Mid Year Report.

We're half-way through the year and that means I'm gonna do a little speil about my favorite records and songs of 2010. This year the records I've heard have been communicating more with their style than actual lyrics so far, plain songwriting albums like last years "The xx" and "Middle Cyclone" coming up weak, but the broad range of tones and sounds that artisits have hit this year is exciting enough. Also, typically my favorites are somewhat mainstream efforts which this year have been weak also (Kanye West and M.I.A. should be making splashes soon) so the indie crowd have been wooing most of my attention for the first part of the year. That may change, as these lists are highly volatile but here we go.

Ten Best Albums of 2010 (thru June)
10. Heaven is Whenever - The Hold Steady
The Minnesotta-turned-New-York bar-band-turned-classic-rock-revivalists deliver morality soaked if melodramtic tunes about being down-and-out and growing up. Notable Tracks: "The Sweet Part of the City" "Hurrican J". Notable Lyric: "I only had one single it was a song about a pure and simple love...I still play that record/ but it don't sound that simple anymore."
9. Welder - Elizabeth Cook
A country crooner with a pipette voice sqeaks through true-life stories of herion-addict sisters and, of course, lost love, with an attention to emotion honesty and truncated rythyms. Notable Tracks: "Rock and Roll Man" "El Camino" Notable Lyric: "When you say yes to beer, you say no to booty".
8. Contra - Vampire Weekend
I slammed this album early in the year and now I'm having second thoughts. Sure, it's not as exciting or touching as it's predessesor but it's a more mature work that discretly handles the band's preoccupations with class struggle, Ivy-League style. Notable tracks: "Taxi Cab" "Giving Up the Gun" Notable Lyric: "Dad was a risk-taker/his was a shoe-maker/you greatest hits 2006, little list-maker/your caught in the melody/ you wait in the car/ you were born with ten fingers and you're gonna use them all."
7. High Violet - The National
Another unfortunate slamming which shows i'm still getting used to this whole rating thing, I took the lameness of the first two and last two tracks as empty sad-sackery which it is, but the middle chunk of this album has a sweeping gothic grandeur and attention to detail which is rich as the warm thud of the music. Notable tracks: "Afraid of Everyone" "Conversation 16" Notable Lyric: "I gave my heart to the army/ The only sentimental thing I could think of/ With cousins and colors somewhere overseas/ But it'll take a better war to kill a college man like me."
6. The Monitor - Titus Andronicus
An epically-scoped and furiosuly-performed punk-opera about the Civil War and rebellious New Jersey teenagerdom, they mine the teritory of Bruce Springsteen, The Ramones, and The Replacements to probe the idea of what makes America through ambitious and grand anthems which a ruh around the edges and frail at the heart. Notable Tracks: "Theme From 'Cheers'" "The Battle Of Hampton Roads" Notable Lyrics: "I never wanted to change the world but I'm looking for a new New Jersey/ Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to die."
5. Blackjazz - Shining
Truly living up to it's title, this album by the Nordic-metal band Shining is as dense as it is dark, creating an all incompassing soundscape whcih probes madness and violence and while the lyrical quality is typical metal, the music is not, endlessly invintive and challenging. Notable tracks: "Exit Sun" "Blackjazz Deathtrance" Notable lyric: Ican't understand what the hell their saying and i don't care to.
4. Have One on Me - Joanna Newsom
A harpist and mousy-voiced singer who mines the past with a nostalgic romanticism which she reflects in her cryptic lyrics, Newsom spend most of this triple-album probing the relationships between her and the men in her life revealing a complex portrait of the modern young woman and a musical tapestry as difficult as it is rewarding. Notable Tracks: "Go Long" "Jackrabbits" Notable Lyric: "I have sown untidy furrows across my soul but I am still a coward/ Content to see my garden grow so sweet and full of someone else's flowers"
3. Treats - Sleigh Bells
Mining the work of James Brown more than they know, these hipsters want the catharsis most artists crave once a song 24/7 so they make a loud, raging album of dance-jams, amp-explosions and bubblegum vocals for the overstimulated teenager in us all, all while exploring what it means to be, well, and overstimulated teenager. Notable tracks: "Riot Rhythm" "Crown on the Ground" Notable Lyric: "Deaf chords, dead ends/ sling set can't meet their demands/ dumb whores, best friends/ infinity guitars, go ahead"
2. Transference - Spoon
Spoon get into typically deep territory on this album, their best since 2002's Girls Can Tell. The voice existential queries about growing up and facing their own specific splace in the rock pentheon, one which they advance with this serious of dark, adult, rock grooves. Notable Tracks: "Trouble Comes Running" "Written In Reverse" Notable Lyric: "I got nothing to lose but darkness and shadows/ got nothing to lose but bitterness and patterns"
1. This is Happening - LCD Soundsystem
Dance-puck auteur James Murphy ups his game in every way possible, on this final record from his flagship band. The electronic grooves are hypnotic and elusive, with nods to Talking Heads, Iggy Pop, Daft Punk and an entire library of great bands, but ultimately its the sardonic, neurotic lyrics that stand out. They are the last will and testament of an aging hipster who finally finds himself able to cut past the cool and come home. Notable tracks: "One Touch" "Pow Pow" Notable Lyrics: "You're afraid of what you need/ If you weren't, I don't know what we'd talk about"

Top 10 Tracks So Far:

10. Theme From "Cheers" by Titus Andronicus
9. Soft in the Center by The Hold Steady
8. California English by Vampire Weekend
7. Rill Rill by Sleigh Bells
6. The Suburbs by Arcade Fire
5. I Can Change by LCD Soundsystem
4. Telephone by Lady Gaga
3. Power by Kanye West
2. Go Long by Joanna Newsom
1. We Used To Wait by Arcade Fire

Most Anticipated
1. The Suburbs - Arcade Fire
Exploring middle American upbringing is the best conceit an Arcade Fire album can possibly have; the singles they've released are stellar; the band has never made an album that wasn't masterful. It just all adds up for this band in this year. And if they could throw a single up the charts, the world just might change.
2. Good Ass Job - Kanye West
Mr. West is returning to rap and hoping to return to the populariy he lost at last years VMAs. My guess is, he won't but if the album isn't great, the next one certainly will be. He may be a jerk, but one should never forget that he's also a genius.
3. Title TBA - Fleet Foxes
Their debut was a suprise hit and one of the most universally-loved records of the past decade full of pastoral beauty and aching vocals. The plan is to record the record quickly al-la Van Morrison's Astral Weeks to make a more cohesive, darker, and rawer album. Should be a tight-rope walk well worth hearing.
4. /\/\/\Y/\ - M.I.A.
After making huge artistic and commercial strides on 2007's Kala the Sri Lankan chanteuse has every oppurtunity to take her third record of electropunk into new heights, or to sink under pressure and self-importance. Either way, this will be one of the most intereting and talked-about records of the year.
5. Hot Sauce Committe Pt. 1 - Beastie Boys
After a dissappointing instrumental album, the rap pioneers are preparing a self-produced album featureing Nas and Santigold. Almost none of their albums are let downs and the party boys turned vetrans have plenty of material to mine for introspection and their peculiar brand of humor. The cover art is quite promising as well.

Treats by Sleigh Bells

"Loud" like Beastie Boys means "rowdy"; like Public Enemy, "confrontational"; like Slayer, "brutal" perhaps. For Brooklyn duo Sleigh Bells "loud" takes on shades of meaning which is only possible because they're hasn't really been a record that was loud in this blown-out amp, drum machine explosion way before. The first time I put it on it infuriated me (headphones); trying it again in my car it made me rapturuos. Tipped way above safe decible levels with "Infinity Guitars" and "Riot Rhythm" that trudges along with dependable steadiness until overwhelming you, the songs often recall those of label-mate M.I.A. they way their bombastic density clobbers you. With songs about superficial "Kids" on a vacation and another track called "Straight A's" the loud here is a reaction to the overstimulation of young people, the shallowness of modern radio and the pitfalls of attention-seeking blog behavior (uh-oh I'm caught up in it too).

These people aren't hypocrites though, they're not fighting overstimulation with overstiulation as much as attempting an alternative, intelligent album about overstimulation. You know, the way Randy Newman's "Rednecks" didn't actually glorify racism. They get the fuel to make that commentary from the sweet suger-laced melodies that chime from singer Alexis Krauss who has far too much respect for teenyboppers (as she says "I know the part") to deride them or condecend to their audience, something label-mate M.I.A. does too much these days. The lyircs are simple, the melodies catchy, the sound LOUD. This is an album about the fracture between mainstream music and independent music, partuicularly for teens who are just carving their own aesthetic niches, and it insists that they meet eachother half way. Sleigh Bells mine dangerous territory here(the glorious thud of rap, dancefloor synths, abrasive punk guitars, and shoegazer vocals are all derided among some listners) but those sounds combine into something unabashedly (even frighteningly) contemporary. "You gotta march" a chorus of giddy tweens boast in "Riot Rythym" and Sleigh Bells make pop worth marching for. Doubt the kids'll listen, much less march, but glad someone is trying. 4.5/5

Brothers by The Black Keys

It's obvious that this duo bought their first instruments and started mining blues tropes to get the girls almost all these songs are about. That's why each tune is shimmering with the smoky atmospherics of a Quentin Tarantino movie, cutting into White Stripes' stomping ground without the trickness of Jack's lyrics or the intensity of Meg's unrelenting stomp. Instead the beat is laid back into
R&B turf for the seduction of those drawn to oddly vague, cool rock-and-roll.We never learn about who that is exactly since The Black Keys treat women as demographics, not individuals, in songs which go for universalism but end up as glorified song skeletons, lacking the meat of real relationship details. After all, it'd be a shame if those girls found out the whole show was for them. That would make the band and their audience appear to be tangible people instead of faceless blues archetypes, ruining the magic. Only on the last track does the gentleman who does the crooning truly sound flustered, and it's not about girls at all. 3/5

Cosmogramma by Flying Lotus

I heard this in a posh restaurant/hotel once. Or maybe it was a dream of a posh restaurant/hotel. I guess they're the same thing which would be the long-labored point of this record if the West Coast DJ who made (he'd say crafted it) was as interested in points as he was in finding new sonic contexts for windchimes. 2/5

Heaven is Whenever by The Hold Steady

A record with this many problems shouldn’t be this good, but that’s life as usual for the Hold Steady’s Craig Finn, a guy just far removed enough from his songs of down-and-outs to act as a bar band moralist, but just close enough to them that you wander why and for whom he’s moralizing. You question his authority even as you start to think that maybe he wants you to do just that. His story-songs are hook-strong and delivered in the nasally grandeur of Finn’s singing (stronger and more nuanced than ever as he sings more than speaks) and they all have tremendous problems. The first is the production, which is steeped in power-ballad, roots-rock cliches (so many choirs!) second is the image Finn is trying to project. This band has always been too big for his britches, going for Bruce Springsteen and inevitably falling short and their ambitions are obvious here, as melodramatic as that album cover. The last minutes of the album are ridiculously maudlin

But I must be honest, and despite all I know about propriety, I love this record. Finn, like me, is more or less a rock and roll innocent who fantasizes about the girl he’s wrong for but curls up in bed alone instead (“Hurricane J”) who wishes he wasn’t so happy so he could write better songs (“Rock and Roll Problems”) who’s livin’ for “The Smidge”. He has a way with honesty that here he pairs with some of his strangest and sweetest sentiments without ever resisting the urge for an arena-filling guitar solo. In a world where tuneful nice-guys are confined to the wasteland of twee, indie pushovers, Finn’s nice-guy is inspiring because he understands how unappealing the nice-guy is, but wants to try for it anyway. 4/5

Exile on Main St. by The Rolling Stones (Deluxe Edition Reissue)

In 1972, The Rolling Stones were already a veteran band with eight years of experience and a dozen records behind them. While they had always been overshadowed by the Beatles in the sixties, the breakup of that group allowed the Stones to develop artistically on their own and produce some of the greatest records that the worlds ever seen. Beggars Banquet and Sticky Fingers were towering achievements of modern riffage, blues reinvention, and the playful hedonism that has both informed and tarnished the band’s reputation. But even with those masterpieces and era-defining songs like “Satisfaction” and “Gimme Shelter” to hang on their mantle, Exile on Main St. was a revelation. It stood apart in sound and technique from any other work the band made previous, and has served as the archetypal rock and roll record ever since.

Dense and dirty, this record takes multiple spins before the chaos of its grungy production gives way to the order of the songs, the soaring interplay of the guitars, and the bands genius rhythm section. Mick Jagger is at his most acidic on “Rip This Joint” and his most tender on “Shine A Lights” broken-down reverie (for this band tenderness and broken-downiness are the same). Enough has been said about this record that I can only add personal superlatives to the records sterling reputation. I never believed in this band, until this album, and suddenly it all made sense to me. I preferred the slickness of The Beatles and mistook Mick and Keith’s avant- layering of rhythms and tones to be lazy production, but The Beatles never made a record as primally satisfying as this one and they never really made one that stood as a unified whole quite the way these 18 songs ebb and flow against each other. If the sound hear has been cleaned up, it’s not as revolutionary as the treatment of The Beatles catalogue last year, but this record isn’t supposed to sound smooth and digitized, it’s supposed to crack and hiss and move like the notes are coming at you for the first time every time you play it. The deluxe edition has notable bonus material on the second disk (the Richards-sung version of “Soul Survivor” is a keeper for sure), but it’s the original album that stands as a monument to the best rock band of them all. One of the ten best ever made. 5/5

We Live in Exciting Times

Arcade Fire on the prowl = never a bad thing.

As per usual with this bad, play it loud.