2010 Year-End Round Up

2010 has been -- like every other year when you dig deep enough -- an excellent year for music, and I never cease to marvel at the joy of discovering new records. After taking a hiatus from writing up Top Album blurbs last year to concentrate on trying to make sense of an entire decade's worth of music (though the curious can find my '09 Pazz and Jop ballot here), the Albums of the Year list makes a triumphant return below. As always, the guiding star with these write-ups is my personal relationships with these records over the past 12 months. I'm not here to add to the critical lovefests for the year's most celebrated records; you'll have plenty of other opportunities to read about My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Teen Dream and The ArchAndroid elsewhere.


Honorable Mention... #20-#11

20 Somewhere On The Golden Coast, Henry Clay People (TBD Records)
19 J. Roddy Walston & the Business, J. Roddy Walston & the Business (Vagrant)
18 Stuck On Nothing, Free Energy (DFA)
17 The Way Of The World, Mose Allison (Anti-)
16 The Outsiders Are Back, Kings Go Forth (Luaka Bop)
15 Travellers In Space And Time, Apples in Stereo (Yep Roc)
14 I'm Having Fun Now, Jenny and Johnny (Warner)
13 Transference, Spoon (Merge)
12 Together, New Pornographers (Matador)
11 The Grand Theatre, Volume 1, Old 97s (New West)

10 Reform School Girl, Nick Curran & the Lowlifes (Eclecto Groove): "Rock and roll at its most primitive..." warns the ominous soundclip during the title sequence for Little Steven's Underground Garage, and it's a phrase that Nick Curran has taken to heart for his fifth album, and first with the Lowlifes. (Indeed, it was LSUG that first alerted me to Curran.) A raucous stew of rockabilly, surf, blooze ("Kill My Baby") and early R&B/R'N'R beamed straight from Little Richard ("Tough Lover") -- and with a blessing from fellow sonic traveler Phil Alvin of the Blasters on "Flying Blind" -- Curran had a blast celebrating the sounds and energy that make rock and roll so vital. (YT: "Flying Blind")

09 The Guitar Song, Jamey Johnson (Mercury): With listeners' musical tastes more heterogeneous than they've been in years (ever?), it's been interesting to see a few tried-and-true country acts popping up on unlikely cultural radars, making appearances once thought impossible. Taylor Swift can take a long walk off a short pier; the real country crossover this year was South Alabaman Jamey Johnson and his epic double-disc The Guitar Song, which garnered deserving raves from unlikely outlets such as Spin and Rolling Stone. Hardcore country hasn't been done this well since Merle and Waylon's heyday. The best country album of the year is one of the best rock albums of the year is one of the best albums of the year, period. (YT: "Mental Revenge")

08 Crazy For You, Best Coast (Mexican Summer): Consider this thought experiment: What would happen if all the emotional trauma chronicled by girl group singers of the 1960s actually befell a real person here in the 21st century? You'd end up with Best Coast (aka Beth Cosentino), who on Crazy For You (along with Bobb Bruno), is wracked with paranoid, self-doubt and feelings of unrequited love, cooped up in her house, heavily self-medicating with marijuana and wishing her cat could talk. (That album title isn't a sweet celebration; it's a clinical diagnosis.) And oh -- it's one of the catchiest, buzziest records of the year, effortlessly condensing 50 years of pop into 30 minutes, and practically begging to be blared out of a shitty boombox at the beach on the hottest day of the year. Is Crazy For You dead serious about its anguish? Is it an ironic indie parody/homage/deconstruction of girl group frustration? Have I missed the boat entirely? Let academia tackle those questions; all I know is it sounded great all summer. (YT: "When I'm With You")

07 Majesty Shredding, Superchunk (Merge): If history holds 2010 as the "The Year Indie Broke", (through, not down... though it depends on who you ask) then it is fitting that the elder statesmen (and -woman) in Superchunk got to deliver two terrific State of the Indie Union addresses on the opening salvos of Majesty Shredding, their first album in nine years: "Digging For Something" and "My Gap Feels Weird". Mac McCaughan and the gang don't always know what that weird something is either, but throughout, they float their theories: through the push-pull rhythms of the aforementioned "My Gap Feels Weird" (the title of which was supplied by McCaughan and bassist Laura Ballance's daughter, post-tooth loss, but it more than covers the space and time since 2001's Here's To Shutting Up); the graceful strings of "Fractures in Plastic"; the rumble of "Learned to Surf"; the fever pitch of "Crossed Wires" and "Rope Light". Truly, the album is nothing less than a celebration of the last quarter-century of big-hearted, big-guitared indie rock... and a blueprint for the next. Here's to Superchunk aging gracefully... and not heeding the title of their last album. (YT: "Digging For Something")

06 Harlem River Blues, Justin Townes Earle (Bloodshot): While he still may be grappling with his personal demons, there's no denying that Earle is in full control of his musical soul on Harlem River Blues, his third full-length and second-in-a-row to earn a coveted slot on the Haag Year-End Top-Ten list (and surely not for the last time, either). More cohesive than, if not quite scaling the heights of, 2009's Midnight at the Movies, HRB cemented JTE's knack for writing instant classics -- it's hard to believe the gospel-choir-aided title rack and "Working for the MTA" aren't 100-year-old public domain tunes -- and showcasing a sense of humor ("Move Over Mama") and pathos almost as sharp as his legendary wardrobe. (YT: "Harlem River Blues")

05 Brothers, Black Keys (Nonesuch): As a tireless defender of the Keys' Rubber Factory, I'm unwilling to call Brothers the band's highpoint (as many others have done), but it definitely lines up right behind the duo's '04 masterwork in their nearly unimpeachable discography. Expansive in a more organic way than '08 Danger Mouse-assisted rut-shaker Attack and Release was, Brothers finds Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney dabbling in T. Rex (the "Mambo Sun"-nicking "Everlasting Light"), covering Jerry Butler ("Never Gonna Give You Up") and improving on their always-welcome scuzz-blues-garage ("Ten Cent Pistol"). Truth be told, a little judicious pruning (15 tracks at 56+ minutes) could've made a great album even stronger -- Brothers reminds a lot of White Blood Cells in this way -- but who am I to fault a surfeit of great ideas? (YT: "Everlasting Light")

04 Astro Coast, Surfer Blood (Kanine): A January release that held up over the past 12 months, no doubt thanks to one of the strongest A-sides of the year, Astro Coast took a welcome page from the '90s alt/indie playbook: prickly guitars, healthy doses of both melody and noise and a scrappy underdog mentality, all of which helped cut through the ponderous navelgazing/U2 bombastics of too much indie rock these days. Fave moment: consistently forgetting that "Swim" isn't Eno's "Needle In The Camel's Eye". (YT: "Swim")


03 Midnight Souvenirs, Peter Wolf (Verve): Rock fans in general -- and we Bostonians in particular -- have known for years that Peter Wolf is a rare treasure, so it's not news that Midnight Souvenirs is good... but it is a pleasant surprise (if not the year's best surprise) that the record is firing-on-all-cylinders great. Whether on his own ("I Don't Wanna Know") or with ringers like Shelby Lynne and Neko Case who play off his shaggy vocals beautifully (especially the latter on the goosebump-inducing "Green Grass of Summer"), Wolf is in full command of his talents -- hell, he even painted the album cover. (YT: "Tragedy")


02 Halcyon Times, Jason and the Scorchers (Courageous Chicken): Ah yes, time for the ol' oddball pick that only Steve Haag makes. (Seriously, I haven't seen this album earn a slot on a list anywhere in the deep dark bowels of the internet.) It's a shame this record hasn't found a larger audience, because Jason Ringenberg, Warner Hodges and friends (including the Georgia Satellites' Dan Baird and Ginger from the Wildhearts) really bring the heat on Halcyon Times, rivaling the output from their mid-'80s cowpunk heyday. Opening manifesto "Moonshine Guy" (about a guy who "loves the Stones, hates the Doors [and] thinks the Beatles sing for girls") bounds out of the gate and into a world full of blue collar coalminers ("Beat On The Mountain"), souped-up rockabilly cornpone ("Fear Not Gear Rot"), music industry disillusionment ("Twang Town Blues") and of course, girls ("Mona Lee", "When Did It Get So Easy (To Lie To Me)?"). I don't know how a record released this year can already be ripe for rediscovery, but here we are. (YT: "Mona Lee")

01 The Monitor, Titus Andronicus (XL): Yes, on paper it's ridiculous: As the Village Voice's Sean Fennessey so eloquently put it, The Monitor is an album that "conflat[es] The Civil Fucking War with getting dumped and drunk in Jersey," yet there's no denying that in the execution, there was something special about Titus Andronicus' sophomore album. TA frontman Patrick Stickles and co. found the sweet spot between Born To Run and Zen Arcade -- the latter especially, as The Monitor feels like a Class of '84 SST record in a way that too few indie/punk releases aim for these days: a wildly ambitious conceit, overflowing with ideas, sloppy-in-a-good-way, honest and giant-heart-on-sleeved. And like the aforementioned classic albums, The Monitor is a young man's record: Fung Wah bus rides, Keystone Light-fueled ragers, nakedly emotional historical quotes ("If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on Earth." Abe Lincoln, or dark-night-of-the-soul Facebook status update?), and finally -- and crucially -- coming to terms with oneself: On "To Old Friends and New," Stickles' duet partner, Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner, offers, via her quivering assertion that "It's all right, the way that you live," the most devastating line I've heard in ages (even if the song itself dates back to September '05). Raise a glass to the best album of the year. (YT: "A More Perfect Union")