2010 retrospective

so i'm going to try to do a real blog posting.

with all the 2010 nostalgia going on all over the web, i decided to make my own best of 2010 list.

ariel pink's haunted graffiti - before today

i've been loving ariel pink for a few years now, but before today really takes the cake in terms of its "what the fuck is this is awesome" factor. i could listen to AP's 80's tv jingles flow in and out of the tracks for hours. butthouse blondies? what? luvz it!

deer tick - the black dirt sessions

it took me a lot of listens to even start to like this album. when i first heard it i was incredibly disappointed. i really only started listening to deer tick in 2010, or maybe later on in 2009. i was and am really into war elephant, and i thought the black dirt sessions took an entirely different tone, which it does, that didn't suit my fancy at all. it took me maybe 4 or 5 listens to realize that this album is just as wonderful. i love john mccauley's snarled voice. listen to him croak the fuck out in this track at around 3:45. it's wonderful.

coyote clean up / fur - lackadaisical ep

i can't get enough of the 4 coyote clean up tracks on this thing. with all the dubstep and its various incarnations that have been emerging this year it's refreshing to hear something that really adheres to the idea of dub itself. i just downloaded the new coyote clean up album, downhill exxxpress, last week and haven't been too impressed by it so far, although there are a couple of jammers.

james blake - klavierwerke ep

as i write this, i am salivating over the full length lp that is taking obscenely long to download right now. i am grateful to hear dubstep without the whole wobble thing going on. it's been a while, at least for me. also, klavierwerke has just the right amount of weird/interesting to keep me totally engaged with every listen.

salem - king knight

i have gone through various stages of obsession with this album. i am so into the slowed down/pitchshifted hip hop vocals and world music samples that bleed through this album, not to mention the moments of beauty that shine through the dark and murky walls of sound on king knight. in fact, i like this album so much i'm putting up two tracks.

i wanted to put the track "killer" here, but i can't find it online because all the youtube links have been taken off. that's ok though - this music video is sick.

caribou - swim

i will never not like caribou, so maybe anything he does is golden to me. i have heard lots of opinions from different people about this album, but i think it's great. it's sort of a hybrid of andorra and the milk of human kindness in that it has the shimmering, magical qualities of andorra with some of the more beat-driven stylings of the milk... 

woods - at echo lake

it's not just the whole almost falsetto thing that is going on with the vocals, but is it just me or is woods reminiscent of a stripped down neil young? this album isn't really covering any new ground, but it's certainly a continuation of what they had going on before it - and that's totally fine with me.

abe vigoda - crush

what the fuck happened here? i am still in shock, i think. i used to think of abe vigoda as this totally psyched-out, tropicalia punk deal, but crush totally redefined them as a band. they've still got these bouncy riffs floating through the album's tracks, but now they've got some morrissey cred. also, doesn't this song remind you of xiu xiu?

julian lynch - mare

this dude is amazing. he embodies the type of music i would have liked to been writing myself a couple years ago. his sound is just so good. nuff said. check out this track.

deerhunter - halcyon digest

yes, the album is way more accessible than anything they've done before, but why the fuck is that a bad thing? i hate it when people complain about stuff like that. they're probably my all time favorite band, honestly. they make the kind of music that i am one day going to sit down in my cushy armchair with a glass of scotch to listen to whilst gazing wistfully into the distance reminiscing about my youth. deerhunter has perfected something here.

tame impala - innerspeaker

i am actually still so stoked about this album. thank you, australia, for doing the only worthwhile thing you have done in... wait, ever. thank you for bringing back rock and roll. innerspeaker is like discovering psychedelic drugs and the beatles' "she said, she said" simultaneously. for a good laugh, look at this list of australian music:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Australia

tame impala is not even on it. that's probably a good thing, though, it could damage their credibility.

not so much the album, but this song, and especially, this video:

beach house - teen dream

more drifting, floaty vibes from beach house, teen dream picks up right where devotion left off.

zola jesus - stridulum II

did you know this chick is only 19 or something? this kind of reminds me of lydia lunch. her voice has such a heavy presence; it is layered over these smooth pad sounds and minimal drums and it sounds like something i'd like to listen to on an ocean voyage.

un prophète

this french movie about a young arab dude surviving in prison. it was a bad year for film, but this was a pretty good flick.

that's all i'm putting up for film, actually. i read through this to jog my memory:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_in_film

but everything fucking sucks. seriously, what a shitty year for movies. youtube, however, had its share of hits.

and, on the eve of world war 3 (i think i'm joking), we had:

BP oil spill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill

WikiLeaks fiasco

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks

julian assange rapes swedes

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11047025

thailand, my crib, goes red with rage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Thai_political_protests

a guy killed a shark with his feet last week

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/17081/48/

paul pierce does this sick shit last week