The Best Albums I Heard in 2010

I often forget that I started my blogging career with the (fortunately deleted forever) Blog of Destiny, an mp3 blog so named because there was a Tenacious D movie coming out about a guitar pick of destiny, the song about which I was way into (oh, to be 17 again). And I often forget that this blog's first foray out of my personal life and into something relevant and sustainable was a failed list of the top 50 records of 2007. And that list led to the creation of Sublime Noises, a music blog that floundered because I hadn't quite found my voice as an e-writer and my friends didn't quite have the time to contribute. This year, Horatio Q. started reviewing records on this here site, augmenting my meager collection of record reviews and necessitating the creation of the Killian Gradient of Winners, which, I promise, will see more use this year (if there's something the internet needs more of, it's references to The Running Man). Horatio Q. moved to London and hasn't had as much time to write about stuff, so music was kind of left on the back burner for most of 2010. Let's change that.

The most significant thing I can think of saying for my 2010 in music is that it's the year that I totally gave up on the CD as a medium. I mean, good for gigantic record companies when whatever flavor of the month they're pimping sells 30,000 records in a week, but this isn't 1992, and I'm not lined up outside of Sam Goody to buy Use Your Illusion. I made the switch to vinyl, which sounds stupid when I say it after deeming the CD an anachronism, but I like owning physical objects, and the vinyl record certainly qualifies. Bigger cover artwork, richer sound quality, and, depending on the record label, a coupon to download the album in high quality mp3? Sounds like a good deal. Besides which, I can buy most records for the same price as a CD (from local retailers, good people, not the faceless types who run iTunes and Amazon mp3), and more when I buy used. It's the best of every possible world.

Otherwise, it was a pretty quiet year. I didn't buy tickets to Bonnaroo for the first time in three years, only went to three concerts, and spent most of my music listening time on old David Bowie albums. That being said, here in no specific order and with scant description are the best albums I listened to in 2010. This one goes to 11.

Janelle Monáe - The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III)

It's about damn time somebody realized that soul music wasn't just a genre for schmaltzy slowburners about candlelight and making love. People used to dance to this stuff, too. The Metropolis-meets-Stax-Records aesthetic makes for thrilling pastiche, one too unique to be cribbed and repopulated by wannabe radio stars. The best debut of 2010, complete with a degree in interplanetary funksmanship.

Gil-Scott Heron - I'm New Here

Sixteen years is a long time to go between albums, and listening to I'm New Here, I wished Heron was in the right frame of mind to record something during, say, the Bush Administration, or in the aftermath of Katrina. His voice is hardbitten, observational and not particularly hopeful. The title of this album is almost sarcastic in a way--the world is no less embattled now than when he recorded Bridges or "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." The revolution was televised after all, but went ignored before it got overturned, and here we are. Heron sounds worn out by it all, but he carries on. That's what artists do.

Girls - Broken Dreams Club (EP)

Girls' frontman, Christopher Owens, has snatched triumph from circumstances that would have crushed lesser human beings. While this collection of six songs is less raw than their debut, Album, Broken Dreams Club is the work of an incredibly tight band that has found its sound and is clinging to it for dear life. Probably the best thank you note a band has ever written to its fans, and a thrilling preview of what's next.

Charlotte Gainsbourg - IRM

Technically speaking, this came out in December, 2009, but December is traditionally a month when the music industry goes into its cave and relies on The Eagles Greatest Hits selling enough copies as a last minute gift idea to get them through the winter. Written and produced by Beck in the aftermath of a water-skiing accident that nearly killed Gainsbourg, this is an album preoccupied with death and the lack of control. After this, Beck moved on to covering classic albums with a smattering of famous friends and collaborators, including The Velvet Underground and Nico, but this, alternately breathtaking and ramshackle, is much closer to the Velvet's aesthetic than Beck got with the later project. And listening to Gainsbourg here, it's hard to believe that 2009 also saw her mangle Willem Dafoe's testicles in Antichrist. Against Beck's music, she sounds positively overjoyed just being alive.

LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening

If it really is the last we'll ever hear of LCD Soundsystem, it's one hell of a way to go out. All of James Murphy's previous successes and demons converge on this album, battling it out for his musical soul. It's hard to tell which side he believes has won. Too melancholy to celebrate, too transcendent to muck about in depression, it sounds simultaneously like Murphy's lost his edge and found a new one. I've endlessly played and replayed this album, and there isn't a cut that gets old. The work of a true mastermind.

Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

It doesn't get much ballsier than asking "Can we get much higher?" a minute into your new album, but it's pretty clear by now that Kanye West isn't living on this or any other plane of reality. After all the badass Twitter posts, the revelation that West's infamous live TV rant about Hurricane Katrina was George W. Bush's personal nadir, all the talk of Kanye wanting to become the next Michael Jackson (though he admits he can't sing or dance), anything less than a monstrous album would have been an absolute flop. Without going on and on and repeating everything you've heard, believe the hype. It's hard to know what Kanye's thinking. It's also hard to not be excited by it.

Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me

Given that the wait between this and Ys was three years, I probably anticipated Have One On Me more than any album that came out in 2010. Opening the gigantic black box that houses the three vinyl records necessary to contain Newsom is not unlike sitting at the feet of a master storyteller. Her music is a modern cabinet of curiosity, able to take me through time and space. When I saw her live in April, the songs from this album, still mostly new to my ears, made me putty in her hands. Her evolution, from The Milk-Eyed Mender to now, has been astonishing. Not only has she adapted to having a full band surrounding her, but her voice sounds less fragile, more sure of itself. I don't think two whole hours of this is going to convert anybody who didn't already like her, but the fact that two whole hours of harp can land anywhere in the Billboard 100 is astonishing in an age of Nickelback and Auto Tune.

Robyn - Body Talk

For a fat, rhythmless man, I sure do like dance music. And this is the best dance music of the year, without question. It probably helps that Robyn released two albums before Body Talk, which is a collection of the best of Body Talk Pt. 1 and 2 with new stuff thrown in, but the new tracks and new sequencing come together to make something new (shocking, I know), and unexpected: a dance record that validates the album's continuing existence as an entertainment medium. Considering that dance music is one genre that probably could sustain itself on singles and singles alone, the refusal of one of its best artists to give up on it is welcome news.

Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty

I've always been part of the camp that held up OutKast's 2003 Speakerboxxx/The Love Below as an unappreciated classic, mostly due to the trunk-rattling awesomeness of Big Boi's effort on Speakerboxx. Because of the undeniable and ubiquitous charm of "Hey Ya!," the group's sudden megastardom was chalked up to Andre 3000. Here, Big Boi steps out of that shadow. Andre 3000 appears only in material cut from the album due to label issues, and Big Boi delivers the most organic, unforced rap album in some time.

Titus Andronicus - The Monitor

Music rarely comes harder or more furious than it does on Titus Andronicus' second album. Influenced by everything from Bruce Springsteen to the Civil War, it's as if this album was made using a checklist of my nerdy passions, past and present. Every song is vibrant and exhausting, and just when it seems like they've got nothing left, the band charges forward. The sound of punk to come, one hopes.

The Dead Weather - Sea of Cowards

Jack White keeps moving farther and farther from the self-imposed constraints of the White Stripes, wandering out from the little room he described on the Stripes' breakthrough record, White Blood Cells. While The Raconteurs delve into White's seeming admiration for the 70s guitar gods who graced posters and magazine covers, The Dead Weather get to the down and dirty parts of White's aesthetic and, poked and prodded by Kills frontwoman Allison Mosshart, reveals the dark, seamy underbelly of his formerly innocent schoolboy sexuality.