Top Albums of 2010 - #14-10

This week, the BZNZmen will be bringing you their list of the best albums of 2010.

#14

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today

JESSE: I've already said a little bit about how good Round and Round is. The rest of the album shows just how good Ariel Pink is at the craft of pop music. He's cleaned up the sound, added some professional musicans, and the result is so impressive. A lot was masked under that cassette tape fuzz, which isn't completely gone. While before the intensity of the lo-fi-ness definitely contributed to the overall feeling of the music, it was really hard to get past sometimes. Fright Night, for example, is clearly not a hi-fi track that require the most expensive headphones to pick up those key stereo effects, and it's still lo-fi overall. However, everything is audible, nothing is hidden, and it just works. It's also nice to hear someone working with the now-mocked mainstream 80s vibe so seriously. We've all heard plenty of tributes to 50s doo-wop, 60s psych-pop, 70s garage rock, but this is the most successful modernization of an era that we don't pay much attention to these days. And don't get me wrong, despite the obvious 80s vibe, it's still very, very Ariel Pink. It's pulled off so well though, that sometimes it's hard to tell whether he is making a tribute to or mocking the 80s. From interviews it's clear though, that the music is made with the intent to be liked, and not as some snobby hipster joke. I Can't Hear My Eyes has a familiar feeling groove, backup singers, and keyboard, but the falsetto, the buildup, the lyrics, are all just part of Ariel's music's distinct sound. Menopause Man, which is like the weird, sexualized, adult version of the old Counting Crow's song I Wish I Was A Girl (surprisingly enough, there is mention of Counting Crows in today's comments. Wasn't expecting so many references to them here.) The weirdness of the theme of the song is very much part of Ariel's artistic repertoire, but presented in a way that's easy to bob your head to, and like Round and Round the man just has a knack for choruses. So it's a mixture of songs that are more artsy and weird or poppy and straightforward, but regardless, it's just catchy from front to back. Ariel ushered a lot of artists into the bedroom pop 4-track jams ('06 HG&TN not to be excluded), but he's taken a big leap away from those lo-fi roots.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Menopause Man



Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Fright Night

#13

Simian Mobile Disco - Delicacies

#12

Sleigh Bells - Treats

RAJ: Funny that the same talent-scout instincts that made M.I.A. a star may have also proved to be her downfall. Because when you get down to it, isn't Maya (hell if I'm typing out that idiotic punctuation title), with its attempt to create dance beats out of grinding industrial noise, just an utterly failed attempt to do what Sleigh Bells did so effortlessly? It can't be a coincidence that M.I.A. signed the group to her label right around the time she started recording her own album (or that one of her best tracks samples Sleigh Bells). The point of all this is to show just how difficult it is to do what Sleigh Bells did - create an album with dance beats hot enough to move stadiums out of blisteringly abrasive sounds. It's pure pop, but it feels as fresh and downright revolutionary as any other comparable album this year thanks to the weird components it's made of. And it'll get you dancing, or at least stomping, I guess - "A/B Machines" and "Infinity Guitars" both thrash to half-punk, half hip-hop beats. The thing that gives me the most hope for Sleigh Bells' longevity, though, is "Rill Rill", which shows that guitarist Derek Miller and vocalist Allison Krauss are just as good as creating summer-breeze-light pop songs as they are at creating face-melting dance crunch. Not that I want any less of the latter, of course.

Sleigh Bells - "A/B Machines"



Sleigh Bells - "Rill Rill"



#11

Titus Andronicus - The Monitor

RAJ: Titus Andronicus caught plenty of flak after their debut album for being pretentious - theirs was a punk album, after all, with track titles that nodded to Bruegel and Camus made by a band that, as a reminder, is called Titus goddamned Andronicus. Consider The Monitor, then, to be a mocking middle finger raised high to said detractors. This is a concept album that uses the Civil War as a metaphor for lead singer Patrick Stickles’ conflicted relationship with his suburban Jersey hometown, which features indie rock icons reading quotations from Civil War-era figures as varied as Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman and concludes with a 14-minute song that peaks with a bagpipe solo. So, yes, the pretension and ambition ratings are through the roof here, but gloriously and improbably, it all somehow works – this is the best rock album of the year.

Not to mention the best rock album about the suburbs this year. It’s fascinating to see how much this album has in common with Arcade Fire’s latest thematically and how differently it manages to arrive there (the two bands are also more than a little similar live, both in the ferocious quality of their sets and in the sheer number of people on stage at any time). Both albums are centered on young rebels who, after achieving their long-desired escape from the loathsome suburbs, start to realize the terrifying inevitability of the existence of the suburbs and the continued grasp they will have on their own psyches - the McMansions of their past turn out to be hard to shake. But Arcade Fire goes at these ideas with generalities and reductive simplifications – Win Butler likes to talk about “the kids” and “the suburbs” as uniform collective entities – while Titus Andronicus goes for vivid specificity and storytelling – his Mahwah, NJ kids worry about “getting their lazy asses to the Bottle King by ten” so they can “throw up in the warm glow of the traffic lights”. And they don’t stop at that set of ideas – Stickles’ writing is dense with well-placed cultural allusions, fun historical fiction scene-setting, and deeply honest reckonings with the thoroughly weird concepts of American history and patriotism.

And the music – oh, the music. It was clear from the last album that Titus could write a fist-pumping punk anthem as well as any contemporary band in existence, but they’ve cleaned up their lo-fi production into stadium sound and expanded their music palette to include everything from folk and country-influenced melodies and, yes, the occasional bagpipe solo. Titus Andronicus makes music as deeply angry and pessimistic as any band engaging in real-deal social commentary, but they also manage to be funny and lively and fun. Where a band like Arcade Fire goes for somber mourning in the face of gloom, Titus Andronicus rage against the dying the light. It’s a philosophy summarized quite nicely by Stickles in the middle of the album: “I’m at the end of my rope,” he says, “and I feel like swinging.”

Thoughts on Titus Andronicus - "A More Perfect Union"

Titus Andronicus - "Four Score and Seven"


Titus Andronicus - "Theme from 'Cheers'"

#10

Teebs - Ardour

JESSE: I missed the Brainfeeder show in early November because I was on a game show in Singapore at the time, but luckily I snagged Ardour a few days before the flights across the globe. I appreciate Teebs for so many reasons. One, he skateboards (or used to). Two, he's a visual artist (and a good one, at that). Three, he makes killer music. Of Brainfeeder dudes, Teebs is sort of the George Harrison to Flying Lotus's John Lennon and Daedelus's Paul McCartney. I can't think of a way to put GLK or Ras G into the Ringo Starr role, but whatever. The music's more subdued and emotional, but holds its own weight. Changes in songs are gradual, and the whole album has a persistent star-gazing or cloud-watching feel, but then enough pitch changes and sound bends to have your mind wobble around for a bit. It's also got a somewhat amateur feel to it, which is nice. Not too much to analyze, but surprisingly solid overall.

NASTY K: Teebs is doing a great thing, I luckily had the chance to catch him on the Magical Properties Fall Tour with Daedelus and The Gaslamp Killer back in October. At a time when Daedelus and Flying Lotus seem to be going in a more perhaps straightforward direction with their live shows, Teebs is staying really true to himself. This is not to say I don't love Daedelus's animated performances with his Victorian dandy get-ups, because I certainly do, but his live set moved more in the direction of boring dubstep, just wobbling bass for the sake of having wobbling bass. This surprised me coming from a guy who became known for the ornate nature of his beats. Flying Lotus for his part too, when I caught his act in September, played a good part of Boys Noize's "Lava Lava", again surprising from the king of Brainfeeder, the introspective, late-night, cannabis-induced beat factory that it is. So Teebs in a sense is keeping the flame, playing his set with his hood up, and a real understated manner. Jesse is on the money about this album being full of emotion, recorded after Teebs lost his father. When I came up to him after the show and told him I thought his set was absolutely transcendent, he just beamed. He is certainly a rising star in the Brainfeeder world, coming from a really honest and heartfelt place, and his tunes are totally dope, keep em coming. The joint mixtape he did with Daedelus, entitled LA Series 6 is one of the best I think I have ever heard, best half hour of beats released this year, and the B-sides of Ardour are also worth a listen.

Teebs - "Felt Tip"


Teebs - "Double Fifths"