Texplush's Favorite Albums of 2010

11. Gonjasufi - A Sufi and a Killer
Backed by two of my new favorite producers, Gaslamp Killer and Flying Lotus, Gonjasufi sings twisted soul in the midst of dense and disorienting electronics.



10. Frightened Rabbit - Winter of Mixed Drinks
I guess there's nothing quite like a thick Scottish accent to make sadness feel authentic. These guys are going to make the young girls swoon if they keep writing songs like 'Swim Until You Can't See Land'. Driving rhythms, hooky melodies and eclectic arrangements overshadow the occasionally over-earnest lyric. FR feels like sipping whiskey in a warm chair by the fire.



9. Janelle Monae - The Arch Android
A protege of Big Boi, Janelle Monae's album is the most over-the-top and ambitious of the year. She attempts a slew of genres- and invents a few of her own in the process. Her voice is absolutely insane and she's short and adorable. Also my vote for best album cover of the year.



8. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and the Good Friday tracks
With Kanye, the highs have always been stunningly high, and the lows have been embarrassingly low. That is still true with MBDTF, but songs like 'Power', 'All of the Lights', 'Monster' and 'Runaway' are the best of his career. I could do without the Chris Rock monologue, but Kanye makes up for the unlistenable stuff with almost another album's worth of great tracks for free on his website (the GOOD Friday tracks). Here's one of my favorites:



7. Deerhunter - Halycon Digest
I have always flirted with liking this band, but previous albums have been inconsistent and immature. Halycon Digest, on the other hand, slays on almost every track. Neil Young meets Sonic Youth, with absolutely killer production. A headphones masterpiece:



6. Vampire Weekend - Contra
I drank the Kool-Aid. Contra is a great album and such a leap forward in terms of production, with a lot of new colors for VW's pallate that surprise and complement their established sound. There are still some embarrassing lyrics here and there, but Contra proves that Vampire Weekend is in it to innovate. Here's one of my favorite tracks:



5. Field Music - Measure
Field Music's third album is an embarrassment of riches. Twenty songs and every single one is impeccably written, arranged, played and produced. A modern XTC with a hint of Big Star - I like to imagine if I was a math major and british, this was the music I'd make.



4. Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz
Just when I was on the verge of tiring of Sufjan and his ever-angelic anthems, this crucial work in the Stevens oeuvre appears, on the heels of the less impressive but still entertaining All Delighted People EP. The Age of Adz is not always a soothing listen - it's often dissonent and cacophonous - but it is nevertheless a welcome change of pace and a thrilling ride. This is a long player in the epic sense. As some have commented, the closing 20-minute track 'Impossible Soul' alone has more exciting musical ideas than most other albums that came out this year.



3. The Walkmen - Lisbon
This is their simplest record and most unified statement. Drawing inspiration from Sun Studios, the arrangements are spacious, warm and simple. Hamilton Leithauser croons like he's never crooned, the guitars chime with honeyed distortion and the Walkmen continue to sound like absolutely no one else. Lisbon is calming, invigorating, fresh and classic all at once. The money shot on this song comes at 2:28:



2. Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
The best hip top album of the year. Thick, southern, purple and funky. This track says it all:



1. Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma
This year, I fell in love with LA's beat scene, of which Flying Lotus is sort of the godfather. Conceived as a 'Space Opera', Cosmogramma feels to me what I imagine it must have felt like to hear jazz for the first time. It has served as quite the gateway drug, introducing me to Gaslamp Killer, Teebs, Shlohmo, The Take, Baths and more. Total eargasm.



Honorable Mention:
Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings
Aloe Blacc
Spoon
Gorrilaz
MGMT
New Pornographers
Maps and Atlases
Mark Ronson
The Soft Pack
The Roots
Sleigh Bells
LCD Soundsystem
Mount Kimbie

Favorite Songs:
Swim Until You Can't See Land - Frightened Rabbit
Shadow People - Dr. Dog
Rill RIll - Sleigh Bells
When The World Comes To An End - Dirty Projectors
Shutterbug - Big Boi
Tightrope - Janelle Monae
Power - Kanye West
Coronado - Deerhunter
Norway - Beach House

Back to The Week That Was

I'm going to try to issue a few posts on albums from last year. It seems silly to declare "best of" lists and then just leave them to sit for time eternal.

First up is The Week That Was. I learned about this group from Tex Plush in either November or December, but was still taken by them to the point that they made the #8 spot on my list for the entire year.

I was already warmed up to them via School of Language, whom I spent the better part of the year drooling over. And while I don't think TWTW's album is quite as consistent as SOL's Sea to Shore, I think it contains the highlight of their combined output-- and Field Music's as well.

Here it is, "Scratch the Surface," which is the last cut on the album. Love it and weep, bitches...



Analysis: It still holds up, and probably still in the #8 spot where I had it last year.

Drischord's Top 10 Albums of 2008

A Merry Christmas, Hanukkah and Festivus to the entire Kittybrains Collective, our loyal readers and of course, the Web Sheriff. I give you my Top 10 albums of 2008-- a year that wasn't as jam-packed with awesomeness as 2007, but certainly had enough to make a Top 10 difficult.

10. The Tallest Man on Earth- Shallow Grave
Thanks to Quinapalus for weeding through Pitchfork's annual paean to pasty white guys playing rave music to dig out their review of this. I love this record. I love the guitar playing, the lyrics, his off-kilter voice and the fact that he's from Sweden.

9. The Week That Was- The Week That Was
Thanks to Tex Plush for alerting the collective to this record. Thanks to Field Music for a) being pretty darn good in and of itself and b) spawning side projects that are even better than the main band.

8. Vampire Weekend- Vampire Weekend
God I want to hate this band. In terms of background and hype, they basically are the Strokes. But in terms of talent, they're so much better. Yes, I do hear the Paul Simon-isms. But I think they're limited to only a few songs, and frankly there's a lot of Afro-pop that they touch on that Paul Simon missed. They also are one of the few indie acts to use string instruments in a way that doesn't reek of total dilletante-ism. I'll give points to anyone who gets more out of major scale than their cellist. This debut isn't perfect, but damn if it isn't promising.

7. Wye Oak- If Children
I can't understand why this record was ignored by critics this year. Goes to show that good PR can take you a lot farther than good music. If you want an album that better combines delicate beauty and dissonant guitar/drum fuzz-outs, you'll have to settle for Yo La Tengo. (Only Yo La Tengo doesn't really sound like these guys. So you'll just have to get this record.)

6. Sun Kil Moon- April
Mark Kozelek has gotten so good at what he does, sometimes we don't give him enough credit for solidly connecting every time. This isn't going to make a non-fan a fan or vice versa, but if you dig Red House Painters, solo Kozelek or earlier Sun Kil Moon, this record offers up exactly what you'd be asking for.

5. Bon Iver- For Emma, Forever Ago
As I noted in my earlier rant about the cheapening of "minimalism," this record is a great example of how stripping back can be the best thing an artist does. (Just not always.) Anyway, by "minimalist" standards, this isn't particulary drastic. There's a good deal of multi-tracking, particularly on the vocals, which gives them this amazingly eerie quality. I'm totally with the critics on this one. Awesome.

4. REM- Accelerate
Hope everyone can hear me over the sound of Tex Plush barfing. I believe Eric linked to an blog entry documenting how critics claim that every REM album is "the best since ___", thereby invalidating the previous album they had bestowed with equal praise 2-3 years ago. Well this time it's true. This is their best album since either Up or New Adventures in Hi-Fi. (Both are classics, but not everyone realizes Up's greatness. Ironically Tex does, yet he does not care for Accelerate. Go figure.)

3. Bob Dylan- Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8
I was late in the game to this because I wasn't in a place to be buying double CDs. Also, the fact that everything on here was recorded 2 to 20 years ago makes it somewhat unconventional to make a 2008 Top 10 list. But there are so many great unreleased songs on here, that there was really no way I could deny it. Quinapalus posted some great tracks-- Someday Baby and Dreamin' of You-- and there are many more where that came from. God Knows, Series of Dreams and Marchin' to the City are standouts for me.

2. School of Language- Sea From Shore
Quirky, guitar-heavy, great drums, reminiscent of Shudder to Think, Jeff Buckley and noisy Flaming Lips all at once. What more could a boy really want?

1. Fleet Foxes- Fleet Foxes
Originally this wasn't even going to make my list, but then I read Pitchfork's brilliantly rendered Top 50, which reminded me how much I loved the Knife in 2006 and suddenly I reali--

Aw, fuck that! I don't need the skinny-pants music intelligentsia to tell me what the best album of the year was. It was GUNS N' FUCKING ROSES motherfuckers!

Chinese Democracy, though flawed (yes, even I admit that) was the best record of the year. Out of 14 songs, it had zero duds, 2 tracks that didn't hold up (Scraped and Sorry), 2 tracks that were interesting but overwrought (Madagascar and This I Love) and 10 fucking amazing songs that are going to join Axl Rose's canon. Yes, he is a ridiculous individual who screwed himself over by refusing to publicly promote the album, but he's a very gifted musician. Time will be kind to this record.


Honorable Mentions
Deerhunter, Deerhoof, American Music Club, the Hold Steady, Shearwater, Drive-By Truckers, Andrew Bird (Soldier On EP), Gutter Twins, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan, Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks

Might Have Made It But Never Heard It
Sea and Cake, Pavement (Brighten the Corners reissue), Calexico, Ryan Adams

Likely Would Have Made My 2007 List Had I Heard It That Year
Travis Morrison Hellfighters, Field Music

For Your Consideration: The Week That Was

I was planning on giving ya'll a break from me, but I have to post this in light of Drischord's latest.
The Week That Was is another Field Music side project that came out this year. Pretty hard to describe, but I hear alot of early Genesis here. I love the way the drums sound. Highly recommended.
The Good Life
Scratch The Surface

For Your Consideration: School of Language

School of Language is my greatest new music discovery of 2008. I randomly stumbled across their album Sea From Shore on eMusic. (Those guys should totally pay me royalties.) It fits my taste so well, which is interesting because it's basically the solo project of the drummer from Field Music, who are generally too "British" for my tastes.

I think a number of you will like this, but Eric in particular should drag the river to get a copy of this. Not the least of which is the fact that the album's bookends are a 4 part song called "Rockist," which is the subject of an earlier Eric rant on this blog (or possibly an e-mail before the blog started.)

Anyway, this track isn't one of the Rockist series, but it's equally good. It's a little ditty they like to call Extended Holiday, which means "extended vacation" in British.