Part 2: The Top 10 from Matt Rothstein

Today we continue with the Top 20 albums according to resident music guru (or nerd, depending on how you look at it) Matt Rothstein.

This is the first in what is going to be many posts wrapping up the year in music. Stay tuned for a top 100 tracks (though it might end up at 50, depending on how drunk we get) from Matt, myself, and absolute god Sam Walker, as well as my own thoughts on the crazy roller coaster ride that was 2010.

10. Lindstrøm & Christabelle, Real Life Is No Cool – It’s tough for an album released in the first half of January to keep buzz going until year-end listmaking time rolls around, especially when it’s not by a real buzz band. For whatever reason, I feel like this album never got the respect it deserved for being an absolute electropop powerhouse. More 70’s/80’s, disco/funk informed than Robyn, it’s a non-stop synth bliss-out, with the atmosphere often propelled by simple 16th-note hi-hat cymbals that give the album a feel of a chugging train of “space disco”, as some have labeled Lindstrøm. Once this album hits its groove on the pulsating funk of “Lovesick”, it does not let go.

9. James Blake, CMYK/Klavierwerke EPs – James Blake had to find a spot on my year-end list, even though he hasn’t released a full-length album yet (that comes next year, and from the first impression of lead single “Limit To Your Love,” it should be something spectacular), because he has been, without a doubt, the most innovative, forward-thinking artist of the past year not named Flying Lotus. Ostensibly originating from dubstep, his compositions are much less and more at the same time. With CMYK using chart R&B samples, and Klavierwerke sampling his own voice, he takes the skeleton of a song and rearranges it in ways I never knew were possible, dropping parts in and out, letting certain bits echo in the spacious silence that is always present, even when the music is going. It’s like he realized something about pop and electronic music that Miles Davis realized about jazz in Kind of Blue – you don’t need to fill every moment with sound to be interesting.

8. LCD Soundsystem, This Is Happening – Apparently this is the last album for LCD Soundsystem. So far, the reactions I’ve read have settled on “Well, this is an appropriate exit, and I hope James Murphy continues to make music.” FUCK THAT. This and 2007’s Sound of Silver (which I rank slightly higher) are both masterpieces of dance music. No live band makes more danceable music right now. Nobody. This Is Happening is a mature record about coming to grips with your own shortcomings, and hoping to find acceptance despite them. It’s also about saying “screw it, let’s dance” just as much. Opener “Dance Yrself Clean” is an explosion that reveals Murphy’s deep knowledge of music lovers. Of course you’d turn up the speakers during the painfully soft intro, and of course those speakers would then blow you the hell away once the synths come in like a bomb. Closer “Home” is sentimental, joyous, and the best use of vocal harmonies in a dance song I’ve ever heard. And everything in between is a wonderful journey that starts off exhilarating and uptempo with “Drunk Girls” and “One Touch,” before it slows down slightly and lets the real emotion in with “All I Want” and “I Can Change”. Everything after that is gravy. Come on, James. You know the world needs more of this music.

7. The Walkmen, Lisbon – The Walkmen’s last album, You & Me, was my favorite record of 2008. Perhaps my personal bar for them was set too high, but Lisbon disappointed me slightly. That’s not to say it isn’t brilliant; it is. It just reminds me too much of their last album while lacking its lyrical and thematic depth. That being said, there’s a phenomenal string of winners on this album, from opening song “Juveniles” through to “Woe Is Me”, after which the three remaining songs serve as a slow, soulful nightcap. Lead singer Hamilton Leithauser’s lyrics are self-deprecating, thoughtful and weary, which takes on an air of frustrated energy on the uptempo rocker “Angela Surf City” and mockingly triumphant “Victory”, which, as Leithauser notes in the chorus, is “right beside me.” Lisbon stands along This is Happening, Body Talk and High Violet as an uncommonly mature record in an age in music dominated by youth.

6. Deerhunter, Halycon Digest – Deerhunter’s main lead singer, Bradford Cox, is a gigantic hipster. I used to hate him for that; plus I didn’t really like his music. Yet the way he’s progressed since I decided that, with the very good Microcastle and now this, suggests that he just wants to make music that I’d like more. Seriously, the maturation of this band from hipster noise-rock to 60’s pop-inspired rock has been masterful. “Desire Lines” (actually written and sung by guitarist Lockett Pundt) is like taking a shower in guitar that is pure and crisp, “Helicopter” takes that pure and crisp feeling and turns it into something delicate and nearly angelic, and my favorite track, “Coronado”, dispenses with purity entirely in favor of laid-back garage bounce, with the least annoying saxophone in a pop song I’ve ever heard.

5. Beach House, Teen Dream – I first heard this album in December of last year, and I thought that it would be tough as hell to beat for best album of the year – much like Merriweather Post Pavilion last year. Fortunately, 2010 has been an unbelievable year for music. Teen Dream still stands as an enormous leap for the band – an injection of energy and pacing where it wasn’t present before. I’ve been a fan of Beach House for a while, but at best, their first two albums were hazy and lethargic. Absolute stunners “Used To Be”, “Silver Soul” and “Norway” are the very essence of dreamy pop bliss, and Victoria Legrand has one of the most unique, enchanting voices in the indie sphere right now. Other albums may have made bigger splashes, but no record was more filled with understated beauty than this one.

4. Local Natives, Gorilla Manor – If comfort and happiness could be distilled and recorded, it would be this record. The amazing vocal harmonies don’t quit, and the African-inspired drumming is so much of the moment that a lot of people called these guys copycats, which is frankly ridiculous when you consider how many times every drumming style has been copied. The guitar is filled with playfulness throughout the album, but that and the drumming are both in service to the singing. My god, the singing on “Airplanes”, “World News”, “Cubism Dream”, and especially “Who Knows, Who Cares” – which is far and away my favorite pop song of the year – are nothing short of divine. It is damn near impossible not to fall in love with this band for their infectious enthusiasm for making catchy rock music.

3. The National, High Violet – All you need to know about how great this album is comes from the second song, “Sorrow”. A less careful band would take the climax of the song, at two minutes and twenty seconds in, and add a solo or a big flourish. Instead, we get a ghostly chorus for a precious few seconds. In fact, there isn’t a single ear-catching moment on the whole album. Nothing jumps out (except for Matt Berninger’s devastating voice), and oh baby, is the album better for it. The uptempo songs have a propulsion to them only makes Berninger’s baritone despair more poignant, and the slow songs…well, sometimes they just overcome the senses with their perfection, with “Lemonworld” being a case in point. An album in which every element is in balance has a beauty that is impossible to capture in words. If I could choose one album this year to just listen to alone, slightly drunk and with my eyes closed, it would be High Violet and it wouldn’t be close.

2. Big Boi, Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty – Kanye’s album is great, but give me Big Boi any day. Not as forward-thinking, sure, but he keeps a level of consistent excellence from his rhymes, his beats, his hooks, and even his jokey interludes throughout the entire album, without the staggering amounts of baggage. The 80’s style futuristic bounce of “Shutterbugg”, the triumphant soul of “Shine Blockas”, and the absolutely dialed-in bounce of “Tangerine”, all without the maddening bullshit that Kanye attracts and invites? Please.

1. Flying Lotus, Cosmogramma – If I didn’t keep this unreasonably short, then I’d write a novel about this album, simply because there simply aren’t enough superlatives to heap on it. Visionary, mind-expanding, genre-defying; you get the idea. Throwing together instrumental hip hop, dubstep, free jazz, and pure ambition into an album that seems otherworldly at its very core, Stephen Ellison is a prophet for a perfect future of music that will never come to be – where incredible breakbeats, powerful synths, and virtuosic jazz sax and bass play together in what feels like outer space itself.

Part 1: Mr. Matthew Rothstein gives us his favorite albums of 2010

Well hey there, Internet. It's been awhile. I almost didn't recognize you. Sorry I've been so distant these past few months- so many things have just been happening.

I'll have the decency to be up-front with you and admit that I've been writing another blog about UC Denver and Denver's music scene. It's nothing personal, really, just business. I've also been working for a Colorado-based independent record label and playing in a few different musical projects.

But I realized how much I love you, baby. And how much I want to...... write......you.

But we're going to have to take it slow. I need some time to re-adjust. In the meantime, you can talk to my good friend Matt, who'll fill you in on everything that's happened this year. Here's part 1 of Mr. Rothstien's top albums of the year.

Part 2 will come when I feel like it. So don't hold your breath, but definitely feel free to get excited.

I’ve been ranking my favorite music each year since 2007, which is when I really started caring about current music, and without question, this has been the hardest year for choosing favorites (except the top two – those distinguished themselves rather easily) and probably the best year overall. Plenty of incredible music didn’t make the list, and here are a few:

Yeasayer, Odd Blood

PS I Love You, Meet Me At The Muster Station

Titus Andronicus, The Monitor

Mount Kimbie, Crooks & Lovers

Call Me Lightning, When I Am Gone My Blood Will Be Free

Cee Lo Green, The Ladykiller

Erykah Badu, New Amerykah, Pt. Two (Return of the Ankh)

Dr. Dog, Shame, Shame

Janelle Monae, The ArchAndroid

Fang Island, Fang Island

Girl Talk, All Day

Four Tet, There Is Love In You

Toro Y Moi, Causers Of This

20. Guido, Anidea – Dubstep as a genre continues to morph and expand faster and more impressively with each year, but the one thing that remains elusive for even the best of the genre is a great full-length record. Though he doesn’t have the chops for the huge singles of Joker or Girl Unit, Guido managed to do that which only a handful of dance producers ever do – make a cohesive, compelling album that is more than the sum of its parts. He excels at imbuing his synth and bass lines with genuine emotion, with some cinematic strings sprinkled in for extra pleasure.

19. Sufjan Stevens, The Age of Adz/All Delighted People EP – Both albums share a spot here, because for all the innovation and jaw-dropping complexity of The Age of Adz – and there’s a lot – Sufjan’s EP still stands up as a great continuation of what all of his fans wanted: brilliantly composed, symphonic folk-pop. That he came over the top just a couple months later with a challenging, yet deeply emotional symphony of freak-out electronic…something – it nearly justifies the excruciating wait.

18. Robyn, Body Talk – People who know me well know that there was a time when I swore off pop. Robyn is as much a reason as anything for that time in my life being over. Electropop composition that simply doesn’t have an equal, supporting lyrics that actually have something to say? This is pop that is about a light year or two above guilty pleasure. For God’s sake, have you ever heard a pop song as brilliantly written as “Call Your Girlfriend”?

17. Tame Impala, Innerspeaker – Today, 60’s psychedelic music sounds downright pastoral; especially given what prog rock did to the word “psychedelic” in the 70’s. Tame Impala’s true strength is taking the 60’s blend and really, truly making it sound psychedelic again, much like Caribou did with Andorra, only with more of an emphasis on actual rock elements, like absolutely on-point drumming and some great guitar riffs. What’s more, the album feels like a journey on the whole, with each song containing enough left turns to make it all feel much more full of ideas than the average record.

16. Curren$y, Pilot Talk – Though its sequel Pilot Talk II nearly equaled it just four months after its release, this album out of New Orleans is as drenched in pot smoke as anything I’ve ever heard out of hip hop (short of Madlib, who is not of this planet anyhow). Ski Beatz’s production is dirty (with, like, 40 r’s) funky, switching the BPM from an easy bounce, as in “Breakfast”, to the blunted crawl of “Audio Dope II”, which features steel drum that sounds like it came out of Tom Waits, with Curren$y drawling over everything with deceptively clever verses. Sure, he talks mostly about bud, but he is an internal rhyming poet. Believe the man – “Some of the good things that weed can do.”

15. Dosh, Tommy – It’s as if two clouds named “Yo La Tengo-style tranquil indie pop” and “cool jazz” just swept up together and breathed out this record. “Number 41,” which is a simply great indie pop song with tinges of country, feels nearly out of place on this record, which is mostly instrumental, if only because it feels the most like a song. Everything else just feels like an impressionist sketch, light as a feather and with washes of melody flowing over the listener like a summer breeze. And all of it’s kept together by percussion that is jazzy in a surprising number of ways from track to track.

14. Broken Social Scene, Forgiveness Rock Record – Another album whose beating heart belongs to the drums. The wealth of guitar is a given when it comes to BSS, but I was honestly surprised when every song that hits its mark (with the notable exceptions of “Sentimental X’s”, which expands to synths for help with their rhythm sections, to amazing effect) leans on the drums. The huge fills of opener “World Sick” give the rain of guitars direction, the restrained-yet-nearly-frenetic pacing of “All to All” becomes more and more percussion-heavy as the song goes on, getting better and better, and the unrelenting stomp of “Meet Me in the Basement” is taken to another level by the clever cymbal lines that alternate throughout. The album gets long and not every song is a winner, but its overall force cannot be denied.

13. Gorillaz, Plastic Beach – Over the course of ten years and three albums, Gorillaz has gone from a cool, yet unfocused stoner joke band to a unified vision of frontman Damon Albarn, displaying amazing consistence in feel over the course of Plastic Beach. The balance between bright synth sounds and classical orchestration that occasionally evokes George Gershwin, especially on all-orchestra closer “Pirate’s Progress”, is cleverly shifted over and over throughout the album, with the requisite rapping that Gorillaz has always relied on for its hits seeming more out of place over such music, but not unpleasantly so. The focus that ties it all together is an emotional one, of disaffection and resignation in the face of an unpleasantly consumerist society, which hardly seems appropriate considering what a fun listen this is.

12. Arcade Fire, The Suburbs – I apparently liked Neon Bible better than everyone else I know, so only I seemed to be disappointed by this album. I expected something closer to the raw, world-conquering emotion of Funeral or the righteous fury of Neon Bible, and what I got was discontent and despair. But when I got over my expectations, I realized that despite it being more expansive than its predecessors, The Suburbs is a more unified emotional statement. Instead of an uptempo song providing a lift from a downer that precedes it, every new song is like a different camera angle on the same pissed-off suburban family – or, even more powerfully, refrains that only strengthen the potency of what we’ve already seen (sequels like “Half Light II”, “Suburban War” and “Sprawl II: Mountains Beyond Mountains). They may not have the desire for skyscraper singles anymore, but they know how to make albums better than they ever have.

11. Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy – Anyone who enjoys writing about music could fill tomes talking about this album, which is probably why this is popping up as #1 on every major list I’ve read so far. My feelings toward the album are…complicated. Suffice to say, the album is musically brilliant, matched by great rapping by Kanye and all of his collaborators (except for “Blame Game,” which is a boring song with a funny, but way too long comedy bit by Chris Rock at the end). But Kanye continually invites people to tangle up his music with his public image, since even he can’t get them straight, so him being unable to decide whether he’s sorry for being a dick or whether he loves it takes away from the experience for me. I don’t want to be pissed off when listening to music, but that’s just me. It’s a very, very good hip hop album, but Kanye’s celebrity has elevated the album past where it’s deserved. (I mean, the first 10 since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Pitchfork? Really?)

Yeah, the Top 10 will be coming soon, along with lots of other year-end lists that will make you want to go out and catch up on this entire last year of ridiculously good music.