2010 Magazine's Albums Of The Year Thread For Posting Lists and Discussion

jewelry selection is a terrific mixtape, esp its second half, but i've kind of given up on gucci mane ever getting it together to fulfil his potential on a proper album, and i basically can't be bothered to particularly rep for artists whose careers are basically just them dribbling on to the internet without any sort of editorial process and leaving their fans to actually curate their shit into some sort of sense

― lex lex lex lex lex on the track BOW (lex pretend), Monday, December 6, 2010 11:15 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

o_O you were nicki's biggest backer //// lol rockist

xxxp well that clarifies things slightly @ lex

deej read my clarification - nicki is actually the perfect counterexample - and also wtf does "rockist" even mean in this context, is it 2004 again in your mind?

oh god xp

i basically can't be bothered to particularly rep for artists whose careers are basically just them dribbling on to the internet without any sort of editorial process and leaving their fans to actually curate their shit into some sort of sense to clarify i mean this w/r/t artists of a certain status - obv i'm totally happy to do this for emerging artists at the start of their career, but gucci mane should be well beyond it, and it actively pisses me off that he can't get a grip on his career.

No you were right the first time. MYSTIQUE and QUALITY CONTROL, people. I know the former has kind of gone out of the window in the Twitter age but still. Although given what happens when major label rap artists start giving up control over the editorial process maybe it's the lesser of two evils.

Also srlsy fuck Spin for coining the phrase "art-soul" and then using it about YEASAYER.

a proper album

if only he could get it together & release a proper album like paris hilton

No you were right the first time. MYSTIQUE and QUALITY CONTROL, people. I know the former has kind of gone out of the window in the Twitter age but still. Although given what happens when major label rap artists start giving up control over the editorial process maybe it's the lesser of two evils.

Also srlsy fuck Spin for coining the phrase "art-soul" and then using it about YEASAYER.

― Matt DC, Monday, December 6, 2010 11:28 AM (37 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

if u are arguing this you never 'got' gucci mane in the 1st place

i could probably put together 15 gucci mane tracks from 2010 - not just off jewelry selection - that could be an album of the year contender, like top 5 of the year. why the fuck can't he do it, then? why are some of his best tracks not even on mixtapes? still?

jewelry selection is a perfectly fine album & better rap LP than the nicki record for just one example

just reading the phrase 'proper album' has me rmde

aw, I was just posting the Spin top 10

Spin really makes me lol; I disagree with over half their choices yet still somehow as an aggregate they manage to continue to rep 80% of my overall musical aesthetic better than anyone else

Angst Music For Sex People: The Quietus Albums Of 2010

1. Liars - Sisterworld
2. Salem - King Night
3. Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky
4. These New Puritans - Hidden
5. The Fall - Your Future Our Clutter
6. Walls - Walls
7. Lindstrom and Christabelle - Real Life Is No Cool
8. Teeth Of The Sea - Your Mercury
9. New Young Pony Club - The Optimist
10. UFOmammut - Eve
11. Gayngs - Relayted
12. Electric Wizard - Black Masses
13. Cathedral - The Guessing Game
14. Besnard Lakes - Are The Roaring Night
15. Grinderman - Grinderman II
16. Zola Jesus - Stridulum II
17. The Body - And All The Waters Of The Earth Shall Turn To Blood
18. Pan Sonic - Gravitoni
19. Janelle Monae - The Archandroid
20. Big Boi - Sir Lucious Leftfoot: Son Of Chico Dusty
21. Anika - Anika
22. FM Einheit - No Apologies
23. Barn Owl - Ancestral Star
24. Oneohtrix Point Never - Returnal
25. Shining - Blackjazz
26. Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma
27. I Like Trains - He Who Saw The Deep
28. Shit Robot - From The Cradle To The Rave
29. High On Fire - Snakes For The Divine
30. Lonelady - Nerve Up
31. Jane Weaver - The Fallen By Watchbird
32. Pantha Du Prince - Black Noise
33. Napoleon III - Christiana
34. Gil Scott-Heron - I’m New Here
35. Arabrot - Revenge
36. Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté - Ali and Toumani
37. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
38. Demdike Stare - Symbiosis
39. Mulatu Astatke - Mulatu Steps Ahead

LCD are getting crazy love in this year's polls. Don't quite get it, much as i love 2 or 3 tracks on the album.

Well, I think it's in large part because of the three albums, it's the most cohesive; regardless of whether you think the individual songs work, they do ebb and flow very nicely into each other. (Personally, I think it's the best thing he's done that I've heard by leaps and bounds.)

Nice to see the Mulatu Astatke album turning up in the Quietus list, it's not world-changing but it's an enjoyable listen and deserves to be mentioned.

thanks for posting that Spin list, their website drives my up the wall.

click… click… click (x40)

Sean from Drowned.. mentions 'a strange but apparent death of consensus' in the spiel that accompnies the DIS list and i think Reynolds' piece from last year about a lack of overall consensus between crits as the last decade progressed, and why that has happened, is even more relevant than a year ago: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/dec/07/musically-fragmented-decade

how in the world can anyone possibly argue that there's been a death of consensus in the last two years when ALL THESE LISTS ARE BASICALLY IDENTICAL

well sure, if you view all these indie rock acts as essentially the same, the lists can be considered "basically identical". Whereas those people who, you know, like and listen to indie rock hear big differences between Deerhunter and Titus Andronicus and see lists with one or the other at the top as anything but basically identical.

still, it's basically the same 50-75 albums that show up over and over...it would be nice to have a little more variety

God you guys would have hated the lists back in 1968 when there was only like 50 albums to choose from anyway.

Yes but you can safely assume from the words "Sean from Drownedinsound mentions..." that everything that follows is going to be overexcitable bollocks with no basis in reality.

We’ll be listing them in groups of ten, so today it’s entries 100 to 81, on Tuesday it’s 80-61, Wednesday 60-41, Thursday 40-21, and finally 20-1 on Friday.

lol at this ^^ on the FACT tracks list; these are NOT groups of ten u idiots!

Our list doesn't have that much in common with the others. Cathedral, High On Fire, Pansonic, Mulatu Astatke, Demdike Stare, Shining, The Body, Arabrot, Jane Weaver, Napoleon III, Electric Wizard, UFOmammut, Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate, I Like Trains, Barn Owl, Anika... I mean, I'm not going to start pretending I like really obscure records just to make it even more diverse than it already is.

are you from fact? i was being kinda troll-y with that, obv, but i do believe that FACT's lists arent really that difft in terms of the values / aesthetics they favor than pfork is ... just less trad indie, less folk, more idm, more dubstep, more eurotechno

its sorta like, take a pfork list & center it around burial instead of animal collective (by switching each artist's placements)

i mean, this basically is "Fact music" so im not really criticizing this approach on its own terms, just arguing that its not nearly as refreshingly unexpected as ppl sometimes present it

Well, yeah but I'm helpless in the face of trolls... it's my achille's heel. No, I'm from the Quietus. I like FACT's list but I'm more into industrial/ metal/ drone/ noise etc than dance music, hence the weighting on ours.

That R1 Ryders track is banging by the way.

I liked that Quietus list a lot, Doran. Lots of character, and lots of recommendations I'm excited to check out. Also: It takes balls ranking Salem so high. That's an album with definite merit, but an album that can be really taxing to defend.

Quite. I cringed involuntarily when I saw how high it came in. Cheers.

Yes but you can safely assume from the words "Sean from Drownedinsound mentions..." that everything that follows is going to be overexcitable bollocks with no basis in reality.

― Matt DC, Monday, December 6, 2010 12:07 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

surprised it took 5 posts before someone made this point

in many of these lists, salem are actually standing out in a good way - kinda feel sorry for anyone who thinks they're worse than the national. arcade fire, sleigh bells, gayngs etc etc

well sure, if you view all these indie rock acts as essentially the same, the lists can be considered "basically identical". Whereas those people who, you know, like and listen to indie rock hear big differences between Deerhunter and Titus Andronicus and see lists with one or the other at the top as anything but basically identical.

― skip, Monday, December 6, 2010 11:59 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

this post is hilarious

I'm not really into either of those bands but even from cursory listens it's pretty easy to see they sound absolutely nothing like each other.

I am completely comfortable in saying that if you like Salem more than Sleigh Bells, you are probably a racist.

i realize deerhunter & titus andronicus are different bands, but if they show up 10-1 on one list and 1-10 on another, there's a REALLY good chance that those are gonna be similar ass lists

the thing about the SPIN gallery is not the 40 click thrus (tons of websites do this & it's probably gonna be the least of crimes as we move forward) but that their site is slow as shit -- the combination is intolerable

^^^ otm

The New York Times was so courageous in covering Salem, and making it safe for blogs to put them in their top 10s.

what i've heard has not motivated me to spend £££ to listen to the record

Haha, I actually sent "House Girls 6" in full to some people Lex but left you off because you said you hated it...

In my top 3 tracks of the year dudes, if that means anything.

Are there any actual standout tracks on that Teenage Fanclub album? Is it worth checking out?

"Power," the most exhilarating, witty, and necessarily bombastic track of his career

not really billsteve...but still worth checking out/finding a stream.

"house girls 6" cost me 69p and it was definitely worth it

Yeah House Girls 6 is great, I don't get how anyone could rep for Hey Hey and the Ayobaness comp and not like it.

I'm liking this Solar Bears album as well - brightly coloured cartoon beach music. Also a bit like Boards of Canada picked the whole Robygiv vibe and built from there.

the Quietus 2010 list contains one actual hip-hop album (Big Boi) and two others tangentially related to hip-hop (Janelle, Flying Lotus), yet places an album that offensively steal most of its ideas from hip-hop at #2 (Salem). who would truly prefer white guys making light of black music and culture to actual hip-hop? i like the rest of the list, but Salem at #2 is just embarrassing

wow, a direct truthbomb from ilxor

who'da thunk it? ;)

it's a shame that neil kulkarni's work didn't do enough to get joell ortiz on the list