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.