Best Albums Ever of 2010

so i have been wanting to write a blog for quite some time now and i have to tell you, my initial thought was, (as i'm sure is many of yours now) "isn't there an over saturation of opinion on the internet already?" thankfully, my second thought was, "how can i best perpetuate this?"

so after settling on writing a weblog (which is long for 'blog'), i then had to wait for the internet to be invented. and honestly, the next like, twenty years was just procrastination due to excellent television programming.

but now Finally, its here... Another Blog! (see what i did there?)

for my seminal sojourn into this world of subjective argumentation, i thought i would take this first opportunity of mine to quite pointedly thumb my nose at the status quo and perfunctory wisdom of the contemporary opinion makers on the web who both carelessly and frequently remind us to, "go big, go polemical."

so, i'm sorry to disappoint all of the internet fat cats out there, blogging condescendingly from your big "mother's basement" on the hill, but this blog is going to be about something on which we all, as common sense American's can agree... my taste in music.

the albums listed below are not "The Best Of 2010". they are just the albums that i happened to listen to this year, most of which were my favorites, some of which i just wanted to write about in order from least likable to most likable. but that makes for an awful title. so without any further ado, i give you... "The Best Albums Ever of 2010."

CONTRA, by Vampire Weekend

this album is terrible. and my personal loathing for its repetitive, uninspired, (and just bloody lazy) song writing is compounded unforgivably by the fact that Vampire Weekend's eponymous musical offering was such an outstanding example of what pop music can be. "Contra", however, is not. it's just plain garbage... actually, that's unfair, garbage has some variety.

"Contra" is so bad, they would have been more honest, if sticking to the video game theme, they had called it "Pitfall." this is a Vampire Weekend album that could make Van Helsing long for Mondays... think that joke was terrible? try listening to "Contra" by Vampire Weekend.

PLASTIC BEACH, by The Gorillaz

okay, this album's not so bad. in fact, it's pretty good. while i must say that i miss the cartoon characters who comprise the fictional quartet on the cover of this latest work by Damon Albarn, i do enjoy about 30-40% of the music contained therein. no, this album is NOT "Demon Days" which was produced by the Danger Mouse himself and featured one of my favorite emcee's MF DOOM (and for my money was the "band's" greatest offering to date) but it does articulate a distinctly new theme in the canon of Gorillaz music: complicity. Albarn paints another melancholy picture of a world in which the existentially adrift youth who frequent his subject matter, stumble myopically, almost willingly into a world of transparent commercial consumption, where the puppets see the strings and long for their pull, where even the most sacrosanct of human emotion is subject to the coercion of the industrial free market as the album's most devastating track "Rhinestone Eyes" demonstrates a third of the way in (so much math in this review). Albarn seems to be contemplating the apathetic resistance and even luke warm acceptance of a horrific new world consensus, in which social progress is measured exclusively by material abundance while the devastating pollution of its bi-products are brushed aside as isolated images of "factories far away."

and i can guarantee you, this was exactly Snoop Dog's interest in lending his vocal talents to the albums first track. if anything, "Plastic Beach" is a heterogeneous mixture: a kernel of well intended, deft and important music-making combined with the subsequent dilution of second hand Hip-Pop throw-away music...

in a way, "Plastic Beach" is a self prophecy. its something terrifying and beautiful that has outshone the unseemly pile of refuse its steeped in. i'm sure somewhere, Snoop Dog is writing all this down.

EMBRYONIC, by The Flaming Lips

i love the Flaming Lips. from "The Soft Bulletin" through "At War with the Mystics" i have fallen in love with their strange, sublime, and often visionary gifts in the art of making music. and "Embryonic" is no different... actually, that's a lie, "Embryonic" is completely different. chiefly in that no other Flaming Lips albums gives me nightmares. the band's magnum opus, "Yoshima Battles the Pink Robots" was thematically embedded in a dark, futuristic world in which humanity fights (both literally and figuratively, from without and within) against an ever-advancing technological tide that threatens to consume us in its wake... but that which was psychologically disturbing in the album was offset, musically by a kind of subtle yearning for genuine human connection... no such luck with "Embryonic".

"Embryonic" sounds like a recording a serial killer might make in his basement (or "her" basement, unfair of me to assume). even the moments of truly gorgeous melody that pepper the album are permeated with a kind of hollow despairing that refuses to release the listener from the general unease of the album's tone.

sound unnerving? correct! but coming from the Flaming Lips, this is a seismic shift, one fully embraced and while psychologically off-putting, musically, "Embryonic's" aplomb is undeniably moving.

SNAKES FOR THE DIVINE, by High On Fire

i know, i know... i can hear all the "Sesame Street" fans out there chiming in unison, "High on Fire kicks ass!!!" yet more appropriately and probably in much more dulcet tones, "one of these things is not like the others..." and they would be correct in both cases. my first three album reviews fall decidedly along the lines of the Indie Rock/Pop/Electronic genres, while High on Fire decidedly does not. for those of you unacquainted, (more the "Dora the Explorer" crowd) High on Fire is one of the world's premiere Heavy Metal bands whose two chief musical influences include Black Sabbath and Pot (that joke, stolen directly from my brother). and so for all those who, out of gross unfamiliarity with the genre, dismiss its inhabitants out of hand as an anachronism which survives in spite of its simplicity or some empty meme confusingly inadequate and generally unqualified for comparison to the high-art of "Contra" by Vampire Weekend, i will only say this: Heavy Metal, at its best, from its origins in Sabbath through its evolution to the genre's current zeitgeist, Mastodon, has more in common with Mozart, Wagner or Bach than 90% of all other modern music (fact check it! it's exactly 90%)! Heavy Metal is the musical expression of extremity and simplicity in dynamic conversation with one another. the classical composers understood this and we happy few of Metal devotion are the direct descendants of this artistic tradition... so you can suck it, everything else!

now about High on Fire... i was, at first, somewhat dismissive of the band for what i perceived as its detached and seemingly harsh superficial aesthetic, but like all great Metal bands, just below the surface, lie what i consider to be the heart of Heavy Metal: a sincere desire to change things for the better.

High on Fire is no different. when they are at their most sublime, they are detailing, enumerating and excoriating those systems they consider directly antithetical to human freedom: corruption, conformity, and most of all doctrinal fundamentalism. all of which is wrapped around the core desire for a humanity recognized. they just happen to do it with guitar riffs and double bass drums which taken all together, will shred your fucking face off.

i will again quote my brother on this topic (as in my mind he remains the foremost expert): "i bought the album for $10, heard the first track and thought 'that was worth it'." for my part, the first two tracks are worth three times the amount. "Snakes for the Divine" is an alternately soaring, brutal, risky Heavy Metal endeavor that reaches the farthest outside the medium of any High on Fire album to date which also ends up being their most significant.

CONGRATULATIONS, by MGMT

okay, let's be honest, nothing was going to satisfy fans of MGMT's first release "Oracular Spectacular" as a follow-up short of re-releasing the same album under a different name... perhaps "Schmoracular Schmectacular" would have pacified the Indie-masses for a month or two before their canines distended at the faint possibility of 'more of the same,' but music fans who truly appreciate innovation and are willing to accept the purview of adventurous musicians would have been severely disappointed by such a thing. music nerds are weird like that.

luckily for us, MGMT did not attempt to reproduce their first album. astonishingly reverberant though it was, Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden took a decidedly bizarre and unconventional turn with "Congratulations" most of which was, (as Kid A is to OK Computer) a reaction to the overwhelming success of their previous album. but it was also a decidedly brave departure for the fledgling band who severely chanced the reality of alienating large numbers of the fans they won with their previous release. yet as they unapologetically lament in their 12 minute plus epic "Siberian Breaks": "wide open arms can be so cold" and just to further the point with a rhyme at the songs apex "i hope i die before i get sold, i'd rather die before i get sold..." the song itself is (as many have derided it) derivative, but to my account (and as you know i own a very precise abacus) "Siberian Breaks" hints at the influence of at least "Simon and Garfunkel," "The Mommas and the Poppas" and a sound distinctly, transcendentally, pop 80's, all of which culminates in something uniquely synergistic and undeniably MGMT.

in fact throughout the album, one hears the Beach Boys, Brian Eno (duh) and even the Beatles but while the influences are clear the result is again unique.

"Congratulations" will be forever hated by those who love "Oracular Spectacular" to the point of exclusivity... but it will be revered by those who hunger for musical artistry that creates with an unapologetic recklessness, dangerously in pursuit of something more than what has already been achieved, something that moves the listener forward to a new way of hearing, something promising beyond the lust for congratulations.

BROTHERS, by the Black Keys

listening to "Brothers" makes me feel a bit like i often did while watching Michael Jordan play basketball as a kid in the 90's. no matter how 'spectacular the move' nor 'tenacious the D' (Albert, 134, 515) something in the back of my brain said, "i could do that." now, don't get me wrong. kids are stupid. and i am well aware now that i couldn't, in point of fact, do that. but like those long gone days of my overly confident, youthful self-assessments, hearing "Brothers" for the first time, i couldn't help myself... it sounded a lot like an album that i could have made.

but both Michael Jordan and The Black Keys (never thought i would begin a sentence this way) possess the common quality of those truly exceptional entities which are so bloody good at what they do, that they actually make it look easy.

i heard the first three songs off of this album while driving through the deserts of Utah (don't re-read it, it wasn't a typo) and i was taken aback, i thought, "wow, that's a great way to start an album!" and then i thought, "oh, WOW, this one's great too!" for each of the next 11 songs until the album finished and my ipod skipped ahead to Contra, by Vampire Weekend, whereupon i deliberately took up the wheel, careened violently into oncoming traffic, collided with a moving van shipping bricks of C4 and exploded upon impact.

the most obvious musical influence on "Brothers" and on the Black Keys in general, is the Blues and while i'm not personally a very big fan of the archetype of Blues music, i am a huge fan of its influence on Rock music... apparently so are they. "Brothers" is built around the tradition of Rock-anthem-making, Blues enthusiasts such as Led Zepplin, Cream and even the occasional Sabbath (i hear them everywhere) as they echo each at different moments throughout.

it was hard for me not to pick Brothers as my favorite album of the year. musically, it is the best. hands down. but my favorite music is about something more than such an excellent sound. my top two albums of the year have shown me something intangible between the sounds that make them, personally, even more special than this near perfect offering from the Black Keys.

WARP RIDERS, by The Sword

The Sword's website tells us, without even the slightest hint of irony or self-effacement, this of its tertiary release, "Warp Riders tells the tale of Ereth, an archer banished from his tribe on the planet Acheron. A hardscrabble planet that has undergone a tidal lock, which has caused one side to be scorched by three suns, and the other enshrouded in perpetual darkness, it is the background for a tale of strife and fantasy, the battle between pure good and pure evil."

all of which just goes to show you just what Arthur C. Clarke and THC can do when they work together.

the 2010 release from The Sword, one of my favorite bands and one unfortunately pinned down by the misnomer of "Doom Metal," brings an almost 'take that' quality to its highly conceptual jump into hyper-space. on their two preceding offerings, the band brought its devotees along with them through a world unmistakably based in that of the 1930's pulp-fiction fantasy universe of Robert E. Howard, the progenitor of Conan the Barbarian.

normally, when an album becomes so specifically conceptual, it runs a high risk of a creating a severe disconnect between its sound and its subject. how does one manage to fit a short story entitled "The Frost Giant's Daughter" into a blues/metal/rock album without the resultant audio betraying the inspiration from which it came and coming across to the listener, in general, as either thematically inconsistent or musically disjointed?

if one is The Sword, then the answer is that one does it deftly, consistently and with balls the size of Jupiter (each one). with a seemingly otherworldly ability to musically articulate anachronism with riff-centric metal, The Sword forged two ground-breaking albums that put them at the forefront of their genre and positioned them perfectly to defend their newly usurped throne from all would-be challengers... all they had to do was stay the Fantasy metal course (sure, it's a 'course') and The Sword would remain king.

so they made a sci-fi album instead.

much anticipated and much fretted over in the metal community, "Warp Riders" was very well reviewed upon release, but for my 10,000 Quatloos, not nearly as well as was deserved. while continuing to evoke a sound unquestionably unique to the band, the alchemy of a retro space-odyssey that defies expectation, bending the genre like so much space-time and in doing so, soars to moments of truly transcendent musical crescendos, "Warp Riders" is a rock-metal album that has defined the future in more ways than one.

from the first instrumental assault in "Archeron/Unearthing the Orb" to the final, harrowing decent of "the Night the Sky Cried (Tears of Fire)", The Sword is consistent in marrying subject and sound like no one else can (with the obvious exception of Mastodon who released "Crack the Skye" a few months too early to be the unequivocal number one on this list). my favorite stand out on the album, "Lawless Lands" ranges from its bluesy intro about the despondent and solitary archer to its epic, towering 'chorus' telling of his redemption amidst the oblivion of a dying world. in the most stark terms i can manage, what makes this album so exceptional is that it sounds like what it is saying. when i consider seriously the scope and depth of just what that is, an epic story of individual salvation against the backdrop of a world-ending cataclysm, creating "Warp Riders" becomes a task bordering on the quixotic... and in taking up the challenge, The Sword has again emerged victorious... long live the King.

THE SUBURBS, by Arcade Fire

to many of you, my favorite album of the year may not be nearly as much of a surprise as it was to me. when i first listened to "The Suburbs", i had to fight through the bitterness of wanting to like it far more than i actually did. having fallen deeply and painfully in love with both "Funeral" and "Neon Bible" well past their expiration date for the rest of the listening public (which, i believe, grows increasingly shorter by the year for all of us) i was perfectly poised, almost over-ripe to hear an album that would change my life.

upon a first, second and even third hearing, "The Suburbs" was not that album. i found it a generically melancholy and lacking the occasional touch of the weirdness i had come to long for in each of their offerings to date. in short, it was not at all what i had hoped for.

but what makes this band so important to me is that, despite my cynicism and painfully short emotional memory, they somehow consistently offer one of the rarest and most sublime gifts that musicians can: with each new album, Arcade Fire teaches me how to listen.

however The Suburbs is not defined solely by the creeping exceptionality of its sound. upon each and every subsequent listen, the album hints at itself, it winks through echo and refrain. it gives us phrases like "I would rather be wrong, than live in the shadow of your song." which proves to be as significant as it is ephemeral. what we are left with is a fleeting description of the fleeting. and the albums central question, is one i still cannot answer for myself: how does this generation, in preparing to take up the mantle of status quo adulthood, create a world which is in anyway meaningful, when we have watched the world that was built for us in childhood slowly crumble into meaninglessness at the hands of time and proximity, as evidenced in the words of the eponymous opening track, "and all the walls that they built in the seventies finally fall, and all the houses they built in the seventies finally fall, it meant nothing at all, it meant nothing at all, it meant nothing..."

in what is, for me, the album's most haunting track, "Suburban Wars", those steadfast allegiances forged out of childhood tribalism begin to disintegrate amidst the inevitable despondence that results when one generation takes up the standard of its predecessor and what was once the only thing to believe in, becomes a distant, forgotten, promise, "And my old friends, I can remember when, you cut your hair, we never saw you again, now the cities we live in could be distant stars, and I search for you in every passing car."

because of Arcade Fire, i understand Bruce Springsteen fans. i am going to admit to you now that i don't have much of a working knowledge of "The Boss," so much so that i feel uncomfortable referring to the man's nickname without employing quotation marks as a kind of buffer zone betwixt myself and it. but what i do know is that when i ask those who love Springsteen to impart their appreciation, the justifications are almost always non musical.

I'm certainly not saying that "people don't like Bruce Springsteen because of his music," but i do think he captured the energy and emotion of his time by generating a sound between the sounds, a vibration that had yet to be given a name, one that he took up himself.

to those of us little brothers and sisters of Gen-X, Bruce Springsteen is a kind of Sphinx whose riddle was never intended for us. a riddle that, even upon explanation, still manages to confuse and frustrate the uninitiated because to understand, as i have oft been told, "you really had to be there."

i believe "The Suburbs" will be one of the many albums that defines our generation, the little brothers and sisters of Gen X, but at some point, those who include the ephemeral in their art must also succumb to the inevitable nature of the ephemeral. it will fade from our collective memory and as we move past the feeling, Arcade Fire will eventually become the Sphinx's riddle for our little brothers and sisters. words will fail us and convinced of the impossibility of the imparting their significance, we will undoubtedly inform them that the conversation is pointless because, in the end, they really had to be there.

and if we are lucky, a band will come along for them that will capture their emotion and energy in such a way that one of them may say at the end of a self-important blog filled with specious opinions and sycophantic cleverness, that because of that band, they understand Arcade Fire fans.

also Contra is by Vampire Weekend is a terrible album.