#9 - Charlotte Gainsbourg's "IRM" (2010)

If you don’t like Beck, stop reading.  To call him a producer on this album would be like going to Five Guys and referring to the bacon on your cheeseburger as a “garnish.”  This is a full-on Beck project and his fingerprints are everywhere, even if Gainsbourg is the principal collaborator.  If you’ve never gone to Beck’s website and listened to some of the offerings from his “Record Club,” in which he and a group of guest musicians cover a classic album in a single day recording session, do yourself a favor and check it out.  There are some gems.  You can hear that type of experimentation in the percussion on IRM tracks like “Greenwich Mean Time” and “Voyage.”  Most of the vocals are delivered in that wispy, girlish voice that has been a mainstay among indie songstresses for the past decade.  Don’t let that deter you.  A virtue of Beck’s compelling production is to feature Gainsbourg’s singing at exactly the right level throughout.  The result is a voice that sounds in practice far more versatile than you would think it could be in theory.  It is jaunty on the White Stripes-style duet “Heaven Can Wait,” seductive on “Time of the Assassins,” sweet on the Beatles-y ballad “In the End,” hopeful on “Master’s Hands,” and – amazingly – both fragile and defiant on the menacing “Le Chat Du Café des Artistes.”  If you’re wondering about the title, it is the French abbreviation for what English-speakers call an “MRI” – a reference to the series of brain scans that Gainsbourg underwent after a water-skiing accident a few years back.  Pardon my French, but this album is KO-A.  Grade:  B+

#8 - Roky Erickson with Okkervil River's "True Love Cast Out All Evil" (2010)

Of all the high profile comeback albums in 2010 from stars of yesteryear – Jerry Lee Lewis, Mavis Staples – this gem by the former 13th Floor Elevators’ frontman was by far the best.  Bookended by two lo-fi song fragments, the album consists of Erickson & Co. tackling all types of heavy shit.  Ruminations on love and loss and law from a man who in 1969 opted to be committed and undergo electroconvulsive therapy rather than serve a ten-year sentence for possessing a single joint.  A background like that makes it all the more poignant when he sings – sounding like a psychedelic Steve Earle – “electricity hammered me through my head” on “Ain’t Blues Too Sad.”  This album is as deep, dark, and beautiful as it is unexpected.   Grade:  A-

#7 - Titus Andronicus' "The Monitor" (2010)

In a year when Snooki & the Real Housewives have reduced New Jersey to a national inside joke, one could be forgiven for thinking that their chief export in 2010 was STDs.  It would be worth remembering, however, that this is the state where George Washington crossed the Delaware River and where Walt Whitman wrote his deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass.  Punk-rockers Titus Andronicus clearly draw a great deal of inspiration from their home state on this Civil War-themed album.  In the seven-minute (!) opener (!!), a “A More Perfect Union,” Patrick Stickles sings, “Oh, I never wanted to change the world, but I’m looking for a new New Jersey / ‘cuz tramps like us, baby, we were born to die,” channeling both Billy Bragg and the patron saint of the Garden State, Bruce Springsteen.  This is a nerdy, brash, passionate mess of an album and you may find yourself singing along during the first listen.  Grade:  A-

#6 - Nas & Damian Marley's "Distant Relatives" (2010)

It was hard to know a year ago what rap in 2010 would be like with Lil Wayne in jail.  Aside from maybe Rihanna, there really has been no single figure in hip hop quite so ubiquitous in the last five years as the Poet Laureate of Hollygrove.  I am happy to announce that the state of our union is strong.  Perennial heavyweights like Big Boi, Eminem, The Roots and Raekwon all punched out strong albums this year, while newcomers like Nicki Minaj and KiD CuDi delivered full lengths that were highly catchy, if a bit more superficial in content.  And though there were a few tracks still peddling in Auto-Tune, it appears as if most of hip-hop took Jay-Z’s “D.O.A.” for the coup de grace it was meant to be.  Of course, all of the regular tropes are still there:  the sex, the money, the braggadocio.  But there seems to be more room in rap these days for realistic introspection.  Or, in the case of “distant relatives” Nas and Damian Marley, a thoughtful reflection on a tumultuous past and a hopeful future.  The story of Africa is the focus here – its anthropology, its diaspora, its colonization – told through a riveting and tasteful sampling of its contributions to world music.  And though the album does not shy away from the well-plumbed depths of slavery and racism, neither does it wallow in anger or despair.  Distant Relatives is ultimately about shared experience, a “big picture” album that insists on considering history from an inclusively human and humane perspective.   Grade:  A-

     

#5 - Sleigh Bells' "Treats" (2010)

Many of the critics reviewing this album compared band member Alexis Krauss’ singing to something like religious chanting and the comparison is appropriate.  There is a hypnotic, meditative quality to the vocals, especially on stand-out tracks like “Rill Rill.”  But for my money, the real star here is Derek Miller’s production, which, in a year of catchy and crunchy guitar riff pyrotechnics (see: Fang Island), is the undisputed King of the Mountain.  Listen for the thrilling moment on “Infinity Guitars” around the 1:51 mark when the already loud song gets inexplicably louder.  It is obvious throughout that their amps go to “11.”  Grade:  A- 

#4 - Kanye West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" (2010)

My introduction to this album’s material was watching Kanye West perform “Runaway” on the MTV Music Awards.  After a year of embarrassing outbursts, interviews, tweets and an involuntary cameo on South Park, calling himself a “douchebag” felt like too little and too late.  It also felt appropriately tasteless.  Hearing the word “douchebags” sung, no matter how deserving its target, no matter how pretty the accompanying melody, for any reason other than comedy just felt…silly.  Watching that on TV, I really thought I was witnessing Kanye nuke the fridge.  But then:  a pair of revelations.  The first was this album, which, for all its bombast, is nearly a masterpiece.  The second was my realization that his personal life – even his frighteningly narcissistic insistence on living the majority of it in public – is kind of irrelevant to the art he’s creating.  I don’t want to make a virtue out of vice, but he seems capable of an alchemy that turns shit into gold.  After all, reasonable people can agree on all the available facts and still disagree on the conclusions one could reach from them.  Is Kanye obnoxious?  Garish?  Self-involved? Arrogant?  Yes.  Is he also charismatic?  Ambitious?  Self-critical?  Talented?  Yes.  As he rightly dares us on “Gorgeous,” “act like [he] ain’t had a belt in two classes.”  In 1994, major league baseball went on strike.  I was 15.  Turned off by what seemed to me then to be the greed of players and owners alike, I stopped watching.  I even stopped playing, so great was my disgust.  But, after reaching adulthood, I came back to the sport, acknowledging that the game itself was better than the men who played it.  So it is with Kanye.   Grade:  A-

 

#3 - Surfer Blood's "Astro Coast" (2010)

 An amazing debut from a great new band.  I haven’t been this impressed by a “first try” since, well, since Vampire Weekend came out.  If you’re not hooked by the opening power chord undertow of “Floating Vibes,” then don’t bother with the rest.  But if you let yourself float a little further out, here be dragons:  great harmonies, handclap percussion, reverberating guitars, jangly solos.  And, if the REM influences haven’t crashed over your head by then, they will on “Twin Peaks.”  Be sure to hang around for the flawed, stream-of-consciousness beauty of closer “Catholic Pagans” with its goofy allusions to bomb shelters and Barack Hussein Obama.  Grade:  A-

#2 - Das Racist's "Shut Up, Dude" / "Sit Down, Man" (2010)

The conventional wisdom about Das Racist is that they are not so much a rap group as a group of guys who love rap. And that this love has led to a knowledge so encyclopedic and a sensibility so epicurean that they almost can’t help being great rappers themselves. This critique is codependent with the other standard line on this band: that if they are not exactly novelty musicians (think: “Weird Als” for the millennial generation), they are, at least some of the time, taking the piss. I am of the opinion that many reviewers have missed the mark here, that they have revealed the extent to which their ideas are trapped in a kind of hipster lockstep. If for most of your adult life you have only been amused by irony, then you run the risk of believing that every time you laugh it must be the result of something ironic. Now, don’t get me wrong. Das Racist are funny. And they are not above poking fun of rap’s clichés and excesses. But that, too, reveals their devotion to rap’s legacy of humor and authenticity (see: De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, etc.) as opposed to a tongue-in-cheek aesthetic mocking rappers who take themselves too seriously. Bottom line: if you love wordplay, classic hip-hop, pop culture, good beats, self-deprecation and social commentary, then these two excellent mixtapes are as real as it gets.  Grade(s):  A- / A-

#1 - Vampire Weekend's "Contra" (2010)

 

Contra was released less than two weeks into 2010.  Week after week I waited for someone to top it.  Here I am, December 31^st, still waiting.  Nearly twelve months on, the songs sound as fresh and as expertly-produced as they did at first blush.  To borrow a Sarah Palin-ism, this album may be the best refudiation of the sophomore slump since the curse was first diagnosed.  The whole band – and lead singer Ezra Koenig in particular – sounds more assured than on the debut, which is something, considering they weren’t really the shrinking, shoegazer type to begin with.  As Koenig sings on “Holiday,” “I got…a healthy sense of worth.”  Indeed.  Lately, this band’s high self-esteem is just good common sense.  Grade:  A