My Top Albums of 2010

This is a fun list to put together, I have to thank Jon Abelack for telling me he was doing one and encouraging me to do the same. He also provided the rough format that I’m going to follow. And, though I’m sure this was not entirely his intention, I suppose he’s returned me to blogging. At least for the moment.

It was an interesting year in music for me. Last year, it seemed a given from month one that Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion was the album to beat. This year there was no such album. Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs was likely the most anticipated album of the year. The Black Keys’ Brothers was the most ubiquitous. And LCD Soundsystem’s This is Happening seemed to most consistently find its place at or near the top of the list on various blogger/magazine rankings. But for me, I think one song rose to the top in just the right way that it could carry it’s album with it. I’ll explain in a moment, so without further ado, here’s my personal list of the top ten albums I acquired in 2010.

(Note, if I never got it, it doesn’t get ranked. Them’s the breaks.)

1. The National – High Violet

Rock & Roll is for the young. It rewards unbridled emotion and untempered passion. In fact, it’s nearly a rule that rock stars get boring when they grow up. We want to hear them scream about busting out and making it big. If their life doesn’t seem freer and more exciting than mine, how can they possibly capture my imagination with their music and lyrics? Or, at least, that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Probably the first “adult” album to grab me was Tunnel of Love, back in 1988. Bruce Springsteen turned his writing inward and autobiographical, offering a view into his world. It wasn’t the world of a 25 year-old driving all night, hoping to find the promised land somewhere past the Jersey state line. It was the world of an adult, struggling in a relationship on the rocks. He’d grown up and he was taking his audience with him, even an eight year-old from his home state.

This year, The National put out an adult album. “Afraid of Everyone” deals with fatherhood, and the paranoia associated with protecting a young life in the world. But the one song that grabbed me, as I mentioned earlier, is “Bloodbuzz Ohio”. I loved it at first listen and it still calls me to attention every time it pops on the iPod or rings through the din of a bar. The driving snare and rhythm guitar keeps me on edge throughout while Matt Berninger deep baritone conveys the mixed emotions of reluctantly returning home to find himself forgotten, just as he realizes that though he never remembered it fondly, he remains deeply in its debt. If that home in Ohio is actually University of Cincinnati, where he went to college, that debt may be quite literal. An adult problem very many of us can relate to.

2. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

It became much harder to rank albums after #1, because there are several very good choices competing. In fairness, my bias here is in part because I love this band. I have for a long time and they’ve yet to disappoint me. The Suburbs is an ambitious album, itself sprawling metaphorically like its subject matter, yet packing the punch of a well-written concept-driven entity. Some of the songs work better than others, but there are several real standouts.  “We Used to Wait” is probably Win Butler’s best written song to date, using the decline of the postal service as a metaphor for the over-caffeinated immediacy of our world. But my personal favorite is “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains).”

With a disco beat and a sound that owes plenty to Blondie, this sound captures the essence of the album. Regine Chassagne sings about the suburbs and a young girl’s desire to make it in the city, despite nay-saying from the buttoned-down masses around her. In this song she never puts down the suburbs. In parts, she romanticizes them, of biking to the park and kissing on the swings. Likewise, she calls out the city for its closed-mindedness towards suburban folks.

Now, you may be asking, how can a song discussing the relative merits of the suburbs be remotely enjoyable? My answer: if you can make the suburbs danceable, you win.

Note: Some people hate Regine’s voice. Some people love her voice. I’m in the latter camp. It’s a matter of personal taste and nothing more.

3. The Black Keys – Brothers

This is a funny album for me to write about. I just got it. I don’t really even have strong feelings about a particular song or the lyrics. I can’t wax all that poetically about The Black Keys’ Brothers. I’m ranking this high, however, because it’s just really good. From a pure musical perspective, this is the album of the year. These two guys (and producer) create a type of timeless, bluesy soul unlike anyone out there. Sometimes I feel like they’re playing the music Jack White is supposed to be producing. And look at them. Those two dude are not suppose to make sounds like they do.

Favorite song: “Next Girl.” Key lyric: “Oh, my next girl will be nothing like my ex girl. It was a painful dance, now I got a second chance.”

We’ve all been there. Of course we have, it’s the blues.

4. Ryan Bingham – Junky Star

I still don’t know why I waited so long to buy this album. Deep down, I think I might have feared it wasn’t going to live up to expectations. Crazy Heart, for which Bingham wrote and performed many of the songs, is a favorite. An album full of his music, therefore, came with a particularly high expectation.  I think it delivered.

Bingham’s music is straight out of West Texas: picked guitars, sparse instrumentation, a harmonica somewhere between a passing train and “The River,” and a slight slow drawl that nearly betrays his youth. This album won’t necessarily lift your spirit, but it will help you locate it.

Favorite Song: “The Wandering,” his best piece of second-person poetry since “The Weary Kind,” also featured on the album, but disqualified from favoritism for having already appeared on the Crazy Heart soundtrack.

5. Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More

For a man of my particular taste in music, there’s something really exciting about a band like Mumford & Sons getting mainstream airplay. I mean, they’re a British folk/bluegrass act with a  taste for chamber pop. Who the hell makes that first decision to put one of their songs on the radio? That’s a ballsy call!

But frankly, Sigh No More, and especially “Little Lion Man,” are just that good. The lyrics, the passion, the driving banjos and the internal rhymes just create this feeling of perpetual motion that grabs you and doesn’t let go. And every time he hits the chorus in “Little Lion Man,” it shakes you and makes you feel the pain and embarrassment of hurting someone he’d loved. Music, like comedy, is at its best when it puts words to your emotions. Love and pain are common emotions to be expressed in song. Culpability, however, is unique.

6. Bruce Springsteen – The Promise

I debated whether to include this, but I think it is valid. This is previously unreleased music, packaged and sequenced like an album, albeit comprised from the outtakes of a separate album recorded in 1977 and 1978. Frankly, the better question is: How can a collection of songs not good enough to make the original album can possibly stand up on its own as one of the top albums of the year? Well, the answer is twofold. One, Darkness on the Edge of Town is phenomenal. Two, Bruce is crazy. It’s true.

But this collection of songs explore different areas for the E Street Band. These are the pop songs that don’t fit on an album called Darkness. These songs are Southside Johnny. They’re Brill Building. Even his alternate take on “Racing in the Street” rocks in a way that more closely draws the parallel to its distant cousin, Marvin Gaye’s (by way of Martha and the Vandellas) “Dancing in the Street.”

Best song: “The Promise.” How this song took 32 years for a proper release is beyond me. One of his most autobiographical songs, it deals with difficulty he faced in the years between Born to Run and Darkness. He was now a rock star. He couldn’t pretend not to be. This song discusses the burdens of actually living your dreams and finding out that dreams alone aren’t enough.

7. Tom Petty – Mojo

Whereas it’s always a little surprising that The Black Keys can be so soulful, it seems like a natural for Tom Petty. The joke, however, is that he’s never done such a bluesy album before Mojo. It’d been a long time since I’d bought a Petty album. I loved him back in middle school, but never really got into the older stuff or anything since Into the Great Wide Open. I know his greatest hits, but that’s about it.

Mojo, however, was a bit of a revelation. Petty’s band rocks and his voice perfectly lends itself to the genre. In fact, his upper register whine is particularly effective, as it stands out from deep-voiced bluesmen that more typically think of.

I can’t say I spent a lot of time listening to this album front to back, but it’s been a welcome rotation player when I listen to songs on shuffle. (I hate that Apple has trained me to say shuffle instead of random.)

Favorite song: “Lover’s Touch.” Just perfect blues. Should be a Clapton concert staple.

8. Frightened Rabbit – The Winter of Mixed Drinks

Ok, so I might be cheating here. I didn’t even know about this album until I read someone else’s list of the top 10 albums of the year. That said, it lived up to its billing and sports the best album title of the year. So here it is.

This Scottish quintet plays music that is decidedly of the moment. It is pure indie rock. The lyrics tumble over each other and the production is loose, but textural. Singer Scott Hutchinson’s voice cracks and strains appropriately for his lyrics. Frightened Rabbit has touch of The National to them, an affliction that obviously carries some positive weight in this space.

Frightened Rabbit is one of those bands that you can’t believe you haven’t heard before. But once you do, they’ll stay with you.

Best song: “Not Miserable.” One of the best songs I’ve heard about the troubles of drinking too much this side of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Life By the Drop.”

9. Ray LaMontagne & the Pariah Dogs – God Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise

Just a good album. LaMontagne stripped back some of the sheen from his last disc and offers some good country folk. And of course, he still has his voice, a quality instrument in its own right. I love his last album, but he feels more at home here. So much of his career has been a climb, fighting his way up from the station wagon he used to sleep in. Here, he finally sounds like he’s at peace with himself. And the Pariah Dogs provide him a sonic home from which to sing.

Best song: Tie between “Beg Steal or Borrow” and “New York City’s Killing Me.” The former is superbly written and is appropriately nominated for the song of the year Grammy. The latter just eats at me for beautifully assaulting the city I love. I don’t agree with him, but it’s just a good song.

That said, am I the only one who thinks he’s slowly turning into Jim Croce?

10.  Jamey Johnson – The Guitar Song

Way too hard to pick #10. There were a few that competed here. I love Jamey Johnson more than I love The Guitar Song. Like all double albums, it’s got more than an album’s worth of great material and a nice concept. Still, 25 songs is a lot and it probably prevented me from truly connecting with this collection like I should have.

All of that said, on this album Johnson continues his neo-outlaw tales of defeat and redemption. He’s a shot of take-no-prisoners country at a time when you’re more likely to see slinky dresses on teenagers than dusty leather and grizzly beards. Frankly, he’s everything I love about country at a time when very little of that is around.

Best song: “Poor Man Blues.” “He uses folks like me just to keep his sorry ass amused. Well son you’d better watch your back when a poor man gets the blues” ‘Nough said.

Top Compilations/Box Sets/Soundtracks

1. Various Artists – Dear New Orleans

My Morning Jacket, Tom Morello and Steve Earle highlight this tribute album.

2. Various Artists – Crazy Heart (Soundtrack)

Jeff Bridges, Colin Farrell and Ryan Bingham perform from the movie, surrounded by a wonderful collection of older country songs.

3. Various Artists – Doctors, Professors, Kings and Queens

A four-disc history lesson of New Orleans music. Thorough and tremendous.

Top Live Release

Various Artists – The Benefit Concert, Vol. 3

Warren Haynes and friends jam at Christmas time for Habitat for Humanity.

Other albums I acquired (some of which I loved):

Adam Klein – Wounded Electric Youth

Avett Brothers – The Avett Brothers Live, Vol. 3

Belle & Sebastian – Write About Love

The Gaslight Anthem – American Slang

The Hold Steady – Heaven is Whenever

Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening

Owen Pallett – Lewis Takes Off His Shirt (EP)

The Roots – How I Got Over

She & Him – Volume Two

Titus Andronicus – The Monitor

Vampire Weekend – Contra

Various Artists – Best of Bonnaroo

Various Artists – Hope for Haiti Now

Wu Tang vs. The Beatles – Enter the Magical Mystery Chambers