Halfway Through 2010: Favorite Albums of the Year (So Far)

In the spirit of So we're halfway through 2008; what are your top 10 albums of this year, so far? . . .

Favorite albums of the year so far?

Just posted this on my humble tumblr this morning:

My favorite new music of the new decade thus far; alphabetical, with two notes.

Across Tundras - Old World Wanderer
Cathedral - The Guessing Game
Elvis Costello and the Attractions - Live at Hollywood High*
The Flight of Sleipnir - Lore
Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 - Propellor Time
Mugstar - Sun, Broken…
The National - High Violet
Ratt - Infestation
Samsara Blues Experiment - Long Distance Trip
Triptykon - Eparistera Daimones
Ufomammut -Eve
The Velvet Underground - The Professor’s Tapes**
Voice of the Seven Thunders - Voice of the Seven Thunders

*This is the first complete version of a ‘78 show that has been previously released in dribs and drabs. It smokes, reminding me why I loved Costello so much at one point.

**This is a bootleg of five VU shows that have been available before as recordings made from radio broadcasts of these exact tapes. Needless to say, the audio quality is definitely improved, making great performances sound good instead of just passable.

Seconding Propellor Time and The Professor Tapes, adding Elisa Randazzo's "Bruises & Butterflies," the Rangda album everyone on ILM is nuts about ...

No order:

Extra Life
Slices
Konono No.1
Lean Left
Optimo's Fabric mix
Lindstrom & Christabelle
Rangda
Black Breath
Dry Rot

Voice of the Seven Thunders - Voice of the Seven Thunders

^oh and this!

vampire weekend
hot chip
lcd soundsystem
the fall

Voice of the Seven Thunders - Voice of the Seven Thunders
White Fence
Forest Swords
Golden Triangle
Peter Brotzmann - Woodcuts
Guinea Worms
Jimi Hendrix
Thee Oh Sees
the Fall
Dead Luke
Acid Mothers Temple - In O to Infinity
Konono # 1
v/a - Brazilian Fuzz Bananas...etc.
Puffy Areolas
Hanoi Janes
El Jesus de Magico

It's been a strong year so far, already a lot more albums I love than there was last year.

1.The Chap-Well Done Europe
2.LCD Soundsystem-This is Happening
3.Hot Chip-One Life Stand
4.Janelle Monae-The ArchAndroid
5.Owen Pallett-Heartland
6.The Fall-Your Future Our Clutter
7.Ted Leo & the Pharmacists-The Brutalist Bricks
8.Gorillaz-Plastic Beach
9.Robyn-Body Talk (Part One)
10.Erykah Badu-New Amerykah Part Two
11Goldfrapp-Head First
12.Everybody Was in the French Resistance..Now!-Fixin' the Charts
13.Groove Armada-Black Light
14.Lindstrom & Christabelle-Real Life is no Cool
15.Fyfe Dangefield-Fly Yellow Moon

Looking forward to hearing the new Scissor Sisters, Kylie, Big Boi, M.I.A and The Dream albums in the next month.

To make it a perfect year I'd really love new albums by The Avalanches and D'angelo, but that's not looking likely especially in D'angelo's case.

01. Spoon, Transference
02. Peter Wolf, Midnight Souvenirs
03. Drive-By Truckers, The Big To-Do
04. Soulfly, Omen
05. T.A.M.I. Show DVD
06. Yeasayer, Odd Blood
07. Minus the Bear, Omni
08. Darkthrone, Circle the Wagons
09. Dr. Dog, Shame, Shame
10. The Bird & the Bee, Interpreting the Masters, Vol. 1: A Tribute to Daryl Hall & John Oates

Honorable Mention
Black Keys, Brothers
The Fall, Your Future Our Clutter
Goldfrapp, Head First
Jimi Hendrix, Valleys of Neptune
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, I Learned the Hard Way
Jónsi, Go
Marina & the Diamonds, The Family Jewels
Overkill, Ironbound
Pretenders, Live in London
Voice of the Seven Thunders, s/t

"Exile on Main Street" has been the best reissue (I really love the first six bonus tracks).

Pantha du Prince - Black Noise

that's it

So far I really like:

Sleigh Bells - Treats
Midlake - The Courage of Others
Ellen Allien - Dust

and about half of Vampire Weekend - Contra

Oh, and I just got The Tallest Man on Earth - Wild Hunt, which will probably be moving onto the "really like" list.

Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid
Marina & the Diamonds - The Family Jewels
Daddy Yankee - Mundial

Maybe: Pantha du Prince - Black Noise

Nachtmystium - Addicts: Black Meddle Vol. 2
Alcest - Écailles de Lune
The Besnard Lakes - Are the Roaring Night
Ratt - Infestation
Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
Goldfrapp - Head First
Drive-By Truckers - The Big To-Do
Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma
Yakuza - Of Seismic Consequence
Robyn - Body Talk (Part One)
Cathedral - The Guessing Game

Rangda - False Flag
The Fall - Your Future Our Clutter
Tonetta - 777

of the very little i've heard, stuff i really love:

High on Fire - Snakes for the Divine
Sleigh Bells - Treats
Black Breath - Heavy Breathing
Nice Face - Immer Etwas
Gorillaz - Plastic Beach (maybe?)
Ariel Pink - Before Today
Funerot - And Then You Fucking Die, Man

curious about (lazy): fall, tyvek, cathedral, nachtmystium, rangda, konono #1

disappointed by recent: oh sees, puffy areolas, hot chip

i'm sure i'm forgetting a ton of shit

quadron
efdemin

LCD Soundsystem
Big Krit - KRIT wuz here
Delorean - Subiza
Onra - Long Distance
Pantha du Prince - Black Noise
The Bird and the Bee - Interpreting the Masters Volume 1: A Tribute To Daryl Hall and John Oates
Erykah Badu

Need to listen to more, not sure: Broken Social Scene
Should check out, love the "singles": Ariel Pink, Gayngs
Will be on there fo sho based on what's been released: Big Boi

The Hold Steady.

so far . . . LCD Soundsystem. imagine Sleigh Bells will be high up on my list when I listen to it more. besides that, I've mostly stuff that came out before this year, and the new stuff i've heard is kinda middling

*i've mostly heard

Spoon
Radio Dept.
Scout Niblett
Harvey Milk
Rene Hell-Porcelain Opera/Rogue Camera
Actress-Splazsh/Machine And Voice
White Fence
Avi Buffalo
James Blake-The Bells Sketch
James Murphy/VA-Greenberg OST
Autechre-Move Of Ten
Total Abuse-Mutt
Madlib-Madlib Medicine Show No. 5: The History Of The Loop Digga 1990-2000
Young Jazz Rebels-Slave Riot
Bird Show-Bird Show Band
The Allison Cameron Band-S/T
Sightings-City Of Straw

goddam, keep forgetting to track down the new harvey milk

contenderizer why didn't you like puffy areolas?

top 5

northern portrait - criminal art lovers
standard fare - the noyelle beat
outrageous cherry - seemingly solid reality
title tracks - it was easy
besnard lakes - the besnard lakes are the roaring night

Yeah I think the Puffy Areolas lp is awesome.

puffy areolas seem like they'd be cool live (haven't seen em), and the basic sound is awesome - but after a few spins i realized that they don't yet have the tunes or riffs to back the sound up. so unless i was in the perfect mood for it, it quickly came to sound like a bunch of undifferentiated grinding and yelling. all the bits sound cool at first, but there's nothing memorable to hang on to in the long run. i'm not saying it's a bad album, but i got tired of it quickly. it's too abstract for me, and not pop enough, because i'm stupid like that. kept getting bored & irritated before it ended.

ugly truth: sold the lp back w/out using the download card (ow).

Boris - Variations

oh yeah and melvins - the bride screamed murder

you should have waited on this thread for about two more weeks (i need the time).

Four Tet
LCD Soundsystem
Pantha Du Prince
Caribou
Spoon
Owen Pallett
Laura Marling
Lindstrom & Christabelle
Steve Mason
Vampire Weekend

I'm almost certainly forgetting a few more. A good year thus far.

Massive Attack
Pawel
Joanna Newsom
Voice of the Seven Thunders
Polar Bear

Gonzales - Pianist Envy

Owen Pallett
Black Keys
Paul Cary
Midlake
Harvey Milk
The National
Liars
Tallest Man on Earth

and quite possibly this new Punch Brothers record, which I am impressed by on first listen

I've been probably more out of it than usual but this is my most played on itunes for 2010 stuff:

Konono No1
LCD Soundsystem
Immer 3
Tonetta 777
Optimo - Fabric 52
Die Antwoord
Danny Wang

man, listening to new music and thinking about what album that came out in the last six months is your favourite can make you feel so retarded sometimes.

true, true

I keep everything purchased in any given year in a pile separate from the rest of the filed away collection. Well, two piles, actually; one for 'new' stuff released in that year and another for back catalogue stuff. To remind me that this stuff is recent purchases and I ought to listen to it before it gets put away and forgotten about.

The new stuff pile is bigger than the back catalogue pile so far this year.

2. Mock & Toof - Tuning Echoes

I thought Future Islands' "In Evening Air" would get some love here. It's by far my favorite album of the year. It's a bit of a grower - I only started loving this after 4-5 spins, but damn does it blow me away now! The singer's voice can be a detriment to some (in some of the songs he sounds a little like Tom Waits, not that I'm complaining).

Some of the other albums I've been listening to almost non-stop:

Fredrik - Trilogy
Yellow Swans - Going Places
Eluvium - Smiles
Surfer Blood - Astro Coast
Shearwater - The Golden Archipelago
Caribou - Swim

man, listening to new music and thinking about what album that came out in the last six months is your favourite can make you feel so retarded sometimes.

― teflon donk (samosa gibreel)

But if you're thinking too much about it you're doing it wrong. These sort of recaps should be a quick flashback of the albums you've listened to the most in the past months. If you don't remember them it's ok.

I think the new album by (ex-freestyle singer) salsera India is pretty good, maybe the best she's done (though I confess I've never been completely satisfied with anything she's done):

http://www.myspace.com/india

May have some crossover appeal. The production and some aspects of the arrangements (etc.) put it on the pop side of salsa, but it's definitely still salsa. There are three English language covers ("Smile" the Charlie Chaplin one, "Crying" the Roy Orbison one, and Teddy Pendergrass's "Turn Out the Lights." I'm not big on English-language salsa, but I think these work, and India doesn't sound ridiculous singing in English or anything like that.)

I'm just in street team mode at the moment I guess.

Stuff that comes immediately to mind:

Four Tet
Caribou
Sade
Pantha du Prince
Lindstrom & Christabelle
Eyrkah Badu
Janelle Monae
Yeasayer
The Fall
Flying Lotus
Rangda

Stuff that's great that hasn't been mentioned enough:

Guido
Javelin
Gil Scott-Heron
Jamie Lidell
Ted Leo/Pharmacists

last year i don't think i even liked enough albums to come up with a top 10. this year is great already and i'm really looking forward to a bunch of records in the next couple months.

flying lotus
lcd soundsystem
badu
james blake, cmyk
the inbetweens, quantum cowboy
four tet (this one is growing on me)

Stuff that comes immediately to mind:

Four Tet
Caribou
Sade
Pantha du Prince
Lindstrom & Christabelle
Eyrkah Badu
Janelle Monae
Yeasayer
The Fall
Flying Lotus
Rangda

― ilxor has truly been got at and become an ILXor (ilxor)

Adding a few to my list:

The-Dream
These New Puritans
Gonjasufi
The Knife/Mt. Sims/Planningtorock
Sleigh Bells
Madlib (clearly there's a lot to sort through, but his releases this year are endlessly fascinating...)

Rangda

still really want to check this one out, tbh

Live teaser:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JakvyyNmo4A

it's soooo frustrating that an album as inventive and full of ideas as well as trad r&b values like the jazmine sullivan one will get like 1% of the critical attention of janelle monáe's (let alone kanye's)

I totally forgot to put monae on my 50 album list and momentary felt bad because I do quite like it, but then thought that me ranking her 39 or something probably isn't the kind of critical adulation she'd relying on right now. I haven't heard NEW JAZMINE yet but hope to love it.

In general I reckon it's not so much specifically that critics like to ignore trad R&B values, but that critics don't see the point of trad R&B values in the absence of some context or approach that frames them as somehow oppositional - and hence worthy of writing about. Comparing Jazmine and Janelle can only be a broad-brushstroke dichotomous exercise, but I'd be interested in a comparison of, say, Jazmine's critical reception to that of Jill Scott's first album.

tim, is this your 50 album list for pfrk, or...?

Yeah.

cool. really wish pfrk would post individual writers' lists, like it has a couple times before.

yeah, that would be great

most of them vote in pazz & jop, if that's any solace to you nerds

*cries*

*inconsolable*

the pfork 50-album ballot is literally the ONLY good thing they do - hate having to shear it down to a pissy little 10 everywhere else.

i'm surprised janelle even made your top 50 tim, i thought you were lukewarm on it!

actually a 20-album ballot and 100-track ballot would be ideal.

stuff copied over from the "11 days into" version of this thread (plus some, half sorted):

sun city girls - funeral mariachi
the ex & getachew mekuria - moa anbessa
ofwgkta - earl/rolling papers/bastard/blackenedwhite (rather than break them out by artist)
black breath - heavy breathing
christian mistress - agony & opium
sun araw - on patrol/off duty
high on fire - snakes for the divine
purling hiss - hissteria/public service announcement
big boi - sir lucious left foot: son of chico dusty
e-40 - revenue retrievin: night shift/day shift
the dream - love king
lindstrom & christabelle - real life is no cool
funerot - and then you fucking die, man
various - shangaan electro: new wave dance music from africa
demdike stare - liberation through hearing/forest of evil/voices of dust
bongripper - satan worshipping doom
nerve city - sleepwalker/nerve city
zola jesus - stridulum/valusia
nachtmystium - addicts: black meddle II
actress - machine and voice/splazsh
a frames - 333
tonetta 777 - s/t
mark mcguire - living with yourself
timmy's organism - rise of the green gorilla
thee oh sees - warm slime
shit and shine - bass puppy 12"
sleigh bells - treats
ariel pink - before today

yeah, and kanye, can't deny

but that critics don't see the point of trad R&B values in the absence of some context or approach that frames them as somehow oppositional - and hence worthy of writing about

again this is EXACTLY THE PROBLEM! this is such a dumb way to think, like actually is-your-iq-that-low stupid, and yet it's RIFE in the critical landscape.

eh, i'm willing to grant that some people might prefer and attach special value to the novel, challenging and/or convention-defying without assuming that they must therefore be stupid.

nah it's just that they attach special value to a different set of conventions, but fool themselves into thinking that they're being ~challenging~

like, isn't the janelle album totally conventional by the standards of "arty" sci-fi shit?

if jazmine was framed as coming out of a difft context wouldn't she be seen as "convention-defying"?

what the hell are you even on about?

that's rhetorical btw. i'm sure your answer is all well outraged and all that.

well, it's a given that "challenging" is in the eye of the beholder, right? and in that sense, sure, framing helps. the janelle album has an obvious hook for people into slightly off-center pop, but that's hardly a bad thing. don't now enough about the jazmine record to make any comparisons. i just wanted to stick up for those who tend to seek out that which seems appealingly unusual. it's hardly the greatest fault of taste or intellect.

when is the roots/legend record out?

two months ago?

i'm surprised janelle even made your top 50 tim, i thought you were lukewarm on it!

I was and am. But I've probably only heard about 70 albums this year so coming in around 39 (actually just glanced at my list again and it would probably more like 45) = lukewarm. There's parts of it I really like I guess.

Even hearing 70 albums this year seems ridiculously excessive to me. I suppose it's not for most critics. But then I use up a lot of listening time with non-album funky.

again this is EXACTLY THE PROBLEM! this is such a dumb way to think, like actually is-your-iq-that-low stupid, and yet it's RIFE in the critical landscape.

Well yeah I meant that it's a problem. Certainly quite often at least. Sometimes something breaking with convention is a good thing but - and I think this is what you're getting at lex - the notion of what a "break with convention" is gets ossified, and codified around notions of genre-transcendence or eclecticism for its own sake. We already thrashed out all these issues in the actual monelle thread though I think?

The reason I raised Jill Scott is that at the beginning of the 00s the entire of traditionalist organic R&B was such a big thing for so many critics, again usually framed in oppositionalist terms, like it was kneejerk brave for anyone not to be Destiny's Child. I hated that whole critical line at the time and as a result had a tendency to turn my heart against a lot of that stuff prematurely, something I've only begun to get over/past in the last few years or so.

But of course one of the pernicious and cunning (as in "law of unintended consequences") aspects of the rise of post-Dilla culture is that just being traditionalist organic R&B, even in an anti-mainstream sense, isn't enough to excite critics anymore. Monelle's success is in some ways simply a more outsidery equivalent to the kind of discursive/musical shifts that result in stuff like the Bilal album or the New Amerykahs. At that point it gets very difficult to tease out the positive developments from the negative. Except in the general sense of mourning how every critical enthusiasm has its attendant dark side of ignorance and indifference.

lex, I think you ridiculously exaggerate the role the whole sci-fi concept album bullshit plays in creating The ArchAndroid's appeal. For me the appeal is primarily musical. I'm not a critic though. Maybe critics really do love that concept stuff, but I'm not convinced. I think they probably just talk about it because (a) everyone else is talking about it and (b) it's easier than talking about how the music sounds and feels.

I've checked out some of the Jazmine Sullivan and I don't hear it as very close to what Janelle Monae is doing at all, so I don't see the point in harping on the comparison.

Playing Fuego's La Musica Del Futuro in the background and wondering if I should add it to my personal best albums list for the year. For something that doesn't quite make the cut, I've listened to it a lot; but it definitely sags severely at certain points.

Incidentally, when I was talking recently to someone about current music that I like and I mentioned Janelle Monae, he said something like: "Oh, is that the woman who's the new James Brown?" "Tightrope" is a great single, but I think it's too bad that is the sound and image she's presented over and over again on TV, since it's pretty misleading as to what the overall album sounds like. (I do think she overdoes the James Brown schtick in general.)

hey um isnt jazmine sullivan way way way closer to jill scott than destiny's child? why does this thread turn jazmine into the one who gives me an onerous eat-your-veggies style rhetorical vibe while janelle, whatever her faults, seems breezy & kinda fun?

this is i should note a purely rhetoric-based judgement -- i havent heard JS's album yet

I listened to the clips on Amazon and, yeah...Jazmine is Jill Scott in this equation. LEX HAS BECOME TEH OLDS

hey um isnt jazmine sullivan way way way closer to jill scott than destiny's child?

This is what i was saying?

since when was jill scott a negative comparison?! janelle could do with being a lot more like her, particularly w/r/t ability to convey emotion

and jazmine's most comparable to mary j blige, keyshia cole, faith evans, lauryn hill, obviously, and i'm sure she's very aware of that and proud of it, BUT i think jazmine has an odd playful streak to her arrangements and songwriting that sits at odds with the all-serious-raw-emotion-all-the-time of mary j et al - it reminds me of solange more than janelle though - and that makes her a pretty singular figure within her traditionalist lineage.

This is what i was saying?

― Tim F, Monday, November 29, 2010 6:49 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh i misunderstood then. i mean dont get me wrong, i like jill scott, & a lot more than i like janelle monae

but hey look, lex wants the theater kid to portray emotion -- reverse rockism yo (or just rockism straight up)

conveying emotion = rockism?!

'faster' is one of my favorite songs this year so dismissing janelle as being unable to convey 'emotion' is just like ... why isnt jazmine playing her own instruments?? ... type stupid to me

i wish you'd stop acting as though "popism" and "rockism" mean anything any more - idk why it's me who always gets accused of one or the other. i don't care, they're meaningless terms

janelle is obvi not trying to convey emotion in the matter of a traditional R&B singer. sometimes the vibe on her album gets a little too "Lets do the time warp" to me but it also works pretty often too

i've already written like 1500 words on why the janelle album mostly doesn't work, but suffice to say that it's not just trad r&b singers who need to convey emotion, or just the sense of a song, and that even theatre kids should be expected to do this, and indeed there are plenty who do

im glad youve determined this record definitively conveys no emotion.

good!

i actually expanded on that here http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=2667

Good that their are music critics around to prove I am not experiencing what I'm experiencing.

*there*

(Guilty typing at work typos.)

Maybe some listeners are just too emotionally dense to get certain types of emotional expressiveness?

'faster' is one of my favorite songs this year so dismissing janelle as being unable to convey 'emotion' is just like ... why isnt jazmine playing her own instruments?? ... type stupid to me

yeah "faster" is awes, I should have separated it out for my songs list in retrospect.

I still think this debate gets way too "this is like THIS" at times - one of the reasons I invoked badu above is that I know lex loves her and yet her last two records get rock crit praise on pretty similar terms to The Archandroid. Obv Erykah ain't a theatre kid but pretty much everything else holds true.

Lex would of course have no difficulty immediately drawing several distinctions between erykah and janelle - my point is not to conflate them but to say that it's in those sorts of distinctions (or indeed the distinctions between jazmine and jill) that we really start to talk about how these records work and what about their critics reception is right or wrong, rather than in more crusade-like battles for or against bold iconoclasts or keepers of R&B's eternal hollerin' flame.

janelle rox, jill scott sux, u r all gay

forgot to mention, in the above list, that liars sisterworld is really fucking great. their best since they were wrong so we drowned, imo.

Try as I might, I cannot cross the line between admiring and loving the Janelle Monae album. Although I do fucking adore "Tightrope".

Is there one for 2011?

There is. Search for "favorite albums 2011" and you'll find it.