Later this week we will list our Top Music Videos, the Year in Photos and (MY FAVORITE) the Best & Worst Album Covers of the year, along with our list of Top Compilation and EP releases of the year.
Yesterday, we listed the Jivewired Radio Top 50 Spins, which was voted on by our listeners, with Mai Bloomfield taking the top spot for her single "Eclipse" from her "Eclipse {Sampler}" EP.
I have set up an Amazon page where you can purchase any of the albums listed here or your favorite tracks from each album. The page is located at the following link: Jivewired Top 20 Albums Of 2010 and can be purchased for CD shipment or digital download.
Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful and musically enriched New Year. I thank you for listening to Jivewired Radio and for supporting indie music, and I hope you will continue to listen throughout the new year.
And now, on to the Top 20 Albums of 2010...
10. New Amerykah Part Two: Return Of The Ankh by Erykah Badu
For "Return of the Ankh," Erykah Badu cycles through the various facets of love and longing. It seems that Badu hears the Egyptian “ankh”, the symbol of life, in the key of “love”. It is no mistake, then, that the first words she sings on Part Two are “my love” and that the songs are mostly concerned with relationships and matters of the heart. If Part One brought us the politically charged, musically eclectic side of the Badu charm, then Part Two is all about the interpersonal, soulful side.
The cornerstone of Part Two’s success is Badu’s vocal performance. She wants to fly, preferably alone in a window seat, but she wants someone to “want me”, “miss me”, and “need me”. Love is complex, sometimes contradictory, and she sings about it with the flavor of a first person account plus the reflection of a third person observer. Her performance is polished, as in the opening track’s cozy brilliance, but also raw, as in “Out My Mind, Just in Time”, the aforementioned closer that resembles “Green Eyes”, her three-part finale to Mama’s Gun. “I’ll pray for you,” she urges. “Crochet for you. Make it from scratch for you”. With a single flutter, she exudes both confidence and insecurity. With each fragile note, she conveys experience and doe-eyed enthusiasm, optimism and loneliness, and ends up wooing us and wowing us in the process.
-- Review by Quentin B. Huff
Best Songs: Turn Me Away (Get MuNNy), Fall In Love (Your Funeral), Window Seat, 20 Feet Tall
Team Photo: Out Of My Mind (Just In Time)
09. Sea Of Cowards by The Dead Weather
If anyone thought the Dead Weather was going to be the project where Jack White let someone else take the lead, those notions end a minute and 38 seconds into "Sea of Cowards" opener "Blue Blood Blues", when White tears into one of his most nonsensically badass couplets ever: "Check your lips at the door, woman!/ And shake your hips like battleships!/ Yeah, all the white girls trip when I sing at Sunday service!" It's fantastical tough-guy gibberish worthy of Bo Diddley, and it's the sort of line that only an extremely confident singer would ever attempt, let alone pull off. It reveals the Dead Weather to be just another White vehicle-- the one that plays host to his most deranged impulses.
For two people capable of writing gloriously catchy rock choruses in their sleep, White and Alison Mosshart sure stay away from them here. There are barely any choruses on the album, but that's not to say there are no hooks: the catchiness is all in the thud and flail of the band. This is some serious locked-in rock-dude shit: discordant guitar leads, fuzzed-out organ blurts, clattering falling-down-stairs drum fills. It's unhinged classic-rock explosiveness that sounds like it could be the result of a few vicious jam sessions-- the rumblings of scuzz-rock lifers given a chance to air out all their purest expressions of fuck-you-up ire. It's a heavy, snarly, physical rock album, and it feels like the work of people so secure in their ass-kicking abilities that they don't have to sweat the details.
-- Review by Tom Breihan
Best Songs: Hustle And Cuss, No Horse, The Difference Between Us, Die By The Drop, Gasoline
Team Photo: Blue Blood Blues, Jawbreaker
08. The Suburbs by Arcade Fire
In a hopeless, heartless world, rock's righteous collective rides in to save our souls (again!). If Arcade Fire's ragtag debut, Funeral, found its ecstatic force by celebrating the elusive comforts of community (hence four songs with the word neighborhood in the title), and 2007's aggrieved, galvanizing Neon Bible powered forth in opposition to the hollow sparkle of church, state, and celebrity, then the harder, denser The Suburbs burns on behalf of the belief that modern culture is missing its heart -- and to give up the search is to send one's soul to oblivion.
Or, in Suburbs speak, to the Sprawl, where everything is connected but nothing ever touches.
Radiant with apocalyptic tension and grasping to sustain real bonds, The Suburbs extends hungrily outward, recalling the dystopic miasma of William Gibson's sci-fi novels and Sonic Youth's guitar odysseys. Desperate to elude its own corrosive dread, it keeps moving, asking, looking, and making the promise that hope isn't just another spiritual cul-de-sac. After all, you never know who might be coming in the next car.
-- Review by David Marchese
Best Songs: Rococo, City With No Children, Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), Half Light II (No Celebration), The Suburbs, Ready To Start
Team Photo: Suburban War, We Used To Wait
07. Halycon Digest by Deerhunter
Halcyon Digest is a record about the joy of music discovery, the thrill of listening for the first time to a potential future favorite, and that sense of boundless possibility when you're still innocent of indie-mainstream politics and your personal canon is far from set. In revisiting that youthful enthusiasm, Deerhunter brilliantly rekindle it, and the result meets Microcastle/Weird Era (Cont.) as the band's most exhilarating work to date. Whether those halcyon days were real or just idealized doesn't matter. With producer Ben Allen, who lent a bass-heavy sheen to Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion, these four guys-- lead singer Bradford Cox, singer/guitarist Lockett Pundt, bass player Josh Fauver, and drummer Moses Archuleta-- have created a seamless album of startling emotional clarity.
Deerhunter unveiled their new album by asking fans to print out a vintage DIY-style poster, photocopy it, and tape it up all over town. We'll never be able to parse every lyric or tease out every technical intricacy-- though somebody will probably try-- but that is what Halcyon Digest is all about: nostalgia not for an era, not for antiquated technology, but for a feeling of excitement, of connection, of that dumb obsession that makes life worth living no matter how horrible it gets. And then sharing that feeling with somebody else who'll start the cycle all over again.
-- Review by Marc Hogan
Best Songs: Desire Lines, Memory Boy, He Would Have Laughed, Don't Cry
Team Photo: Basement Scene
06. Teen Dream by Beach House
Beach House's Victoria Legrand and Alex Scully isolated themselves during the creation of "Teen Dream," holing themselves up in a converted church in upstate New York with producer Chris Coady. But despite that isolation, the sound of the record (according to the band) is anything but insular. Their first album for Sub Pop, and third overall, expands on the band's warm fuzz, resting their haunting sound on more rhythmic foundations. According to Legrand, "There's a different kind of intimacy, a physicality on Teen Dream." That physicality may ground you a little more in the hazy world of Beach House, but that might be a good thing. If this new world is as large as they claim it to be, it's best to keep your bearings.
Superficially, there’s not much to distinguish "Teen Dream" from its predecessor, Devotion, or even the debut. There’s chilly organ lines that sound like they’re transmitted from inside the icy walls of the Fortress of Solitude. There’s guitarist Scally’s hardly there guitar riffs that crest like the splashing of a pond’s waves. And then there’s Legrand’s brassy, showtimey voice that audibly quakes with longing. And that’s it. There are no new tricks here, no new-found musical explorations. Just an assured confidence that comes with experience. In a time when bands explode and implode in a matter of months, Beach House has organically grown from a slight bedroom project into a band that can be ignored no longer.
-- Review by Matthew Fiander
Best Songs: Zebra, Norway, Take Care, Don't Cry, Silver Soul
Team Photo: 10 Mile Stereo, Walk In The Park, Lover Of Mine
05. Brothers by The Black Keys
I have never owned anything by The Black Keys until this year. So shoot me, particularly since their grunge & roots garage band sound is right up my alley. I am almost embarrassed to admit I never even heard of them, or if I did, I quickly dismissed them for whatever reasons.
This is how it works with the ears. They're fickle. You listen to something one time and get nothing. Two months later, a snippet of a song hits you upside the head and you're willing to bust the budget on everything the band has put out. That's where I'm at now with this band. All of the sudden I thought, these guys remind me of vintage, pre-1972 Rolling Stones.
The highlights are many, all of 'em dripping with drop-dead-in-your-face sonics that manage to completely sidestep that modern dead-from-compression feel. I suppose you could say that some of the tunes have shaded just a tad over to the soul side, but why is that a bad thing? I have read that with this album, The Black Keys have actually "sold out", and if that's the case, I feel fortunate to have become a fan this late in the game because I think this album is great. There is no selling out going on here. What you hear is the sound of maturation. It happens to everybody. Deal with it.
Die-hard Dead Weather fans will not like that I have this album ranked higher. Head to head vs. White Stripes? No contest White Stripes. But I like The Black Keys a shade better than Dead Weather.
-- Review by Michael Canter
Best Songs: Tighten Up, Everlasting Light, Too Afraid To Love You, I'm Not The One, Never Give You Up, The Go Getter
Team Photo: These Days, Unknown Brother, She's Long Gone
Honorable Mention: Civil Twilight by Civil Twilight
(NOTE: I know this album was released in July of 2009, but it really didn't get airplay until this year, so I have included it for that reason as "HONORABLE MENTION" - had it been released this year it would have been top 5, certainly).
For as long as U2 makes music, and perhaps, even after their retirement, up-and-coming vocalists will always be compared to Bono. While plenty of singers have certainly deserved the comparison, quite a many few have not. Steven McKellar of the expatriate South African-band Civil Twilight, most certainly does. On the band's full-length major label, self-titled debut, McKellar sounds eerily like the Dublin frontman from the very first note.
From front to back, this is one mammoth album. Laden with arena-filling sonic charm, and brimming with comparisons to both Radiohead and Muse, Civil Twilight have crafted an album that is too hard to overlook and even harder to dislike. Having made music as a trio since 1996, the band's comfort with each other is readily apparent. Never once does a note, either vocally or musically, miss a beat. The band comes out of the gate roaring and never lets up.
-- Review by Gregory Robson
Best Songs: Anybody Out There, Letters From The Sky, Run Dry, Soldier
Team Photo: Quiet In My Town, Stolen
04. Come Around Sundown by Kings Of Leon
In the run-up to Kings of Leon's fifth album, frontman Caleb Followill fretted publicly over his band's swelling popularity. Sorry, dude: That horse left the barn a while ago. The Kings' last album, 2008's "Only by the Night," sold 6.5 million copies worldwide, they now headline arenas all over, and the Grammy-grabbing "Use Somebody" has been covered by everyone from Paramore to Trey Songz. If Wilco and My Morning Jacket are vying for the title of America's Radiohead, Kings of Leon have — Bono's honorary green card notwithstanding — become our U2. And the gigantic-sounding "Come Around Sundown" suggests that, Caleb's humble grumblings aside, they are thriving on it.
-- Review by Will Hermes
Best Songs: Back Down South, Radioactive, The Immortals, The Face, The End, Mary, No Money
Team Photo: Birthday, Pony Up
03. How I Got Over by The Roots
In 2010, the Roots kicked ass five nights a week as the house band for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and teamed up with John Legend for the Seventies-soul tribute "Wake Up!" But their most impressive accomplishment this year was "How I Got Over," the best album of their two-decade-long career.
The Roots sound so good in the pocket that sometimes they need something to push them out of it: On their ninth album, that thing is the indie rockers they've played with since becoming the house band for Jimmy Fallon. On "How I Got Over," they cover Monsters of Folk ("Dear God 2.0"), scat like the Dirty Projectors ("Tunnel Vision") and — most thrillingly — make Joanna Newsom sound as funky as Erykah Badu ("Right On"). And when they come back to Roy Ayers-style funk ("Radio Daze"), they prove nobody does it better. Let's hear it for steady employment.
-- Review by Nathan Brackett
Best Songs: How I Got Over, Radio Daze, A Peace Of Light/Walk Alone, Dear God 2.0, Right On, The Fire
Team Photo: Dillatude: The Flight Of Titus/The Day, Tunnel Vision
02. American Slang by The Gaslight Anthem
"American Slang" is the title of the third album by New Jersey’s Gaslight Anthem, the follow-up to 2008’s "The ’59 Sound," which reached out to fans of Bruce Springsteen in the same way as The Hold Steady, whose unshakeable belief in rock music as a rowdy salvation Brian Fallon’s band unswervingly share.
Because they are reckoned to owe so much to Springsteen, who famously put in an appearance with them last year at Glastonbury and was on stage with them again a few days later when he headlined Hyde Park, there has been a perhaps inevitable suggestion that American Slang will be The Gaslight Anthem’s "Born To Run." The record, in other words, that will carry them into the mainstream after years of making-do and scuffling, playing anywhere that would have them and in earlier days less hospitable places, all the hard work about to pay off now in a possibly big way.
American Slang delivers spectacularly on all expected fronts. Everything that was great about "The ’59 Sound" is here, but the sound is even bigger, epic without getting blustery. And there have been great leaps forward in production and the musical arrangements, which have greater depth, atmosphere and texture. Brian Fallon’s writing has moved on, too. Previously, he’s written descriptive vignettes, tales of teenage trauma, frustration and heartbreak, narratives about the lives of others.
It remains to be seen, of course, where "American Slang" will take them, but they certainly sound here like a band going places in a hurry. American Slang is one of the most exciting rock’n’roll records since global warming hit the headlines. It’s an album of electrifying rapture, massive riffs, songs with verses that sound like choruses and choruses that sound, yes, like anthems, meant to be sung by multitudes. Listening to it, you can almost hear the stadium roar that played live these songs will likely inspire.
-- Review by Allan Jones
Best Songs: The Diamond Church Street Choir, We Did It When We Were Young, The Queen Of Lower Chelsea, Old Haunts, Bring It On, American Slang
Team Photo: Stay Lucky
01. This Is Happening by LCD Soundsystem
The myth goes like this: In a display of neurosis, determination and egomania, Picasso would bring his paintings to the Louvre before they were dry. He wanted to see if his work held up alongside the old masters.
James Murphy probably engages in similar behavior. As LCD Soundsystem, his third, purportedly final and almost best album, "This Is Happening," genuflects before the pantheon of David Bowie, Brian Eno and Talking Heads while simultaneously threatening to kick in the door.
This is hyper-sculpted music that remains hyper-aware of its influences, continuously mining the fault line between rock and disco. With vintage rhythms tumbling beneath blurting synthesizers and chewy bass lines, it should feel like a nostalgic exercise. Instead, it ends up sounding propulsive, radiant and wildly satisfying.
-- Review by Chris Richards
Best Songs: Dance Yrself Clean, Pow Wow, All I Want, You Wanted A Hit, I Can Change
Team Photo: Drunk Girls
Picks #11-#20: http://sonicbytes.blogspot.com/2010/12/jivewired-top-20-albums-of-2010-11-20.html
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