------------------------
(Also receiving votes: Beach House – Teen Dream; Black Breath – Heavy Breathing; Black Mountain – Wilderness Heart; Big Boi – Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty; Devo – Something for Everybody; Daft Punk – Tron Legacy; Drake – Thank Me Later; Elvis Costello – National Ransom; Frightened Rabbit – The Winter of Mixed Drinks; Gary Wilson – Electric Endicott; Gaslight Anthem – American Slang; Grinderman – 2; Idlewild – Post Electric Blues; John Mellencamp – No Better Than This; The Joy Formidable – A Balloon Called Moaning; Kylessa – Spiral Shadow; LCD Soundsystem – The London Sessions; Mark Ronson and the Business – Intl Record Collection; Mayer Hawthorne – A Strange Arrangement; Midnight Juggernauts – The Crystal Axis; N.E.R.D. – Nothing; Neil Young – Le Noise; Of Montreal – False Priest; Past Lives – Tapestry of Webs; Perfume Genius – Learning; The Posies – Blood Candy; The Roots – How I Got Over; Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings – I Learned the Hard Way; See Me River – The One That Got Awake; Spoon – Transference; Surfer Blood – Astrocoast; The Thermals – Personal Life; Truckasaurus – Quarters; U900 – Ukulele Mystery Tour; Vampire Weekend – Contra ; Violens – Amoral; Weekend – Sports; Yeasayer – Odd Blood; Young Evils – Enchanted Chapel)  (0) Comments |
2010 Faves
27) The Grand Theatre, Volume One – The Old 97’s
23) Together – The New Pornographers
19) The Lady Killer – Cee Lo Green
16) III – The Budos Band
15) So Runs the World Away – Josh Ritter
14) Infinite Arms – Band of Horses
12) Failed Graves – The Lights
10) ArchAndroid – Janelle Monae
9) Man on the Moon II: Legend of Mr. Rager – Kid Cudi
6) Sigh No More – Mumford and Sons
5) This is Happening – LCD Soundsystem
4) My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy – Kanye West
3) The Monitor – Titus Andronicus
2) The Suburbs – Arcade Fire
1) Brothers – Black Keys
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