The year is coming to a close and all the albums that are on my radar are out. So it is time to look back at the gold and shit from 2010. Now going into this year there were several acts that I knew where coming out with albums that I was excited for and expected to be excellent, but even with all these treats waiting I managed to stumble onto somethings that surprised me. These are artists or albums that I had never heard of or albums that I thought were going to suck that were actually good or maybe even great.
I won’t be going into great detail here on most albums since some of them will be included in my Best albums of the Year list and others I have little more to say then “It is worth a listen/skip it”
Rap/hip-hop
This year is the first to convince me that rap albums are worth owning. Let me elaborate. For a long time I hated rap, there was nothing you could do to get me to listen to this shit people were passing for music. In fact until this year I could count the rap albums I owned on one hand (Nerdcore Rising, Secret from the Future, Fight with Tools, 3Feet High and Rising, Demon Days). As my opinion started to soften I began to consider rap artist as single based acts, a fact that is basically true for many acts. There just weren’t any hip-hop acts that I wanted a full album from unless you were MC Frontalot, The Flobots, or Gorillaz.
2010 has changed all that. Sure I got good albums from both MC Frontalot and The Flobots, and an excellent one from Gorillaz, but that wasn’t the defining moment that started my new hip-hop awakening. That came from B.o.B.‘s debut “B.o.B Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray”. Now I don’t want to talk too much about this album here, but it caught my attention. It was a great example of how close the line between those who consider themselves “street” and geeks has been blurred. And it was through this album that I discovered another breakout artist of 2010.
Janelle Monáe probably shouldn’t be in the hip-hop section because she is so much bigger than that. Again I don’t want to get to deep into it here but she is and artist who gives me hope for the artistry of album making and the ambition of concepts.
Now after talking about two artist that I can’t really get into yet lets talk about the biggest surprise of the year Kanye West. With all the stupid build ups and stunts to it, “My Dark Twisted Fantasy” should have sucked. And the first taste of it certainly didn’t help. Runaway was the first song people heard, along with a 30min mini movie music video for it. I will link to neither since they are both abysmal. So when the album came out I got it with plans of tearing it a new one…too bad it is an amazing album. Not a single song is truly bad except for “Runaway”. In fact “All of the Lights” is one of my favorite songs of the year.
Another established rap act that I just discovered is Sage Francis. His new album “Li(f)e” is a marriage between rap and indie rock in a way that will turn off the more hardcore fans of either genre, but for me this is like peanut butter and chocolate together at last. The best track of this is “Best of Times”, it made me cry the first time I listened to it. It is just a very powerful songs for someone who grew up as kind of an outsider in school.
Collaborations
Another aspect of this year’s music is how many artists have collaborated with good results. Now one would think when two great acts get together they should be able to spin straw into gold, but more often it just doesn’t happen. Every hear Eric Clapton’s album with B.B. King? But this year gave us a great set of collaborations.
There is Danger Mouse and James Mercer of the Strokes form Broken Bells, Jim Bryson And The Weakerthans release “Falcon Lake Incident”, David Bryne and Fatboy Slim come out with “Here Lies Love” with a plethora of guest vocalists, Ben Folds and Nick Hornby’s “Lonely Avenue”, John Darnielle and Franklin Bruno putting out an Extra Lens album “Undercard”, and Elton John and Leon Russell give us “The Union”. Every album one of these albums is at least good and several of them are amazing.
Veterans
The acts that people consider musical dinosaurs seem to all either fall into a pattern or fall to banality and never escape. But there has been some truly amazing music from some so called Dinosaurs. Both Peter Gabriel and Brian Wilson came out with one of the best albums of the year. We also got a very interesting statement from Devo, who, after years of preaching DIY mentality release a completely market tested album, with fans choosing everything from the songs on the album to the color of their hats. It is a really fascinating move and I suggest anyone who is interested in the music industry look into it. Other old acts with good albums this year include Iron Madien, Joe Satriani, Santana, and Peter Wolf.
They're still around?
So what about the bands that seem to have disappeared from the main public view? Well this year say releases from Barenaked Ladies, Shonen Knife, James, Jakob Dylan, and The Crash Test Dummies. The Crash Test Dummies album “Oooh La La” is especially interesting, the album is based around old analog toy synthesizers. You would think a gimmick like that would overpower and album, but listen to the opener “Songbird” and tell me if you spot a gimmick.
So over all this has been a really great year for music that is both accessible and ambitious. I will go into this more once I get to talking about specific albums, but before we get there we have one more stop. Like I said overall 2010 has been a great year for music fans full of more good then bad…which doesn’t mean the bad doesn’t exist. Next time I will take you through my biggest disappointments of 2010, which albums just didn’t meet expectations.
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