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The 25 Best Albums of 2010

Sometimes, when everyone agrees that something is pretty great, it’s because it’s actually pretty great.

The 25 Best Albums of 2010
Photo: Interscope

Katy Perry is nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards. Not that the Grammys carry a hell of a lot of clout for anyone who isn’t already a member of NARAS, but that’s still an important talking point. A professional organization that ostensibly has an investment in both the commercial and the artistic viability of popular music came right out and said, “In the two thousand and tenth year of our Lord, we stand firm behind Katy Perry and her Teenage Dream as the embodiment of the highest achievements of our industry and of our art, with the hope that other artists will look to all that she has accomplished and will strive to be more like Katy Perry. Amen.”

Now, it’s easy to pick on the geriatric membership of NARAS, just as it’s easy to throw shade on Perry, but her nomination flies in the face of the notion that year-in-review listmaking and awards-giving should be all about the consensus picks. It’s a bold, editorial choice that recognizes the value in a group having a distinct point of view, however WTF? that point of view might seem.

The flipside to that argument, though, is that there can be just as much value to consensus, at least in a year like 2010, when it has become easier than ever before to get trapped in one’s own little special-interest bubble. It’s the cream-rises argument, and, while that inevitably means that more obscure titles get swept away in the deluge of year-end lists, that consensus ensures that some of the year’s strongest work from across the full musical spectrum ends up getting highlighted. And this year, it seems like most everyone can agree on the notion that Kanye West managed to channel his public persona, which he has constructed from being an absolutely insufferable douchebag and a motherfucking monster of absolutely epic proportions, into a challenging, divisive hip-hop record that demands a strong reaction. It’s an album that our staff has reacted to quite favorably, and the same can be said of Robyn’s series of progressive, emotionally devastating dance-pop EPs and of Janelle Monáe’s weird-ass Robot Messiah song cycle.

Sometimes, when everyone agrees that something is pretty great, it’s because it’s actually pretty great. That’s not a preemptive mea culpa for the fact that our best-of albums list includes some albums that a host of publications have also cited as among the best of 2010, so much as a statement of principle that a consensus can only emerge from individual voices. And, with acts like Lizz Wright, Jenny Wilson, and How to Dress Well also included here, the voices of our staff’s individual writers are reflected just as strongly as the consensus picks. And no, we still can’t stand Katy Perry. Jonathan Keefe

Editor’s Note: Check out our Best of 2010: Singles.

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The 25 Best Albums of 2010

25. Hot Chip, One Life Stand

When Joe Goddard couldn’t attend Hot Chip’s SummerStage performance earlier this year because he was having a baby, he still managed to send himself there via a video containing his oversized, lip-syncing head. Whatever you think of the band, do not doubt their generosity and commitment—as musicians or lovers. One Life Stand may not be as ready for the floor as The Warning or Made in the Dark, but it’s the album that most boldly attests to the group’s melancholic romanticism (it’s even in the kinda-euphemistic title), the love these heirs to the Pet Shop Boys want but can’t have or don’t want anything to do with, but also to their endearing sense of male camaraderie. Their beats are practically a diagram of the heart: they stutter, they soar, they often break. Ed Gonzalez


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

24. Mahjongg, The Long Shadow of the Paper Tiger

Mahjongg’s third effort is an album without a core, a 36-minute spiel for which even the divisions between songs feel like arbitrary markers. This could easily devolve into sonic mush, but the group manages to tie their myriad influences together into a sprightly, effusive bundle, one that feels to be distractedly excited to be contained. Take opener “Gooble,” which ditches any pretext of standard structure for a roving free-association pattern, attaching new sections which flow into others, spinning out bizarre vocal passages that lead nowhere. The album continues on in this pattern, capturing and rebranding familiar sounds, transforming guest vocalists into unrecognizably processed drones, never repeating itself in its pursuit of untrammeled musical bliss. Jesse Cataldo


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

23. LCD Soundsystem, This Is Happening

Music tailormade for my Eno-loving heart. Not unlike the woefully undervalued Another Day on Earth, This Is Happening is a frantic elegy to a man’s crippling ennui. This is not as emotionally uplifting a record as Sound of Silver, but it doesn’t want to be. It is, though, unquestionably affecting, eerily, bombastically, and resonating with loss, self-doubt, and regret. James Murphy is more of an analogue man than the boys of Hot Chip, but like them, he insists on linking upbeat sounds with downbeat emotions, knotting his aspirations and fears to create a sound that disconcertingly and beautifully hurts. Gonzalez


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

22. Vampire Weekend, Contra

You can take the band out of Cape Cod, but you can’t take Cape Cod out of the band, even when they move to Nicaragua and don balaclavas. Post-grad indie band Vampire Weekend leaves behind much of their debut’s piss and vinegar in infusing their worldbeat aura with the sights and sounds of Latin America, but the scholastic wink and high-society bon mots remain. As a result, sophomore effort Contra ends up being equally acute and sardonically sweet—a colorful, vista-spanning travelogue of lost romance, warm afternoons, and coming-of-age realizations. In the process, the band manages to carve a few more subtle details onto their yuppie-rock personas. That goes double for leadman Ezra Koenig, who finally ditches the Paul Simon impression for the scratchy sentimentality of a world-weary troubadour. And so from the pleasant machine gun rumble of “Giving Up the Gun” to the breezy chorale of “Horchata” and the crackling, crunchy beat of “White Sky,” Contra is both a passport to an older, more exotic world and the maturation of a promising young band. Kevin Liedel

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The 25 Best Albums of 2010

21. Ray Wylie Hubbard, A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There Is No C)

He may have spent the majority of his career as one of the leading candidates for the title of country music’s Poet Laureate, but crotchety sumbitch Ray Wylie Hubbard summarily dismissed such distinctions on “Down Home Country Blues,” declaring Muddy Waters to be every bit as deep as William Blake. It’s a loaded statement, for sure, and one that serves as a stark reminder that the best country music has always been able to boast intelligence as one of its virtues. Hubbard’s twisted, gothic exploration of the grimiest forms of country and blues plays out as a powerful collection of Songs of Experience that would do both Waters and Blake proud. Keefe


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

20. How to Dress Well, Love Remains

The cavernous reverb, dirty low-end, and minimal instrumentation all signify Tom Krell’s interest in making Difficult Experimental Music, but the stuttering beats and especially the keening, multi-tracked harmonies, resemble nothing more than ’80s new jack swing in the vein of New Edition and Ready for the World. Slickness, smoothness, and other adjectives connotating an expensive kind of sexiness have been important to radio R&B’s aesthetic since, at least, Mariah, so it’s intriguing to listen as Krell reconstructs the genre on his shoestring budget. His home-recorded basslines aren’t nimble or funky; instead they bloom out of the speakers in a wash of chest-rattling thunder. He’s more careful with his beats, but even their precise hits carry a grimy density. Matthew Cole


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

19. Jenny Wilson, Hardships!

In a year defined by increasingly baroque female eccentricity, from the scores of pop singers following in Lady Gaga’s footsteps to Joanna Newsom’s increasingly expansive oddness, Jenny Wilson offered a different outlet. A Swede dabbling in a kind of rootlessly eccentric, always melodic piano pop, her breakthrough album, despite its effortless maturity and consistently solid songwriting, was unfairly ignored by almost everyone. Flitting from one wild experiment to another, it retains a firm pop foundation with all the necessary trappings: an expressive, searching voice, thoughtful lyrics, music that challenges and takes risks, swelling with grandeur and inscrutability. Cataldo


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

18. Flying Lotus, Cosmogramma

It’s a strange world we live in: One minute you’re doing uncredited bumper music for adult-oriented cartoons, the next you’re releasing the most bizzarely ambitious album of the year, a leftfield hip-hop mindbender in the proud tradition of DJ Shadow and California’s Anticon collective. Listening to Cosmogramma, one gets the impression that “genre” just isn’t a concept that Flying Lotus is familiar with. Ambient hip-hop mutates into disco on “Zodiac Shit,” “Satelllliiiiiteee” goes from IDM to free-jazz, and even the psychedelic pop of “…And the World Laughs with You” decomposes into glitchy oblivion as FlyLo does hi-tech violence to Thom Yorke’s voice. Interdisciplinary? More like intergalactic; next to this guy even space-case Janelle Monáe could be the girl next door. (If Cosmogramma leaves you craving more, check out the follow-up EP, Pattern + Grid World. Warmer and less heady than the main event, it’s the sound of FlyLo returning from Jupiter to relax with a blunt and an Xbox controller). Cole

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The 25 Best Albums of 2010

17. Deerhunter, Halcyon Digest

When listening to any album of such dreamy scope, it can take a while for all of its fanciful components to click into place. London is drenched, traffic is deadlocked, my bus has crept mere inches forward in the last hour, and I’m listening to Deerhunter’s Halcyon Digest. Somewhere between the searing tremolo guitar work and outlandish percussion of “Earthquake” and Bradford Cox’s haunting “Where did your friends go?/Where do they see you?” that closes “He Would Have Laughed,” something definitely clicks. All of a sudden, this entrancing lo-fi psychedelica becomes the soundtrack to my awful journey, its swirling harmonies and wistful electronic noise giving my mundane environment a rich filmic quality. Jones


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

16. Lizz” wright, Fellowship

“The power of the universe, it knows my name,” Lizz Wright sings with reverence on “I Remember, I Believe,” the jaw-dropping centerpiece from Fellowship. She continues: “Gave me a song to sing and sent me on my way/To raise my voice for justice, I believe.” And what an extraordinary set of songs she has assembled and what an astonishing voice she has. A truly gifted, exquisite vocalist with a rich tone that recalls Anita Baker in her prime, Wright raises her gorgeous, honeyed alto not only for justice, but for compassion, reason, insight, reflection, and grace. That perspective makes for a secular album that speaks to the power of true gospel music at its finest. Keefe


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

15. Beach House, Teen Dream

Those are stripes on the cover of Beach House’s Teen Dream (it helps to know that one of the tracks is called “Zebra”), but they could pass for leaves, an X-ray of the brain, or the surface of a conch shell. The music itself is similarly confounding: gorgeous dream pop at once sunny and shadowy. These are moody love songs, full of florid allusions and lovelorn sentiments—a bittersweet drone of a record that derives its beauty from the intricately bound relationship between Nico-like Victoria Legrand husky vocals and Alex Scalley’s equally fraught musical textures. It’s like hanging out inside a beachside gospel tent, a ray of light illuminating our hope through gray, thundering cumulonimbus clouds. Gonzalez


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

14. Caribou, Swim

Mathematician/musician Dan Snaith has described his latest album under the moniker Caribou as “dance music that sounds like it’s made out of water.” And there’s certainly a fluidity to the nine songs here, but water—normally associated with coolness—is a less accurate summation of the sounds on Swim than fire. Snaith’s lyrics are secondary, half-whispered and drenched in reverb or fragmented and stretched into muted syllables. Instead, the music is the focus; it’s warm and inviting, which is not always the case with electronic music, a delicate balance of the organic and the synthetic, of the human and the artificial, of the modern and the tribal. Sal Cinquemani

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The 25 Best Albums of 2010

13. Das Racist, Shut Up, Dude

Appearing two years before the release of this startling mixtape, “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” was such a baffling, silly track that many mistook it for a parody. The style of Shut Up, Dude which pairs looseness and density in a way that few things have been capable of, seems to clarify this, an album that references Larry Bird, Macbooks, Raffi, and a U.P.S. ad campaign on its first track, before moving on to a song which hinges on a sped-up Billy Joel sample. The musical equivalent of a messy dorm room, the album tosses out heaps of referential baggage and unforced silliness while retaining a shifty core seriousness, standing out as two guys’ attempt to parse, mock, and process a world overstuffed with information. Cataldo


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

12. Owen Pallett, Heartland

With Heartland, the artist formerly known as Final Fantasy once again employs a fictitious narrative, but even if you can’t suss out the details of protagonist Lewis and his existential crisis, the album still impresses as a summation of Pallett’s talents and achievements to date. Less dissonant than its predecessor, 2006’s He Poos Clouds, but not quite as “poignant” as his debut, Has a Good Home, Heartland continues Pallett’s affinity for chamber music (not to be confused with chamber pop) while more fully incorporating the electronic elements that were only previously hinted at in his music. In many ways, Pallett’s career has run parallel to that of Patrick Wolf, whose last album similarly embraced electronic music and deftly combined it with the artist’s classical background. Cinquemani


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

11. Sufjan Stevens, The Age of Adz

As painful as it is to wave goodbye to the gentile side Sufjan Stevens displayed on his earlier efforts, it’s impossible not to gleefully embrace the all-encompassing finery of The Age of Adz. His penchant for haunting electronic sounds and immeasurably grand orchestral arrangements are very much the fulcrum of the album, creating a spastic tapestry of epic sounds with a kitchen sink full of instruments. “Too Much” stands out for its magnificent brass sections, the title track is memorable for its frenzied cacophony and choral roars, while “Impossible Soul” is a relentless 25-minute marathon of ever-changing soundscapes that acts as Stevens’s most unregimented stream of consciousness to date. Jones


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

10. Gorillaz, Plastic Beach

A stellar warp tour through a futurama of freakish sights and sounds. Even Snoop Dogg’s intro, in spite of that sketchy but understandable Planet of the Apes reference (this is an apocalypse after all), is a blazed-out wonder. Whether thumping, wafting, bouncing, or thrashing, the ever-morphing production—hence plastic—is of a piece with the kooky balladry. These “guys” make the most high-falutin’ of instruments spit out oddball beats that are alternately grandiose and chill, and the surreal immersion is such that you may just pull out of it believing in superfast jellyfishes. “Glitter Freeze” could be what Kier Dullea listens to in space, “Empire Ants” what plays in Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory,” and “On Melancholy Hill” the music that plays inside elevators connecting heaven and hell. Gorillaz put us existentially at ease. Gonzalez

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The 25 Best Albums of 2010

9. Lindstrøm & Christabelle, Real Life Is No Cool

Norwegian DJ Hans-Peter Lindstrøm and vocalist Christabelle’s Real Life Is No Cool is a pop-funk odyssey that draws on early Massive Attack, Prince, and especially the space-disco of Giorgio Moroder. The album is, perhaps, Lindstrøm’s most accessible work to date (the single “Lovesick” appeared in a car commercial earlier this year and the U.S. version of the album is even more polished than the original Rough Trade incarnation), but despite clear standout tracks and copious pop hooks, it’s a testament to the strength of Lindstrøm’s singular vision that the album plays best as one whole piece, no small feat considering that it was at least seven years in the making. Cinquemani


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

8. Arcade Fire, The Suburbs

As the group learned on Neon Bible, it’s difficult to strike a balance between sweeping musicianship and pretentiousness. Just as Arcade Fire began to settle into their rock-star pomp, the knives were out and all of a sudden the seven-strong Montreal outfit had an overblown and grandiose sound. The Suburbs doesn’t necessarily fly the flag for a back-to-basics approach though: Not only is there nothing basic about what is served up here, but their regression from Neon Bible’s pageantry takes them to a decidedly different sound than Funeral. Losing yourself in these labyrinthine arrangements is a joy, as are repeated visits to the utterly tremendous refrains from “Rococo” and the title track. The Suburbs seems to have everything, sashaying through innumerable sounds with the majesty of musicians at the very peak of their powers. Jones


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

7. Big Boi, Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty

The guys at Jive said a lot of douchey things to Big Boi while he was working on Sir Lucious Left Foot: that they couldn’t promote the album, that it needed a single that sounded like “Lolipop,” and even when the OutKast MC jumped ship for Def Jam, that he couldn’t release the album as long as Andre3000’s voice appeared anywhere on its 17 tracks. Big Boi didn’t give up on the album, and now it’s clear that every second he fought for his delirious art-funk opus was time well spent. Sir Lucious Left Foot is an extravagant hip-hop circus and Big Boi is its ringmaster, dropping one stylishly madcap verse after another while his guests turn in their own killer performances. As if that weren’t enough, Big Boi went ahead and leaked the excellent, Andre-featuring “Lookin’ 4 Ya” (“Au contraire!” he told GQ, “They cannot block it!”). But the album slays with or without Andre, and even the not-inconsiderable part of me that hoped for a new OutKast album has to admit that Big Boi probably gave me a better deal: OutKast hasn’t made an album this hot since Aquemini. Cole


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

6. Crystal Castles, Crystal Castles

Crystal Castles’s second album finds the Toronto duo wisely softening their palette from harsh, experimental throwaway pieces to a decidedly gentler brand of electronic pop. Whereas their debut often smacked of a noisy, one-note, look-how-clever-we-are tantrum, their second self-titled album is subtly layered: reflective and dreamy but also tense and conflicted, full of crisp, Atari-inspired severity (“Birds,” “I Am Made of Chalk”), pristine, starry melodies (“Celestica,” “Suffocation”)—ultimately a restless balancing act between the grim and the sanguine. In the divide between the lo-fi and the polish, the artistic gulf between Ethan Kath and Alice Glass is beautifully represented—he as the architecturally minded shut-in and she as the unpredictable, aggressive noise-punk performer. The album is taut with a ferocious give-and-take energy, and it’s the very antithesis of a sophomore slump. Liedel

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The 25 Best Albums of 2010

5. The Black Keys, Brothers

If there’s a lesson to be learned from Brothers, let it be that the blues sounds better plugged in. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney tackle all of the genre’s conventional staples with fervor and angst, putting a rugged contemporary spin on classic blues and soul. Take the way Auerbach rages about romances gone awry in “Next Girl,” his syncopated delivery only amplifying the passion with which he delivers his prose. And on “Everlasting Light,” his newfound falsetto acts as a sublime contrast to the march of ever-swelling distorted guitar. This is the most cohesive the Black Keys has ever sounded as a unit, the duo greatly benefitting from the DIY production approach, and yet Brothers feels like their loosest jam to date. Jones


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

4. Sleigh Bells, Treats

Already dubbed by many as the Loudest Record of All Time, Treats isn’t so much about volume as it is about conveying the raw energy of barely contained sound. Playing as though it were recorded entirely from within the guts of a dilapidated amp, the album is a constant tug of war between Alexis Krauss’s sweetly sung vocals and Derek Miller’s thrashing grain distortion. It’s as if the homecoming queen and the headbanger you knew from high school formed a band and decided to violently mash their discrepant tastes together. Thus, we get gems like “Tell ‘Em,” which somehow finds room for an unapologetic hair-metal guitar line, pounding wet-snap percussion, and a kick-ass cheerleader chant all in one three-minute track. And yet, as something like the chilled “Run the Heart” proves, Sleigh Bells has also mastered the ability to dial back the sonic shredder in favor of subtler dynamics, thus lending Treats more than just the benefit of eardrum-punching power. Liedel


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

3. Janelle Monáe, The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III of IV)

What with the pompadour and skinny ties (and matching uniforms for the band) and the James-Brown-by-way-of-Prince-by-way-of-Andre3000 gimmickry, Janelle Monáe’s kooky act at first seems like an elaborate put-on. But the whole of The ArchAndroid, with its fearless, forward-thinking vision of contemporary rock and R&B and its twitchy sci-fi imagery, says otherwise. Girl gets real damn weird with it, but the confidence and swagger with which she shouts, “I used to believe there was something wrong with me!” in the middle of “Cold War” proves that Monáe is comfortable in her most peculiar skin. Keefe


The 25 Best Albums of 2010

2. Robyn, Body Talk

When music historians look back on the battle for ultimate electro-pop diva of the new millennium, they will inevitably reward the LED-encrusted tiara to Robyn. The Swedish dance club princess delivered her T.K.O. with her Body Talk series, three punchy releases essentially culled from the same big music party (and it is, unmistakably, Robyn’s party—the rest of us are just invited for a peek at all the fun). Body Talk represents both a culmination and perfection of today’s synth-driven Euro-pop craze, which has effectively become like crack for radio on this side of the Atlantic, obsessively mimicked and pushed through every thumping, Auto-Tuned R&B-rap-pop monstrosity climbing the charts. Rarely, however, is the genre delivered with as much snarky wit, steely beauty, and remarkable consistency as Robyn manages here. Both lost in the moment and yet keenly future-minded, Body Talk regularly provides a kind of self-aware accessibility that most pop musicians have lazily abandoned for the past decade. When Robyn finally pauses to whisper “kick drum” with deadpan nonchalance on “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What to Do,” the sorely missed lost art of not taking oneself too seriously comes roaring back with glee. Liedel

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The 25 Best Albums of 2010

1. Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Kanye’s masterpiece begins with an invocation of layers behind layers, a fitting opening for an album dense with mixed emotions and double meanings. The rest of opener “Dark Fantasy” sets an exciting template, stemming from the “can we get much higher” refrain, which sounds like both a statement of accomplishment and an anxious question. All of his bravado is injected with fear, and his fear breeds even more bravado, creating a vicious cycle that brilliantly marries grandiosity with desperation. From the melancholy celebration of “All of the Lights” to the bluntly cathartic “Hell of a Life,” the balance of introspection and revelry remains perfectly attuned, creating a magnificent depiction of a man at odds with his swelling fame. Cataldo

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