By John Davidson
[We are pleased to have another guest contributor offer a top ten list. John has written for publications like The Big Takeover. 'Nuff said. - Rube]
It’s been amazing and heartening to watch the Internet revolutionize the music industry: if the first ten years or so were all about distribution (first through online record stores and eBay, and then the creation of a previously unimaginable ubiquity via file sharing) then the next wave has been the utter destruction of gatekeepers through social networking. We don’t need Rolling Stone or Spin…the truth is that even Pitchfork doesn’t influence like it used to. We can lament the passing of Paste but the truth is that we don’t need it anymore. We’ve found better, more efficient ways to connect to music.
And yet despite the rise of more powerful discovery mechanisms, there still seems to be an unmanageable deluge of interesting new music releases to pick through, hampered in part by the inevitable journey that accompanies a click of the mouse. It’s hard to make a Top 10 list, not only because I’m worried I’ve missed something but because a calendar year seems too arbitrary. To wit—that great song “Kandi” by One EskimO
One Eskimo – Kandi
Anyway, here are the ten albums that I probably listened to most this year, not really in any order.
1. Halcyon Digest
It’s great to call Deerhunter an Atlanta band, but the bottom line is that it really doesn’t matter where this band is from—trying to draw inferences from possible geographical influences is a fools’ game. Still, this is the most consistently interesting local band of the past five or so years, and this is their best album—or at very least, their least weird.
2. The Monitor
This album is flooring in so many ways, a thinking man’s Replacements without the flailing self-destruction. At the same time, it’s easy to imagine these guys mellowing out over the years and ending up at the same place Westerberg and his gang did.
3. Pictures
This is the best Kinks band that never was, and this is their The Village Green Preservation Society
4. The Guitar Song
I was tempted to hate this double album simply because I knew it would be full of lyrical clichés, creepy tributes to outlaw country, and wince-inducing filler. But then found out I I was wrong, and all the lavish praise was spot-on.
5. Transference
Spoon peaked for me with Kill The Moonlight—I’d interviewed Britt Daniels back then, was in love with the album, and figured that Spoon was headed straight to the bin of woefully forgotten bands. But eight years later, Spoon still seems at the top of their game; Transference continues the astonishing run of quality.
6. Cinéma
The best dream-pop album of the year, a modern shoegazer type of thing that doesn’t pimp feedback or washout vocals as a calling card. The High Violets haven’t changed much in a decade, they just keep writing great pop songs and infusing them with swirling guitars and big hooks.
7. Infinite Arms
They didn’t manage the big statements of 2007’s Cease To Begin this year, but Infinite Arms charms with repeated listens. Allegedly culled from a few dozen songs, the album struggles to find cohesion but triumphs on the timeworn shoulders of atmospheric country rock.
8. I Speak Because I Can
The most promising folk singer in recent years and an album void of filler—it’s hard to avoid the wunderkind context once you learn that Marling is barely 21 years old.
9. Together
The Beatles lasted seven years. It has now been a decade since the New Pornographers burst forth with the ebullient Mass Romantic and truth be told, no one in this side project expected it to last. That Together seems a little bit settled as a result isn’t alarming or even disappointing—the maturity goes well with all the baroque pop ambitions that the band has always nurtured.
10. So Runs The World Away
Everyone loves Josh Ritter on this website, so why bother pimping him right? He draws a lot from Dylan and Waits, but Ritter doesn’t have the gruff distance of those guys. Instead, So Runs the World Away gathers close and whispers like a dear friend with a great book to share.
