This is a list of some great songs from 2010.

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Tame Impala - “Jeremy’s Storm”, Innerspeaker

Though the album sounds like a Beatley Zaireeka, ”Jeremy’s Storm” may ironically sound the least like that selling point at times. Nonetheless, some of Innerspeaker’s best moments take place here, and it is surely one of the best groove-oriented rock n’ roll songs of the year.

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Zach Hill - “The Primitives Talk” and “Burner In The Video”, Face Tat

I couldn’t choose just one song from Face Tat, though because of it’s inconsistency I obviously couldn’t choose the whole album. Phrases like “scatter shot” and “noise collage” really don’t describe this album from the avant-garde drummer; it’s way crazier than that. So if you’re timid when it comes to strange or experimental hard-edged music, I suggest you listen to these two songs; they’ll better explain why I can’t get even the worst parts of this album out of my head.

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Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - “Woke Up Near Chelsea”, The Brutalist Bricks

I can’t help myself when it comes to the most fatalistic song on an otherwise upbeat Ted Leo album. Combine that with a driving piano riff and the epic drum roll during the chorus, and you have one of my favorite songs of the past 10 years, forget 2010.

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LCD Soundsystem - “Pow Pow”, London Sessions

SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE ALBUM VERSION.

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Frankie Rose and The Outs - “Candy”, Self-titled

There isn’t a shitload to say about this band other than that they made a really good song with “Candy”. I wasn’t able to get on board with much of the rest of their self-titled album (at least initially), but this song was a perfect holiday single.

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Colour Revolt - “Our Names”, The Cradle

This Mississippi band’s pseudo-comeback album is too anomalous for me to include as a whole (though after seeing them live, trust me, I’d like too). Colour Revolt spends far too much time jumping back and forth between derivative radio-play fare and genuine brilliance. If you’ve ever heard the band Longwave, then you know what I’m talking about. Nevertheless, there are a few times on this album, this song included, when the band stops caring about the fact that they’re on a country label and really lets things go.

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Yeasayer - “Madder Red”, Oddblood

Though I generally didn’t have great words for Yeasayer’s newest album as a whole, Odd Blood’s better songs are heads above most everything I’ve heard in years. “Madder Red” is a song that I simply can’t skip over if it comes on. From the silky guitar introduction to the epic vocal background, I’m stuck listening to it. It’s that engaging.

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Deftones - “Rocket Skates”, Diamond Eyes

Many of the songs mentioned here have made my list in spite of the albums from which they come. This song may be the most extreme example. I suspect “Rocket Skates” was carried over from the Deftones’ shelved album Eros, which has been described as their “most unorthodox piece of work”. “Rocket Skates” is exactly that: extremely heavy yet mid-tempo; not immediately catchy, but wildly addictive. This is the diametric opposite of the rest of its album, Diamond Eyes, which is so spoon-fed to the audience that it’s nearly unlistenable.

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Delta Spirit - “White Table”, History From Below

“Trashcan” introduced Delta Spirit as a band with a knack for rhythm moreso than a knack for southern rock. On “White Table”, they slow things down, and turn that pounding rhythm up several notches. The result is an undeniably great blues-informed epic.

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Tanlines - “Real Life”, Settings EP

Tanlines has yet to release a proper album, and it’s unclear whether they even plan to. Instead, they’ve treated listeners to a line of singles and EPs over the past year, the universally accepted highlight of which is “Real Life”. Though less Caribbean and island-influenced than many of their other tracks, Tanlines successfully panders to the hipster-electropop crowd with one of the year’s best choruses.

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Daughters - “The Dead Singer”, Daughters

I know I’m going to soon regret not including this whole album on my “best of” list, but it came to me so late in the year that I hadn’t had time to digest the entire thing. As a band, Daughters followed a similar paradigm of other Hydrahead Records bands: start hardcore; reel them in with your experimental side; then go soft; then just break up. For maybe that reason alone, “The Dead Singer” is one of the best songs of the year. As a slow, brooding, abstractly-rhythmic apocalypse track, it represents an appropriate goal that the band set when they stopped making one-minute scream-songs and moved towards genuine songwriting.

Quick: I’m not going to rank my list. Ranking is stupid because it’s objective, whereas music is subjective. If you want to take an honest look at it, most musicians began making music in the first place because they didn’t want to play competitive sports. So a performance review at the end of every year doesn’t make any sense. If that sounds pretentious, that’s because it is. 

Simply put, this is a list of some great albums from 2010.

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The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Who Killed Sgt Pepper?

These guys haven’t made a genuinely good album since Strung Out In Heaven; that was twelve years ago. But I guess over the course of ten subsequent releases, they were bound to put out something good. I wouldn’t have guessed it’d be this good though. This album’s brilliance is undeniable, while at the same time understated. They haven’t reinvented the wheel: the shoe gaze guitars and muddy production are still there; but they picked up a couple of Icelandians in the offseason and added electronic drum loops, most of which are incredibly addicting.

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Mike Doughty - “Pleasure On Credit”, Sad Man Happy Man, 2009

Completely missed this October 2009 release by one of my favorite singers, Mike Doughty of Soul Coughing. Admittedly, he hasn’t been comparable these days to his old band. Nevertheless, he sort of raps on this song, and that’s cool.

Every few months I inadvertently rediscover and revisit music that I’ve already discovered and revisited countless times in the past. I’ll go through all of a band’s albums, read every single solitary review or tidbit about them, and then begin calling people and raving about this band that they “must hear”. This can go on for as little as a week, or, in extreme cases, a year or two.[1] 

The cyclical nature of music obsession is probably not new to anyone. However, with respect to this album, Magnified, it was apparently important long before I had ever even discovered it the first time. 

In the years between 2002 and 2004, my obsessive web-scouring for information about whatever band I was rediscovering at the time often led me to an unmemorable website with a blog post by some unmemorable music guy, which simply declared, “Failure is better than Nirvana”. I must have come across this same post 3 or 4 times before I finally decided to give the band a listen. 

The legitimacy of the argument that Nirvana’s creative output pales in comparison to little-known Failure’s is pretty difficult to make, especially in the face of the disparate number of millions of records sold between the two bands. It’s like comparing apples and oranges that happen to taste pretty similar[2]: the vast majority of people will still prefer apples. 

However, upon listening to Failure, it seems like (to me, at least) a believable, even reasonable, argument to make. It wasn’t so much like apples and oranges anymore; now it was more like, “If only the Rockets and Bulls had been able to face each other in the Finals, then we’d know who the true ruler of 90s basketball was.”[3] 

To the insignificant number of people who still consider Failure relevant or cool, the band was known not only for it’s we-took-what-Nirvana-did-and-made-it-tighter style, but also for lead singer Ken Andrews’ prowess as a producer and sound engineer.

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Dear band, I know you’ve spent most of 2010 looking for that “big break”, but I think I’ve finally found it. This showed up in my inbox this morning:

From: S——e L—-y <l—————-r@y—-o.com>
Date: December 14, 2010 6:00:52 PM CST
To: (Blank)
Subject: [filmind-3] Feature film SO UNDERCOVER seeking college age background artists (18 to 25 or so) for various dates in January.

Feature film SO UNDERCOVER seeking college age background artists (18 to 25 or so) for various dates in January.

Register for free at: 
http://gloriosocasting.com/BLKGlorioso/SOUNDERCOVER.html 

Filming Uptown New Orleans and other sites around the city and nearby. 

Seeking both female and especially MALE, all races. 

— 

J-y D———e
K—e W——n
Glorioso Casting, LLC

So I did a little research about this film, “So Undercover”. It’s an action-comedy starring Miley Cirus and Skinny(er) Kelly Osborne.

The producers of the movie need a band to play in the background during a scene, and they apparently think the New Orleans is still living in the 12 Stones/corporate-handouts culture of the 90s.

I talked to one of the dudes from Big History once about this, and he made it seem like his band had the role locked in. I guess some smoke got blown up some asses.

Anyway, just got this e-mail, so I thought I’d pass it along. I mean, at this point you guys could probably drop out of school and quit working. You wanted your big break? THIS IS IT. Time to be stars and sell gold records.

But seriously, if you guys are interested, give it a thought. That Big History dude said it was, and I quote, a “shit load of money”.

Disappears - Superstition

Disappears, already a shoe-in for my 2010 year-end list, is set with an album for 2011, Guider. The first track released, “Superstition”, is short, sweet, and astoundingly identical to the sound and feel of their debut Lux. If you’re down with why that album was so cool, then another just like it can only mean good things.

I was watching “Empire Records” one day when it occurred to me that the movie is just one long obscure popculture reference. I suppose when I was young I just thought that the posters in the background were for made up bands, or something like that. It’s possible though that I knew it was all real, but obscure=imaginary to a ten-year old.

So I started looking in the background at posters to see if I recognized anything. I didn’t recognize a whole lot. But I caught this pretty obvious one staring me in the face midway through the movie:

Ethan Embry wearing a T-shirt that says “Chainsaw Kittens”. It sounded vaguely familiar, so I Wikipedia’d it:

“The Chainsaw Kittens were a part of the American alternative rock scene…For various reasons, primary among them a pronounced lack of major label support, the Kittens saw little commercial success. However, they have since gained recognition in such sources as Allmusic and the Trouser Press as one of the best groups of their era.”

Fair enough. I was able to track down a couple of their albums. I got Flipped Out In Singapore:

I got Pop Heiress:

I got High In High School:

Straight forward alterna-rock drums, jangly guitars, sort of weird singer. It all works; not just as an artifact of 90s independent rock, but also for it’s own purposes as a kick ass band.

Check out this shit!

Pop Heiress Dies - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8kwPdsZ1Cg

Connie, I’ve Found The Door - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsdBXHp5WrU

High In High School - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzGX3EBg954

Though their penmanship far outweighs their musical creativity at this point, …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead have a new song, so that’s good. Stream it at Spin.com, though I wouldn’t bother reading the article.

http://www.spin.com/articles/exclusive-new-trail-dead-song

This article makes me feel like a loser for knowing it exists.

I always thought that Of Montreal made music for broads, but I never really thought Of Montreal knew that they made music for broads.

The worst part of it, even worse than writing an article about Pitchfork writing an article about Of Montreal, even worse than The Of Montreal Guy starting a words war with group-think behemoth Pitchfork Media, and even worse than actually showing the guy’s dong in the article, is the fact that I read all the way to the bottom. How could I not see this coming?

http://www.artrocker.com/node/30176

Preface 1: As audiences, it’s always about who we give the credit to. We understand that most things in life, especially modern western art, are collaborative processes. Nevertheless, we generally need a “brains” or a leader, to whom we give the praise reverence. I don’t know whether this is an American thing, or a more expansive human phenomenon.

Preface 2: We don’t treat out musicians like we treat our filmmakers. In film, the director is the brains, or spokesperson. When a movie is good, it’s the director’s movie. The screenwriter, though he often had the great idea in the first place, is just the writer. The producer, though it’s often his creative vision, is just the moneyman. The actors, though they actually are the screen representation of the movie (and admittedly get a certain degree of credit themselves in the acting world), are just the director’s puppets. For all intents and purposes, it is always the director’s movie.

We don’t view music in this way, at least not anymore. In 2010, the performer is also the writer – we call him the musician. The record company, which would be the “moneyman”, isn’t really a factor anymore, for reasons irrelevant to this analogy. Most importantly though, a producer/engineer is given nowhere near the same degree of credit for a finished recording as a director is given for a finished film. Simply put, no album is a producer’s album.*

This is pretty unfortunate, considering that the success of almost every indie band since the year 2000 has rested on the texture, authenticity, and overall feel of their sound recordings. However, it is this unsophisticated observer’s honest opinion that much of that “feel” can be credited to Dave Fridmann.

If that name sounds familiar, it’s because you read it on the back of your Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots CD jewel case back in 2002. Fridmann co-produced that album with the Flaming Lips, as he has every one of their albums since Priest Driven Ambulance (with the exception of Satellite Heart).

Fridmann began, believe it or not, as the bassist for the seminal theatric-nineties band Mercury Rev. He was involved in the recording process of their music from day one, but came to forefront of the engineering chair with their best-known album, Deserter’s Songs.

That album may serve as the prototype for what many modern indie bands seek to achieve when they enter the recording studio: crystalline, symphonic instrumentation, high-pitched, though still melodic, vocals, and drums that are indistinguishable between live and preprogrammed. I suppose one could argue that the modern indie sound began with this album. However, I think it may have come to a T with an album called the Soft Bulletin, which the Flaming Lips put out in 1999.

Bulletin had some of the same defining characteristics as Deserter’s Songs. There is uncharacteristic orchestral atmosphere to the entire album, with lots of synthesized strings; Wayne Coyne’s signature Neil Young-esque vocals are present, but now with layer upon layer of choral backup vocals; and there is a very strange mesh between this sleek orchestral instrumentation and a grittier, grimier percussion section.

A small list of other albums Fridmann has produced or worked on: Weezer – Pinkerton, Mogwai – Rock Action, Sparklehorse - Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain, Elf Power – A Dream In Sound, Longwave – The Strangest Things, Low – Drums and Guns, Thursday – Common Existence, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Some Loud Thunder, Tapes N’ Tapes – Walk It Off, MGMT – Oracular Spectacular, OK Go – Of The Blue Colour of The Sky, and Tame Impala – Innerspeaker.

While the list of bands Fridmann has worked with is impressive, what’s possibly more impressive to me is the list of bands that currently emulate the type of sound he pioneered. The pseudo-electronic/stereo-grit sound that he pioneered on the game-changing Soft Bulletin has now become the industry standard of electronic indie rock.

A short list of bands that arguably utilize Fridmann’ sound: Vampire Weekend, Bibio, Ratatat, the Secret Machines, and everything the DFA has ever produced, which includes the Rapture, LCD Soundsystem, and Holy Ghost. Honestly, the list is endless.

You may take issue with that. Fine; but don’t misunderstand me. Nothing I’m saying is meant to detract from the bands that emulate the sound that Fridmann should be credited with because, as I mentioned, we view music differently than film. None of the albums Fridmann has produced are his albums**, and he isn’t credited with creating a genre of music, just a type of sound. The Soft Bulletin is a Flaming Lips album. That sound though? That’s all Fridmann.

*Sole Exception: Captain Beefheart – Trout Mask Replica is really Frank Zappa’s album.

**The obvious exception being Mercury Rev, of which he is a member.