Best Music of 2010

My ability to listen to as many albums as I did several years ago is gone. in 2009, I no longer had my own apartment or house or car and focused my energy and efforts on being in the world and traveling as opposed to sitting on my computer and listening to music. I still enjoy very much doing the latter, however, due to those things, my musical horizons have not increased as rapidly as in the past. However, this year I reached into the past and started listening to Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits. I've had fun exploring their catalogue of music and am excited to find more classic artists in 2011 as well as new music. I love music and creativity and the following are albums that I enjoyed for the past year.

1. Menomena - Mines It's great to find a band when they have one release and to see them put out quality albums with each new record. Ever since I AM THE FUN BLAME MONSTER, I had found one of the greatest, most unique albums I had ever heard and the bands following releases were good and offered something new each time. However, with the release of MINES, I feel like the band has found their best sound yet. Much of the album is reminiscent of what they've done in the past, however, on MINES, the sound is much larger and much more diverse and much more capable for aural exploration. Also, the most singsongy album of theirs to date.

2. The National - High Violet
After getting into the National with BOXER, I was certain no National album could live up to my love of that album, thus keeping me from ever looking into their back catalogue. However, with HIGH VIOLET, the National has made just as solid of an album as their last. The songs are perfect and the album is a testament to a band that puts forth all their time and energy on creating a masterpiece.

3. Damien Jurado - Saint Bartlett
I have been a DJ fan ever since I mail ordered the GATHERED IN SONG ep from an early internet site advertising the release from "Damien Jurardo." Confused about his name for some time after and catching a live performance at the cornerstone music festival in 2000, I immediately delved into his career and since have purchased every release possible from the artist. I have seen him more than I've seen any other band or artist and until getting into Bob Dylan, DJ has always been my favorite singer/songwriter/artist. After a slew of great songwriting mostly in the same vein, this year we see Jurado breaking free from a formula that has worked so well for him and pulls from new influences and has the help from producer Richard Swift for a new sound that suits Jurado well. The opening is the best album opening of the year, and of Jurado's career, reminiscent of an epic church song.

4. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
Another band I have been with since their first release. I will never forget the first time I heard/saw Arcade Fire on the Conan O'Brien show and immediately going out the next day to buy FUNERAL. The album produced a sound I had never heard and was excited about music. This was an important time (2004) in my musical pilgrimage and discovery and FUNERAL was a perfect album to open my horizons. After a disappointing but still solid NEON BIBLE, the band has returned with possibly the sharpest album of their career. While not holding the pureness of FUNERAL (a record that holds a more raw power like that of IN THE AEROPLANE OVER THE SEA or even the promise ring's 30 DEGREES EVERYWHERE), THE SUBURBS is a brilliantly constructed album from start to finish that holds such a strong sense of living life in the suburbs, something I can easily relate to.

5. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
His psychological shortcomings get released in the form of being an asshole and while his rhymes are kind of, what's the word, bad, the guy knows how to produce an incredible sound.

6. Aloha - Home Acres
90's emo (ie The Promise Ring, Get Up Kids) meets 2000s experimental rock (ie. Dirty Projectors, Battles)

7. LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening
The best live music experience I have ever had was at Bonnaroo this past summer seeing Dr. Dog (which reminded me of what may be the closest thing to seeing the Beatles or a similar act in the heyday of psychedelic drug use mixed with experimental rock n roll), The Flaming Lips (the greatest live show of all time) perform THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, and then followed by LCD Soundsystem at 2 in the morning all in one day. What a beautiful day ended with a tent full of people having fun dancing to a full band performing such brilliantly produced unique songs.

8. Mimicking Birds - Mimicking Birds
Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful

9. The Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt
I cannot get enough of his voice. A great live show I saw in the summer of 2009. Great stage presence and confidence that match his songwriting and simple songs.

10. The Black Keys - Brothers
My first experience with the band who apparently has 5 other albums prior to this excellent album.

11. Baths - Cerulean
Drugs

12. MGMT - Congratulations
Better than their last album of one hit wonders. Fun and trippy. A couple of the songs actually remind me of what Everything, Now! has been doing for a long time.

13. Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid
This album is full of so many influences and styles. Very fun.

14. Toro Y Moi - Causers of This

15. Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz
Duh.

16. Arrah and the Ferns - All the Bad in One Place
Good friends with such a level of improvement and maturity over their first fun pop album. I am excited about their reunion and continual progression.

17. Tame Impala - Innerspeaker
More drugs

18. Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record

19. Avi Buffalo - Avi Buffalo

20. Phosphorescent - Here's To Taking it Easy
Country!

21. Frog Eyes - Paul's Tomb: A Triumph

22. The Books - The Way Out

23. Cowboy Angels - Rent. Vol. 1
It's the year I and many others became country apparently.

24. Wolf Parade - Expo 86

25. Ok Go - Of the Blue Colour of the Sky

Honorable Mentions: , Spoon - Transference, Surfer Blood - Astrocoast, Dr. Dog - Shame, Shame, Joanna Newsom - Have One on Me , Frog Eyes - Paul's Tomb: A Triumph

Favorite Songs from Albums not listed or not given full listens:

FRIGHTENED RABBIT - Nothing Like You
DR. DOG - Jackie Wants a Black Eye
DELPHIC - Doubt
ARIEL PINK'S HAUNTED GRAFFITI - Round and Round
FOALS - Total Life Forever
GIL SCOTT-HERON - New York is Killing Me
GORILLAZ - Stylo
THE RADIO DEPT. - Never Follow Suit
KNXWLEDGE - Kollective
MUX MOOL - Hog Knuckles