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10. WEEZER "Pinkerton" (Deluxe Reissue)
If you don't think that I realize how opening this list with a reissue spanks of a cop out, you're wrong because I do. It isn't an indictment of this past year in music either because it has been a pretty great year. Just like if Criterion reissued one of your favorite films with all the bells and whistles, it just can't help but make a resonating impact on your psyche. "Pinkerton" is still a revelation of uncomfortably honest, heart on your sleeve guitar rock. It's still a beautifully ramshackle masterpiece of ultra catchy nuggets of angst and sexual ineptitude. It's still all of that and then some. The live tracks from Y100 Sonic Festival and Reading instantly flood me with a sense of regret for not having ever gotten the chance to catch a show from that era of the band. It also puts into context how special this album is when considering how empty and hollow the latter day WEEZER records are in comparison. Plus, the all too brief piano sketch of "Across the Sea" opening alone is priceless enough to be included into one of my forthcoming mixtapes.
9. MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE "Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys"
It is now an unequivocal truth that the most admirable quality of this band is their artistic restlessness. Never one to stand pat, they have made it their business to generate excitement for each new release through the drastic stylistic reinvention of their sound. From the shoot em' up emo crunch of "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge" to the Broadway pomp of "The Black Parade" and now with the hot blooded dance thrash of "Danger Days", Gerard Way and co. have launched their latest curve-ball. The only constant is their unflappable commitment to weaving narrative through the track-list. At this point, I'm going to stop calling them concept albums. To me, they're just audiobooks now.
8. ISLES & GLACIERS "The Hearts of Lonely People"
Talk about for the love of the game. Part urban legend and part the deepest, darkest wishes of underage Hot Topic chicks the world over, the formation of this band probably started out as a joke told one booze soaked after party many many moons ago, but to everyone's surprise actually became reality. Comprised of pieces of today's more prominent hardcore bands, this supergroup distills all the best parts of the genre and tempers it perfectly with synth beats and drum loops, resulting in a tight collection of concentrated vitriol. The definite highlight is the three part gang vocals working in concert while viciously bodying each other for pole position, Nascar vocals.
7. THE ROOTS "How I Got Over"
Despite the head scratching career turn as a late night talk show's house band, The Legendary Roots Crew return with a perfectly titled album of meditations about the moments before and after the drug deal, the fist fight, the arrest and every other hood life touchstone in between. Deeply cathartic because of its ability to fill in the blanks and paint the full picture of corner life, this album shows the world that THE ROOTS are one of the few hip hop acts that can expound on every aspect of street life with astounding clarity. Song stealing features by JOANNA NEWSOM, THE DIRTY PROJECTORS and MONSTERS OF FOLK also show us that they can invite anyone to the block and not have it feel out of place. Serious credentials for their bid as the global ambassadors of hip hop. They have my vote.
6. SPOON "Transference"
The polar opposite of MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE'S sonic precociousness, an argument can be made for SPOON being the most consistent band in all of indie rock. Having outlasted nearly all of their peers, this band still brings the style and swagger of meticulously disjointed hipster rock without the forced pretension. Frontman Britt Daniel's raspy warble is and forever will be punk as fuck. Album highlight "Written in Reverse" proves that there is a fountain of youth for cosmopolitan cool and that SPOON is obviously bottling it for themselves.
5. THE NATIONAL "High Violet"
Is there anything better than a dark, brooding winter record to play over headphones during those cold, lonely nights? Probably not, I'd wager. To me, this album qualifies as one of those mood enhancers, for better or worse, because when I'm in one of those moods I yearn for something to show me how far the rabbit hole really goes. The slow burn dirges of this album coupled with frontman Matt Berninger's signature honey warm baritone fits that bill to a tee. My personal favorite track "Anyone's Ghost" was made for a night slumped over a bar nursing that double you don't ever want to finish. Album closer "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks" is the soundtrack for the long walk home after you eventually do.
4. J. COLE "Friday Night Lights"
For those who believe that this world is solely populated by either ELVIS men or BEATLES men, I humbly offer this corollary. In the realm of contemporary hip hop, I honestly think that one is either a DRAKE man or a J. COLE man. Despite one's unquestionable impact on pop culture, I'm firmly in the other's camp. Fresh off his nabbing a coveted spot on XXL'S Freshman Class of 2010 cover and the title of being the first signee to JAY-Z'S personal record label, J. COLE could potentially be the future face of hip hop. A producer with a knack for hard thumping drums in his own right, this artist sparks with an impeccable flow that flips from conscious wit to street flossin' at the drop of a dime. If he follows the new school business model pioneered by mentors JAY-Z and KANYE WEST, J.COLE being the next king of hip hop is never out of the question.
3. jj "Kills"
An extremely last minute addition to this list, this album made me thank goodness for procrastinating. A Swedish electro-pop band with ethereal gender bending vocals and everything, jj dropped this free mixtape for public consumption right on Christmas Eve. This masterpiece fuses the cooing of distant angels (think if SIGUR ROS actually sang in something that you can understand) with a murderer's row of sampled hip hop instrumental tracks (DR. DRE, DIDDY/DIRTY MONEY, KANYE WEST and TAIO CRUZ'S "Dynamite" of all things). How could I not resist a record that has a pristine, lilting voice utter the phrase "haters gonna hate"? Short answer, I cannot.
2. THE ARCADE FIRE "The Suburbs"
Win Butler and his gang are incapable of keeping things small. Deploying horns, strings, orchestral vocal arrangements and whatever else is in their musical arsenal, THE ARCADE FIRE turn ruminations of life in the suburbs that we all either live in or have lived in into grand sweeping epics of heart break, desperation and longing for that proverbial "something else" beyond the white picket fence. Even though the brilliant title track was turned into an equally brilliant, Google Chrome hocking short film by none other than director SPIKE JONZE, "We Used to Wait" is still the one record that regularly takes my breath away.
1. KANYE WEST "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy"
As far as for gone conclusions go, this is the furthest and more decisive of them all. KANYE WEST released the best album of the year...again. Not content with keeping it within the confines of the audio recording, KANYE WEST turned all of his exploits of this past year into one massive, multi-level precursor to the release of this album. From the fiasco of the TAYLOR SWIFT incident to the founding of his twitter account and the weekly leaks of his G.O.O.D. FRIDAY mp3 series, all of it was calculated to lead up to this. "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" is his villain album. Its his "Empire Strikes Back" after setting a precedence within his public life that he has indeed fallen to the dark side. Steeped in stellar production and bursting at the seams with pitch perfect features from a veritable who's who of the record industry, KANYE WEST makes it abundantly clear that the rich do indeed get richer, the only thing better than excess is more excess and that being a hero will never be as viscerally more intriguing at watching the hero become the villain. The only tale more tantalizing than that would be if someone out there was brave enough to take him on and win. That's a big if.
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