Friends, enemies, & strangers:
What a year, what a year. In the spirit of universal experience, I assume that (like me) you all have had a truly tumultuous 2010. Fulfilling accomplishments, stomach-dropping mistakes, ecstatic fellowship, blindsiding betrayals, priceless treasures, heart-breaking loss. Musicians seem to have fared similarly on this last spin around the sun (the burgeoning creativity born of extremes—pleasure and pain). Art has an uncanny tendency of tracing the lines of one’s experience like an impressionistic portrait of one’s emotional topography.
What a year, what a year. In the spirit of universal experience, I assume that (like me) you all have had a truly tumultuous 2010. Fulfilling accomplishments, stomach-dropping mistakes, ecstatic fellowship, blindsiding betrayals, priceless treasures, heart-breaking loss. Musicians seem to have fared similarly on this last spin around the sun (the burgeoning creativity born of extremes—pleasure and pain). Art has an uncanny tendency of tracing the lines of one’s experience like an impressionistic portrait of one’s emotional topography.
So for a particularly dramatic year comes a particularly dynamic set of music. 2010, from my heavily-biased and narrow perspective of the music world, saw artists releasing a glut of exemplary material: moving, innovative, unique, and sometimes just downright fun. In a desperate attempt to meet demand with supply—or maybe just out of pure gluttonous indulgence—I have doubled my 2010 sampler, stretching its span across two make-believe discs (or one portly ITunes playlist).
As much as any teenage puppy-love mixtape, I have carefully and lovingly arranged this playlist not only as informational—to introduce you to some new music—but as a performance in its own right—a sweeping film score to accompany the year. I hope you enjoy and cull some new favorites from it.
Platonically yours,
~~Seth Green
Top 5 Albums of 2010 (in alphabetical order)
Arcade Fire The Suburbs
Back-seat kids with foreheads pressed daydreamily up to the windows crane their necks looking for stars beyond the long fingers of the streetlights. The gentle rhythm of well-surfaced roads and well-serviced shocks rocks them to sleep in the cradle of suburbia. Padded by privilege, enveloped by entitlement, they dream of adventures in that fantastical unknown world of "the other side of town" where they are self-made men and women. But they are not jolted awake, disillusioned and disappointed by the waking sight of cul-de-sacs and three-car garages. Their father gently nudges their corduroy knees. Put on your shoes, sweetie--we're home.
Back-seat kids with foreheads pressed daydreamily up to the windows crane their necks looking for stars beyond the long fingers of the streetlights. The gentle rhythm of well-surfaced roads and well-serviced shocks rocks them to sleep in the cradle of suburbia. Padded by privilege, enveloped by entitlement, they dream of adventures in that fantastical unknown world of "the other side of town" where they are self-made men and women. But they are not jolted awake, disillusioned and disappointed by the waking sight of cul-de-sacs and three-car garages. Their father gently nudges their corduroy knees. Put on your shoes, sweetie--we're home.
Favorite tracks: "Rococo", "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)", "We Used To Wait".
Beach House Teen Dream
The title of Beach House's third album is alarmingly similar to a contemporary release by Katy Perry. These two albums could not possibly be more dissimilar. While KP's most recent library of auto-tuning effects may indeed capture the modern IPod-generation Teenage Dream, it is a dream that would leave a true lover of music snapping awake in a feverish sweat, frantically seeking the light switch, and mentally computing just how quickly he/she can deactivate his/her Twitter and Facebook. Beach House's Teen Dream is an 8mm, sun-bleached reminiscence of adolescence. The rose-colored home video of a faulty memory. This teen dream is the dream of what we misremember looking back, the romanticization of that most awkward and transitory of times. The kind of dream that coaxes unconscious hands to keep hitting the 'sleep' button, leaving us to repaint our own history in pleasant shades of John Hughes.
Favorite tracks: "Zebra", "Walk In the Park", "Norway".
This record is everything that I love about indie pop/rock: unpredictable, irreverent, unassumingly catchy, accidentally accessible yet purposefully anticlimactic. The Montreal indie supergroup takes their biggest weakness (see previous word supergroup) and turns it into their biggest strength: Forgiveness Rock Record is a perfectly-realized indie mix-tape.
Favorite tracks: "Sweetest Kill", "All to All", "Texico Bitches".
Sigh No More is a gritty combination of the earthy, folk revival of Fleet Foxes and the throw-your-head-back, four-on-the-floor anthems of arena rockers. Unapologetically emotive and sanguine, Mumford & Sons' songs rise and soar as if every track were their last. There is a desperation to their songs that will inevitably polarize self-aggrandizing critics, but I, for one, will fall on the side of those joyous partakers with heads flung back, stomping the floor in four-four time, and screaming the chorus.
Favorite tracks: "The Cave", "White Blank Page", "Little Lion Man".
Vampire Weekend's sophomore effort Contra is like a 21st-century transposition of Paul Simon's seminal Graceland. A manic smattering of influences pop in and out of the ten tracks like a stylistic whack-a-mole. Like Graceland, Contra's focus is on the songwriting rather than the stylistic diversity, making the album light and accessible and avoiding the pitfalls of many other ambitious but heavy-handed albums. Few artists are so successful at winning and maintaining hipster credibility while simultaneously giving the arbiters of said credibility the finger.
Favorite tracks: "Run", "Taxi Cab", "Diplomat's Son".
2010 Playlist (i.e. Love Jams '10)
1. We Were Promised Jetpacks - It's Thunder and It's Lightning (from These Four Walls)
2. The Roots - Dear God 2.0 (from How I Got Over)
3. Local Natives - Airplanes (from Gorilla Manor)
4. Vampire Weekend - Run (from Contra)
5. Margot & The Nuclear So and So's - Birds (from Buzzard)
6. Caribou - Odessa (from Swim)
7. Passion Pit - Little Secrets (from Manners)
8. The Black Keys - Tighten Up (from Brothers)
9. The Dead Weather - Hustle and Cuss (from Sea of Cowards)
10. Menomena - Dirty Cartoons (from Mines)
11. Josh Ritter - The Curse (from So Runs the World Away)
12. Frightened Rabbit - Things (from The Winter of Mixed Drinks)
13. Brandon Flowers - Crossfire (from Flamingo)
14. OK Go - WTF? (from Of the Blue Colour of the Sky)
15. Kele - Everything You Wanted (from The Boxer)
16. Foals - Blue Blood (from Total Life Forever)
17. Gorillaz - On Melancholy Hill (from Plastic Beach)
18. Deerhunter - Revival (from Halcyon Digest)
19. Broken Social Scene - Sweetest Kill (from Forgiveness Rock Record)
--End of Side A, Please Turn Tape Over to Listen to Side B--
20. The National - Terrible Love (from High Violet)
21. Mumford & Sons - The Cave (from Sigh No More)
22. Page CXVI - Battle Hymn of the Republic (from Hymns II)
23. Arcade Fire - Rococo (from The Suburbs)
24. Interpol - Lights (from Interpol)
25. Surfer Blood - Swim (from Astro Coast)
26. Yeasayer - I Remember (from Odd Blood)
27. Broken Bells - The High Road (from Broken Bells)
28. Stars - Wasted Daylight (from The Five Ghosts & The Seance)
29. Tokyo Police Club - Breakneck Speed (from Champ)
30. Crystal Castles - Year of Silence (from Crystal Castles (II) )
31. Jónsi - Grow Till Tall (from Go)
32. Greg Laswell - Goodbye (from Take A Bow)
33. Angus & Julia Stone - Draw Your Swords (from Down the Way)
34. Beach House - Zebra (from Teen Dream)
35. Hammock - Breathturn (from Chasing After Shadows... Living With the Ghosts)
36. Max Richter - infra 5 (from Infra)
--Well Done, Your Journey Is Now Complete, Go Eat A Sandwich--
