PopMatters' Best 50 Albums of 2010

There’s a perfectly good reason why I never thought of Michael Jackson as the “King of Pop”. It’s not because I’m a hater. It’s not that I thought he was undeserving of the title. It’s that I always thought of Michael Jackson as an entire category unto himself. How, I wondered, could he be “of” anything? He was his own genre. Same thing with the Beatles. James Brown. Ella Fitzgerald. Aretha.

Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, has covered an awful lot of ground in a short period of time. Like many other people, I first happened across his music during late night channel surfing. Many of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim commercial bumps have been scored by his music since 2006, but it wasn’t long before his snippets took fuller forms, and connections with artists like J Dilla and the Stones Throw roster opened the door for his debut, 1983, that same year. With the follow-up, 2008’s Los Angeles, Flying Lotus took large strides towards becoming the face of Los Angeles’ burgeoning ‘beat generation’ scene. At the very least, much like Black Milk, he had stepped out from the shadow of J Dilla and become his own entity.

But it is the heart, soul, and humanity of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy that ultimately marks it as the defining pop moment of 2010.

Last year’s war of words between the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne and Arcade Fire front man Win Butler was, at the time, an enjoyable diversion. Although Coyne’s comments (about what he perceived as arrogance in Butler’s crew) seemed somewhat impolite and petty, the flare-up between the two acts injected some energy and fun into a modern rock scene that is too often stuffy and image-conscious. Butler responded, Coyne apologized then retracted his apology, and finally the whole affair died down. Both bands continued to sell records and make money.

If I initially had any trouble figuring out exactly what to make of The Airing of Grievances, the 2008 debut by New Jersey blogosphere faves Titus Andronicus, it was only because the experience of listening to the record was so purely and deliriously pleasurable that it led me to distrust my own opinion of it a little. Arriving via a wave of hype in the digital sphere nearly a full year before getting a physical release in early 2009 (a potent example of underdog ambition having finally outpaced the creaky machinations of an increasingly lumbering industry), the album was most confusing for the number of contradictions it seemed to embrace. A band so exhibitionist in their literary tendencies to name themselves after Shakespeare’s earliest and bloodiest tragedy should not, for example, drop a Seinfeld reference as the title of their first album. Likewise, a band that bravely flaunts their pretentions with song titles like “Albert Camus” or “Upon Viewing Brueghel’s ‘Landscape With the Fall of Icarus’” should probably not populate said titles with the kind of angst-y, adolescent lyrical diatribes that lead yelper Patrick Stickles filled the album with, like the frantically scrawled journal pages of a moody high school kid who spends a little too much time alone in his bedroom.

Since Super Taranta!, Gogol Bordello’s excellent 2007 breakthrough, the band has built plenty of hot anticipation for a follow-up by earning a reputation as one of rock’s most combustible live bands. Along the way, they caught the ear of goldsmith-guru Rick Rubin, who has produced their fifth album, Trans-continental Hustle.

Eminem can rap about recovery and Drake can rap about the pitfalls of newfound fame. Each can eloquently argue, with mind numbing flow and envy inducing wordplay, about how tough things have been for them. They might even be right, but there isn’t an MC in history that has had it as tough as Big Boi.

Forget the hype and set aside your suspicions that Sleigh Bells might only be the blogosphere’s flavor-of-the-month—none of that will matter once the sensory overload of Treats kicks in anyway. And that onslaught of noise pretty much begins from the very first instant. You’ll probably be too shellshocked by the anxiety-inducing and heart-palpitating thrills of the leadoff track “Tell ‘Em” to do anything else but take it all in, even if your eardrums tell you to turn off the racket. After some piledriving beats and a towering riff trigger the start of “Tell ‘Em”, hyperactive drum machine rhythms and frenetic synths push their way to the front of the dense, crowded mix, disorienting anyone who expects a sense of space and depth in a song. You figure out pretty fast that Sleigh Bells ain’t music to just have on in the background.

Halcyon Digest is, to my mind, the best we’ve seen from Deerhunter, and a hint that their best is still to come.

We already know Joanna Newsom isn’t afraid to go big. Hell, she sits her small frame behind that hulk of a harp all the time, and knocks out those strange, percussive notes of hers. However, Have One on Me isn’t big—it’s enormous. It’s an album without borders, its two-hour-plus running time is an unruly and unreasonable length. We saw her expand from tight, contained songs on her debut The Milk-Eyed Mender to sprawling yet stately folk epics on Ys, backed by the huge swirl of Van Dyke Parks’ string arrangements. So, at first glance, you could mistake this new, triple-album as a next step for her.

There’s probably nothing I can say about Ariel Pink that hasn’t been said better by Mike Powell, my nomination for Pink biographer should the occasion arise. An early champion of works like The Doldrums and House Arrest by Pink and his imaginary band the Haunted Graffiti, Powell nevertheless grew weary of the seemingly endless array of home-recorded reissues that surfaced after his first appearance on Animal Collective’s Paw Tracks imprint. It has been said that Pink has not released any new material since 2004, meaning that his entire sojourn into the spotlight and under the microscope occurred during a time when he wasn’t even writing music (This isn’t entirely true; there was a brief stint in the scatological side projects Holy Shit and Shits and Giggles). As the archives grew dry, it seemed like Pink was destined to fade, as he himself had decidedly preordained. His lost basement pop/ obscured-photo/ tattered record sleeve persona seemed as much a deterministic rule as an autonomous construct.

To hear Best Coast’s throwback indie-pop, it can be hard to tell whether frontwoman Bethany Cosentino is an old-fashioned hopeless romantic or a Twitter-era AD/HD flirt, the blogosphere’s it-girl of the moment. As a songwriter, Cosentino has a command of the necessary elements that go into pop songs that could stand the test of time, while having a good sense of what’s current musically and culturally. You can hear her keen grasp of past and present on the title track of Crazy for You and on the doo-woppy “The End”, both of which sound like Cosentino and collaborator Bobb Bruno could’ve sampled the “oohs” and “ahhs” from an obscure 1960s compilation, then posted ‘em straight on their MySpace page. So while the debut album’s stories and aesthetic are familiar enough, there’s something about Best Coast’s take on unrequited love and burning yearning that’s refreshing and in the here-and-now.

Like its concluding song, The Age of Adz is occasionally transfixing, but overall inconsistent.

It may be a sign that Konono No. 1 have made their mark on the international musical consciousness that no introduction or attempt to explain the group and what they do are provided on the liner to their new CD. Instead, the booklet presents us with some great photographs of second-hand car parts artistically piled in the Ndjili market. Ndjili is a municipality of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo where Konono No. 1 perform and now record their spectacular brand of “congotronics”. The connection, as the brief liner notes make clear, is that it is from the used-parts market that Konono get the materials for the instruments they build. This latest installment in the “Congotronics” series takes us a few more steps into the world of Konono No. 1, treating us as returning guests familiar with “Papa” Mingiedi Mawangu, his raucous electric likembés, and the incredible extended trance music to which they contribute.

Instead, there’s a conflation of sexual politics and the very real violence of power on Grinderman 2 that makes it as unnerving as it is invigorating to listen to.

By anyone’s standards, Caribou’s Dan Snaith has a pretty impressive batting average. With the exception of 2001’s slightly bland glitchtronica pre-season tryout Start Breaking My Heart, Snaith’s much-adored full-lengths wound up in many year- and decade-end lists throughout the naughts. Swim is Snaith’s fifth solo long player (two were released under a moniker whose name can now only be used to advertise on behalf of a geriatric ex-punk) and he’s back to broken hearts. Swim‘s sonics boast valleys and peaks that play out like the domestic dramas contained within the lyrics. Despite a decidedly acute pop bent held over from 2007’s Andorra, the sketches of human interpersonal struggle are best heard as the aggregate of a fragmented exposition, rather than nine separate acts.

That Young takes risks with his music at this stage in his career is remarkable enough; that this one has paid off so handsomely is nothing short of spectacular.

The good news for Drive-By Truckers fans is that their new album The Big To-Do rarely strays from what the band does best. The bad news is band’s lyrics are taking on a far greater resonance for millions who have lost their jobs and homes in the Great Recession.

Bingham’s work on the Crazy Heart soundtrack found him working with producer T-Bone Burnett, who produced Bingham’s third album, the new Junky Star. This is Bingham’s record, a showcase for his tightening songwriting and singular vocals, but it also carries all the hallmarks of a Burnett project, which means, of course, that it sounds terrific.

Although Forget might not usher in a new musical era, it’s a near-flawless album and certainly one of the most impressive debuts we’ve ever seen.

Justin Townes Earle confidently writes and performs these 10+ songs as if he’s singing about life back in Tennessee instead of the Big Apple, and does this so damn convincingly that you believe him.

“See, you don’t want to fall in love with me,” drawls the inimitable Erykah Badu to her potential suitors in “Fall in Love (Your Funeral)”. “Prepare to have your sh*t rearranged the way I say,” she warns. “You’ve got to change jobs… and change gods,” she taunts. With a nod to the Notorious B.I.G.‘s classic line from Ready to Die‘s “Warning”, Badu lays the smack down, “There’s gonna be some slow singin’ and flower bringin’ if my burglar alarm starts ringin’.”

Whatever the case, we finally have My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky to judge, and—whatever baggage it might carry—what a gift it turns out to be.

Returning with Majesty Shredding, their first full-length release in almost a decade, the underground legends don’t waste any time proving that they haven’t lost a single step

School of Seven Bells writes relatively simple songs. However, where another band might scale down in the name of simplicity, this band goes expansive. On the new album, like on the debut, Alpinisms, it’s all about melody. Each song finds its basis in a catchy and pretty melody, sung and harmonized by the twin sisters, Claudia and Alejandra Deheza. Around the voices comes sequencing, jangling guitars and synthesizers. The songs don’t have much texture: just vocals and what amounts to a backing track (the music never really grabs your notice separately). They also don’t have many parts to them besides a catchy verse and a catchy chorus and sometimes a wordless melodic part. Still, even with these few layers, School of Seven Bells manages to pull off a big sound. Though there is synthetic feel to the album, it still conveys a sense of majesty that comes across naturally, as if you can hear the room too—or, as if the band was performing on a mountaintop.