Tame Impala – Innerspeaker
Psych rock revivalists who list Cream, Jefferson Airplane and Supertramp amongst their influences might seem like a pretty underwhelming proposition. We all remember Wolfmother. Innerspeaker, however, manages to ably navigate the thin line between scholarly replication and pastiche that goes far beyond the knuckle-dragging results of their peers.
All the furniture of the genre is present – fuzzed-out guitar tones; riff-driven song writing; gratuitous, narcotic layers of sound. In the most complimentary sense, what the band do is reminiscent of The Beatles late-career LSD-fuelled output; they even possess a front man in Kevin Parker who sounds eerily like John Lennon. In spite of all this, on Innerspeaker they never sound like they’re hawking or borrowing too clumsily from their lineage. Whilst the vocals bring to mind Lennon, that break is pure stoner rock, but those drum-fills are too showy for Kyuss and too advanced for Ringo, and that guitar tone is definitely Floyd.
Still, only purists need apply. Innerspeak won’t draw in anyone who wasn’t weened on early Pink Floyd and the like. The sanded-down psychadelica might be a little too formless for an audience used to a bit more bite, but for those, like me, interested in an album full of riff-heavy, lysergic rock music, it strikes the balance perfectly between reviving and revivalism just right.
Vampire Weekend – Contra
Vampire Weekend’s average fan-age can’t be much into the teens. Those girls ripped on the HRO ‘H8 u Kirsty Kenny’ video? They’re the core demographic. A-punk brought them here; they heard it in an ad that needed something ‘quirky’. There were mothers at a recent gig at Alexandra Palace, something I’d not encountered at a gig until my Muse days when, well, my mother was there, hanging at the back.
That said, listening to Contra it’s hard to imagine a better primer for the next generation. Where mine had to fumble around awkwardly with Linkin Park and Busted, the legions of soon to be acne-riddled tweens can find their feet with a Twilight soundtrack and then move on to a tight band still cribbing (quite well) off Graceland and splattering some other influences about ranging from reggae to synth pop in between the neatly arranged, preppy orchestration. If I’d heard something as equivalently colourful as California English in 1999 – auto-tune, strings and synth-pop keys in one song? Just rapping and guitars felt transgressive back then – I’d like to think I’d be a more cultured and well-rounded individual. It would have beaten Hybrid Theory, anyway.
MP3: Vampire Weekend – California English
Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
It might have been the influence of the Glastonbury essence and the media blackout that being stuck in the place for just under a week provides, but I really enjoyed Gorillaz’s headline spot.There was something charming and winning in the ad-hoc nature in which Lou Reed, Mark E Smith, Bobby Womack and the like were charged out and then taken away. It probably didn’t translate as well on TV, but oh well. It was exciting.
As an album Plastic Beach works the other way around: conceptually it’s pretty cohesive for a 21st album, the environmental shtick runs the whole way through and gives Damon’s haunted sigh and weary ennui a meaty subject to sink its teeth into. It’s also the only Gorillaz album you’d want to listen to from start to finish, unlike the throngs of orphaned U2 fans left expecting, inexplicably, something exactly like U2. And, as kaleidoscopic as Albarn’s music preferences are, and as big as his ego may be (him and Kanye would get along, no?), the album gels together remarkably in spite of bouncing from electro-pop, krautrock and the more familiar alt-rap. The pre-apocalyptic vision of an Earth in the not so distant future gives reason for the smashing together of disparate styles; the bleep of programmed beats and the mechanical synth-fuzz runs throughout giving it a recycled, reclaimed feel in the deepest of grooves or the airiest of melodies. Plastic Beach is where the Gorillaz dropped the cartoon pretense and got serious.
MP3: Gorillaz – Glitter Freeze
Big Boi – Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
In 2010, Odd Future unnerved you, Das Racist made you laugh, Kanye made you feel a lot of things and was a jerk about it. Big Boi was the one you’d actually like to hang out with and have a few drinks with. Sir Lucious Left Foot is a party record; a record to blast in the car with the top down, and one to do whatever the hell you do when you let loose. Synths glisten, cheerleaders chant, choirs herald: it’s a big, lush record. You like Outkast, right?
There’s no Andre, so there’s no magical mystery tours out of traditional Hip Hop territory, just the typical retro-futurism treatment of p-funk and soul staples; even George Clinton guests on blunt anthem ‘Fo Yo Sorrows’. The soaring melodrama of the Blue Notes-sampling Shine Blockas is an instant hit – the chorus a windows-down declaration against the world. And the talk-box driven, west-coast funk of Shutterbugg stands toe-to-toe with anything Big Boi’s done with Outkast. I’ve seen it get bigger cheers than Outkast staples.
Sir Lucious may have not been the most soul-searching, progressive or smart Hip Hop record of 2010, but when an album goes this hard, it doesn’t really feel like it matters that much.
LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening
Murphy has always been an inward-looking, self-aware kind of guy. That introspection usually has some other object to work itself around: New York, coolness, relevance, friendship, growing old. As an album that namechecks Michael Musto, owes a debt to Eno and Bowie, and was repeatedly – and inaccurately – advertised as the last LCD Soundsystem album ever, This still retains a lot of those themes. It wouldn’t be an LCD album without them. What’s so notable about it is how self-lacerating and mature it is in its concerns. For a guy who was content to list his record collection as an attempt to reassert his cool, and only a few months ago described his work as ‘dumb body music’, the sentiment on tracks like All I Want (‘From now on, I’m someone different’) and I Can Change is pretty deep, pretty personal. It might not have the deep cuts of Sound of Silver – the big anthemic gestures like All My Friends or New York – but it’s the most soulful, mature LCD record to date.
MP3: LCD Soundsystem – Drunk Girls
Sleigh Bells – Treats
The gradual decline in bit-rates, the proliferation of iPod headphones and relentless leak culture was only ever going to end up like this: a band fully embracing the crushed crackle and rattle of your 128k unmastered leak through those iPod buds. Where every artist these days seems concerned with evoking the washed-out Polaroid memory of the 80s and the analog unwieldiness of the era, Sleigh Bells fully embrace the present not so much in terms of aesthetics, but how we experience and listen to music. Making your music sound warped like an old cassette is ok, but narrowing the dynamic range and cranking the volume with crunk hits and metal guitars leading the attack is more 2010.
MP3: Sleigh Bells – A/B Machines
Robyn – Body Talk
As a means of satiating her audience after five years out of the game, the three Body Talk EPs were a great strategy; as a way of ensuring complete satisfaction with the final product, it was a little less successful. Knowing everything perfect that came before, you can’t help but pick over the final Body Talk production – which also, paradoxically, feels a little overlong after three snack-sized treats – and wish X was there instead of Y and so on. So, not that this album doesn’t deserve to be here. My biggest complaint is that Robyn was too good everywhere to ever had an album that could her justice. This fourth place is more for Robyn in 2010. For Hang with Me, None of Dem, Dancing on My Own, Call Your Girlfriend and all those live performances. Y’all were great on Fallon.
MP3: Robyn – Dancing on My Own
Das Racist – Sit Down, Man
“They call us joke rap / We kinda weed rap / We just like rap / We don’t even need rap / So get a real job / Only rap weekly / I don’t need rap / Told you rap need me.”
MP3: Das Racist – Luv It Mayne
Beach House – Teen Dream
I caught Beach House round about the time they must have been in between touring their first album and recording Devotion. It was a Bella Union showcase, a strangely formal thing at the Royal Festival Hall compered by Paul Morley. I was there to see the Howling Bells and left unimpressed by the duo. The stuffiness of a seated venue probably didn’t help, but they were boring: Victoria mumbled at the audience (when she was and wasn’t singing songs), I made out a ‘tough crowd’ in response to our silence in response to something we couldn’t make out; their songs were woozy and atmospheric, but lacking in obvious hooks and drive. This was when Victoria still dressed like an enchantress or some sort, and Alex just hid behind his haircut and did his slide guitar thing.
Alex still hides behind his haircut and does his slide guitar thing, but it’s bigger like most of the band’s sound now. Teen Dream is the realisation of most of what the band’s been building towards: there’s still room for the home-spun beats but it’s given a cinematic treatment that takes full advantage of Victoria’s booming voice. Like no.1 on the list, Beach House had to go bigger to get better.
MP3: Beach House – Lover of Mine
Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Through all the hype, through all the backlashes and backlashes against the backlashes, this is still the album of 2010. I rummaged through every release I’d listened to this year; I went to last.fm, hoping my charts would reveal something else, turns out this is my 2nd most played album ‘ever’. I reappraised every album below this one over and over, but there wasn’t a better album. There wasn’t anything that still excites and entertains me as much as Minaj on Monster; nothing with as much pathos as Runaway; nothing as mighty as Power. The 10.0 is bullshit and there’s been a lot of embarrassingly excitable and exaggerated things said about it, but the 10.0 is only bullshit where a 9.8 would have only been a little generous – and you can’t really blame people for getting excited about stuff as good as this.
Somehow after all the tweets, all the drama, all the memes, Kanye emerged as an actual human being with a classic album that reminded you of it. Kanye. Album of 2010. Whodathunkit?
I’ll leave it to Rob Sheffield over Rolling Stone to sum it up better than I can:
‘Look, life is unfair. Nietzsche died alone and forgotten in an insane asylum. Khloe Kardashian is still on television. I get why you wish the gods had given Kanye’s talent to somebody smarter than Kanye, humbler than Kanye, or maybe even just somebody who doesn’t get his feelings bruised every time he sees a DON’T WALK sign. He probably wishes the same thing. Kanye’s struggle with his own douchebaggery, a struggle he loses most of the time, is part of his artistry. (Just part. Less than half. Fifteen per cent? Twelve?) But note that even in “Monster,” where he exorcises his supposedly monstrous ego, he’s at his most generous, giving Nicki Minaj the cameo of the year, not to mention giving the world a pretty incredible song. You’ll meet bigger douchebags than Kanye every day of your life. Only one of them is going to make this album.’
MP3: Kanye West – Monster (feat. Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj & Bon Iver)
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