Twenty Best of 2010

20.  Mimicking Birds - Mimicking Birds

Nate Lacy's ability to fashion interlocking orchestral refrains and responses from a single instrument may well be the origin of the "Mimicking Birds" moniker.  This self-titled long-player, Lacy's first under the name, is an intimate and slightly closeted affair with swirling arrangements, delicately cradled in a Nick Drake-esque dampened finger-picking style.  Oscillating guitar phrases and plaintive tones are astutely and simply rendered with a subtle recording and vocal layering technique giving the album it's unusually atmospheric resonance.  Lacy's voice conveys emotion, disillusion, confusion and hope with the skill of an actor.  The placement of strings and percussion is wonderfully restrained and the album has an unassuming complexity which really asks something of the listener.  Delving into a record such as this demands attention, but also brings rewards.  This can be a rare quality in an era of oft-fleeting attention spans and fickle consumerists.  In fact, the album feels as though it's from another époque - a belle époque perhaps, with Subsonic Words and New Doomsdays.



Live @ Opbmusic

19.  Cloud Control - Bliss Release

A startling and sparkling debut from the Blue Mountain's four-piece with a sound and self-assuredness more typical of an established act with a string of tours and albums behind them.  Alister Wright and his fellow Cloud Controllers have created something unique within the ever-growing electro-folk assemblage, vectoring away from the sullen psychedelia of so many of their contemporaries, instead spruiking a genuine sparkle, cheekiness and positivity.  And there is not a single beard between them!  All four members sing and their collective vocal is their obvious strength.  It's outstanding in fact - especially for an Australian band whose forbears have tended either to scream or to mumble.  In addition to the sublime song-craft at work here (not too many wig-outs to speak of), the album has a discernible two-sided structure and a closing track which genuinely feels like a bon voyage to the listener.  The production values on Bliss Release, whilst crisp and crystal clear, may lack a little punch compared to the live renderings of these songs.  Who knows where and to whom they'll take their enviable talent next? Let's just hope they crank it.



Nothing In The Water live @ fbi

18.  Gil Scott-Heron - I'm New Here

The troubled genius of Gil Scott-Heron has been absent from the studio for nearly two decades.  And while the passage of time and the realities of hard living have taken their toll on the artist's voice, the brilliance of his words and verse is undeniable. The title "I'm New Here" is a touchingly honest admission from a man who has "been away" in all senses of the phrase.  And the album strikes as the kind of self-examination one undertakes when confronted with a time and place which have become blurred and difficult to evaluate.  Indeed, Scott-Heron suggests he and the Devil share a perspective on this new world - as permanent outsiders, only one of whom is looking for a way in.  While Scott-Heron's rising baritone conjures Cohen and his descending growl gestures towards Waits, his voice is a singular rendering of painful reflection empowered by intelligence, insight, compassion and scorn.  With his emotive blues lilt still intact, Scott-Heron relieves some tension with a loving declarative riff poured over a piano-led blues shuffle with gentle picking strings.  The spoken word aspects of the record are genuinely intimate, brutally frank and wholly sincere.  The natural absence of artifice and contrivance is itself an achievement in today's multi-media splatter-fest of auto-tuners and remixes.  You say you're new here? Welcome back.





Live at Coachella

17.  Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest

What incredible power these guys wield.  Enough to make seasoned music writers go weak at the knees and salivate all over themselves in such unsavoury fashion.  What must it be like?  How many flawless moves can they make?  How would it feel to be infallible - you know, like the Pope?!!  It's true - Bradford Cox is one of the nicest, funniest, least self-absorbed rock artists working today.  To this statement, he no doubt would laugh.  Why?  Because Deerhunter's is another kind of absorption.  They are absorbed with the entire oeuvre of past indie rock giants.  And what spectacularly good taste they have.  In many ways they are the greatest of all indie fans, ever.  The way they have preserved, enshrined, conserved and let-shine the artistic value of rock music played by independent artists (independent of corporate, popularist demands and constraints) is an invaluable gift.  From this perspective, it's hard not to see each Deerhunter album and live show as a big 'thank you' to independent artists everywhere.  Their tunefulness and drive, their structured pop and cyclical, chiming wig-outs - they are indeed the high-priests of indie fandom.  I'm confident Deerhunter have within them an album which will take it's rightful place among the standouts of the indie canon.  The constant ingestion of the halcyon outputs of their forbears will definitely support this - but it won't produce it.  It must come from within them.  And when it does, watch out. This is wonderful - but this aint it.  Standby for true greatness.



Desire Lines live on The Interface

16.  Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Arcade Fire have invited us to a night-out at the drive-in. Their shout.  And I, for one, am not missing out.  Too often Arcade Fire have crashed everyone else's parties with their ambitious, sprawling, but ultimately unsatisfying albums and befuddled, collapsible live shows which require apologies to practically everyone involved - particularly the fans.  But like an apologetic gatecrasher - they've gone away, taken a long hard look at themselves, and come back with an ever-so slightly modest, almost-apologetic stereophonic peace offering.  And, mercifully, it confirms they had something unique to give from the very outset.  This time they've decided not to deconstruct, sabotage and vandalise their artistic impulses.  And the result is an album full of summer days in hot cars and swims at the pool and chiming guitar outros which are allowed to play-out til the very end.  Admittedly, it falls away somewhat towards the back-end, but so too do most things which have a tendency to overstay their welcome.  And finally, as a serious critique on suburban upbringings? Well....I like the guitars.  Despite his obvious neuroses, Modern Man is a genuine paperback classic.



Live at Later with Jools

15.  Marnie Stern - Marnie Stern

With the self-title perhaps hinting at a more personally revelatory content and tone, Marnie Stern has demonstrated once again that she is producing art which absolutely, capital-n, No-one else is making or even attempting today.  Her unique style and musicianship is rapid-fired directly at a creaking chasm in the side of the masculine guitar 'rock god' temple, which she seems hell-bent on repeatedly strafing with her incendiary guitar and vocals until the whole useless artifice comes crashing down and the art form is re-built from the ground up. With her drummer Zach Hill powering a battery of giant confounding rhythmic thrusters, Stern straps the willing listener in to a hyper-driven worm-hole sound-machine which permits the traveler to traverse vast distances at great speeds from one galaxy-sized emotion to the next. It's one a hell of a ride.  And the things you notice...


CMJ Spotlight - Marnie Stern from Big Ass Lens on Vimeo.

Live at CMJ, NYC

14.  Malachai - Ugly Side of Love

Both mischievous and marauding, this album puts the voodoo back into reggae and the scruff back into garage rock.  "There's gonna be some trouble", so goes the opening song Warriors, and you quickly get a sense that the trouble, when it comes, will result directly from any and all useless attempts to pigeon-hole the output of this Bristol-based duo.  Reaching all the way back to the early 70s, these artful samplers have summoned a long-lost ghost of classic Brit/West Indian slickness and musical menace crackling over a transistor radio, setting toes tapping within otherwise tense and brooding scenes of British street life.  The tension is defused nicely however with mystic trips into space, Moonsurfin', and funky flights of fancy up above the street-scape, a bit like an absconding snowflake.  In Gee Ealey, Malachai have a secret weapon of scorched vocal brilliance, enabling them to stamp a unique signature across these timeless licks and back-beats.  Further, the complete and crystallising control they have over their sampling, as in Fading World, demonstrates a masterful awareness and understanding of the source material - to the extent theirs is, without doubt, a many-sided love - not just an ugly one.


Radio K at SXSW: Malachai - "Another Sun" from Radio K on Vimeo.

13.  Philip Jeck - An Arc for the Listener

Experimental ambient artistry collides with reverse noise to produce upside down colours. Well that's how it feels anyway.  Philip Jeck's body of aural works is grounded in a strong sense and unyielding pursuit of the visual.  His is the kind of experimental music you'd most like to have accompany your very own art installation - even if your installation is introspective, built for one person, and consists simply of a new state of mind, an inverted attitude or a fresh outlook.  And the fact Jeck's musings are predominately vinyl-based makes them all the more intimate and seductive.  The depth, scope and buoyancy of the sounds emanating from this record indeed supply an 'arc for the listener' - one which places you in the centre of an ocean with trans-formative events occurring around you, seemingly in four dimensions.  Jeck's arc is an expertly made, wave-faring sound-craft, which is a delight to climb into - time after time after time.

12.  Superchunk - Majesty Shredding

The sound of dancing on a propane tank is a sound, and concept, unique to Superchunk.  And it is something to behold - if not also to be a little wary of.  The purposefully wayward shredding of the Superchunk oeuvre is twenty years young and still kicking, like a horse.  Since their 1990 debut, Superchunk have out-maneuvered multiple waves of contemporaries and apprentices with a sharp plectrum and even sharper wit.  This album gloriously emerges as another sharp-as-a-tack Superchunk record, rather than some long-heralded, over-hyped, miserably-contorted and squeamishly rehashed comeback release.  To write and play with such prickly youthful abandon is a trait not present in most 'seriously' young, self-regarding rockers these days.  Superchunk may indeed have their wires-crossed in terms of how 30- and 40-something year old rockers are expected to handle themselves today but, much like Dinosaur Jr, they are in this for the rock, not the rolls of cash or carpets.  It's an enviable place to be and one which is cheekily exhorted by Superchunk throughout this album, alongside the humorous everyday gripes and growls that make up their subject matter - helping the rock world to take itself a little less seriously. A worthy cause.



Digging for Something on Fallon

11.  The Morning Benders - Big Echo

Dazzling summery songs with a creative confluence rippling through the album like a long luxurious spilling wave.  One of 2010's pleasant little surprises was the re-emergence of Morning Benders from indie nippers to first-class music makers with a fully developed melodic mastery and taste for luxury, of the acoustic kind.  The album opener Excuses exhibits such confidence and smirking maturity you can't blame them for putting the old-school balladeering, strings and percussive shuffles upfront.  It works wondrously as a puppet show-style introduction, before the characters of the Big Echo file slowly on stage and reveal themselves and their romantic plights to our collective delight.  The influence of Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor is undeniable, yet never itself denying of The Morning Bender's unique sway and natural plushness.  The Hand Me Downs these guys sing of are the priceless kind - the ones which can change your life's direction.  With such a great sound - it's a pleasure for echos this good to be a big as the are. All-day day-light. Yes.



Live at Rolling Stone

10.  Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt

We can safely say the northern European landscape has never experienced the kind of rambling Americana, guitar-singer-showman treatment Tallest Man on Earth bestows upon it here.  And despite whatever initial reservations you may have (or think you should have) it is, in fact, a perfect fit.  Kristian Matsson's interpretive tendencies and influences are clear.  But it doesn't take too many listens to this masterful collection of songs before you begin to tire of those incessant Dylan comparisons.  For once you've actually zeroed-in on Matsson's vocals, you realise it is a genuinely unique voice with its own grainy capabilities, subtle nuances, splendid flaws and wayward aspirations.  Steel-string acoustic guitar is the predominate instrument of choice on The Wild Hunt and the album can and should be regarded as an accomplishment in great guitar playing.  Supremely delicate and, in some ways, figurative guitar parts succeed in fleshing-out and shading-in the descriptions of the individuals who prowl through these songs.  Their journeys, however small and plaintive, are what draw you in.  The Wild Hunt elicits a level of empathy, interest and desire towards its characters not often achieved, or even sought-after, in much contemporary music.  And they're certain to break some hearts before this hunt is ended.



King of Spain live in Spain

9.  Julian Lynch - Mare

One man's personal exploration of his various effects pedals never sounded so good.  Mare is an album for people with a 'connection' to music.  Not in a "I was in a band once!" type of connection, but more in the sense of a connection to things musical in the world.  Lynch's background in ethno-musicology acts as a kind of gateway to a rare level of diversity in this record - pushing boundaries and fusing fragments without ever falling in with the World Music franchise.  The simplicity of the recording processes permits small flourishes and surprising intricacies to take centre-stage in a suite of thought-provoking pieces of music that, if you want or need them to be songs, they can be songs.  Or, they can be something else altogether - an expedition through musical terrain for example.  Sometimes tracing the tracks of ancients, at other times breaking new ground, Lynch relishes the opportunity to approach new and existing musical surfaces always from a new angle.  Voice as instrument works best in these circumstances and the album exudes an atmospheric quality without ever coming across as a work of ambient art-music.  Lynch's gentle bass chords and intermittent drums provide an attractive canvass upon which to explore, intermingle and thoroughly orbit musical bodies with a sense of weightlessness.  Gives new meaning to the term musical traveler.



Travelers live in NYC

8.  Tame Impala - Innerspeaker

The second Australian long-player to feature in this year's Top 20 hails from a far-away galaxy called Perth.  And, 'in all honesty', it is a perilously derivative but startlingly brilliant debut from these gifted students of psychedelia.  The sheer ambition of the record, combined with its laboratory-level perfectionism in guitar amplification, has created a Frankenstein of psychedelic guitar rock which is currently captivating multiple generations of rock music fans around the world.  And it's not just the guitars.  The staggering propulsion behind this album can be found mostly in the bass and drums which team up to strap an interstellar drive to the base of the psych-outfit and launch them all, face first, into space.  The array of vintage-style guitar effects and techniques harnessed or replicated on Innerspeaker is a prodigious display of professorial knowledge of psychedelic history.  Yet it never collapses into caricature or, worse still, a guitar tutorial.  Kevin Parker's Lennon-esque voice adds yet another surprisingly element to the record, but again (somehow!) without pushing the band's output into cartoon land.  The band's collective passion and intensity is what elevates this work way above the average.  With music this well-developed and realised, it's almost difficult to see just where they can go with it next.  It's gonna be fascinating to see whether they can actually land this mothership, or whether its just gonna take them off into deep-space.



Live in the KCRW studios Los Angeles

7.  The National - High Violet

With five albums now, The National might be considered veterans, ripe for new-found introspection, self-examination and willful indulgence.  Problem is - that's exactly what they've always done. And that's where their true mastery lies.  After 2007's heroic punch-through album, Boxer, The National could easily have spiraled off into a multitude of directions, satisfying pet-tastes and unearthing dormant desires to step out of oneself, gain PhDs and become directors of off-Broadway musicals about famine and injustice.  Thankfully, The National are too smart to fall for fanciful notions of self-perfection and misguided altruistic ambitions.  They know life is, at best, a fractured mess.  And the role they play best, in this fleeting and noisy fracas, is as narrator and companion.  High Violet is a poetic explanation to friends and family, deliberately ambiguous, at times drifting, and never really coming to the point - implicitly acknowledging that, in many cases, there is no point.  So how do you write music for this kind of transcendental realism?  Well, The National shove these shy topics right onto the grandest of centre of stages - employing a towering, cathedral-like resonance to command the attention of mere mortals and gods alike.  Matt Berninger's voice comes at you, not like a preacher at the pulpit, but like the voice of an unseen person seated in the pew behind you - narrating an unfolding disaster and whispering uneasy truths.  And it's that cinematic scope and high-drama which makes these songs such a pleasure to fold yourself into. 



England live...in England

6.  Brian Eno - Small Craft on a Milk Sea

We are the small craft, the milk sea is the surface of the artist's planet-sized brain, and the album is the soundtrack to our circumnavigation.  Or at least that's one, quite legitimate, way of approaching the new album from Brian Eno.  Eno's work has always had a tendency to intimidate or generate defensiveness in some people, and the response to this outing has been no different.  The possibility of "not getting it" is always a factor in people's considered approach to Eno's music.  However, the continued presence of this very inkling is one of the reasons Eno remains, decades into his career, such a vital and disruptive musician.  Eno's novel and varied approaches to composition also generate a fair amount of bewilderment and even suspicion.  However, they are themselves strategies for setting and re-setting the scenes into which the music can adopt a variety of roles.  Not just soundtrack - but as protagonist and antagonist as well.  Small Craft, although apparently pulled from a number of different recording sessions, is assembled with singular vision and the detectable collusion of his new family at Warp.  At turns foreboding and disquieting, then propulsive and transforming, the first side of the record is a re-introduction to Eno's off-world colony of ambient early-settlers.  It's a fascinating encounter with a past-acquaintance, containing surprising developments and evolutionary twists and turns no one could have foreseen.  The album then literally bursts out of itself - the ambient face-hugger since departed.  A set of seemingly refracting sound waves then ensue, punctured by contorted guitar and mesmeric percussion, before drifting out again beyond the solar system.  By the time you close-out the second side, the album's ability to speak as a whole has become both confounding and beguiling.



Two Forms of Anger

5.  Women - Public Strain

Darkness this way lies...and doesn't it sound enticing.  It would be easy now to say, with the benefit of hindsight, that much of Public Strain could be construed as the sound of a band unwittingly, or deliberately, engineering its own demise.  The now notorious on-stage stoush between the band members in Victoria, BC, late this year, points towards underlying tensions which, for some reason, chose to erupt - not on the bus, nor at the hotel - but right in the middle of a live rendering of a record so spasmodic, suspicious, catatonic and paranoid you can't help but associate the two.  A creative entity creepily self-destructing?  More likely - the making of the intense, vivid portrait of emotional exhaustion that is Public Strain probably contributed to a level of physical exhaustion in its creators which simply couldn't be ignored or overlooked any longer.  A touch melodramatic?  Perhaps.  But you need only listen to the lockjaw strain and struggle of the Flegel brother's vocals as they stand well-back in the mix-queue behind the guitar, drum and bass of Women's emergency-ward sonic scatter.  You can almost imagine the players, reclining uneasily in the trauma ward, playing their instruments to each other across the reverberating corridors of the local general hospital.  Each bandaged in obscure fashion - so much so that they can only play their respective instruments in an off-kilter, deeply dissonant, style.  The second side of this record is slightly more comprehensible than the first - as though 'the patients' (the band) had received a shot of something, to bring a degree of lucidity to what could otherwise have been seen as an expressionless outburst.  Rarely do albums of this stark and disturbing quality get made in a recording industry struggling with deepening viability concerns.  It's a strange delight indeed to find yourself relishing this kind of foreboding creative output.  We should just hope they get back up, dust themselves off and crack on.  Maybe just little steps at first...little 'China Steps'.



Live at Cafe de la Danse, Paris

4.  Joanna Newsom - Have One on Me

Or should that have been, "Have Three On Me"?  Let's just look at that again.  Quite apart from the inevitable panicked and hyperventilating industry and marketing types fretting over the idea of how to promote complex and intricate ideas, Joanna Newsom's three-disc 2010 long-player isn't actually a triple album.  Not in the sense that Tom Waits' Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards is a triple album.  It is, in fact, a double album which has been split into three Acts.  And this is only one of the reasons it works so incredibly well.  Newsom has opted to cut the chord on some of her purist folk pursuits and tendencies and focus on bringing to fruition the exploration of a more physical relationship with her music.  That's not to say she kicks over the harp/amp and rocks out ferociously here.  The feel is one of a still-developing, still-searching songwriter looking for fewer definitives, and more open ends.  Newsom's Good Intentions Paving Company, at seven minutes, is a good example of the loosened up, blues-folk swivel and sway that naturally opens holes, lets in light and space, enabling an arrangement to breathe.  The ability for the drums to halt completely for several minutes mid-song and reintroduce themselves for a lilting outro without altering the feel underscores the relaxed approach to composition and arrangement present here.  With Newsom's near-continuous singing it can be difficult to see anything other than a strict arrangement tirelessly at work.  But Have One On Me exudes a falling leaf randomness which permits the recurrence of characters and sentiments over the course of the three parts.  Acoustic and electric guitar, brass and woodwind flourishes, interspersed with pouncing drum shots, often way back in the mix, but sometimes up front, signal a jarring episode, an eager awakening, a deepening understanding, a troubling encounter for the characters who populate this album.  All the while a benevolent harp, calling the characters back from the brink, inviting them to come home, oversees the story.  This perhaps is the one small shortcoming of an otherwise beautiful album.  No matter how you play the thing, it is difficult for the harp to sound, even in the expert fingers of Newsom, anything other than benevolent.  Possibly injecting a bit more menace into the harp next time might be worth considering.  Because anything lasting three discs surely must have a dark side.



Peach Plum Pear

3.  Here We Go Magic - Pigeons

Who'd have thought psychedelic electro-folk would emerge as the most potent force in rock in 2010?  Above just about everything else, people's relationship to music remains an emotional one.  And when people dive headlong into a new song and play it thousand times to then find the rest of the album is "different", they can become coy and aloof.  The great pity is however, they risk missing out on the true shades and artistry behind the greater work.  And they've done so here in spades.  Pigeons is arguably the shy master among the new electro-folk assemblage of actors.  How many albums this year can you think of start you off in the driver's seat (with Hibernation) and then invite you try the captain's chair (with Collector) all within the first two tracks?!  But the true gems lie just beyond these two sparkling show-ponies.  The sparse drums and near-catatonic guitar of Surprise, for example, talk the listener into coming closer as though being whispered to.  With a deft and timely light-touch (saving us from the ever increasing over-earnestness of polit-rock), One World United is rivetingly hilarious.  The space and simplicity of many of the album tracks allows simple aspects to shine through.  The simple vibrato of a chord which otherwise would be played straight up; a subtle and never overwrought bass gliss; a slight quickening of the snare's heartbeat in response to a key change. These are big moments - if your relationship to music is an intrinsic one. It's just nice to find a band so serious and committed to playing music which is upbeat and electrifying, rather than pensive and ponderous.  This record is definitely of the Land Of Feeling.

Moon live in Brooklyn

2.  Sharon Van Etten - Epic

This year's bolter.  Only seven songs and every one of them as awe inducing and beguiling as you could imagine.  Seven songs interconnecting perfectly to produce this year's runner-up for album of the year.  On her second time out, Van Etten has produced her Grace.   This record has the sound of an album which wrote itself practically from start to finish.  I don't know (of course), but I can almost imagine Van Etten sitting back saying (perhaps quietly) "that was amazing! where did that comes from?"  Of course, this is not to undermine or shortchange the stupendous amount of effort that goes into writing, performing and recording songs of this incredible quality.  It's more that the album has certain naturalness and confidence that, we can imagine, it almost insisted on being brought into existence.   In Van Etten's hands, the acoustic guitar has experienced something of a re-spiriting, perhaps partly carried by the strength of her vocal, perhaps because of her playing style which is strong and confident without ever being overwrought.  The placement of each and every chord change is unswervingly brilliant.  The songs themselves seem to swirl around each other with certain familialness - they belong together.  They have relationships - an increasingly rare characteristic in record making these days.  To carry the Jeff Buckley/Grace analogy just a little bit further, Van Etten centres the album on her own So Real - Don't Do It, complete with a similar kick-drum/floor-tom plus ride build and then a jamming-on of the snare breaks before launching into the next round/verse/chorus.  Epic is a wondrous tree around which Van Etten has placed priceless hand-made musical gifts. That they are wrapped in such understated but spectacular harmonies is, on top of all that, almost too much to handle.  I'll let you discover the rest for yourself.  Yes, do it.



One Day, behind the scenes, at the Pitchfork Festival Chicago 2010

1.  Walkmen - Lisbon

The album everyone's been trying to make for years (including them) - just got made.  The Walkmen have delivered on a promise oft-implied, but rarely realised.  The Walkmen have until now almost made the subject of disappointment a part of the process of listening to their records, as well as the focus of their words and attention.  We're not about to propose they've cheered up significantly or even brightened their weary outlook, what's changed here is a sense of assuredness, control and purpose which literally oozes out of the microphone, guitar amp, kick drum.  There are simply no half-measures, near-misses or missteps on Lisbon.  The record wrests control of the listener from the outset and deposits you back down (gently I might add) when finished.  Juveniles almost serves as deliberately formal introduction before you're catapulted headlong into Angela Surf City, having only briefly underestimated the ability of The Walkmen to rock-out ever-so gloriously.  It seems The Walkmen have finally learned to walk upright.  And the sound is gorgeous throughout.  The power of the drumming, it has to be said, plays the role of a dynamic engine-room here and punches spaces and holes in things through which Hamilton Leithauser launches his spectacularly unique voice - only then to see the guitar and bass and other band members peering back at him through other near and distant holes in the sound-scape.  Unlike some of its forerunners, Lisbon is charged with defiance rather than apologies. And the powerful interconnectedness of the songs gives the body of work an orchestrated and combined punch which is difficult to turn away from.  The ferocity and tenderness of the record is much more nuanced than the usual loud/quiet/loud strategy adopted by so many others.  There is a carefully assembled and deliberately distinctive sound, attitude and purpose to this recording.  They've selected a singular musical prism through which to bring us Lisbon and it is nothing but wholly commanding and totally authentic.  So whilst The Walkmen themselves have remained unassuming and endearing even, Lisbon has emerged with all the exultant haughtiness of a self-knowing classic. The Walkmen have taken themselves and us to a new level in album-making.  Masterful.


The Walkmen || Angela Surf City [1 of 3] from Ray Concepcion on Vimeo.

Angela Surf City live in NYC

Honourable Mentions 2010

20.  Archie Bronson Outfit - Coconut

From the opening track Magnetic Warrior, which is amongst the best album openers of 2010, through to the closer, the Archie Bronson Outfit on Coconut has finally realised its full potential with an urgent and fretful collection of smashed-up rock songs which at last relate to one another as songs must for an album truly to be a body of work (rather than just a few extra wordy wig-outs book-ending one ferocious riff).  Chunk for example, despite having a predominantly clean sound, is as lick-laden as the Bronsons could make it - with multiple guitar phrases spiralling in and out of its loosely mechanical percussive vortex.  Combined with a tastefully overdriven lead-vocal from Sam Windett, it is a faultless piece of rock originality. Welcome to the first-division. Scorching.



Magnetic Warrior live Double Six Club Session

19.  Liars - Sisterworld

When you hear the word 'challenging' - do you too often conclude that this could well be an album for me to own, however I'm certainly not going spend my precious free-time listening to the thing?!!  Well, in Sisterworld, Liars help you now to relax while injecting a purposefully dubious cocktail of new approaches right between your ears.  Sisterworld is a pleasure to listen to, even whilst it expands your appreciation of discipline in dissonance.  Not like homework.



Proud Evolution live @ Insound Club Deville

18.  Beach Fossils - Beach Fossils

Sounding like a cross between a Hal Hartley movie soundtrack and the Go-Betweens, Beach Fossils present an unassuming little record of disarmingly sanguine and uplifting guitar motifs.  While the bulk of the songs exhibit obvious lineage and derivation, they are played and recorded so lovingly it's hard not to adore them also. Lo-fi for lovers.



Youth live in Utrecht Netherlands

17.  Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record

Kevin Drew and crew have opted to rock-for-forgiveness on this latest venture and the results deliver them a tuneful absolution.  Unlike many other outsize groups, Broken Social Scene enjoy a harmonious, collective restraint which prevents the songs from sprouting a thousand legs and trampling all over any sense of direction.  That they should achieve this with their sense of humour intact, I think is the whole point. Perspicacious.



Texico Bitches live on Q TV

16.  Male Bonding - Nothing Hurts

Capturing a sense of contagious urgency is difficult to do when you're sitting around in a studio for twelve hours at a time trying to recreate that allusive live-music flash-point.  For Male Bonding however, it's no biggie.  They just rocket along as through 'nothing (really) hurts'.  That, plus a dose of commanding songsmithery has delivered a seamless collection of punk-pop gems with next to no passengers.  Pocket rocket.



Live in Brooklyn for Tunnelvision

15.  Bill Callahan - Rough Travel For A Rare Thing

Mr Callahan announces from the outset, "we're gonna get right down to business", and from that moment on the listener is led through the bittersweet highs and breathtaking lows of an ordinary man's emotional journey while nestled in the warm, reassuring embrace of Callahan's crystal-clear baritone. Live double albums are rarely this intimate.  Master craftsman at work.



Cold Blooded Old Times on Don't Look Down

14.  Junip - Fields

While it can sometimes be too easy to hear a quantum of over-earnestness in Jose Gonzalez' lyrics and voice, it is his nylon acoustic which supplies all the brilliant irony and breathless enjoyment you could ask for.  And as a three piece, Junip knows exactly what's required to harness these acoustic elements and launch them into amplified outer-spaces. Starship Junip - now boarding.



Rope & Summit at the The Knitting Factory

13.  Titus Andronicus - The Monitor

Never has being smashed in the face seemed so appealing.  When the band is the most likely culprit at an all-in pub brawl, you know you've come to the right place.  Titus Andronicus deliver their unique brand of New Jersey fisticuffs with a tuneful snarl and probable collapsed lung.  You dare not turn them off before it ends, for fear of getting a clip 'round the ear.  Stick 'em up.

Titus Andronicus | FOR NO ONE from FOR NO ONE on Vimeo.

The Battle of Hampton Roads

12.  No Age - Everything In Between

'Intelligent punk' sounds like an oxymoron at best, and downright pretentious at worst.  However the extent to which No Age gives a toss, in either direction, is probably negligible.  This duo is capable of unleashing two and three-minute punk frenzies while still finding room (almost accidentally) for nuanced artistic flourishes.  And Randy Randall's preparedness to allow his guitar to feedback off-key, but somehow tunefully, for the entirety of a song is endearing rather than annoying.  Scrunched-up beauty.



Life Prowler and Glitter live in Brooklyn

11.  Charlotte Gainsbourg w/Beck - IRM

Watching Charlotte Gainsbourg pursue her various art forms is riveting, even if you do have to close your eyes from time to time.  And this album sets a new high standard for her accomplishments as a recording artist.  A collaborative effort with Beck, IRM almost has the feeling of a novel rather than an LP. Gainsbourg's ability to distill complex characters from her voice, without the need (or ability) for vocal acrobatics is a masterclass in subtlety and delicacy. The album possesses an almost chameleonic quality in which different elements reveal and shroud themselves at different times - seemingly dependent on when and where you're listening to it.  This is truly a detailed scan on Gainsbourg's inner workings with Professor Beck at the controls.  A fantastic voyage.



Heaven Can Wait with Beck live @ KCRW

10.  Fang Island - Fang Island

Supremely joyous post-punk petulance, which admittedly doesn't make a whole lotta sense, but is infinitely listenable.  Along with a healthy dose of cackling, the album comes with its own fireworks!  Fang Island have somehow achieved the impossible by appropriating corny metal-style time signatures and dampened power chords and reinstating them as a viable and laudable indie technique.  Spasmodic and irregular shifts in time, tone and texture appear more likely to have resulted from a comical mishap with a guitar lead rather than any sense of deliberate deconstructionist agenda-bending. Grab your pirate outfit and set sail for Fang Island!



Sideswiper live @ KEXP Radio studios

9.  Pantha Du Prince - Black Noise

If the Swiss Alps were to play host to a Close Encounters of a Third Kind-style musical dialogue with recently arrived extraterrestrials, you'd certainly be checking Hendrik Weber's availability in case NASA got off on the wrong foot and manage to upset our potential new cosmic overlords.  Weber's music is universal in the outer-space sense of the word.  Over the course of eleven lengthy explorations, Weber challenges his fellow techonauts to travel back to where it all began - planet Music.  The results are, if not astounding, still incredibly rewarding.  Not just music for the Von Trapp's after-hours chill-out sessions.



Live @ LA's The Echo

8.  Twin Shadow - Forget

Where are we going with this 80s thing?  Whether it's the Psychedelic Furs or Echo and the Bunnymen, anyone who was any good at the time (and there were a few) is under the microscope as part of some deranged experiment to harvest quality 80s taste cells and graft them on to present-day musical organisms hopefully without infecting them with 80s haircuts and highpants. Or preferably with the highpants - I don't know.  Anyway, George Lewis Jr's Twin Shadow is a cut above the quiffs with this most excellent effort, superbly realised by Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor on twiddling duties.  Easily one of the best sounding studio guitar mixes of the year.  I challenge you not to do a running on the spot dance, fingers clicking, singing, "s/he loves my moves" during I Cant Wait.  The Killing Moon strikes again.



Castles in the Snow live @ La Poisson Rouge

7. Surfer Blood - Astro Coast

Who said anything about quarantining the past?  Surfer Blood's debut LP arrived with an almighty crunch in the first month of this year and immediately set tongues wagging about a new Floridian Pavement quite possibly young enough to be fathered by Stephen Malkmus and thoughtful enough to have been raised by Rivers Cuomo.  Once the dust and delirium settled, what emerged was a great rock record, indeed indebted to a swathe of indie legends, but also one oozing fresh-as-a-daisy indie guitar goop from a satisfyingly clean wound in the body and spirit of guitar rock.  The introspective elements of the record are uncontrived and heartfelt - lyrics and instruments gently sustaining one another.  Broken chords and chiming harmonics; parsley stems and erupting volcanoes.  Strong and bitey for such a youthful blend.

Pitchfork TV: SPECIAL PRESENTATION by Surfer Blood "Floating Vibes"
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Floating Vibes live in a garage for Pitchfork TV

6. Wolf Parade - Expo 86

"Just another pair of boat shoes walking away from the harbour?"  I think not.  But, sadly, probably the last long-player we'll hear from Wolf Parade for the foreseeable future.  Retro polaroids enjoyed a new-found prominence on album covers this year and Expo 86 was probably the pick of them.  However, any truly insightful reflections on a past golden age were more likely to be found within the album sleeve than on the cover.  The dueling song-smiths in Boeckner and Krug supply a positive tension here, rather than the kind of erratic mush feuding egos may have produced in such circumstances.  But, perversely, this most excellent record seems tethered ever so slightly by a desire not to explode out in any one particular direction for fear of upsetting the delicate balance between two accomplished songwriters. Oozing pedigree, but just shy of fifth gear.  Pobody's Nerfect?



I'll Believe in Anything live @ Sub Pop

5. Black Angels - Phosphene Dream

Black Angels pack up their campsite at Jim Morrison's grave site and move on from Père Lachaise (to a smoky joint just 'round the corner).  Psychedelic rocksters must be careful of their influences these days as the genre stumbles, if not unwittingly, certainly stoned and unhurriedly, into the maelstrom of super-stardom - or at least high-rotation radio and an almost inexhaustible global festival circuit.  The wig-out is where it's at on this album and who can blame them, they're a fiercely tight outfit.  But if anyone's actually behind the Haunting at 1300 McKinley, Jim Morrison will certainly be seeking his pound of flesh from somebody in the Angels' phone book.  Whilst the second half spreads its wings and airs its pits somewhat, it's not long before it starts swaying from side to side again, eyes closed, reverbed to all hell, rowing down a river of blood, towards......The End?

The Black Angels - Science Killer - Live
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Science Killer live @ Canal Plus France

4. Mavis Staples - You Are Not Alone

Have you heard the one about the two Chicagoans who walk into a bar and somebody else says, "do you wanna make a record?"  And they say, "shit yeah!", and then walk out again?  Well neither have I, and I don't want to hear it again because this record wrote itself for the honour and priviledge of being sung by the spectacular songstress and civil rights activist Mavis Staples.  The pleasure of hearing Staples' voice at the helm of a stack of superbly penned and beautifully executed songs cannot be overestimated.  Fellow Chicagoan Jeff Tweedy, with his readily apparent forensic-level knowledge and insight into Staples' career - in particular her Stax records era - is a gift of a pairing and one which has produced an album of rare warmth and sensitivity which can still growl and grind with the grindiest of today's artful rockers.  Staples' vocal embrace is still uplifting and inspiring and Tweedy is astute enough to frame it with just the right amount of textural backing and songcraft to allow her to soar uncluttered and unrestrained.  There are many golden moments on this record, whether cover, new version or new song.  They all work.  With Mavis and Jeff around...you're certainly never gonna be alone.



Wrote a Song for Everyone live

3.  Foals - Total Life Forever

A crafty follow-up to 2008's Antidotes sees the Foals slipping out of the noose of what can sometimes be a regimented math-rock paradigm and throwing all the doors and windows wide-open on their visceral rock algorithms.  By absorbing air and organic textures the Foals have launched themselves at a batch of new songs without defaulting to a staple-gun approach to myriad notes and rhythms which, whilst precise and meticulous, can often strangle the band's ability to orbit and tug on a song rather than just crash straight into it. The sound of a group still discovering its abilities, the Foals have submerged their speakers into a liquid texture and have found in themselves an ability to remain calm in a raging rip-current of guitar, bass and drums and float towards a less quixotic, more nuanced songcraft.  Still probably on their way to their best music yet - Total Life Forever accidentally, if only very occasionally, slips into just the sort of earnestness their album title is cleverly trying to avoid. The overall result however is a spectacular display of musicianship coming to grips still with the idea of "feel".



Live at KCRW Los Angeles

2. Emeralds - Does It Look Like I'm Here?

Could that be a question asked by this Cleveland-based three-piece outfit's faithful synthesizer? And if so, would it be expecting a meaningful answer? The answer to both questions surely must be 'why?' One need only look at the titles to these precision-guided sonic bursts to get a sense of where the Emeralds are coming from/going to. 'Summerdata', 'Access Granted' and 'Double Helix' all suggest the band members could probably get out more - but, if anything, I reckon they're getting just the right amount of extragalactic background light wherever they find themselves. These are exquisitely crafted, fast-traveling, enveloping pods of light and sound which replay with a deep lusciousness absent from so much other synth-based recording these days. Mark McGuire's elliptical guitar injects an organic quality to the soundscape without ever dissenting or disuniting from the core ideology driving the band's ambitious towering musical creations. Access recommended.



Candy Shoppe

1. Flying Lotus - Cosmagramma

The sheer scale, furious complexity and colossal depth to be found inside this album can leave you a little breathless, if not outright concussed, if you come at it with anything less than an eager ear and all the right gear. The jazz inflections alone seem immediately to show the listener that they are held in very high regard by the artist, aka Steve Ellison, which leads you to want to listen even more intently. The cycle is then replicated throughout the entire album until such time as you either fall on your face or seriously begin to wonder whether anyone out there actually has a John Coltrane portrait tattoo - or whether you would in fact be the first.  Then, inevitably, you want some more.  The intercellular nature of the songs on Cosmagramma heralds a new kind of album experience - one where the musical narrative climbs, descends, levels-out and climbs again almost without anything resembling a traditional songwriting device or structure.  It's a powerful display of musical love and inspiration.  Journey skywards with the Flying Lotus.  Today.


Miguel Atwood-Ferguson Ensemble "Drips/Take Notice" feat Flying Lotus from Miguel Atwood-Ferguson on Vimeo.

FlyLo live with the Miguel Atwood-Ferguson Ensemble