Albums : 2010

Two towering figures loom over the music scene this year: Kanye West and Robyn. Future pop music queen, Lady Gaga was pretty much content working on her forthcoming album Born This Way while appearing and receiving accolades in music award shows and putting out impressive music videos that continues to be imitated by other musicians. But for this year, Kanye West yet again seized our attentions by releasing a record that is far beyond anyone's expectations. At the same time Robyn has pushed her three-part outing to create a buzz that has only served to raise the bar that she herself has set from one EP to another.

But there are far more important discoveries that 2010 has cruelly overlooked, including what I picked as album of the year. Eliminating the risk of sounding generic or overly pretentious, the albums I included in this list are the ones that have served as overtures and bookends to a fascinating year.



10. Major Lazer + La Roux - Lazerproof
Diplo and Switch of course have been known to turn pretty much anything they touch into gold and Lazerproof is no exception. Potentially lackluster Euro-dancehall tracks are now brimming with syrupy goodness thanks to the samples and beats thrown in by the duo. Tracks seamlessly flow into each other making Lazerproof a perfect mixtape of 80s and Jamaican flavor.



9. The National - High Violet
Warm fuzzy guitars interlace the album’s opening track ‘Terrible Love’. It’s a rather sinister song that runs with even more sinister images of spiders, depression and more woes, setting the template for the rest of the album. Matt Berninger sounds like every arthouse kid’s older yet wiser brother who has had his fair share of heartbreak, affairs and broken/beat-up days spent nursing with a bottle of vodka or any preferred alcoholic beverage.


8. Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz
The old Sufjan Stevens we know opens The Age of Adz with ‘Futile Devices’, operating on guitars that could be mistaken for a music box tinkling you away to sleep. But Stevens drops the auto-tuned bomb with the next song ‘Too Much’. It’s his way of telling us that he’s grown up but still haunted with the ghosts of his past: lovelorn explorations, bravura choirs, impressive instrumentation and brave forays into the unknown.


7. The Black Keys - Brothers
Snazzy riffs, slick choruses and stories which could potentially be about barnyard sex, The Black Keys’s Brothers is a record hardwired with traditional blues and a good ‘ol shot of whiskey. Tracks like ‘Black Mud’ and ‘Howlin’ For You’ only serve to strengthen the album’s grip on the material they have always been good at: an impeccable throw back to a straightforward record of blues, dejection and serenading.


6. Youth Pictures of Florence Henderson - s/t
Even the sub-genre itself is tired and done but in their self-titled album, Youth Pictures of Florence Henderson manages to resuscitate the beaten-down music tropes. The album launches an assault of atmospheric wonders through intricate arrangement, echoic vocals and jangling guitars rivaling those of Sigur Ros and Explosions in the Sky.


5. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
What is left to be said of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy? Kanye West continues to defy expectations (particularly with the apologia of ‘Runaway’) and he’s armed with a battering ram this time and accompanied by an array of the best musicians and artists that he could arrange. Whoever thought Bon Iver would appear alongside hip-hop heavy weights such as Nicki Minaj (in a scene stealing bit in 'Monster')  and Jay-Z and still create eerie atmospherics with their signature stripped down template? As always, this album is built on West’s continually erect dick, only this time it’s more grandiose and slightly, dare I say it, emotional.


4. Sleepwalk Circus - Great Secret Show
It’s pretty uncanny for Sleepwalk Circus to open their debut album with Bahasa. If it’s a message about the diversity of their soundscape, Sleepwalk Circus has got it right. Great Secret Show is rife with melee of guitars tinkling and jangling away to reveal the eccentric personalities that inhabit the world of Great Secret Show. From the math-rock stop-start of ‘Sideshow’, the sci-fi dynamics of ‘Flies are Falling’ to the sensuous finale of ‘Farmers After Party’, Sleepwalk Circus’s debut record is a stunning promise of better things to come from such a young band.


3. Robyn - Body Talk
The exclusion of fan favorites such as ‘Include Me Out’ and ‘Cry When You Get Older’ may have marred the consistency of Body Talk to a number listeners but nevertheless, the record is an amazing display of Robyn’s antithesis to everything that passes itself as squeaky, electro-dance pop. The entire catalogue of the three EPs is definitely rich with potential triple-platinum singles (such as the newly released ‘Call Your Girlfriend’ and ‘None of Dem’). Despite the generic lyrics, Body Talk is an amazing pop record that will never wear down after repeated listening.


2. Olafur Arnalds - ...and they have escaped the weight of darkness
Is it the Icelandic dreamscape the fuel that gives artists such as Olafur Arnalds the capacity to put out record after record of such grand and brilliant proportions? Just like what the title and the album art depicts, the album is a tenuous tread into the borders of light and dark; a struggle that Arnalds perfectly captures in each of the nine instrumental tracks that run the album’s blood. With such quality present in this neo-classical work, it’s baffling that many music critics have overlooked Arnald’s 2010 record.


1. Shearwater - The Golden Archipelago
Apart from Sufjan Stevens, Shearwater may be the only reason why concept albums still exist in the digital music arena. Accompanied by a gorgeous fifty-page booklet of photographs and documents obtained by Jonathan Meiburg in his trips to places such as Tierra del Fuego, New Zealand and Galapagos, The Golden Archipelago is the perfect finale for the band’s The Island Arc trilogy (the other two are Palo Santo and Rook). Filled with sprawling imageries of islands, exotic animals, dreamscapes, prows and maps, The Golden Archipelago is a stunning work that transcends the boundaries of narrative and musical arrangement.