Kevin's Favourite Albums of 2010

There’s really a lot to like about December: Religious turned secular festivities (Christmas and Hanukkah), New Year’s Eve, Candy Canes, the overuse of the colours red and white. But for all that I like about Christmas, I must admit that my favourite part about this time of the year is making my Best of *year* lists.

It’s a great time because the Winter break really allows for you to take some time off, pause, and think “man, what was awesome this year and what was completely awful?” It’s a reflection process that turns into an informative piece about just HOW was the year. So, I shall no longer wait; it’s time to assess what has been great in the last year for music.

However, before I start into my lists, I think it is important to pause and just recap what this year has been like for the music scene and set the perimeters for what I’ll be analyzing. I think that it’s important to say that I obviously approach my music listening from a certain grounding that privileges “indie” music artists. Outside of the world of hip-hop, I find that I do not generally listen to much music that would be played on mainstream radio. That being said, there are obviously some great and amazing songs that make it to the radio, but you will never ever hear me praising the Black Eyed Peas or any other run of the mill, copper penny in a world of copper pennies, boring generic rock or hip-hop acts.

Okay, now that we generally know what my bias is, I think we can talk about the year in music. I will be focusing on two main themes in my analysis: the first would be that this was an uncharacteristically great year for hip-hop, really proven with the release of Kanye’s new album; the second would be that artists who we have already classified as being great have continued to release more quality albums.

This year really saw the reinvigoration of the hip-hop genre. There have been some solid albums in the last few years but I can confidently say that there has not been this many solid hip-hop releases in one year since at least 2004 (such as Madvillain’s – Madvillainy, Kanye – College Dropout, M.I.A. – Arular, Dizzee Rascal – Showtime). This year basically delivered hip-hop albums that could easily make the top 10 list for best albums in the following year, without a doubt.

Das Racist’s emergence onto the hip-hop scene with the release of two mixtapes, Shut Up, Dude and Sit Down, Man, brought a new voice onto the hip-hop scene, one that basically tore down the conventions of rap music while paradoxically praising them at the same time. Their first single “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” just really polarized everyone’s opinion of them when it came out last year. Are these guys serious rappers? Is this song mindless nonsense or a critique of consumer culture, meaning that all we can talk about is consumer culture? These two mixtapes should put everyone’s mind at ease to show how incredibly intelligent and witty this group is. They’ll make you laugh out loud (“Puerto Rican Cousins”), cleverly insult hip-hop music (“Fake Patois”) and then make you question how serious they really are about everything (“Hahaha jk”: “We’re not joking / Just joking / We are joking / Just joking / We’re not joking”), and drop a plethora of pop culture references in one song that would Ben Mulroney to shame. They’ve got some serious musical credibility to back up their big boasts with a lot of big name producers, such as Diplo and El-P, assisting them on the mixtapes. If you haven’t checked them out yet, I really suggest you get ready for the most interesting and unique hip-hop act you’ll have heard in a while.

On the more standard hip-hop fare, Kanye West and Big Boi have both released long awaited albums that may very well be the albums of their careers, well at least more certainly for Kanye. Both albums share a lot of hype: Kanye West had been making us anticipate in his album ever since he began posting his first Good Friday releases, and Big Boi had taken a while to get approval for his album to come through. When both albums dropped, they were like bombshells in the music world, and probably for good reason. Both albums are impeccably produced and just sound so dense, layered and full. The guest stars on both albums are pretty tight for the most part, but obviously the main artists shine through. I don’t really want to get too far into this but it should be said that both of these albums really demand a listen.

Anyways, for my list I’ve decided to not go with a standard ranking format but rather stick with a tier format. The one exception is that I will post my one favourite album this year that exceeds the rest for me. There are a couple albums I really need to give a better listen to (Sufjan, Deerhunter, Best Coast) so they will not be on this list. Anyways, enjoy! And have a merry Christmas!

My Top 25 Favourite Albums:

My Favourite Album:

• The National – High Violet

Killer Albums:

• Big Boi – Sir Lucious Left Foot, The Son of Chico Dusty
• Das Racist – Sit Down, Man
• Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
• Robyn – Body Talk

Awesome Albums:

• Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
• Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
• Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma
• Vampire Weekend – Contra
• Beach House – Teen Dream

Solid Albums:

• Sleigh Bells – Treats
• Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Before Today
• Foals – Total Life Forever
• Wolf Parade – Expo 86

Great Albums:

• Das Racist – Shut Up, Dude
• The Black Keys – Brothers
• Owen Pallett – Heartland
• The Walkmen – Lisbon
• Surfer Blood – Astrocoast

Good Albums:

• Local Natives – Gorilla Manor
• Sufjan Stevens – All Delighted People EP
• LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening
• Shugo Tokumaru – Port Entropy
• Menomena – Mines

Da Drought is Over (Hopefully)

No, the title of my post is not referring to Weezy being released from jail. It's about the hip-hop drought being over: the difficulty that rap has had in releasing multiple good or better hip-hop releases in a single year.

Hip-hop has really suffered the last few years. Sure there were still some bangin singles, like "Throw some D's", but it's been really difficult to get a lot of good full album releases in a year. In fact, any good hip-hop CDs I don't think would have been good enough to place too high on any year end lists, with the only exception really being Raekwon's last album. All the really great hip-hop stars haven't really been producing very high quality products. I remember when I'd just desperately crave for the next Madvillain album, although it's still clearly so far away, just because nothing would be coming out.

We haven't really had amazing years since the first half of the decade. Does anyone remember how absolutely amazing 2004 was?

• Madvillain - Madvillainy
• Kanye - College Dropout
• M.I.A. - Arular
• Dizzee Rascal - Showtime

Like, gawd damn those are some good debut releases from the first 3 artists! Ridiculous!

I'm hopeful that the times are changing now. This year has been a fairly good year so far with new albums from Big Boi (awesome album actually), Das Racist, and the resurgence of Kanye West. There's so much potential with the new Kanye album and the Kanye / Jay-Z one as well. It's not like there hasn't been a high amount of meh (Eminem, Lil Wayne), but I'm fairly hopeful that these new album will really overshadow the rest of them. That new Big Boi is so ridiculously hot and I'd dare say it's the best hip-hop album to come out in recent years.

Anyways, I'm hopeful that Kanye and his crew will help be at the forefront of this new reinvigoration of hip-hop. If that new album sucks, I'll be crushed.

Burrrr!

When I have a moment later today, I'm going to add to Kevmoh's recent winter album post and post some of my most enjoyed "winter-esque" albums from the past. He's most definitely spot on with The Moon and Antactica; full agreeance there.

One tune that always came to mind for me (among a many) is the closer from Motion City Soundtrack's Commit This To Memory titled "Hold Me Down". I'm sure that notion I get is largely in part to it's video, but the whole album had a winter-ish theme to it. Motion City's sophomore effort Commit This To Memory coincidentally was released in the early summer of 2005, but was obviously either written or recorded during winter sessions. Jesus... hard to believe that was over 5 years ago already.... Anyway, more on that later! For now, how's about a video?!

Hold Me Down:

Nostalgia Revisted

Everything from the past always seems to be better than anything in the present. Oh how we all long for the days of the past, the days that we have crystalized in our memories as being pure, solid, and good. Nostalgia is something that we can really never attain again, which may be a good thing. We're all nostalgic about our childhoods but that doesn't mean that it's something that we necessarily want to return to or something that should be returned to.

Anyways, this is a poem by Billy Collins, a man who used to be the U.S.' poet laureate from 2001-2003. It's a pretty funny poem and satirizes how we look at the past.

Billy Collins - Nostalgia:

Remember the 1340's? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These days language seems transparent a badly broken code.

The 1790's will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.

I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,
or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture the serenity of last month when we picked
berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.

Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.

As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.

Kevin's Winter Albums

The temperature is slowly dropping these days. A lot of the trees have lost almost all their leaves. There's often the potential for rain to be mixing with snow. Yes, yes it's that time: Winter is coming.

With that change in temperature comes different moods, emotions and tones to match our destitute landscape. Long gone is the Summer pop music or the joyful Spring albums: they have been replaced with melancholy and weary songs. I'm now going to start a list, and Ryan or anyone else can add on if they want, for some good Winter albums / songs that I've found in the last few years.

Albums:
Christian Fennesz - Black Sea
Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica
Stars - Set Yourself on Fire
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Etiquette
The Field - From Here we go Sublime
Husky Rescue - Ghost is not Real
M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas, Lost Ghosts
Why? - Alopecia

Most of these albums are not the most... uplifting. They're generally very sombre in tone and reflect the feeling of Winter in various ways. For example, Alopecia, Set Yourself on Fire, and Etiquette all have lyrics that generally deal with pain and suffering in relationships that individuals have with others. Throughout most of the songs, the lyrics deal with individuals desiring a sort of emotional or spiritual renewal that they are just not obtaining it in their lives. The rest of the albums generally have a sort of melancholy feel to them that comes through their instruments. There are harsh realities and existentialist crises scattered about (Modest Mouse's "The Stars are Projectors" or "Lives") that make aware the reality of life and death that the season of Winter brings.
Overall they're all great albums, with Moon and Antarctica actually being my favourite album ever, so I suggest you check them out.

But I need to give special recognition to another Winter album....










SO GOOOD

MANIAC

A new Kid Cudi track has surfaced today and it features underground rapper Cage that goes be the name "Maniac". What I'm most stoked on is the fact that it features an unlikely sample of St. Vincent's "The Strangers" from last year's album Actor. Not sure how well it works, but we'll see after a few repeat listens. It's expected that this track will be featured on the new Cudi album, "Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager" due out November 9th. Check back here for leak updates, though. Here's praying it's better than the first album!

You can download the track right here.

Also in Cudi news, his video for his first single "Erase Me" featuring Kanye West was released today. Features a cameo from McLovin from Superbad and Clark from Hot Tub Time Machine. Not to mention Kanye wearing the gold chains he seems to be in love with recently.

Erase Me:

Bulletproof Monster

Kanye continues to roll on, and I for one, have no complaints. Just a couple hours ago the Entertainment Weekly website posted an exclusive stream of a new remix of "In for the Kill" by pop act, La Roux. Apparently they're already in the works of creating a video. I think it's a bit much, but that's because I'm not a huge fan of the track, myself. Give it a listen for yourself here.

As a bonus, make sure you check out his latest performances on SNL. Fuckin' brilliant.

Runaway:

Power:

Floating Vibe

Every year or so comes along 2 or 3 albums that I constantly find myself coming back to for repeated listens (ie; Vampire Weekend's first LP, Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest). Surfer Blood is another one of those bands for me. Their first and only album to date, Floating Vibes, was released earlier this year and has gained many a listens for me. This is one of the few bands that can give you a real sunny, summer feel but at the same time give you a colder/fall vibe.

They did a live-in-studio performance for Halfway House where they performed a couple tracks from their first album, and a brand new track, "I'm Not Ready" for their next album. Needless to say, I'm stoked! Give the new track a listen!

I'm Not Ready:

Floating Vibes:

Fast Jabroni:

These Wasted Words

Hello.

So this will be my other blog, my blog that everyone can post on as long as they've got something to say that can't be supplemented with a simple "lol".

When I made the other blog it was not in any effort to be pretentious, to be able to shout out "ha I have a vessel for spreading out my ideas while you don't have anything important to say". No, that's not what I was trying for at all.

I just really like to write. It's an idea that is heading into cliche waters, but you can really find out a lot about what you believe in and think by just translating into a physical form (writing it out, typing it out, drawing it out). I would really just like for this blog to be about people coming to terms with things that they're thinking, contemplating, pondering about. Saying that, I also want to avoid simple conclusions and wandering thoughts - thoughts that lack substance or any meaningful sense of purpose.

Whoever is in, come aboard. Our feet will wander with our minds.

Or so it goes.