Hot Ham Water: 2010

Sometimes when I feel overwhelmed, like the pressures of modern life are too much, I like to think back to a simpler time, a better time when people were friendlier, the streets were safer, and the world moved at a slower pace. A sepia-toned time called 2010. And even though 2010 may seem a lifetime away now, we can still feel like we're stepping into the past through the magical music of this bygone era. Now let's get nostalgic!

20. Off With Their Heads - In Desolation

Listening to In Desolation is like being Off With Their Heads' therapist, except they shout their problems at you, and you have a strange urge to shout them back and then run around in a circle pushing people. Off With Their Heads are as pissed off as the next punk band, but they direct their anger back at themselves, writing songs that are as self-loathing and defeated as they are energetic and catchy. This is probably the only band that could turn "I'm not alive, I'm just as good as dead/I can't find a reason why I should even get out of bed" into a defiant mosh pit sing along. Let's hope these guys never feel better.

19. Sundowner - We Chase the Waves

When I was 18 The Lawrence Arms weren't just my favorite band, they were the best band I could imagine. Drunk, sad, funny punk rock filled with references to The Simpsons and literature? Hell yes, I'll have some of that. But The Lawrence Arms haven't released a full album since 2006's Oh! Calcutta!, so for now we'll have to settle for periodic releases from singer Chris McCaughan's acoustic side project. And when I say "settle for," I mean "enjoy the hell out of." It may lack the raw energy of the full band's releases, but We Chase the Waves still sounds like catching up with an old friend and spending ten songs hearing what they've been up to. And then hearing them sing an old baseball ditty from 1910.

18. The Clientele - Minotaur

When you open up a new Clientele record, you know what you're getting. (If you're one of the seventeen people who know who The Clientele are.) The band specializes in beautiful, hazy pop music about suburbs, sunsets, and other pleasant, "stop and smell the roses" trivialities, some of which don't start with the letter s. Minotaur doesn't fix what's not broken, and fills the time between full-length albums with six new, great pop songs. There's also a bleak piano instrumental and a creepy urban legend set to dissonant eerie drones and ambient echoes and footsteps, but you'll probably only listen to those once. The rest of the EP is the world's best pop band sounding as world's best-iest as ever.

17. Band of Horses - Infinite Arms

Sometimes an album cover tells you all you need to know about what's inside. Infinite Arms sounds like a night sky full of stars, which it turns out sounds like a perfect mix of indie pop and Neil Young-inspired folk rock, with some Brian Wilson-esque harmonies floating gracefully in and out of the mix. This isn't an immediate album, but if you live with the slower tempos and soft focus melodies for a while, the record becomes more beautiful and deep with every listen.

16. Tame Impala - Innerspeaker

Not that I know from personal experience, but it's hard to find LSD these days. The kids seem to have moved on to trendier drugs, like prescription painkillers and huffing dust cleaner. But apparently it's still the summer of love in New Zealand, because Kiwi band Tame Impala came out of nowhere this year with a debut album that I can only describe as "far out, man." Innerspeaker is a swirling kaleidoscope of trippy guitar and spaced-out vocals that sounds straight out of 1968. It's the perfect soundtrack for a trip, whether you're high on acid or nostalgia. (Or both!)

15. Ted Leo and

the Pharmacists - The Brutalist Bricks

The world needs Ted Leo. If one guy (and the guys in his band) could save mainstream rock music from the coma it's been in for the last fifteen years or so, Ted Leo would be the one to do it. His upbeat blend of punk energy, infectious pop hooks, and thoughtful, relevant lyrics are everything that's been missing from rock radio for seemingly forever. And while The Brutalist Bricks isn't his strongest album, it's still an addictive collection of songs that all sound like #1 smash hits in some alternate universe where popular taste corresponds with talent.

14. Crime in Stereo - I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone

Hardcore isn't a genre that encourages experimentation. Stick with your three chords, galloping tempos and shouted lyrics, and you can stagnate in a hardcore band forever. So when a band like Crime in Stereo comes along to challenge perceptions of what hardcore can be, a lot of people can get pissed off. But fuck those people, because Crime in Stereo has pushed their sound so far from the hardcore blueprint that they make the genre sound fresher and more exciting than it has in years. I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone sounds like hardcore being broadcast from the moon and into the vacuum of space; cold and expansive, somehow bursting with hardcore anger at the same time it's sounding lonely and isolated. But the saddest thing is that the band broke up a few months after the album came out, meaning that their most intriguing development will also be their last.

13. Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid

There's always been a formula for success in pop music, and it rarely changes: write a catchy, disposable song (or have one written for you), wear revealing clothes and milk that success for all its worth. Janelle Monae shows a different path. You can write a genre-defying epic with suites and overtures, release it in two parts, and focus the whole thing around a vision of the future inhabited by robots. The ArchAndroid isn't like any pop record you've ever heard before, using its 18 tracks to explore dance, jazz, punk, psychadelic, English folk, and anything else that comes to Ms. Monae's mind, which might actually be a computer processor. But even if she is a robot, she's a very well-programed robot, able to go from old-school jazz crooning to punk screaming and back without breaking a sweat. (Or whatever robots do when they get too hot.) "Cold War" and "Tightrope" are possibly the two best songs of 2010, and hearing them back-to-back on the album is enough to convince you that the future is already here, and it belongs to Janelle Monae. Now let's just hope she doesn't want to kill all humans.

12. The Menzingers - Chamberlain Waits

My musical tastes have expanded a lot in the last few years, but much as a parent always loves their firstborn the most, punk rock will always be my favorite genre. Which is unfortunate, because there's sure not a lot of great punk rock coming out these days. 2006 had at least a dozen amazing, all-time classic punk records. 2010 had three or four. Of these, The Menzingers gave us the album that sounds most like it can stand the test of time. Chamberlain Waits never drops the ball, and each of its' dozen vaguely folkish punk songs is ready-made for basement sing alongs. It's nothing groundbreaking, but sometimes good old-fashioned punk rock just sounds right. Punk's not dead, but it's probably on life-support right now. The Menzingers might be the band to save it.

11. Beach House - Teen Dream

Tell people that one of your favorite albums of 2010 was Teen Dream and they'll probably assume you're talking about Katy Perry. But this Dream actually feels like one - a gauzy haze of droning keyboards offset by the guitar that spirals around them and the warm, inviting vocals. Unlike most dream-pop, the album doesn't just sound like one long, pleasant song. Each song here has its own ideas, its own sense of purpose, from the bright pop of "Norway" to the gospel-tinged "Used to Be," and yet they come together to form a coherent whole. This is music to immerse yourself in, and let it ebb and flow around you. And best of all, this is a Teen Dream that you didn't hear about five thousand times last summer.

10. Vampire Weekend - Contra

Vampire Weekend's first album was a bright and happy collection of pop songs, so naturally it made a lot of people very angry. Something about authenticity, I don't remember. For the follow-up, they don't play it safe or cater to their critics by changing things up too much. Instead they broaden their sound and incorporate elements of dub, alt-rock, and even tasteful autotune to their shiny Afro-pop. "White Sky" wears its Paul Simon influence proudly and is anchored by an outstanding, helium-voiced wordless chorus. "Cousins" explodes with a stop-and-go punk energy, while "I Think UR a Contra" brings a stately, dream pop sound to the mix. Referencing Joe Strummer on the six minute dub-flavored track "Diplomat's Son" is no coincidence. They'll attempt their "London Calling" sooner or later.

9. The Walkmen - Lisbon

My favorite albums are the ones that create their own worlds, landscapes of sound that you can explore and get lost in over and over again. The Walkmen's latest does that as well as any album I've ever heard, building up a world of sparse instrumentation that nonetheless sounds open and vibrant. The songs fit together perfectly, but the band wrings a lot of variety out of a simple base sound. "Angela Surf City" is an driving and rhythmic rock and roll explosion. "While I Shovel the Snow" sounds as still and peaceful as a freshly-fallen blanket of white. Lisbon sounds like nothing else - it's a bright, misty morning in a strange town, a half-remembered dream of somewhere you've never been. Which is all a pretentious way of saying that this album makes me feel things, maan. I'll bet it'll do the same for you.

8. Girls - Broken Dreams Club

Girls' debut album was my pick for the best of 2009 (although now I wonder if it should have been P.O.S. instead...), and in my write-up last year I mentioned how Girls' singer Chris Owens spent his youth in the Children of God cult with his mother, basically separated from the outside world. The result of growing up in a cultural vacuum is that certain musical cliches never had a chance to turn into cliches. It's an easy explanation for why Girls' music is full of things you just don't hear much anymore, like optimistic affirmations that "you can rock and roll, out of control" and the word "darling." On Girls' follow-up EP, the old pop music cliches get a chance to shine again, as the band pulls off six brilliant new songs, all without a trace of irony or pretension. Maybe they're right about that whole rock and roll thing after all.

7. Surfer Blood - Astro Coast

Imagine you're walking down a hallway, carrying with you a big bowl of The Beach Boys. Coming toward you from the opposite direction is a guy carrying a bowl full of R.E.M. and Big Star. You collide. Music goes everywhere. "You got your jangle pop in my surf rock!" you exclaim. "You got your surf rock in my jangle pop!" he shouts. Then you try it, and realize that it's catchy, addictive, and sounds great blasting out of a car stereo. "Two great tastes that taste great together," you proclaim, before going your separate ways and thanking god this incident turned out better than the Nickelback/Gordon Lightfoot disaster from last week.

6. Dessa - A Badly Broken Code

You wouldn't know it from following popular taste, but hip-hop is a hugely varied genre, capable of creating as many sounds and feelings as any other. Dessa's brilliant debut album sounds a world removed from the likes of Lil Wayne, with its spoken word poetry influence and non-autotuned singing interludes, but it's a perfect example of how hip-hop can give voice to a wide variety of people and ideas. Dessa's lyrics focus on family relationships, and the substitutes we look for if those break down. It's heavy, emotional stuff, buoyed by Dessa's unimpeachable skills as both a rapper and a jazzy crooner. On the infectious "Bullpen," she asks "In a room with thugs and rap veterans/Why am I the only one who's acting like a gentleman?" and it's enough to make you wish there were about a dozen more of her out there.

5. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

A Canadian indie band writes a concept album about the American suburbs. Doesn't that sound terrible? Can't you already hear the pretension and dismissal being belted out between the handclaps and string sections? Well, the Arcade Fire are better than that, and The Suburbs isn't the flat condemnation of suburbia that some bands would have given us. Instead, it explores the tension between comfort and boredom that always exists in rows of identical houses. The album sounds hopeful but cautious at the same time, celebrating the feeling of youth and security while looking towards an outside world both inviting and overwhelming.

4. Los Campesinos! - Romance is Boring

Romance is Boring is interested in more than having a "great album, ugly cover art" contest with Crime in Stereo. The record is so dense with weird lyrical asides and unexpected turns of phrase that it can it can require a few listens to take it all in. Even then, your enjoyment of the album will depend on whether you find lyrics like "I think we need more post-coital and less post-rock/Feels like the build up takes forever but you never get me off" are delightfully snarky or obnoxiously snarky. Los Campesinos! (who are British and thus could play a concert with Yo La Tengo and confuse some Spanish music fans, but I digress) handle everything from relationships to religion to death with the same sarcastic smirk that almost obscures the fact that these songs are surprisingly thoughtful, introspective and most of all, addictive.

3. The National - High Violet

The National write huge songs about small subjects. Sweeping songs with orchestral scores feature lyrics about student loan debt and social anxiety. Singer Matt Berninger's rich baritone makes the lyrics haunting and universal, and the music is overcast and gloomy without being oppressive. It's an album with its own view of the world as a place where regret too often overwhelms hope, but never entirely. High Violet is the definition of a grower - new details emerge on every repeat listen and the album goes from a collection of songs to a cohesive piece of art. It's an album to get lost in after a day that didn't quite go right. And again the next morning, because it's that damn good.

2. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Sometimes you have to separate an artist's personal life from their music. Like how millions of people still love Michael Jackson's music, despite that time his hair caught on fire. Kanye West doesn't allow that kind of art/artist disconnect, because listening to his music is like being allowed inside of his head. And it's a fucked up place. MBDTF explores a lot of topics, like fame, sex, drugs and isolation, but even on songs with around a dozen guest spots, it never wanders far from Kanye's egocentric, yet paradoxically self-loathing monologue. Which would all be boring as hell if the music wasn't amazing, but it is. This is hip-hop's Sgt. Pepper: a sprawling work of art that will change the game forever. The track list reads like a career best highlight reel; the propulsive chant of "Power," Nikki Minaj's frothing showstopper of a verse on "Monster," Kanye and indie folkster Bon Iver teaming up to create the world's most alien dance party on "Lost in the World." And then there's "All of the Lights," which brings eleven (fucking eleven!) guest stars as diverse as Fergie and Elton John to create this decade's "We Are the World," except this time the charity is Kanye's insatiable ego. If he keeps making music this groundbreaking, we'll keep forgiving him.

1. Titus Andronicus - The Monitor

Before the Civil War, when Americans talked about themselves, they said "The United States are..." After the Civil War, that changed to "The United States is..." The war was a horrifically destructive, bloody affair that ruined and ended countless lives. But at the end of it, America had finally become itself, so to speak. What does this have to do with a punk band named after a Shakespeare play? The Monitor focuses on growing up in New Jersey, hating everyone around you, drinking to excess, and being entirely directionless. It also fills out its sound with quotations from people like Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Using the civil war as a lens, Titus Andronicus takes an honest look at young adulthood, with all of its confusion, joy and apprehension. And they hope that, like America, when this great conflict is over, we'll have become ourselves.

2010 kicked ass. Actually, that's a lie. 2010 was a pretty fucking terrible year and I'm glad it's almost over. But musically, 2010 kicked more ass than any other year since I've been paying attention to music. My top twenty albums this year could have been a top fifty and I still would have had a hard time narrowing it down. This year's "Best of" mix could have been a box set. So before we get to the big album list, I wanted to give credit to ten amazing songs from albums that didn't quite make the cut. So here are the honorable mentions that, in any other year, would have been near the top of the list. The album list should be coming in a few days, if I'm not too lazy.

Belle & Sebastian - "I Didn't See It Coming"

"I Didn't See It Coming" is a perfect slow-build, starting out quietly and gently before building to an exuberant and impossibly catchy pop song. Starting off as a quiet and sweet love song, this instantly addictive opening track builds until it sounds bright and enormous. The title is apt, because it's not an easy trick to see coming.

Broken Social Scene - "Texico Bitches"

"Texico Bitches" could have been a big hit. It hits all the right notes that usually guarantee that a song will start turning up in movie trailers and Apple commercials. It's upbeat, relentlessly catchy, and comes surprisingly close to sounding like Vampire Weekend. But Broken Social Scene never goes for the easy route, and the lyrics' scathing indictment of the oil industry, and the fact that they say "bitches" about a dozen times, probably sunk the song's chances of being a crossover hit. And it's all the better for it.

Cee-Lo Green - "Fuck You!"

If you haven't heard this song, I'd say you've been hiding in a basement, but I spent most of 2010 hiding in one basement or another, and even I couldn't escape it. But why would you want to? Writing a pop song called "Fuck You" was a good enough gimmick that the song would have made an impression no matter what, but "Fuck You" is such a great song that you forget about the joke as soon as that Motown piano kicks in. It's one of the most bitter songs you could write, but Cee-Lo makes it sound like 2010's most fun party.

Fake Problems - "Songs for Teenagers"

Fake Problems have come a long way from their Against Me!-esque folk-punk origins. "Songs for Teenagers" retains the youthful energy of their earlier work, but with an unmistakable melancholy and something approaching maturity. It may be called "Songs for Teenagers," but the song is what it feels like to stare into the expanse of adulthood and wonder how the hell you're going to pull it off.

The Gaslight Anthem - "The Diamond Church Street Choir"

MTV and their gang of orange-skinned monsters pretty much ruined New Jersey's already shaky reputation this year. But The Gaslight Anthem struggled to redeem the Garden State with songs like this bluesy tune about heartbreak and finding comfort in music. It's great to hear the band stretching when it would have been easy to give us "The '59 Sound" part two. When Brian Fallon's voice starts reaching for those high notes, it's the sound of a band exploring the limits of their classic sound.

Jimmy Eat World - "Movielike"

For the last ten years or so, Jimmy Eat World has been a band split in two directions. There's the Jimmy Eat World that will forever be chasing "The Middle," with increasingly flat-feeling, radio-ready alternative songs like this year's "My Best Theory." And then there's the Jimmy Eat World that I love, the one that writes heartfelt and beautiful pop-rock songs that are able to sound simultaneously intimate and enormous. When "Movielife" explodes into its harmonic chorus, it's suddenly clear that these are still the same guys who gave us Clarity.

Joanna Newsom - "Good Intentions Paving Company"

Joanna Newsom isn't for everyone. Her voice, squeaky and sometimes shrill, can bring to mind a lost Appalachian folk singer, Lisa Simpson, or a flock of seagulls (not the band). But like other tough singers to crack, like Tom Waits or Bob Dylan, once it clicks, it's magical. "Good Intentions Paving Company" is the closest she's come to writing an accessible pop song, with its driving bass and steady beat matching its lyrics to sound like a plodding march that may not lead anywhere. Her voice sounds fuller than ever, and the melody sounds like something that's been around for decades. If the general public is ever going to embrace this stuff, here's the place to start.

The New Pornographers - "Your Hands (Together)"

It's perfect that this music video is choreographed with karate and crazy ninja moves. It's rare for a song to be this fun and dance-able while maintaining a feeling of aggression just behind its catchy hooks. It's like hearing a great pop song just barely keeping a fiery punk anthem under wraps.

The Roots - "How I Got Over (Ft. Dice Raw)"

It's a shame that hip-hop in 2010 mostly means auto-tuned party anthems designed to be played endlessly for a few months and then discarded for the next one. "How I Got Over" is a fuck-you to the ubiquity of disposable pop-rap, a soulful and moving dedication to the struggles and triumphs of the poor. But it's not all gloom and despair. The hook is as infectious and catchy as anything that hit big on the top 40 this year.

Wavves - "Post Acid"

Pop-punk has always been the music of summer. Classic Green Day songs just don't have the same punch in the depths of winter as they do on a warm summer day. "Post Acid" sounds like a great pop-punk song that maybe spent a little too much time in the sun. It's a blistered, sunburned sing-along that sounds like it was made for blasting out the car windows on the first day when it's too hot to leave them rolled up.

Hot Ham Water

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Best Music of 2010 (Part Two) (Finally)

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Best Music of 2010 (Part One)

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Christmas Wish List!

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

The Blog Challenge!

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