My Best Albums of 2010
If there is one unifying theme behind my favorite records of this year, it’s meeting expectations. Aside from Mount Kimbie, all of the records on this list were ones I couldn’t wait to listen to. These albums somehow survived my expectations and attention span in the Mediafire age and meant something special to me.
10. Mount Kimbie - Crooks and Lovers: The eventual outcome of the move to reflect space in bleak dubsteppy soundscapes, Mount Kimbie’s minimal debut bridges the gap between the next level hip hop of Flying Lotus and the beautiful distance of Burial.
9. Foals - Total Life Forever: An enthusiastic renaissance for a style of guitar music that should’ve died in 2007. Total Life Forever takes post-punk britpop and colors it in with sophisticated songwriting and seriously awesome guitar riffs.
8. Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty: It may lack the perverse magic of its predecessors, but Chico Dusty still plays like a well-earned showcase for the Paul McCartney of hip-hop.
7. Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles (II): The most surprising follow-up of the year, CC evolves far beyond their screamy gimmick into an full-fledged electronica band you can’t ignore.
6. Chemical Brothers - Further: The Chems finally focus the sound they’ve been crafting since their late 90s success into a perfectly sequenced festival melting record full of filthy beats and goosebump-inducing peaks.
5. LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening: LCD stick to their formula of perfectly efficient 9-minute dance songs and hit every emotional note that makes them so special.
4. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs: A victory lap from one of the best bands on the planet, Arcade Fire let their unedited genius spill out onto the page and into a too-long record with scattered moments of incredible brilliance.
3. Gorillaz - Plastic Beach: For all intents and purposes, a wonderfully ambitious new Blur record. PB sounds like an overwritten, weirdly-cast and poorly rehearsed play where everyone turns in serendipitously virtuoso performances.
2. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy: Kanye combines the aesthetic ambition of 808s and Heartbreaks with the hit-parade mentality of his college trilogy and creates his masterpiece.
1. Caribou - Swim: An intimate record that paints the most powerful album length statement of the year for me. Written to reflect his experiences in nightclubs, Dan Snaith reconstructs dance music as an organic experiment in texture and distance. Much like Kid A, Swim effectively uses throbbing beats and soaring melodies to disguise seriously avant-garde songwriting.
