1. The Monitor – Titus Andronicus
2. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy – Kanye West
3. Storage – Wesley Wolfe
4. This Is Happening – LCD Sound System
5. Contra – Vampire Weekend
6. Body Talk, Pt 1 – Robyn
7. Raymond Vs Raymond – Usher
8. Praise And Blame – Tom Jones
9. Lost In Time – Eric Benet
10. Holy Hell – Noun
Comment: So what do my ten fave albums have in common? Nothing. Indie, hip, rock, dance, black, white… oh, except for Tom Jones, distinctly American. There is a reason for that, I don’t think England is enjoying a particularly fertile period and I don’t follow other musical cultures closely enough to have an informed opinion.
Of all of them, it is the failure of Wesley Wolfe to break through, even in a limited indie way, to a larger audience, that aggravates me most. I know what mainstream pop should sound like, and in a post-Alex Chilton universe, Wolfe should find people who could relate to Storage as as fine a piece of pop rock this side of the dB’s. Perhaps Wolfe needed to tour behind it, but therein lies the paradox: you can’t tour without a following and you can’t get a following without touring. I do know that while I don’t care if my heroes can’t afford a mansion, I do want them to be able to make a living making music.
Usually, you can look at a year and learn a lesson. Even 2009 had the Brooklyn scene. But music in 2010 was sceneless, rudderless, floating in space. The only real question was distribution and publicity, and how to turn a profit. So, not unlike 1983, the revolution was not to be found in the music. Social network was the change, the music was static and the only real sound development I was aware of was dance music beyond the DJ world of remixes, or even the DJ world of found sounds, and into the group world as personified by Holy Ghost!, Afrobeta, Drop The Lime and others.
But it was a good year. there was a very consistent level of excellence all year long and if, with the exception of Titus, no mind boggling work of staggering genius, there was a million smaller pleasures.
I could ask for nothing more than 2011 be as good a year as 2010 was.