Music of the Year

In reading this article, you'll quickly notice that I decided to write my end of year wrap up articles in descending order of authority. While I have made an effort to keep up with this year's music, I also acknowledge that there is entirely too much music put out there for me to categorically proclaim the bestitude of any one album. Complicating matters more, I had an album of 2010 all picked out before I found out it came out in 2009.

As a result, I'll be running down some significant albums that came out this year, so hopefully you can gain from my small slice of relevant, new music. Also, I would love it if you leave your favorite albums of the year in the comments to make my list more robust. You can start thinking about what you're going to write while you read. Okay! On with the actual content.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
I try not to put on any pretense about being an impartial cultural arbiter, judging works only on their inherent quality without regard to personal predilections, so I'll just say I'm not a big Arcade Fire fan. In the past their music has struck me as too purposefully anthemic, too wrapped up in its own gravitas to form any kind of connection with me. I downloaded this album on a whim, figuring I'd give their full work a shot, and I ended up liking it more than I thought I would, but The Suburbs as a whole ends up being a hit-or-miss mishmash of likable and obnoxious songs. The title track is a loose rambler that strikes a neat sonic balance between emotional instability and relaxed calm, and might be the best song on the album. Empty Room uses high, fast violins to create a grating anxiousness that doesn't seem to go anywhere. Ready to Start drives forward with steady drums and a nice, earnest chord progression. Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) reminds me of the perils of misusing 80s style synthesizers and sounds like it should be in a Rocky montage. And so on. The Suburbs is a good album, not a great one.

Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest
This is another album that's getting a lot of "Album of the Year" buzz, but it's also kind of hit-or-miss. I love two songs on Halcyon Digest (Revival and Coronado), and the rest of the album ranges between "Not bad" and "boring". It's possible that, being new to album reviews, I'm not supposed to judge an album by the filler tracks, and instead focus on the knockouts, but to me that philosophy kind of misses the point. The best songs on the best albums are built upon by the songs around them, and you can't have two killer songs and call your album great. Maybe that's just me.

Honorable Mentions - Two Sentence Reviews
Since there there is just too much music to cover, I'll address some good music here to save space. I wanted to mention the above two albums to respond to what are considered by many to be the best, but now I'll be getting into stuff I really like. Tame Impala is a wonderful new band that mixes Cream, the Beatles, and drugs into a stew and still manages to produce something original in their debut album Innerspeaker. I can't wait until their sound matures and they start to find their own voice. Janelle Monáe's old soul uses the 1927 film Metropolis as inspiration for her album The ArchAndroid - which by itself is awesome. Throw in rumpshaker Tightrope and dance epic Cold War, and you have a very promising young artist. Kanye West's My Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Fantasy is creative and original, which is more than I can say about 95% of hip-hop lately. The rhymes all work and some tracks feel absolutely epic. Ray LaMontagne & The Pariah Dogs take the country category hands down with God Willin' & the Creek Don't Rise, just killing it with the slow building, bluesy Repo Man, taking it back a notch with Beg Steal or Borrow, and doing the country slide guitar justice with the title track. You know it's good if it makes me talk about country music. Cee Lo does an excellent job even without the rest of Gnarls Barkley with The Lady Killer. This album does modern R&B right with the Saturday night anthem Bright Lights, Bigger City, R&B staples like Satisfied, and of course, the infamous and excellent Fuck You. Finally, Spoon delivers yet another rhythmic Indy classic with Transference. The most interesting song on the album is the indescribable Is Love Forever?, but the rest of the album gleams with everything else Spoon is good at.

LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening
Okay, now we're into it, the best albums of the year. Or at least, the best albums I want to talk at length about. I'm a little late to the LCD Soundsystem party, and I think it's mostly because I don't consider myself a fan of dance music, and that's mostly what this band builds on. However, I love this album because my adoration of long, slow building tracks trumps my tepid reaction to thumping dance-floor tunes. Dance Yrself Clean is a perfect example of this, going in the span of a few beats from simple and quiet to loud and bold. The song mixes playful lyrics with sing-song vocalizations, all while teasing you, making you wait for the most exciting parts of the song. I Can Change is also quite excellent, boasting a surprisingly robust use of synthesizers combined with solid songwriting and cute, understated love-story lyrics. Finally, Pow Pow is just fun. The lyrics are goofy and funny, the beat, while very simplistic, is catchy as all hell, and the song never gets boring. This album is really well put together and exposes my weakness for longer songs. Most importantly, it just works for me.

The Black Keys - Brothers
I'd hesitate to call this the album of the year because the Black Keys have become like Tim Duncan at this point - the quality of production is so solid that you almost forget the lack of flashiness. Brothers is unbelievably consistent in quality over the course of the album. You can listen to the whole album and not hear a song you come close to disliking. You also might not hear any songs that just blow you away either, but you can hardly complain about that. In a year of excellent music, there's probably no better record from top to bottom than Brothers. It's just the solid, bluesy rock the Keys have become known for and perfected over the years. I can't even recommend individual tracks because each is as good as the last. Tighten Up maybe? Howlin' for You? Sinister Kid? It's all gold. You can't go wrong. That's how you make the Album of the Year, even if Brothers probably doesn't have any of the top 15 songs of the year.