2010

Here we enter a brand new decade, though even years later it still does not feel like it.  Either way it's been pretty good so far, but like the last couple years I have done it only gets harder and harder to look at it with any timeless wisdom.  Each year we get closer to the present I will have to admit to missing more releases and yes, having a more emotional reaction.  I was tempted to include Twin Sister's Colour Your Life as it really is long enough to count as an LP, but not so them, so well, anyway, onward to the future...

10.  Grass Widow - Past Time
I saw this all-female trio open for gimmick-rockers Hunx and his Punx and Shannon and Thee Clams and was utterly blown away by them.  I can't remember much afterward apart from buying this record and suggesting they play in Alameda with another band on this list.  The Bay area group has amazing arrangements that verge on progressive rock in their intertwining complexity.  What deepens this is that their vocals take the same approach with all three of them singing usually in a dizzying round.  With this double dose of complexity, they exhibit some of the finest musicianship around with their hypnotic sound making them standouts in the horribly predictable contemporary Bay Area scenes.  This is their second of three albums and the group has such a unique and effective sound their productivity is highly appreciated.  It functions best as an album as the sound is so unified, but "Fried Egg" and closer "Tuesday" are particularly strong.

9.  Danny James - Pear
Another great outsider from the Bay Area, Oakland's Danny James is one of the many artists (especially in this and next year) that is bringing back the smooth sounds of the 70s.  His spaciously-layered sound with its dreamy electric pianos, jazzy guitars, and multi-tracked vocals is reminiscent of studio greats like Steely Dan, showing just what can be done with modern technology.  Like his predecessors his music can get quite dramatic and emotional such as in "Boomerang Kids" and "Smelling Ghost," but with an excellent sense of humor best heard on the stunning opener "Tightlipped."  James' sense of pop is firmly rooted in the Beatles, but he is always apt to make sharp turns making this album quite engaging and unpredictable, even as the smooth vibes are always in full effect.

8.  Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today
After years without recording Pink comes back from the road with his finely-tuned band and some old songs along with a few new ones.  As a longtime fan of Pink, the professional sound here took some getting used to and his oddball sense of humor is more subdued than ever despite the alluring opener "Hot Body Rub," and "Butt-House Blondies."  This album is more about his obvious musical talent and managing to work successfully with others exemplified in covers and outside motifs like "Bright Lit Blue Skies."  The album brought a lot of smoothness back into the indie world with lead single "Round and Round," and others like "Can't Hear My Eyes" and the greatly "improved" production values work to their best effect  on the equally smooth "Beverly Kills," reinvented here as the perfect tribute to his home town.  Pink's new career got off to a fantastic start with this debut of sorts, but he kept the old vibes strong with standout "Fright Night (Nevermore)."

7.  Will Stratton - New Vanguard Blues
On his third album the New Jersey native makes another massive step forward, particularly in the way of production giving his sparse arrangements a more intimate yet expansive sound.  His guitar playing, now with a lot more electric has progressed as well, best heard in the quick bursting trills of "Do You Remember The Morning."  Stratton clearly has more comfort with what he can do in the studio not sticking to any simple live performance such as the move in an out of heavy rock on "The War is Over."  Guitar workouts like "Lying in the Dark" show that Stratton is far from your average Sufjan-esque singer-songwriter and more in line with the symphonic guitar greats, yet it is clear that the young artist's ambition is merely to create the best music he can, and that says a lot for someone with his credentials, indicating more and more to come.

6.  Surfer Blood - Astro Coast
Right when you're totally certain that nothing cool could ever come out of Florida these guys shark attacked us!  The echoey punk band put together a new sound that manages to yank  at the heart strings of our generation like a hyperactive and distorted Vampire Weekend.  The single "Swim" made a huge splash with its emotional fury that captured not simply what we wanted, but needed out of emo, but rather than heartbreak it captured the fear and desperation of being young in the most hopeless economy in history.  It was the most positive thing I had heard in a long time and it even had tambourines.  The rest of the album largely captured the same kind of positivity that could only come from a very troubled young man with a love for the best aspects of 80s pop.  Not to mention it kicks off with another winner on the best (released) song about hometown pride and loyalty "Floating Vibes."  It is a lot of comforting surfy fun and insanity - one of the most perfectly-named bands/records of the year.

5.  Four Tet - There is Love In You
I will admit I have not heard this album as much as the others, yet I feel completely confident placing it here.  This album,  while more "dance-oriented" approaches the same levels of beauty  on Rounds without even sounding all that similar.  Kieran Hebden again captures delicate emotion in a way rarely found  in any kind of music - especially electronic.  The real point  of reference I have was when one  song, "This Unforlds," I am fairly certain synced up perfectly with an old avant-garde film I was watching on silent with Kathryne.  It was easily the most beautiful experience of either of our lives, as she could attest.  Instant tears.  Again, Four Tet's music is in a universe of its own.

4.  Beach House - Teen Dream
With their popularity growing rapidly, the Baltimore duo recorded one of the most expensive modern "indie rock" records of all time.  All the work paid off, as did the incorporation of much heavier rhythms and slightly faster tempos and the opening "Zebra" was the perfect introduction to this bigger and more dramatic sound.  Legrand's vocals have become more commanding, heightening their natural Gallic sultriness by no longer having a passive quality.  Her keyboard playing also gets more subtle while Alex Scally's guitar gets bigger, but more tasteful in his mastery of effects and loops.  Where their previous album had been more of a romantic mood-setter, this is a cinematic and surreal  reinterpretation of the whole expanse of life with tracks like "Walk in the Park."  It is at its best, though, when they fully embrace dreamy atmospheres and their increased energy on a song like "Norway," which sounds like the Cocteau Twins were they trying to evoke a sleepy gray day in Baltimore rather than frightening Celtic mythology and the Crystal City.

3.  Titus Andronicus - The Monitor

Patrick Stickle and his boys did not think that their debut was monumental enough, apparently and managed to create an a double album that outdoes Born to Run in pure Jersey attack.  The themes of youthful and blue collar frustration and classic literature are still the foundation, and this time they add the Civil War for more intensity and patriotism.  While there really is no cohesive focus or structure in these themes it does keep the album uniformly intense.  With its references to places, things and feelings crucial to the New Jersey experience such as doing everything you can to be more like Bruce Springsteen this album, coupled with Crazy Rhythms can fully capture what it's like to be from here.  Opener "A More Perfect Union," might be all you need in that respect, but the paranoid "Titus Andronicus Forever" and the drunken "Theme From 'Cheers" go deeper into the mentality of the misunderstood state and 14 minute closer "The Battle of Hampton Roads" just ends it in more than one way.  With his reference to 80 West, Stickles proves I am not the only one to see that highway, which ends in San Fancisco, to be "Thunder Road."  Obviously it is an iron clad battleship of an album.  No moderation.  It will be heard.

2.  The Apples in Stereo - Travellers in Space and Time

This new direction for Robert Schneider and his band now featuring old friend Bill Doss is tragically still overlooked.  Recorded with the concept of making 70s R&B by extraterrestrials it is an ELO-influenced disco album with the band's funkiest hooks of all.  It is also a heartbreaking divorce rock album as "Hey Elevator," "It's All Right," and many others indicate, such as the first real song, the amazing "Dream About the Future."  On that particular track we hear the advantages of having two keyboard players with the layers of synthesizers and the piano that instantly establishes the mood of the whole album.  Schneider shares the spotlight better than ever here, considering he is no longer married to the  band's second most prolific song writer as most members get composition credits at some point and others, most importantly, the late Bill Doss get lead vocals.  His spot on Eric Allen's "Next Year At About The Same Time" is one of the album's best songs and sadly would be the former OTC's final contribution to music.  At least it was a highlight, as is this whole album.  While it may not be what many would expect from the band behind Fun Trick Noisemaker and Velocity of Sound is proves the Apples to be one of the top groups of the last twenty years with consistent quality in their material.

1.  Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest

After breaking through on a new level with Microcastle and Atlas Sound, Deerhunter, for the last time with the classic lineup follows up with the album that proves just  how important of a group they are.  More than just a noisy psychedelic band they take a distinctly nostalgic direction here, such as on songs like "Basement Scene" and the legendary "Memory Boy."  While getting a title from a guitar pedal may be taking a cue from an underground band like Mudhoney, the nostalgia element goes into  the mainstream with "Coronado"'s use of Clarence Clemons-style sax, a decision Bradford Cox took so much pride in it's hard  to believe there has not been any since.  While "Sailing" may or may not be a nod to Christopher Cross, its softer and more pleasant sound widens the scope of this often abrasive  sound and outdoes their previous quiet efforts.  It's slow and smooth sound, along with the building opener "Earthquake"  shows that the band can play in the trendy "chillwave" game better than their contemporaries, were they ever to be so uninspired.  This more contemplative side hits its peak  with the closing memorial to Jay Reatard "He Would Have Laughed," a heartfelt from one Southern madman to another.  Still it is the catchier moments that make this album such a triumph and suggests how limitless the band's future  could be on the aforementioned "Memory Boy," "Fountain Stairs," and the heartbreaking "Helicopter."  Deerhunter, a bunch of wild weirdos from Atlanta proved once and for all that their other albums were no fluke and that thanks to them rock is neither dead, nor even castrated.